December 21, 2014　=========
☆ nature　本質
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This week’s phrase is about our nature I think. It is “The self is not something that one finds. It is something one creates.” by Thomas Szasz. I had never heard of this man, but a quick Google search told me that he was a professor and psychiatrist in New York. He died in 2012 aged 92. It turns out his main focus was on mental illness and how our cultures define this (in a way that is not helpful to anyone) but he also has many quotes on various different topics, including finding ourselves and our true nature.
He actually seems like he would have been a very interesting professor and a challenging one – many of the ideas he had would be confronting and hard for many people to accept. For example, he said that it is in our nature to persecute those that are different to us; we are offended and intolerant of human differences. Do you agree? Do you think that it is our nature to be intolerant of others who are different from us? If so, what is the hope for humanity – since we will always be different from each other, right? I will always look western, you will always look Japanese, we cannot change this… so how will people ever become more tolerant if this intolerance is supposedly part of our nature? Or, is intolerance really part of our “nurture” rather than “nature”? What do you think?
Bye,
Chris