Of Soul Searching and Sole Scratching

A recent comment I received from a “Soul Searcher” who for strange reasons wishes to remain in anonymity pointed out a mutually contradictory element in my blog. You can find it here along with my reply. But why does a self professed ‘soul searcher’ feel inhibited to reveal his identity while airing his critiques. Is soul searching a ‘hide-n-seek’ game? Any way, that’s not the whole point here. I really appreciate people who reveal their identity when they make a comment.

The soul searcher’s mention of mutually contradictory sentences just reminded me of something I read long back in another soul searcher’s well acclaimed autobiography. I dug out the book ,searched out the passage and typed it out. See what you can reckon from it:

“...I was a pure object, doomed par excellence to masochism if only I could have believed in the family play-acting. But no. It perturbed me only on the surface, and the depths remained cold, unjustified. The system horrified me. I developed a hatred of happy swoons, of abandonment, of that caressed and coddled body. I found myself by opposing myself. I plunged into pride and sadism, in other words into generosity, which like avarice or race prejudice, is only the secret balm for healing our inner wounds and which ends by poisoning us. In order to escape the forlornness of creature, I was preparing for myself the most irremediable bourgeois of solitude, that of the creator. This shift is not to be confused with genuine revolt: one rebels against an oppressor and I had only benefactors...“
-The Words: The Autobiography of JEAN-PAUL SARTRE-