I have a Rider-Waite Tarot deck. From time to time when I feel like a shift is happening in the air, I will draw one. I post it on the wall in my bedroom. Right now it is the Six of Pentacles.
Obviously, I always want to get one of the major ones–a queen, or king, or something like that.
But this got me to thinking: if I actually WAS a king, would I then still want to draw kings? Would my life then be uniformly kingly?
No, of course not. Human beings do human things. They have good days and bad days. They are ideally often smart, but invariably occasionally really thick or slow.
So it seems to me I can both be King of my domain at times, and janitor, and everything in between. All of us need to wear all hats at times. We need to see it all, sit in all the seats. If I were King I would want to be low sometimes, and in my relative peonage, I can still be regal when I want to be.
And I will append an idea I had the other day: putting on world views is an interesting exercise, one that is interesting, a bit pleasurable, and a nice break from routine.
Now that I write this, I feel I may have posted something like this before. It’s been a few years if so.
But if you are a conservative, try and place yourself imaginatively in the mind of a hard core Leftist, as fully as you can. Try to feel what they feel when they see Donald Trump, or the American Flag, or a homeless person, or an electric car. Don’t judge it. Don’t resist it. Just put it on like a new coat, and wear it for a minute.
And I am not even trying to make you smarter with this exercise. This is not the point. Nor am I trying to make you more empathic. What I AM saying is that the exercise ALONE is interesting and fun and worth doing on that basis alone. If it yields more benefits, so much the better.
This is a form of aesthetics, moral aesthetics, in which the painting is your reconstruction of someone else’s moral viewpoint, without resistance.
Try an Amish farmer, the opposite sex, a devout peaceful Muslim, a violent Jihadist, a KKK member, a Quaker, and of course John Malkovich.