How shall I word it?

        When people disuss religion and politics. calm conversations often turn into fierce arguments. Thinking is stimulated  when anyone questions our beliefs and opinions. we sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told that we are wrong we resent the imputation and harden our hearts. We  are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of  their companionship. It is obviously not the  ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is threatened. We are by nature stubbornly pledged to defend our own from attackm whether it be our person, our family, our opinion. For what we beliefs, some of us can swear to a friend or to anybody that God Almighty could not make him change his mind on something. We  may surrender, but rarely confess ourselves vanquished. In the intellectual world at least peace is without victroy.

       Few of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished convictions; indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. This distinction between "good" and "real" reasons is one of the most calrifying and essential in the whole realm of thought. We can readily give what seem to us "good" reasons for being a Catholic, Christian, a Republican or a Democrat, and adherent or opponent of the League of Nations. But the "real" reasons are usually on quite a different plane. of course the importance of this distinction is popularly, if somewhat obscurely, recognized. The Catholic missionary is ready  enought to see that the Buddhist is not such because his doctrines would bear careful inspection, but because he happened to be born in Buddhist family in Tokio. But it would be treason to his faith to acknowledge that his own partiality for certan doctrines is due to the fact that his mother was a member of the Catholic church.

        The "real" reasons for our beliefs are concealed from ourselves as well as fro others. As we grow up we simply adopt the ideas presented to us in regard to such matters as religion, family relations, property, business, and our country. we unconsciously absorb them from our environments. Responding to my friend Gareng Dhie's topic "Experience is the best teacher because it's always on the job and Experience is the one thing you can't get it on easy payments". In orde for us to succeed we have to do the best we can, where we are, with what we have. Each of us has two ends a sitting end and a thinking end a succes depends on which we use. Finally i would like to say to my brothers and sisters we have two ears & one mouth, think twice, speak once!

                                                            Yours sincerely,

                                                                              Bol Tem kuag

                                                                        e-mail-bolilymckembo@yahoo.com