The Self

One of the most difficult challenges anyone can face is that of defining who one is, what one believes, and what one stands for. It is far less challenging to live one's truth, beliefs, and commitments without having to comment on them. Or is it? Every day one is challenged to be truthful, to abide by one's beliefs, and to act with a firm purpose of commitment by the multiple and complex encounters and socially or politically enforced compromises that everyday experience offers. To the degree compromise and acquiescence dominate my experience, then, it seems easier to write about my ideal self--the one who never lies, whose beliefs are entirely consistent, and whose record is one of constancy and reliability--than to face (and worse, live) the fact that I am no more perfect than others think I am (and possibly less perfect than I think I am).

That would seem to make me what is sneeringly called a liberal--the name today's right-wing punditocracy gives to anyone who has second thoughts about what he or she thinks, believes, and says. Yet liberalism has an innocuous enough shade of meaning, even by the supposedly descriptive standards of the Merriam Webster Company: an economic theory based on competition and the self-regulating market; a philosophy based on belief in progress, individual autonomy, and protection of political and civil liberties. Does that mean right-wing conservatives do not believe in those things, or does it mean the punditocracy has not a clue what it is s

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Category: Psychology - T