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Looking for Answers
This bit is very much about my personal experiences sisideas
As I have already explained, my situation was, without being life threatening (I lacked for nothing physically) was none the less bleak. After leaving school I found myself alone, my father dead, my mother although home from hospital, still not fully recovered, my brothers away from home and as I was at boarding school many miles away I therefore had no friends locally.
Loneliness, despair whether real or imagined sets the mind travel down particular paths. When confronted with such situations we may well start to ask ourselves questions. Question like Why? why am I so thick, useless, ugly lonely, why is life so difficult why am I so unhappy. I wrestled with this demon and others like it as I searched for answers but all the time kept mindful of my perceived woeful inadequacies. But the whys remains unanswered, if anything we perhaps tend to answer them ourselves, whether as conscious thought or just an unconscious resignation.....it’s my fault I am the way I am, and of course head-shaking teachers, despairing at my lack of achievement only endorse my sense of culpability at being so stupid. With a resignation to my state-of-affairs comes a sense of guilt at being responsible for the despair that I find myself in. In spite of my resignation at being responsible for my circumstances, I still looked for answers to my many questions.
So Why Religion
I think it is fair to say we all have had a consideration about God. That is “the someone” or something that is responsible for that, which we perceive we are not. Consciously or not, man must concede that he is not the "creator" of the world that he finds himself in: I say “creator” in as much that as man, can in his limited way create and fashion “order” into his surrounding, it is logical for him to assume that a creator exists, to be the creator of the order man finds himself in and indeed the creator of man himself. It is therefore not without logic that if we ask the question “why”, that such a question should be directed to the one that we perceive to be responsible for the ordinance of existence. With the evidential proof (albeit circumstantial) of intelligent design within our universe, I would not be the first to suggest that exist or not man would logically invent a creator God.
No Stranger
However for me God was no stranger, my mother was a devout Christian, and I was brought up in the Episcopal church of Scotland going to church every Sunday when at school. Inevitably such a “drip-feed” had its influence on me. Having been inculcated with the notions of sin needing to be forgiven. I can, on a number of occasions in my child-hood, well remember turning to God to be the salvation of a misdemeanour, unfortunately my contrite supplications to God the organ-grinder were seldom sufficient to placate retribution from the a (human school master) monkey. So in my state of feeling guilty at being responsible for my own uselessness it was not unreasonable for me to turn to the religion I had been brought up with for answers. Although my understanding of the Christian faith, at that time was fairly limited I did understand one of its central tenets was that of forgiveness.
As I have already explained, my situation was, without being life threatening (I lacked for nothing physically) was none the less bleak. After leaving school I found myself alone, my father dead, my mother although home from hospital, still not fully recovered, my brothers away from home and as I was at boarding school many miles away I therefore had no friends locally.
Loneliness, despair whether real or imagined sets the mind travel down particular paths. When confronted with such situations we may well start to ask ourselves questions. Question like Why? why am I so thick, useless, ugly lonely, why is life so difficult why am I so unhappy. I wrestled with this demon and others like it as I searched for answers but all the time kept mindful of my perceived woeful inadequacies. But the whys remains unanswered, if anything we perhaps tend to answer them ourselves, whether as conscious thought or just an unconscious resignation.....it’s my fault I am the way I am, and of course head-shaking teachers, despairing at my lack of achievement only endorse my sense of culpability at being so stupid. With a resignation to my state-of-affairs comes a sense of guilt at being responsible for the despair that I find myself in. In spite of my resignation at being responsible for my circumstances, I still looked for answers to my many questions.
So Why Religion
I think it is fair to say we all have had a consideration about God. That is “the someone” or something that is responsible for that, which we perceive we are not. Consciously or not, man must concede that he is not the "creator" of the world that he finds himself in: I say “creator” in as much that as man, can in his limited way create and fashion “order” into his surrounding, it is logical for him to assume that a creator exists, to be the creator of the order man finds himself in and indeed the creator of man himself. It is therefore not without logic that if we ask the question “why”, that such a question should be directed to the one that we perceive to be responsible for the ordinance of existence. With the evidential proof (albeit circumstantial) of intelligent design within our universe, I would not be the first to suggest that exist or not man would logically invent a creator God.
