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> Child To Adult Transition. >Relationship: Parent/Child >Education >School > "Post Angst" > Fixing The Damage > To Love Oneself > Loving Others <you are here> |
Where We've Go To
Before going on to the next piece of writing I thought I would recap as to how in my journey of thought, I arrived here.
A string of thoughts untangled
It is my experience that we learn thing linearly and usually in small bites sized bits, that is to say we come to an understanding of something, one item at a time, (obviously) but when we have a new awareness on one specific issue, that new awareness can have an influence on other thoughts: the affect of that new awareness ripples through other issues that one might already have looked at. I have been constantly re-examining issues as they juxtaposition with newer items of thought. I am only mentioning this, as it is some times quite difficult, as a writer to put things in the chronological order of their discovery: as a writer, writing in hind sight, a collection of thoughts becomes homogenized over a period of time as they are mollified and adjusted to there current position. So, as many of the issues I am dealing with have become very intertwined it is difficult to disentangle what happened when. What gets put down in my writing is the finished article to date and not necessarily is true chronology.
It is a bit like doing a jig-saw puzzle: (without a picture to follow) to start with one just tinkers with the edges pieces but as time goes on more of the picture emerges as one works on a number of different threads and eventual they all start to converge on one another and one can see their interconnection.
Recap
Any way! to quickly recap as to how we arrived here: Well I suggested that we can look at the beginning of our lives as that of being dealt a set of cards in the game of life. The circumstances of our existence being out with our control: my up bring left me to look for intellectual answers to my perceived guilt at the failure I thought I was.
From a philosophical point of view I examined the whole issue of teenage angst in Child to Adult Transition and found that in many ways we were not responsible for what we had been taught. In D. Nolte's poem we saw that there was a corollary of what we where brought up with, set what we thought about ourselves and consequently the best up bring we should have, would be one that would help us love ourselves.
At a person level I looked at the notion of forgiveness and love from a Christian religion perspective. I examined what I felt was the meaning of love and claimed that such a value should be adopted for the three attitudes to: oneself, others and the notion of life its self. Having written a reasoning for loving myself I now turn to look at loving others.
However running in conjunction with these thoughts is the philosophical work I am doing on the Human Condition: that is, examining those things that make us different from all other animals; in essence that we have a duality of existence. On the one hand as an animal with all the instinctual motivations as well as ... an animal+ as it were, where we can see the nature of our animal existence and consequently have the ability to "see" beyond that existence.
Well as I said there comes a time when the jigsaw pieces start to come together and this is a topic where I find just that happening: to love others, and an examination of another aspect of the human condition.
sisideas
A string of thoughts untangled
It is my experience that we learn thing linearly and usually in small bites sized bits, that is to say we come to an understanding of something, one item at a time, (obviously) but when we have a new awareness on one specific issue, that new awareness can have an influence on other thoughts: the affect of that new awareness ripples through other issues that one might already have looked at. I have been constantly re-examining issues as they juxtaposition with newer items of thought. I am only mentioning this, as it is some times quite difficult, as a writer to put things in the chronological order of their discovery: as a writer, writing in hind sight, a collection of thoughts becomes homogenized over a period of time as they are mollified and adjusted to there current position. So, as many of the issues I am dealing with have become very intertwined it is difficult to disentangle what happened when. What gets put down in my writing is the finished article to date and not necessarily is true chronology.
It is a bit like doing a jig-saw puzzle: (without a picture to follow) to start with one just tinkers with the edges pieces but as time goes on more of the picture emerges as one works on a number of different threads and eventual they all start to converge on one another and one can see their interconnection.
Recap
Any way! to quickly recap as to how we arrived here: Well I suggested that we can look at the beginning of our lives as that of being dealt a set of cards in the game of life. The circumstances of our existence being out with our control: my up bring left me to look for intellectual answers to my perceived guilt at the failure I thought I was.
