On his website (in the subscribers-only section) Dr. Heiner Fruehauf translates a story regarding a 20th Century Chinese physician by the name of Wang Fengyi. Dr. Wang was a young and gifted physician who seemed to take particular exception to the wrongdoings and bad practices of others (I’m greatly paraphrasing this as I’m having to recall it from memory), to the point where his righteous indignation began to eat at him, literally.
His bitterness over Other People’s Failings was so potent and so pervasive that while yet very young he developed a particularly vicious form of testicular cancer, so much so that he had festering accumulations on his testicles. The cancer proved to be completely unresponsive to treatment and he found himself in the position of expecting to die young, his medical prowess useless to help himself and his bright future wasted.
Dr. Wang, in his desperation, sought out a peasant healer in a small village who worked according to a Five Phase-oriented form of storytelling. He would tell the patient stories of all kinds-frequently re-tellings of well known classic tales-that could last anywhere from an hour to a couple of days. Wang approached the storyteller physician who agreed to treat him.
As the storyteller spoke, Wang began to realize that the true source of the thing killing him was himself. All the bitterness, anger, self-assuredness, and superiority he felt over those who just didn’t “get it” was the virulence responsible for his terminal illness. Over the next several days as he kept ritual watch over his father’s grave, he came to terms with his worldview and experienced a purging of sorts (something which I understand typically involves a lot of vomiting, crying, sweating, and diarrhea) releasing his poisonous mentality. Within a short time, the cancer was completely gone, never to return. Wang lived a long and full life as a doctor in the storytelling tradition.
My point: it doesn’t matter that you are right. Being right is primarily for your benefit and hopefully the benefit of others, like acquired wealth being shared with the less fortunate. Truth exists independently of us and does not require our acknowledgement or confirmation to continue existing.
Acknowledgement and acceptance of Truth requires conforming oneself to it, not using it as a means of self-aggrandizement and “showing up those idiots over there.” Doing so is wrong, destructive, self-destructive, and contrary to the objective nature of the situation. You found the answer, you didn’t invent it.
So consider this an injunction to all people who are deeply invested in doing things the right way (including myself) to divulge yourselves of all attitudes and practices that involve looking scornfully at others for their (perceived) stupidity, weakness, ignorance, evil, etc. because such attitudes create a much bigger problem. It helps nothing and noone when in an attempt to be rid of the pest of misinformation you create in yourself the devil of Bigotry.
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(courtesy @ G.Michael Reynolds)
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