I was just editing one of my books, and stumbled upon some old scraps I'd written years ago - one of which was this little passage about mental pursuit, which I quite liked and thought could bear repeating here:
It seems to me that the
pursuit of mental excellence can be thought of as being a bit like getting a
plane off the ground and into flight, because consistently solid and
comprehensive thinking comes with many components necessary for the task. A
pilot has to get all his (or her) dials and instruments in order before he can
take off, and keep a check on all the elements associated with aircraft's
altitude, air speed, air pressure and rates of ascent and descent.
For a pilot before take
off, some of the dials and instruments may be well attuned for flight, but
others may not be, thus affecting his ability to fly. Similarly, the human mind
may have some of the dials and instruments in the right place but have others
set wrongly. Perhaps a person is very logical and rational but is lacking in elements
like emotional intelligence, empathy and kindness, so is impulsive and never
sees the full picture properly. Or perhaps the person is excellent when it
comes to emotional intelligence, empathy and kindness, but has inadequate
knowledge or poor reasoning skills. The latter people may well often make
arguments based on moral persuasion, sounding caring, but will, in fact, lack
the concomitant rationality and proper assessment of the facts.
The human mind can be thought of as something similar to the dials and instruments in the cockpit: to attain mental excellence the mind needs to try to master all sorts of qualities, like logic, analytical intelligence, emotional intelligence, empathy, reason, rationality, lateral thinking, argumentation, assessment of data, wisdom and sound philosophical enquiry - as well as gathering stores of knowledge and understanding, which constitute the oil that lubricates all those proprietary parts. In addition, being truly mentally excellent requires, I believe, qualities like love, kindness, generosity and solicitude too.
There could be quite a bit
of (air) mileage in that illustration J
