"The spirit is willing...

...but the flesh is weak" was one of my mother's favorite sayings - and, when she said it, I knew what she was talking about because I watched her pushing her body beyond its limits with her will in order to work and put food on our table when my father was sick and dying for his last ten years.

I don't know if "spirit" and "soul" are just different words for the same thing or if they are separate things. (That's all just semantics.) All I know is that they are different from the body. The body has its own kind of will but it is based on biological animal instincts and isn't free will. Only the soul has free will and that is the part of us that is made in the image of God. I sometimes think that I won't really have real free will till I understand what that means. I hope I do one day.

Last night I was saying to Chas and Andy that I think of real "intellectuals" as people who understand math and physics and build rockets or create engineering marvels and invent sensible practical useful things (like our Constitution) or run profitable businesses, balance their books and do their own taxes. What other people call "intellectuals" - academics, philosophers, writers and "artists" - I call dilletantes when I'm feeling charitable and wankers went I'm not.

And, no, I don't include myself with the true intellectuals because I am mentally lazy. I can run a business and balance my books but I don't do my own taxes because I'm lazy. My body is more willing than my spirit and I'm one of those dilletantes who prefer "feeling" to thinking and I prefer eating, drinking and being merry and indulging in other pleasures to hard work.

I think of "feelings" (emotions, sensations) as being part of the body not of the spirit. To me, the spirit is that part of me which is pure and peaceful; untouched by this dream that we call life; above the ups and downs and ins and outs of time and changes.

Fake intellectuals deal with emotions and sensations - feelings. There's nothing wrong with feelings but, unlike the dilletantes, I don't pretend that they are the true essence of human consciousness. The essence of human consciousness is free will - not enslavement to emotions and sensations.

I'm not a psychologist or theologian and I know it's more complicated than that. The mind and the imagination are made in the image of God and can be creative (but not enough to create universes or even mountains) yet our minds and imaginations often are stimulated more by emotions than by spirit/free will.

To me America was colonized and founded by people asserting their free will. The American Revolution was all about living according to individual free will not subjecting ourselves as slaves to monarchs or popes or any other potentates. We declared our independence from all potentates. The American Revolution was based on practical and rational considerations not emotional and romantic notions.

Modern European statism/socialism descends from the French Revolution which was an emotional reaction to monarchy not a proactive declaration of independence from it. The French Revolution was inspired in a large part by the romantic emotional notions of Rousseau. Out of the romantic ideals of the French Revolution came socialism, communism, Nazism and Fascism - all the emotional, secularist and materialist ideologies of modern Europe.

Unfortunately European romanticism/socialism has infected probably nearly half of Americans and we're kind of stuck with dealing with the pie-in-the-sky liberals. They don't believe that it is important for the spirit to be more willing than the flesh. Human life is all about the flesh to liberals. They believe that man can live by bread alone. They exalt bodily needs and emotions above reason. That leads ultimately to the idea that "if it feels good, do it."

Liberals/romantics also think that love is an emotion. It isn't. Love is a conscious act of free will. Liberals think like teenagers and still "see through a glass darkly."

The pic below is of Mount Jefferson in the Oregon Cascades.