HOW TO CHANGE MINDS (PART 1)
The symptoms of viral or bacterial infection are entirely negative. Isn’t this a remarkable fact? Why aren’t there viruses that improve your physical or mental wellbeing?
Why doesn’t the flu make you energetic and courteous and prone to spontaneous orgasms?
Why can’t you catch a buzz like you catch a cold?
Why aren’t you calling into work, laid up with inspiration and under doctor’s orders to remain in bed writing concertos and novellas?
A beneficial infection spreads so rapidly that it quickly becomes incorporated into our bodies. It becomes identical with us; we gain possession of it they way we own our immune systems. (This relationship is really more like a delicate truce, unfortunately.)
The same is true of ideas. Encountering a valuable idea, we absorb it into ourselves. It become my belief, my thought, my possession.