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This is http://www.essayz.com/a9008141.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %SHADOW DISHONEST EFFORT DENIAL TRUTH DECEPTION 900814 Many human efforts occur in the shadow of an embarrassing truth, and can best be understood as efforts to hide from those embarrassing truths. In a paradoxical way the efforts cast the shadow in which they occur, for they seek to hide from the light from which refuge is sought. The efforts are efforts to find protection from the light of the truth, and so the efforts are placed between the embarrassed workers and the truth. When we put some thing between us and the sun to shade ourselves from sunlight, we hide ourselves from the light of the sun. When we put some of our efforts between us and truths which embarrass us, we hide ourselves from the light of those truths, and we are in the shadow of our efforts. Because we are in the shadow of our efforts and do not acknowledge the truths from which they hide us, to us the efforts which have hidden us from those embarrassing truths are efforts which make sense. To those who see and acknowledge the truths as being essential to wisdom, our efforts make no sense. They see our efforts as efforts to deny essential truths. Picture someone trying with a broom to sweep the Pacific Ocean away from the shore line. What sense could such an effort make? A self deluded person who is narrowly focused upon the sand immediately at hand might gain hope from temporary success in sweeping the water away from some local spot, and believe that such successes indicate that greater successes in pushing back the ocean with the broom are just a matter of improved effort and technique. Such continued efforts would be meaningful to the worker only in the shadow of their efforts to believe that the Pacific Ocean can be controlled with the broom! Picture someone trying with an atomizer to put out a raging forest fire, concentrating the atomic effort upon a few needles which are burning at their feet---and ignoring the flames which rage a hundred feet overhead. Such efforts would be meaningful to the worker only in the shadow of their efforts to believe that they can control the forest fire with an atomizer. Picture doctors trying to prevent the death of an elderly great-grandmother who is dying of cancer. Such efforts would be meaningful to them only in the shadow of their efforts to deny that some day they too will inevitably die, and that they cannot control their lives to the point of being immortal. Picture a nation addicted to oil and frantically trying to find an endless additional supply of oil on a finite planet which has only one thousand cubic miles of quality organic fuel. Such an effort is meaningful to the nation only in the shadow of its efforts to deny that some day the organic fuel on its planet will all have been used up, and its technocratic frenzy will come to an end. Picture a civilization addicted to technical fixes of all kinds, living in the shadow if its belief that problems with alienation, estrangement and lack of meaning in life can be fixed---through additional knowledge, techniques, technology, resources and efforts. Such living can make sense only in the shadow of the civilization's efforts to deny all truths regarding the nature of human fulfillment, satisfaction, community, communication, conversation, conversion, cooperation, redemption and salvation. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================