No Stranger
However for me God was no stranger, my mother was a devout Christian, and I was brought up in the Episcopal church of Scotland going to church every Sunday when at school. Inevitably such a “drip-feed” had its influence on me. Having been inculcated with the notions of sin needing to be forgiven. I can, on a number of occasions in my child-hood, well remember turning to God to be the salvation of a misdemeanour, unfortunately my contrite supplications to God the organ-grinder were seldom sufficient to placate retribution from the a (human school master) monkey. So in my state of feeling guilty at being responsible for my own uselessness it was not unreasonable for me to turn to the religion I had been brought up with for answers. Although my understanding of the Christian faith, at that time was fairly limited I did understand one of its central tenets was that of forgiveness.
The Attraction
Explanative Preamble
At the beginning of Child to Adult Transition, in the section "we have self-awareness" I said that because we have the ability to analyses who and what we are like as a person, we can have a relationship with ourselves. I further suggested that "The apparent simplicity of this awareness, the fact that we have lived with it all our lives and are seldom fully conscious of it, masks the depth of its enormity." carrying on from there, I want to say that the degree to which we are consciously aware of the nature of this relationship with ourselves, varies from person to person.
Blissful Ignorance / The Philosopher's Curse
I suspect that circumstances might well be responsible for why some people become more aware of them selves than others. I believe that by-and-large the awakening of the intellect is greatly helped by language. Children that have a reasonable vocabulary and have learnt to verbalize there feelings will tend to be more aware of themselves. Being able to describe ones feeling in words helps the intellect define what it is its thinking. Secondly children that don't fit into a group and therefore do not share a mutual affirmation of a "clan", can tend to internalise their thoughts and use their mind to sort out their feeling. Successfully inter-grating into a group of like minded people where one can find acceptance, diminishes the need to question oneself where as loneliness and isolation causes one to "fall-back" on ones own thoughts. The bliss of ignorance from playing "the game" well, allows one to "be" but the curse of the would be philosopher is to be left analysing the "the state of being" So it is probably fair to say that for many the flavour and nature of what I am about to talk about may well not be with in some peoples knowledge.
(For many of us, how we really feel about ourselves is masked from our concious minds. Not-withstanding that, it is my contention the vast majority of people deep down have a low opinion (feel bad) of them selves and even those that might say they have a good opinion, have so from a false sense of projected well-being derived from being successful at "the game" My argument for this is not just one of opinion but more from a subconscious understanding of morality that is part of The Human Condition)
The purpose of my preamble was first to explain that I am going to be using words familiar from a Christian religious context that may be unfamiliar to some and secondly that the premiss of this writing is taken from an assumption that some people are more aware of their feelings and that as such can feel very bad about them selves.
An apologist for Christianity
I know that for many, religion is a complete turn off and I have a lot of sympathy for that stand point for a number of reasons, but Christianity has played a large part in my thinking for good and bad and to be honest a lot of the basic philosophical principles separated from the religiosity of the church are very good, one of which is the notion of forgiveness. But words like forgiveness, sin, guilt and others like them, sound archaic and don't really have an idiomatic context to day. Go to: My Problems with religion (yet to come)
Things in a New Context
So as to put a more contemporary interpretation on these words at their simplest: guilt in the context I'm meaning it is just to feel bad about oneself. Sin, doses not refer to specific wrong doings but more the sense of failure or imperfection. Forgiveness is the "getting rid" of the past to give a means to making a new beginning.
Why is forgiveness a good thing? Its is very easy to attribute meaning to the substance of a writer say, that goes well beyond the reality of what was actually meant.
What was Actually Meant?