From a philosophical point of view I examined the whole issue of teenage angst in Child to Adult Transition and found that in many ways we were not responsible for what we had been taught. In D. Nolte's poem we saw that there was a corollary of what we where brought up with, set what we thought about ourselves and consequently the best up bring we should have, would be one that would help us love ourselves.
At a person level I looked at the notion of forgiveness and love from a Christian religion perspective. I examined what I felt was the meaning of love and claimed that such a value should be adopted for the three attitudes to: oneself, others and the notion of life its self. Having written a reasoning for loving myself I now turn to look at loving others.
However running in conjunction with these thoughts is the philosophical work I am doing on the Human Condition: that is, examining those things that make us different from all other animals; in essence that we have a duality of existence. On the one hand as an animal with all the instinctual motivations as well as ... an animal+ as it were, where we can see the nature of our animal existence and consequently have the ability to "see" beyond that existence.
Well as I said there comes a time when the jigsaw pieces start to come together and this is a topic where I find just that happening: to love others, and an examination of another aspect of the human condition.
sisideas
Leading to Morality
An Introduction To Something Big
In the last chapter I looked at the first of the three attitudes, that of loving oneself. I did touch on the attitude towards others, when I suggested that I perceived myself as being “in all people and all people being in me”. From which I concluded: I could not see the validity in condemning any man for what he was or was not. I’d like to continue by looking at both the attitude to others and to the attitude of the nature of life.
At the offset I would want to be clear that I think we should have an attitude of love towards our fellow man but that having been said a lot of explanation is needed, not so much for explaining “loving others” but more for an understanding of the naturally prevailing attitudes we hold towards our fellow man.
The Natural State of Things
We are, like it or not, an animal and as such are subject to the all the laws of nature. We may not be conscious or feel that we are playing out our animal instincts in our daily lives but we are and that will include the way we perceive every one we meet.
As I have already said (add-nausea lol) man is and animal: the most successful of all the complex animals on the planet. To be that, we have exercised one of the central conditions that we and all animals live with, that of the “survival of the fittest”. The natural order of life is such that the week or unable, whether by illness or just an unsuitability to their environment die. One could describe evolution's "survival of the fittest" as a from of natural eugenics. Even from within our more recent evolutionary times, that of man's early history: is the history (by and large) of physical dominance of one nation over another. Early leaders were the strong, the brave and none of this is that extraordinary if one is to think that we have probably come from a troop animal where there would, most likely have been a strict hierarchical leadership as is the case of gorillas today that are dominated by the leadership of a silver-back.
What I am trying to do is to draw as realistic a picture as I can of the nature of our existence; that it is an uncompromising set of rules and laws that govern our instinctual animal behaviour. Consequently the natural (unmodified) attitude that we hold towards other people will be subject to the same rules and laws as there are with any other animal.
It is, I feel very important to understand the instinctual mechanism with which we see other people. As I have said at the beginning we are an animal and the natural driving force or motivation in life is that of “survive to procreate”, a selfish egotistical motivation that set us in competition with all around us. Such is the lot of man.
Now I say none of this with any sense of prerogative towards the words like “selfish” and “egotistical” as they simply describe the nature of our animal being. So leaving out any sense of morality for a moment, I feel there must be in an instinctual sense of, “good” to being successful, to being good at surviving. But “nota bene” this good is not what I would call a morally based good, quite the opposite it is good in praise of selfish egotism.
As human beings of today’s global society we celebrate and value being successful, wealth gives a nation power both economical and militarily we can feel secure, removed from the threat to our survival. similarly as individuals, success is (seen as or) rewarded by money, power and status, we often recognize a person’s successful status by their wealth. For the purposes of my exploration on this topic it is important that we hold on to this “natural state of things” in our minds, as I go one to examine other aspects.
From the Instinctual
I am not a behavioural psychologist but am sure that it must be the case that when look at people, we will inevitably do so from an instinctual point of view. At friends, to fulfil our needs of troop identity, as prospective mates, or from mutuality “You scratch my back ill scratch yours” as in trading; as rivals or even potential enemies. We will view them all from the animal nature within us.
