It is generally agreed that a newborn comes into the world with a clean mental slate...knowing nothing, having no opinions or beliefs, its mind ripe to be fed. And that during its life, it fills the slate with every thought it has and every action it takes. True to a point.
What that view fails to recognize is that we each have free will as to what we think and believe...that we are not bound by what is presently on the slate. Haven't you ever done that: completely altered your mind about some thing or someone? Is that not tantamount to erasing the tape, reversing it back to a clean one, and inscribing something new on it? And if that is so, and it is, is it not more accurate to say that when we choose to think or do something, we do so onto a clean slate: either affirming (in a sense, rewriting) what was on the slate, or erasing what was on it and inscribing something new? In either case, passing through a clean slate phase.
Is it important to think of it that way? Yes. That perspective repeatedly reminds us that we are forever free to choose the course of our lives, to make it what we will, not bound to the past or to current social mores, and that, to paraphrase the words of William Ernest Henley in Invictus, "I am the only writer on my slate". That perspective prods us to recognize the multitude of choices we have every day of our lives with regard to so many things, and that awareness feeds our sense of the magnificence of human life.
What that view fails to recognize is that we each have free will as to what we think and believe...that we are not bound by what is presently on the slate. Haven't you ever done that: completely altered your mind about some thing or someone? Is that not tantamount to erasing the tape, reversing it back to a clean one, and inscribing something new on it? And if that is so, and it is, is it not more accurate to say that when we choose to think or do something, we do so onto a clean slate: either affirming (in a sense, rewriting) what was on the slate, or erasing what was on it and inscribing something new? In either case, passing through a clean slate phase.
Is it important to think of it that way? Yes. That perspective repeatedly reminds us that we are forever free to choose the course of our lives, to make it what we will, not bound to the past or to current social mores, and that, to paraphrase the words of William Ernest Henley in Invictus, "I am the only writer on my slate". That perspective prods us to recognize the multitude of choices we have every day of our lives with regard to so many things, and that awareness feeds our sense of the magnificence of human life.
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