I know that Christ, being brought up a Jew, would have very familiar with the concept of sacrifice from his knowledge of the Jewish religious law, as a means for atonement: making "better" man's separation from God that is caused by sin. So clearly the overt meaning behind forgiveness through sacrifice was to act as a reconciliation for bad things done in order for man to be acceptable to God. Consequently Jesus's death on a cross, being the ultimate sacrifice, was to make a permanent (one off) atonement for all man's sin....yup all sounds a bit bazaar to our thinking to day.
But I am so tempted to put another interpretation on events....that even if unprovable certainly fits.
Jesus the psychologist?
Well it cant be any more fancy-full than being the son of God? (lol) My take on forgiveness has nothing to do with man's separation from God because of sin but rather that, Jesus "the psychologist" recognised that there were several potentially damaging aspects to man,s state of mind with-in context of "the human condition". A sense of failure and guilt recognisable from the nature of his existence, that man by virtue of his instinctual nature could see that he is a self centred animal, set in a competitive struggle to survive, ultimately at the expense of all other life. We can however perceive of a (theoretical) perfection based on an attitude where all life is equally important and wonderful. We can see this perfection all be it in our minds but can never be it, never lose the selfishness of instinct? Whether or not many of us are actually concious of our existence as such is not the point, it is still true. I believe that ultimately this is the root cause to all our feelings of failure. (NB this perception of man-kind being in an instinctual "state" is substantiated in the language of Christian doctrine "man-kind in a "fallen" world to sin enslaved.) To that end Jesus saw there need to be a "mechanism" that would be able to take away man's sense of ... failure, sin, guilt call it what you will. We all need a sense of forgiveness towards ourselves specifically but of course that also applies to others: forgiveness for our "state of being" the animal that is by nature selfish.
The other aspect of concern from with in the human condition that is dealt with by many religions and specifically Christianity is fear... and the ultimate fear of death but I'm not going into that just now.
So back to me and my search for the answers to my questions why am I so.. and why I turned to the Christian religion for the answers Forgiveness was not an answer to my question, “why am I....” but it was a possible cure to the feelings of guilt that my sense of failure brought about and therefore its attraction for me in my situation was indubitable. But of course my journey did not stop there, it moved on to look at another very laudable tenet of the Christian faith that of love.
Learn to be gentile with yourself
Without doubt I feel most strongly that one should look at the notion of forgiveness as a means of coming to terms with the past. Even if one dose not use the constructed corollary of the the Christian religion: that God loves you so much he sent his son to die for you, find one that works for you even if it is just the "pragmatic" of seeing that one cannot be blamed for the nature of our existence that we had no say in its design: learn to be very gentile and understanding of yourself.
At the beginning of Child to Adult Transition, in the section "we have self-awareness" I said that because we have the ability to analyses who and what we are like as a person, we can have a relationship with ourselves. I further suggested that "The apparent simplicity of this awareness, the fact that we have lived with it all our lives and are seldom fully conscious of it, masks the depth of its enormity." carrying on from there, I want to say that the degree to which we are consciously aware of the nature of this relationship with ourselves, varies from person to person.
Blissful Ignorance / The Philosopher's Curse
I suspect that circumstances might well be responsible for why some people become more aware of them selves than others. I believe that by-and-large the awakening of the intellect is greatly helped by language. Children that have a reasonable vocabulary and have learnt to verbalize there feelings will tend to be more aware of themselves. Being able to describe ones feeling in words helps the intellect define what it is its thinking. Secondly children that don't fit into a group and therefore do not share a mutual affirmation of a "clan", can tend to internalise their thoughts and use their mind to sort out their feeling. Successfully inter-grating into a group of like minded people where one can find acceptance, diminishes the need to question oneself where as loneliness and isolation causes one to "fall-back" on ones own thoughts. The bliss of ignorance from playing "the game" well, allows one to "be" but the curse of the would be philosopher is to be left analysing the "the state of being" So it is probably fair to say that for many the flavour and nature of what I am about to talk about may well not be with in some peoples knowledge.
