My last post was dense, convoluted, and “self-reflection” running amok.  That is ok as it was “me” and I shared from this “me” that has helped me stumble through “mite near” seven decades of life. But two days later, I’d like to simplify things…once again, “a mite”…and kick around for a moment “internal dialogue.”

Hannah Arendt described Adolph Eichman as totally bereft of this human quality, not able to stand apart from the mausoleum of thought that he was.  This character flaw of his was symptomatic of the Third Reich which Arendt, in assessing Eichman, described as “the banality of evil.”  This banality is what happens when we are so immersed in our cognitive grasp of the world that we disallow the possibility of other humans having a “cognitive grasp” of their own which deserves respect.

This internal dialogue is the capacity to have a vein of “self-talk” in our heart which allows us to occasionally pause, look at some of the things we are most certain of and ask ourselves, “Hmm.  Maybe this “rock of Gibraltar” in my consciousness merits another look-see.”

There are so many examples in life today of this malady, but I want to put on the table a trivial anecdote from decades ago.  A news clip in the mid-seventies described a man in Dallas, Texas who became so frustrated and angry when his Cowboys football team lost a game that he grabbed his shot gun and blew out the TV screen. This must have stunned his neighbors as a gun shot next door led them to calling the police. I love sports myself and the Dallas Cowboys were, and still are, my favorite team.  I have suffered many disappointments with them over the decades as too often I’ve suffered the ignominy of watching them get beaten.  BUT, I’ve never been THAT upset! That poor bloke, demonstrated what it is to be “a brain stem with arms and legs,” allowing his seat of emotions to overwhelm him and suspend judgement.  He acted without the presence of the “pauser reason”  that Shakespeare has given us. The Grace of God has equipped most of us with this discretion and we are able to check ourselves throughout the day and avoid “acting out” like that.  Without this taken-for- granted contrivance in our heart, we too would that “brain stems without arms and legs” and catastrophe would unfold.

The complicated machinations of the human heart that I wrote about two days ago can be simplified with Arendt’s notion of, “internal dialogue.”  It is this human quality that permits us to reduce that cognitive/emotional tumult with an automatic filter, of “common sense.”  Without this “common sense” that most of us comply with routinely we will wreak havoc on our world.  Only if  we happen to live in a world, or even a little corner of a world that has also suspended common sense and shut down this “internal dialogue,” we can get by with it.

“Lord, in your infinite Grace, help us.”