I suspect there is, from within this mechanism, a naturally bigotry; we would favour self first and then family over friends, local town over nation and dare I say it we naturally prefer commonality of ethnicity or sexual orientation etc. We feel more comfortable with what is similar to ourselves.
On meeting people we would work out where we fitted in to any group: our position within the hierarchical structure and with that in mind, become aware of the perceived relative “success” of those around us and mentally position ourselves accordingly. All of these observations would go towards the attitude we would hold towards the people we meet but there would not necessarily be any moral or consciously worked out context to the evaluation and yet I would contend it is by and large this is the way we view people.
Drawn to condemnation
This whole instinctual mechanism set us up to look at our fellow man comparatively, particularly as the process is also about setting ourselves within the context of the social hierarchy structure. Subconsciously or not we naturally “judge” our fellow man, those we perceive to be below us, we scorn and those we perceive to be above us we laud, I call this “the lupus factor” after the dominance structure of a pack of wolves. We can enjoy, at worst "demonising" or belittling of those people we see as "beneath" us as in doing so we can elevate ourselves in the process and feel superior.
I am In All People and All People Are Within Me
As part of looking at myself and discovering who it was that I was loving, I became aware that in many ways I was looking at anybody: after all if perfect love could love me it made senses that perfect love could and in fact must love all people for the same reasoning as it would love me: the unconditionally being the same for every one irrespective of who or what they have done they are still .... life
Further more none of us has any more or less emotions or needs than another, although perhaps genetic propensities may set a variance as to the degree of those needs and emotions. Therefore if the corollary of being the product of our up-bring is true, anyone could have been anyone else but for the differences in upbringing. That if any individual human "life entity" had been born to and brought up with precisely the same experiences and condition as say Hitler, would he not have been Hitler? And even if there were a difference that difference could not have been within the orbit of the "would be" Hitler’s control. I concluded that (potentially) I could have been any one and all that separates us into who we are, lies in the accident of our birth to which we have no control: I am in all people and all people are in me, (potentially) from such a reality how then is it possible for me (a human not god) to condemn any man for what he is or is not? This has surly got to be one of the most amazing realities?
Confused Morality
To some this may all sounds callus and unkind but before you, jump to protestation, let me remind that I am looking at the animal nature part of our existence. Yes clearly the world is not totally devoid of "moral" generosity of thought towards there fellow man but that's is not the common place thought or attitude in everyday life for the majority of people. With out being overly cynical much of what one might call generosity of thought is not so much from altruistic benevolence but more form commonalty or mutuality.
(Commonality = the same as me irrespective of morality. Mutuality= not the same as me but to both our benefit.)
Of course not all people hold attitudes that are quite so black and white, there are people that do good to and for others. But in the main the range of behaviour that we accept with “charitable” dispensation is conditional, usually on an individuals behaviour or conformity to norms, outside of which people become moralistic and disapproving.
That is to say our acceptance of people that are: law breaking, drug use, long term unemployment, the poor (unsuccessful) teenage/unmarried mothers etc. diminishes relative to ones perceived sense of norm. Middle class morality can be different to those living in poverty. None the less, although the "moral" (in this case moral= the "acceptable norm") "goal post" may be in different places, attitudes of what is acceptable is still apparent.
And no matter where the "moral goal post" appear to be these acts or situations that are considered to be the result of choice. As such are very often seen as (supposedly) bad “moral” decisions, but when we employ the word “moral” to the making, of what we are describing as "bad moral" derisions, we are in effect defining that which is moral. It would therefore appear that in this context morality equates with success.
People do judge others on their relative performance in life they believe that they do so from a “moral” set of principles. I contend that this type of evaluation of people is in fact being made by the nature of our animal behaviour and that is, selfish egotism driven but the instinctual survival of the fittest.
