The Two Me’s 253emotional 'facts.' Notice the key role that is played by suffering—it
separates the two legs, and it forces the final jump. Again we are back to
the conclusion that every „Germany‟ requires a „Russia.‟ There must be a
better way.A Well, let us see what happens if we keep the me of our
physical bodies on this side of the cliff while we use the me of Mercy
identification to probe the uncertain clouds which separate emotional 'facts'
from logical facts.
When the me associated with my physical body was probing the mists
of Perceiver uncertainty, as in our previous option, there was external
change—some lasting external series of events convinced common sense
that me was different. In contrast, when the me of Mercy identification
establishes the bridgehead, then the initial changes are entirely mental.
They are not seen by others.
The goal of this alternate kind of mental probing is to use Mercy
identification to build a new me held together, as before, by Perceiver logic
and confidence. Above all, this requires internal honesty and integrity. If I
use Mercy identification to fly away to some mental world of escapism,
then I will not be building a new me, but simply playing games with the
old one.
In scientific circles, this type of mental probing is called research. We
all know that research is useful only if it is honest and accurate; that is
what distinguishes research from fiction. The scientist who intentionally
falsifies data or who spreads lies is usually rejected very quickly by the
scientific community. And yet, we also know that honest research is often
quite difficult, especially when personal emotions are involved. For
instance, do we trust the words of a scientist who says that smoking
tobacco is not harmful when we find that he works for the tobacco
industry?
Unfortunately, it is exactly this type of painful honesty which is
required for building a new me. We
must include the subjective in our
research, because we are not simply
working with a set of abstract beliefs,
but we are constructing a new me, and
me, by definition, is my subjective
part. In practical terms, this means
bringing my personal life to my work
A Why must there be a better way? Because, I assume that this is true.
Another major assumption of mine is that an answer can always be found
to every problem. We will see later that it is these two assumptions which
allow Contributor thought to operate with freedom. So far, I have found
these axioms to be true if I am willing to pay the price—and there always
is a cost.