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%CORPORATE CHRISTIAN RELIGION CHURCH POWER SIN EVIL+971206
 %BLAME GUILT SHAME RESPONSIBILITY SELF OTHER ALIEN 971023
                                                          
     Either/or  thinking  often gets in the way  of  clear
insight and understanding regarding responsibility.       
                                                          
     Often either/or people are preoccupied with assigning
blame, guilt, shame and responsibility upon others --- not
themselves.  They are prone to think that it is always:   
                                                          
        Either                 Or                         
                                                          
        Others' fault          Their own fault            
        Individual fault       Communal fault             
        Personal control       Fate                       
        Nature                 Nurture                    
        Moral                  Immoral                    
        Right                  Wrong                      
        Good                   Evil                       
        Spiritual              Worldly                    
        Acceptable             Rejectable                 
        Included               Excluded                   
        Friend                 Enemy                      
        True                   False                      
        Scriptural             Secular                    
        Success                Failure                    
        Win                    Lose                       
        Salvation              Damnation                  
                                                          
     When people  limit themselves to  dichotomous choices
they exclude from  consideration  continuous  spectrums of
possibilities  clear  thinking.    Then  prudent  decision
making  is  often impossible.    Not all choices  must  be
either  one or another.   Often  there  are a multitude of
possibilities to choose from.  It is not helpful to reduce
consideration  of  a  multitude  of possible choices to  a
series of either/or choices ---  as is  required  in  most
parliamentary rules.                                      
                                                          
     Either/or  thinking is often used in futile  attempts
to   simplify   life  which  is   apparently   excessively
complicated.  Either/or  thinking   eliminates  ambiguity,
doubt, uncertainty,  paradoxes and much more  which  makes
life complicated.   Either/or thinking is often associated
with collusive games of mutual self deception.   Either/or
thinking works to hide from view the misleading aspects of
word combinations such as:                                
                                                          
     Holy War                Evil Peacemaking             
     Holy Violence           Evil Conflict Resolution     
     Holy Coercion           Evil Tolerance               
     Holy Excommunication    Evil Intimacy                
     Holy Alienation         Evil Forgiveness             
                                                          
                         (c) 1997 by Paul A. Smith in     
                      "Search for Integrity and Honesty"  
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)

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