This must beg the question what is morality? If the norm in our analysis of other people is being derived from that which is perceived to be successful and that in tern is being called moral, is that all morality is?: an subjective state at the whim of the individual? So, in terms of finding a reason to love someone-one I must first find a motivation to do so, as the "instinctual" is principally selfish, an antithesis in regard to others, we must look to have an understanding of some other motivation, perhaps derived from morality: ... an "absolute morality" and not a subjective one. this topic is dealt with in the chapter The human Condition.
For there to be a reasoning to loving others, one must first define morality or at least find a motivation that is not governed by our instincts.
In the last chapter I looked at the first of the three attitudes, that of loving oneself. I did touch on the attitude towards others, when I suggested that I perceived myself as being “in all people and all people being in me”. From which I concluded: I could not see the validity in condemning any man for what he was or was not. I’d like to continue by looking at both the attitude to others and to the attitude of the nature of life.
At the offset I would want to be clear that I think we should have an attitude of love towards our fellow man but that having been said a lot of explanation is needed, not so much for explaining “loving others” but more for an understanding of the naturally prevailing attitudes we hold towards our fellow man.
The Natural State of Things
We are, like it or not, an animal and as such are subject to the all the laws of nature. We may not be conscious or feel that we are playing out our animal instincts in our daily lives but we are and that will include the way we perceive every one we meet.
As I have already said (add-nausea lol) man is and animal: the most successful of all the complex animals on the planet. To be that, we have exercised one of the central conditions that we and all animals live with, that of the “survival of the fittest”. The natural order of life is such that the week or unable, whether by illness or just an unsuitability to their environment die. One could describe evolution's "survival of the fittest" as a from of natural eugenics. Even from within our more recent evolutionary times, that of man's early history: is the history (by and large) of physical dominance of one nation over another. Early leaders were the strong, the brave and none of this is that extraordinary if one is to think that we have probably come from a troop animal where there would, most likely have been a strict hierarchical leadership as is the case of gorillas today that are dominated by the leadership of a silver-back.
What I am trying to do is to draw as realistic a picture as I can of the nature of our existence; that it is an uncompromising set of rules and laws that govern our instinctual animal behaviour. Consequently the natural (unmodified) attitude that we hold towards other people will be subject to the same rules and laws as there are with any other animal.
It is, I feel very important to understand the instinctual mechanism with which we see other people. As I have said at the beginning we are an animal and the natural driving force or motivation in life is that of “survive to procreate”, a selfish egotistical motivation that set us in competition with all around us. Such is the lot of man.
Now I say none of this with any sense of prerogative towards the words like “selfish” and “egotistical” as they simply describe the nature of our animal being. So leaving out any sense of morality for a moment, I feel there must be in an instinctual sense of, “good” to being successful, to being good at surviving. But “nota bene” this good is not what I would call a morally based good, quite the opposite it is good in praise of selfish egotism.
As human beings of today’s global society we celebrate and value being successful, wealth gives a nation power both economical and militarily we can feel secure, removed from the threat to our survival. similarly as individuals, success is (seen as or) rewarded by money, power and status, we often recognize a person’s successful status by their wealth. For the purposes of my exploration on this topic it is important that we hold on to this “natural state of things” in our minds, as I go one to examine other aspects.
From the Instinctual
I am not a behavioural psychologist but am sure that it must be the case that when look at people, we will inevitably do so from an instinctual point of view. At friends, to fulfil our needs of troop identity, as prospective mates, or from mutuality “You scratch my back ill scratch yours” as in trading; as rivals or even potential enemies. We will view them all from the animal nature within us.
I suspect there is, from within this mechanism, a naturally bigotry; we would favour self first and then family over friends, local town over nation and dare I say it we naturally prefer commonality of ethnicity or sexual orientation etc. We feel more comfortable with what is similar to ourselves.
On meeting people we would work out where we fitted in to any group: our position within the hierarchical structure and with that in mind, become aware of the perceived relative “success” of those around us and mentally position ourselves accordingly. All of these observations would go towards the attitude we would hold towards the people we meet but there would not necessarily be any moral or consciously worked out context to the evaluation and yet I would contend it is by and large this is the way we view people.
