As I navigate through the ‘Are vs. Should’ Problem‘ I see an initial split as we start to unpack our personal inventories. If we first have to lay out all the elements of our lives for inspection and understanding, it becomes obvious that there are (at least) two types of elements to consider. I’m calling these ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ elements, and they are defined within their respective realities. I’m not trying to make this esoteric or overly complicated, it really isn’t.
In short, ‘hard’ realities are measurable things composed of matter that can be studied by science. Things like foods we like, things we find beautiful, our favorite color, types of people we’re attracted to, jobs we’d like to do. Compared to ‘soft’ realities that are less . . . definable. Less measurable. More foggy. These things include our feelings about religion, whether we think abortion should be legal, how we feel about anarchy. . . . how one defines beauty (as opposed to things we find beautiful). And so on.
In short, I want to begin the process of understanding our personal inventories by introducing the idea that there are (at least) two ways of looking at our personality traits defined by these two ‘worlds’. I’m sure other authors and thinkers have defined these things differently, and I beg you to educate me, but this is the idea I’ll ponder this week as we move toward redefining ourselves.
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