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Child - Parent
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Increasingly we [live in a] 'dependency culture.'
We depend on the consumer machine to provide for us - to give us what we want, when we want it. This is our 'right.' The Thing has dehumanised us, and we are all incresingly dependent on it for succour. We expect. We demand. We are like children. Everything must be instant and, if it isn't, somebody must pay.
[Paul Kingsnorth]
Real England, p. 272
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In order to transition to a new paradigm we must be prepared to lessen our reliance on the current culture and the things that it gives us to consume: films, sport, art, music, television. Inasmuch as these things - in both a direct and indirect way - prop up the current state of affairs, we must be prepared to move away from them.
One of the overriding affects of current popular culture is to reinforce the world as it is.
It allows us to go on thinking everything is okay, because culture is okay.
And yet, in many ways, culture - this world that we lose ourselves within - serves to keep us distracted from other things that are happening, outside of its borders.
Inasmuch as we are addicted to our cultural consumables, we must wean ourselves off them. When the addict is intoxicated they disappear into their own world; turned off, tuned out. The outside world, with its problems and worries, disappears, if only momentarily.
One of the biggest imperatives of our time - in light of the challenges that currently face us as a species - is for us all to overcome our addictions.
This includes our addiction to culture.
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Showing posts with label maturity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label maturity. Show all posts
Firm Foundations
Those with an insecure sense of self inhabit houses with poor foundations. They live in constant fear that their home could at any moment crack and crumble. Because the self is in constant danger of falling apart, they will not risk anything that may pose a challenge to its integrity. Harsh weather and heavy blows are avoided.
These people will often be turned inwards, constantly checking for cracks and frantically applying cement, gaffa tape, or elastoplasts to whatever wounds appear. Every blow becomes magnified.
They look for constant reassurance - yes, your house is good (so, no, it won't fall down) - but all reassurance amounts to little more than a superficial and temporary remedy. They've seen the cracks in the basement, and they know how serious things really are.
A secure sense of self rests upon firm foundations, which are, according to some thinkers, put in place during the early years of a person's life. If a healthy relationship is not established with primary care-givers (most especially the mother) then whatever is built subsequently will rest upon an infirm sense of self. A bad start can, according to some, affect everything that follows.
Inflation of the self (self aggrandisement, narcissism, etc) can be a distraction from the worrying reality that remains to be confronted, down in the basement. Make enough noise about your wallpaper and maybe nobody will notice that your house is subsiding (not even you).
If we feel insecure about our foundations, then we may be adverse to leaving our house, lest it should fall over whilst we're gone. We don't believe that it will stay standing without us there to hold it all together. A firm sense of self, on the other hand, allows us to leave home and travel to new, and perhaps unfamiliar, surroundings. We're able to sample foreign customs, and try new ways of being; safe in the knowledge that our home will still be there when we return.
When we have a firm sense of self we're more able to look outwards, and what we see becomes less coloured by our own viewpoint: we project less of ourselves onto things. We stop taking things so personally, and realise that everything isn't about us. Maybe that person spoke to you sharply because you're inherently bad - or maybe they were just having a bad day. We're more inclined to grant the benefit of the doubt. As more colours are allowed into the picture, a more balanced view emerges.
I now believe that large extended families and small intimate communities form a better foundation for the creation of mature, balanced individuals.
A healthy society is one that encourages close social ties and mutual interdepedence, granting each individual a net of unconditional emotional support. Within this nurturing framework, individuals feel secure enough to become quite free and independent.
Paradoxically, I have found the Ladakhis less emotionally dependent than we are in industrial society. There is love and friendship, but it is not intense or grasping - not a possession of one person by another.
I once saw a mother greeting her eighteen-year-old son when he returned home after being away for a year. She seemed surprisingly calm, as though she had not missed him. It took me a long time to understand this behaviour.
I thought my Ladakhi friends reacted strangely when I arrived back after being away for the winter. I had brought presents I knew they would like. I expected them to be pleased to see me and happy at the gifts. But to them it was as if I had not been gone. They thanked me for the presents, but not in the way that I was hoping. I was wanting them to look excited and confirm our special friendship. I was disappointed. Whether I had been away for six months or a day, they treated me in the same way.
I came to appreciate the easy, relaxed attitude of my Ladakhi friends and to like being treated as though I had never been away.
Ladakhis do not seem to be as attached to anything as we are.
Most of them are, of course, not completely without the attachments that so affect our lives. But again, there is a difference - an all pervasive difference - in degree. One may be unhappy to see a friend leave or to lose something, but not that unhappy.
[Helena Norberg-Hodge]
Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh, p.86-7
The infant moves slowly out from the mother, but it "can do this fully and sucessfully only to the extent that the mother is his absolutely unquestioned safe place to which he can always instantly return and be nurtured.
Only when the infant knows that the mother matrix will not abandon him can that infant move into childhood with confidence and power [...]
[...] The physical mother remains the primary matrix even though we separate from her and move into larger matrices [...]"
[Marion Woodman, quoting Joseph Chilton Pearce]
Addiction to Perfection, p. 18
They aren't able to maintain self-esteem with good performances, so they engage in self-inflating verbalizations: talking about skills in domains other than the one pertaining to this task, or boasting of wealth and possessions.
Such behaviours seem to reflect a desire to regain threatened self-esteem in domains other than the one that's responsible for the threat.
[Charles S. Carver & Michael Scheier]
On the Self-Regulation of Behavior, p. 79-80
Once adequate support is developed within the individual and/or in the environment, greater awareness and new ways of being in the world are possible.
