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The comfort of the middle

To call yourself « clear-eyed » about what depends on you, is that not often a license to do little?

Objects to Knowing the difference

1. The path of discernment has common sense on its side: who would refuse to « weigh things up »? It is even the position everyone believes they already hold.
2. But this obviousness is a trap: it is convenient to file under the « impossible » precisely what change would cost us. We often draw the boundary of the possible where our courage stops, not where our power stops.
3. Discernment may then serve as an alibi: it eases the conscience of inaction by naming it clear-sightedness, and of giving up by calling it maturity. The middle way may be nothing but the line of least resistance.

Therefore So discernment, lacking a demand to hold it firm, can degenerate into complacency: a wisdom of façade for those who want neither truly to struggle nor truly to let go.