This is http://www.essayz.com/a9006011.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %LIMITS PERSONAL CONTROL SELF OTHER UNIVERSE FINITE 900601 Honesty demands regular acknowledgement of our limits as regards power to control. The universe is so much bigger than we are in space and time that we find it threatening to even try to comprehend the enormity of all that has been and will come to pass. Most of the universe is beyond the reach of our influence during our short lives. It is even farther beyond the scope of our possible control. The earth on which we live is but a speck orbiting a speck of a star in a dust cloud of stars among billions of such swirling dust clouds of stars. We cannot control what happens on our speck of a planet, much less can we control what happens in the billions of swirling dust clouds of billions of stars each. We cannot control the consequences of our decisions and actions. The patterns of natural processes partially described by scientists as natural laws determine what follows from our decisions and actions; we do not. We have finite knowledge because our brains and libraries are of finite size and duration. We cannot understand in full the operation of our brains because a full understanding of our brains would entail a full understanding of the process of fully understanding the full understanding . . . . . A full understanding of ourselves would entail a full understanding of each of us fully understanding ourselves and each other fully understanding our process of fully understanding all others in relationships to our selves . . . . To be in control of our selves and each other we would need to be in control of a full knowledge of ourselves and others in the process of being fully in control of ourselves and each other in the process of fully understanding ourselves and each other . . . . To be fully in control we would have to be fully in control of our emotions, fears, desires, affection, affectations, deceptions, pretenses, games of mutual self deception . . . . To be fully in control of ourselves and others we would need to be able to fully control how others perceive us while they are fully in control how we perceive them perceiving us . . . . Any paradigm which leads us to try to be fully in control of much of anything is a paradigm which leads to dishonesty and disintegration; and so all such paradigms are unworthy of personal and communal respect. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================