A

Mercy plus Perceiver 93

An Absolute is a set of links which exists in all places and at all times.

 It is a Perceiver fact which is true wherever and „whenever‟ I go.

 It is based in connections which do not change.

At this point, our discussion about absolutes may seem a little strange.
Many of us probably have not thought much about them, and if we have,
quite possibly we have associated „absolutes‟ with dogmatism,
conservatism, religious fervor, and other forms of emotional excess. I
suggest that we are confusing absolutes with the method by which they are
often propagated. Obviously, if a person wearing a bright orange tie with
lime polka-dots comes to my door selling insurance, I will tend to forget
about the product and remember the tie. Similarly, if „absolute truth‟
comes to me clothed usually in emotional robes, I will probably forget
about the facts and remember only the feelings. Don‟t worry. We will dip
our intellectual toes into the goo of emotion soon enough and examine the
connection between „truth‟ and „feelings‟ in exhaustive (and exhausting)
detail.
We have been looking at some of the distinctions between Mercy mode
and Perceiver strategy. We have seen that experiences are stored within the
Mercy room, whereas the connections between these experiences are
worked out by Perceiver thought and stored within the Perceiver room. We
learned that a kind of one-way mirror is located in the „wall‟ which
separates these two mental rooms. This means that whenever Perceiver
strategy works with facts, it can always lift its head, look through the
mental „window,‟ and see the Mercy experiences which are being affected
by these facts.
Thus, I suggest that when a Perceiver person tries to limit his thinking
to „the facts and nothing but the facts,‟ he is actually putting a mental
„curtain‟ over the window which „overlooks‟ Mercy strategy, and
pretending that experiences and feelings do not exist. He usually does this
because he finds it easier to think without the distraction of feelings
emanating from the room next door. However, I suggest that this strategy
is self-defeating, because the only way that Perceiver thought can come up
with facts is by opening the curtain, looking through the window into
Mercy thought, and searching for patterns and connections. Therefore, the
Perceiver individual who limits himself to facts will usually spend more
time adjusting mental curtains than working out facts—he will close the
curtains when the glare of Mercy emotion gets too bright, and he will

individuals with limited experiences, it takes a lot of sifting and thinking to
figure out which facts really are repeated and which ones are simply
temporary combinations of elements. Besides, this mental sorting work
must all be accomplished under the „incoming fire‟ of Mercy emotions.