IS MAN INCOMPREHENSIBLE TO MAN?

TO COPE WITH THE SELF-REFERENTIAL PARADOX

I see this inquiry to be required now as we seek to evaluate the troubling condition of our society. In a recent article entitled “AN UNFORTUNATE REALITY”, I attempted to assess the two basic natures of thinking in this nation. This current article is intended to lay the groundwork for a deeper assessment of those two extraordinarily different ways of approaching “reality”.

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To know our world, to know other people, we must first know ourselves. Otherwise, the unknown aspects of our own minds pollute the data we receive as we observe others in ways we cannot assess.

The self-referential paradox is the apparent conflict that arrises when a system, in this case the human mind, attempts to assess its own nature, its own objective competence when looking at itself. The system observed by itself is limited by the competence of that very system. Does this system know itself in a sufficiently dispassionate and accurate manner to evaluate its own contents?

I look at this world, observe it as objectively as I can, and wonder, am I seeing outside myself clearly? Am I seeing Rip Parker accurately in the several roles he plays? My roles are small, nearly invisible, nothing we could think of as important except perhaps on a small scale for my family. Seems assessing his truth should not be that difficult — but it is.

We all, I think, play mental games with ourselves to cast ourselves in certain…