(For many of us, how we really feel about ourselves is masked from our concious minds. Not-withstanding that, it is my contention the vast majority of people deep down have a low opinion (feel bad) of them selves and even those that might say they have a good opinion, have so from a false sense of projected well-being derived from being successful at "the game" My argument for this is not just one of opinion but more from a subconscious understanding of morality that is part of The Human Condition)
The purpose of my preamble was first to explain that I am going to be using words familiar from a Christian religious context that may be unfamiliar to some and secondly that the premiss of this writing is taken from an assumption that some people are more aware of their feelings and that as such can feel very bad about them selves.
An apologist for Christianity
I know that for many, religion is a complete turn off and I have a lot of sympathy for that stand point for a number of reasons, but Christianity has played a large part in my thinking for good and bad and to be honest a lot of the basic philosophical principles separated from the religiosity of the church are very good, one of which is the notion of forgiveness. But words like forgiveness, sin, guilt and others like them, sound archaic and don't really have an idiomatic context to day. Go to: My Problems with religion (yet to come)
Things in a New Context
So as to put a more contemporary interpretation on these words at their simplest: guilt in the context I'm meaning it is just to feel bad about oneself. Sin, doses not refer to specific wrong doings but more the sense of failure or imperfection. Forgiveness is the "getting rid" of the past to give a means to making a new beginning.
Why is forgiveness a good thing? Its is very easy to attribute meaning to the substance of a writer say, that goes well beyond the reality of what was actually meant.
What was Actually Meant?
I know that Christ, being brought up a Jew, would have very familiar with the concept of sacrifice from his knowledge of the Jewish religious law, as a means for atonement: making "better" man's separation from God that is caused by sin. So clearly the overt meaning behind forgiveness through sacrifice was to act as a reconciliation for bad things done in order for man to be acceptable to God. Consequently Jesus's death on a cross, being the ultimate sacrifice, was to make a permanent (one off) atonement for all man's sin....yup all sounds a bit bazaar to our thinking to day.
But I am so tempted to put another interpretation on events....that even if unprovable certainly fits.
Jesus the psychologist?
Well it cant be any more fancy-full than being the son of God? (lol) My take on forgiveness has nothing to do with man's separation from God because of sin but rather that, Jesus "the psychologist" recognised that there were several potentially damaging aspects to man,s state of mind with-in context of "the human condition". A sense of failure and guilt recognisable from the nature of his existence, that man by virtue of his instinctual nature could see that he is a self centred animal, set in a competitive struggle to survive, ultimately at the expense of all other life. We can however perceive of a (theoretical) perfection based on an attitude where all life is equally important and wonderful. We can see this perfection all be it in our minds but can never be it, never lose the selfishness of instinct? Whether or not many of us are actually concious of our existence as such is not the point, it is still true. I believe that ultimately this is the root cause to all our feelings of failure. (NB this perception of man-kind being in an instinctual "state" is substantiated in the language of Christian doctrine "man-kind in a "fallen" world to sin enslaved.) To that end Jesus saw there need to be a "mechanism" that would be able to take away man's sense of ... failure, sin, guilt call it what you will. We all need a sense of forgiveness towards ourselves specifically but of course that also applies to others: forgiveness for our "state of being" the animal that is by nature selfish.
The other aspect of concern from with in the human condition that is dealt with by many religions and specifically Christianity is fear... and the ultimate fear of death but I'm not going into that just now.
So back to me and my search for the answers to my questions why am I so.. and why I turned to the Christian religion for the answers Forgiveness was not an answer to my question, “why am I....” but it was a possible cure to the feelings of guilt that my sense of failure brought about and therefore its attraction for me in my situation was indubitable. But of course my journey did not stop there, it moved on to look at another very laudable tenet of the Christian faith that of love.
Learn to be gentile with yourself
Without doubt I feel most strongly that one should look at the notion of forgiveness as a means of coming to terms with the past. Even if one dose not use the constructed corollary of the the Christian religion: that God loves you so much he sent his son to die for you, find one that works for you even if it is just the "pragmatic" of seeing that one cannot be blamed for the nature of our existence that we had no say in its design: learn to be very gentile and understanding of yourself.