There Emerson hits precisely upon an essential imbecility of our own time. Rabid partisanship, an overboil of conviction, damages sight, impairs understanding, and may even ruin the joy of life. You see the world with one eye, peering straight ahead through one stupid, dogmatic lens, and walk through the day, as if it were a tunnel, in a state of smug, inflamed, combative rage. There's no substitute for brains and an autonomous mind. But much of America got addicted a long time ago to sensation and controversy, in the way that people get hooked on sex or drugs.
Zealots bizarrely think of balance as a point of weakness.
Turn off the media and read Emerson or Montaigne for an hour a day. In six months, you may have your mind back. 2001 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.