Can you be outside and inside at the same time? In other words, can you see yourself as a rogue, an outsider, a rebel, but still be a full professor? That's unlikely.
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Agreement is overrated. Maybe you disagree!
I don't really care whether someone agrees with what I say. It only becomes important if my ego is wrapped up in a particular opinion. Then disagreement becomes a threat to my ego, to my very identity. Once I step past that point, then I can debate issues with less worry. When disagreement rankles, it is because I haven't detached the opinions from my ego.
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But who is the "I" that detaches the opinions? If not the ego ... who? I wonder if detachment isn't a maneuver of self-protection. I know it's one I perform whenever I send off a batch of poems, knowing that most if not all will be rejected. "I know what I have given you," I tell the editor (quoting Porchia in my head), "I do not know what you have received." But I imagine that even Porchia got pissed off whenever someone would read one of his pithy aphorisms and respond, "I don't get it."
I always say to my students, "Never write something in a paper you would be distressed to learn is not true." I could also say, "Be sure to detach what you say in your paper from your ego." If there is a claim in your writing that you can't detach from your ego, remove it from you paper. Putting it in the paper should be like removing it from your self. You put the idea on an independent basis.
I'm not enough of a (regularly practicing) poet to know if that goes also for poems. But I recently learned that something like this might be true in that sphere also from Robert Graves.
Oh, I forgot: I try to blog with that kind of detachment, always.
So you disagree, Joseph. I find my ego oddly uninvolved, so your disagreement does no damage. It's pretty much in the same healthy state as it was before.
It is self-protection, but self-protection from faux injuries.
The poet's ego is a little different, much harder to detach.
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