[Herb Stevenson]
'Paradox: A Gestalt Theory of Change'
[When something anamalous occurs] how do we construe the occurence? Is it a major event, or a minor event?
And my advice would be, unless there’s strong reason, presume its a minor event and start operating at that level, because otherwise every argument becomes a catastrophe. And if that’s the case you actually can’t solve any problems - you won’t be able to discuss anything - because as soon as you bring up an anomaly - something unpleasant - the other person will assume that everything’s over and get so shorted out that you won’t be able to talk with them.
Those are the sort of people who will cry if you bring up anything negative - their value structure is so fragilely constructed that anything you toss at them - that’s a question - is enough to shake the entire structure to its foundations.
[Jordan Peterson]
‘2017 Maps of Meaning 7: Images of Story & MetaStory’
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What are the people saying?
One Love?
Full Spectrum
This is unhealthy, immature, because it is not an identification with authority that arises out of self-discovery.
It is a sense of frame without sense of picture, a sense of form without retention of spontaneity.
This is a prosociety tendency that is anti-individual. People who develop in this way can be called 'hidden antisocials'.
Hidden antisocials are not 'whole persons' any more than are manifest antisocials, since each needs to find and to control the conflicting force in the external world outside the self.
By contrast, the healthy person, who is capable of becoming depressed, is able to find the whole conflict within the self as well as being able to see the whole conflict outside the self, in external (shared) reality.
When healthy persons come together, they each contribute a whole world, because each brings a whole person.
Hidden antisocials provide material for a type of leadership which is sociologically immature [...] Once in such positions, these immature leaders immediately gather to themselves the obvious antisocials, who welcome them as their natural masters (false resolution of splitting).
The election of a person implies that the electors believe in themselves as persons, and therefore believe in the person they nominate or vote for.
As a whole (healthy) person he has the total conflict within, which enables him to get a view, albeit a personal one, of total external situation.
The election of a party or a group tendency is relatively less mature. It does not require of the electors a trust in a human being.For immature persons, nevertheless, it is the only logical procedure, precisely because an immature person cannot conceive of, or believe in, a truly mature individual.
[D.W. Winnicott]
Home Is Where We Start From ('The Meaning of the Word 'Democracy''), p.243-4, 249
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The Mature Character
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Ownership
A subtle denial of ownership is innocence and indifference. The future is always denied with the response, "It doesn't matter to me - whatever you want to do is fine." This is always a lie and just a polite way of avoiding a difficult conversation around ownership.
Ownership is the decision to become the author of our own experience [...] It is the stance that each of us is creating the world, even the one we have inherited.
[...] each time people enter a room, they walk in with ambivalence, wondering whether this is the right place to be. This is because their default mindset is that someone else owns the room, the meeting, and the purpose that convened the meeting.
Every conventional gathering begins with the unspoken belief that whoever called the meeting has something in mind for us. We are inundated with the world trying to sell us something, so much so that we cannot imagine that this time will be different.
The leader/convener has to change this, in a sense to renegotiate the social contract. We want to shift to the belief that this world, including this gathering, is ours to construct together.
The intent is to move the social contract from parenting to partnership.
Renegotiating the social contract with this room is a metaphoric example of how our social contract with the community can also be renegotiated.
If I do not see my part in causing the past and the present, then there is no possible way I can participate usefully in being a coauthor of the future.
[Peter Block]
Community, p.123, 127-9
In words so applicable to the rest of our politically-structured lives, he declared: "The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people’s sense of personal responsibility dwindles." Monderman expressed the matter more succinctly in saying: "When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots."
Formal rules divide us from one another; the more rules that are imposed upon our conduct, the greater the distances among us. Of course, this is the logic upon which the state always acts: to insinuate itself into our relationships with others, substituting its coercively-enforced edicts for our interpersonal bargaining. We become conditioned to look upon strangers as threats, and to regard political intervention as our only means of looking after our own interests.
What if the idea of living without coercively imposed rules was to spread from the streets into all phases of our lives? What if we abandoned our habits of looking to others to civilize us and bring us to order, and understood that obedience to others makes us irresponsible?
As government people-pushers continue their efforts to micro-manage the details of our lives – what foods and drugs we may ingest; how we are to raise and educate our children; the kinds of cars we may drive and light bulbs we may use; the health-care we are to receive; our optimal weight levels; how we are to provide for our retirement; ad nauseam – might we summon the courage to end our neurotic fixations on "security?"[Butler Shaffer]
'Anarchy in the Streets', online article here.
Montaigne disagreed with learning strictly through books. He believed it was necessary to educate children in a variety of ways.
He also disagreed with the way information was being presented to students. It was being presented in a way that encouraged students to take the information that was taught to them as absolute truth. Students were denied the chance to question the information. Therefore, students could not truly learn.
Montaigne believed that to truly learn, a student had to take the information and make it their own.
'Michel de Montaigne', Wikipedia
Individualistic (E7)
The individualistic ego shows a broad-minded tolerance of and respect for the autonomy of both self and others.
Subjective experience is opposed to objective reality, inner reality to outward appearance; and 'vivid and personal versions of ideas presented as cliches at lower levels' may emerge.
'Loevinger's stages of ego development', Wikipedia
The sense of being owned is deadening; the sense of possession means, not so much that a man desires to have the title-deeds of his estate, as that he desires to work for himself and the community and not for a private master.
[…] The new spirit cannot come unless every worker can be made to feel […] responsible for the work he has to do.
[G. D. H. Cole]
World of Labour
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Individual v Environment
Negative Space
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