Drawn to condemnation
This whole instinctual mechanism set us up to look at our fellow man comparatively, particularly as the process is also about setting ourselves within the context of the social hierarchy structure. Subconsciously or not we naturally “judge” our fellow man, those we perceive to be below us, we scorn and those we perceive to be above us we laud, I call this “the lupus factor” after the dominance structure of a pack of wolves. We can enjoy, at worst "demonising" or belittling of those people we see as "beneath" us as in doing so we can elevate ourselves in the process and feel superior.
I am In All People and All People Are Within Me
As part of looking at myself and discovering who it was that I was loving, I became aware that in many ways I was looking at anybody: after all if perfect love could love me it made senses that perfect love could and in fact must love all people for the same reasoning as it would love me: the unconditionally being the same for every one irrespective of who or what they have done they are still .... life
Further more none of us has any more or less emotions or needs than another, although perhaps genetic propensities may set a variance as to the degree of those needs and emotions. Therefore if the corollary of being the product of our up-bring is true, anyone could have been anyone else but for the differences in upbringing. That if any individual human "life entity" had been born to and brought up with precisely the same experiences and condition as say Hitler, would he not have been Hitler? And even if there were a difference that difference could not have been within the orbit of the "would be" Hitler’s control. I concluded that (potentially) I could have been any one and all that separates us into who we are, lies in the accident of our birth to which we have no control: I am in all people and all people are in me, (potentially) from such a reality how then is it possible for me (a human not god) to condemn any man for what he is or is not? This has surly got to be one of the most amazing realities?
Confused Morality
To some this may all sounds callus and unkind but before you, jump to protestation, let me remind that I am looking at the animal nature part of our existence. Yes clearly the world is not totally devoid of "moral" generosity of thought towards there fellow man but that's is not the common place thought or attitude in everyday life for the majority of people. With out being overly cynical much of what one might call generosity of thought is not so much from altruistic benevolence but more form commonalty or mutuality.
(Commonality = the same as me irrespective of morality. Mutuality= not the same as me but to both our benefit.)
Of course not all people hold attitudes that are quite so black and white, there are people that do good to and for others. But in the main the range of behaviour that we accept with “charitable” dispensation is conditional, usually on an individuals behaviour or conformity to norms, outside of which people become moralistic and disapproving.
That is to say our acceptance of people that are: law breaking, drug use, long term unemployment, the poor (unsuccessful) teenage/unmarried mothers etc. diminishes relative to ones perceived sense of norm. Middle class morality can be different to those living in poverty. None the less, although the "moral" (in this case moral= the "acceptable norm") "goal post" may be in different places, attitudes of what is acceptable is still apparent.
And no matter where the "moral goal post" appear to be these acts or situations that are considered to be the result of choice. As such are very often seen as (supposedly) bad “moral” decisions, but when we employ the word “moral” to the making, of what we are describing as "bad moral" derisions, we are in effect defining that which is moral. It would therefore appear that in this context morality equates with success.
People do judge others on their relative performance in life they believe that they do so from a “moral” set of principles. I contend that this type of evaluation of people is in fact being made by the nature of our animal behaviour and that is, selfish egotism driven but the instinctual survival of the fittest.
This must beg the question what is morality? If the norm in our analysis of other people is being derived from that which is perceived to be successful and that in tern is being called moral, is that all morality is?: an subjective state at the whim of the individual? So, in terms of finding a reason to love someone-one I must first find a motivation to do so, as the "instinctual" is principally selfish, an antithesis in regard to others, we must look to have an understanding of some other motivation, perhaps derived from morality: ... an "absolute morality" and not a subjective one. this topic is dealt with in the chapter The human Condition.
For there to be a reasoning to loving others, one must first define morality or at least find a motivation that is not governed by our instincts.