My New Year¹s resolution

My New Year’s resolution

via Grist.org – the latest from Grist on 1/4/12

by David Roberts.

What follows is a navel-gazey personal essay. If that’s not your thing, move along.

By nature, I am an introverted, thinky person — in the Myers-Briggs personality schema, an INTP, if that means anything to you. Or a Virgo, if that’s your cup of tea. An analyzer, dissector, chopper-upper, drawn to flaws and inconsistencies like itches that need scratching. I like to take ideas apart and put them into new configurations, like Legos. It’s fun! Nonetheless, for me, one of the notable aspects of 2011 has been a growing awareness of the limits of that sort of thing.

Obviously, I’m a fan of reason and opposed to error or deception. But there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are captured by this rational vs. irrational dichotomy…