policy

Someone advocated the fact that we need an intellectual and emotional combination to come to a solution, particularly so because otherwise the 'intellectual pontification' takes place at the expense of providing a rapid, efficient solution for those who are in need (and not those who pontificate, who almost always are removed from the true ground reality).

I see the validity of that. And of course I understand that no matter how much I would wish to believe that I am a truly objective rational decision-making machine, I understand that unconsciously there are all sorts of instincts, intuition, irrational emotions and all influencing me. But, I am not convinced of the validity of my emotions. I'm not even sure that I should have emotions! In the ideal world, I would prefer to be emotion-free.

No doubt this comes from someone in deep need of therapy (!), but I dislike chaos, and confusion. I look to simplify things, in order to understand them, and in order to solve them. No doubt the solution then becomes simplistic and based on a set of unverifiable, and impractical assumptions, but I guess I don't know what else to do, and I'm not yet convinced that any other way is right. And I still believe that that solution is not wholly redundant and it can impose some form of order on the chaos.

However, in one extremely foolhardy moment, i made the decision to get involved. I don't think that I thought for any moment, that it would ever make any difference to the country's need (and I feel that even more after my time there: that whatever we do is so minimal, so negligible, a drop in the ocean) but I did think that it would (selfishly) make a difference to my life. I recognized that there were many things about the reality of a war-torn developing country that I did not know, could not know, at a academic level, without purposely situating myself there.

Well now I am beginning to know. I think I'm learning how to be patient. I think I'm learning it takes much more, to identify the half-distinct blurred impressions of truth that move in us, to learn how to cohere them together. I think that I am beginning to see the way forward, and it is long and hard. I think that doing what I do has given me a real sense of time, of how we move one step forward and always two steps backward, how to accept pace and when to fight against it.

I just wanted to say; that I am beginning, slowly, painfully, to understand. When we come face to face with who we are, versus who we think we are, when we realize that all of our impressions and understandings hitherto, are dogmas handed down to us, when we realize that those structures of understanding don't apply in a different society, and when we learn how to carve out an impression of the world and society we inhabit, that is real progress.

Where reality meets a model, where emotions meet rational debate, where reason fails, and what remains to hold something together. As I write, I realize this is even more abstract and I know it frustrates some people and I apologize. In my everyday work for example, people think that I am cold, that I am too focused on action, disinterested in making people like me, disinterested in the human lives of the actors around me.

The truth is, I am afraid to know all that. To have a goal, and implement it in work, is satisfying (and even that takes too much time and is too difficult). I would start to crack if I had to see people as people and not as agents ( i.e. defined by their function). I know it sounds horrible, and I don't think I'm a horrible person, rather I think I am just (as usual) highly confused.