Freedom, meaning, and anxiety
‘Mind’ is a style of reaction. One might correctly say that ‘mind’ is the measure of reaction a creature makes to a given range of stimuli. The world of meaning for any creature is bounded by the measure in which that creature is able to react to its perception of the world. Paying attention to the world that is bounded by reaction ability is described by Leslie White as “reactivity meaning”.
There are four levels of reactivity of an organism to its environment: 1) Simplest response wherein the organism responds directly to stimuli, 2) Conditioned response is best represented by the “Pavalovian Response” wherein there is a response by association, 3) Indirect association takes place when a tool is used to acquire desired object (an ape knocking a banana from a tree with a stick), and 4) Symbolic response wherein a symbol becomes the object causing response, which entails the creation of a symbol representative of an object.
These four different responses are evolutionary but are different in kind. Only humans are capable of all four levels of reactivity. Only humans have the capacity for creating a relationship such as “house” with an object. We might appropriately state that the evolutionary development of mind is a “progressive freedom of reactivity”. “Mind culminates in the organism’s ability to choose what it will react to.”
Delayed reactivity is the birth of freedom; this ability, plus the mammalian evolution of long prolonged development of new born growing up into a society that demanded ever increasing norms of behavior, led to the further development of mind.
Anxiety is a feeling that I assume is familiar to all of us. It is a sense of helplessness: when the throat constricts, the heart races, and chaos appears. The ability to stand upright against anxiety is considered to be heroic behavior.
What is the source and nature of anxiety? Kierkegaard saw it as a basic response to the human condition of impotence, finitude, and death. Thinkers since Darwin saw it as a stimulus to intellectual growth because only with this adaptation could humans survive. We can see in animal responses that it is the key to survival. Anxiety is the universal response of the organism to danger.
For the child, anxiety becomes second nature when there is the slightest hint of separation from or abandonment by the mother. William James said that solitude is the greatest terror of childhood. Children are midgets in a world filled with giants. The child is dependent upon these giants and feels itself as a helpless object without control. The child sees helpless objects being run over with the car or being flushed or flattened and, as another object, fears equal forms of treatment by the giants. The principal childhood adaptation is to master anxiety by controlling the situations which threaten to awaken it.
Freud’s whole psychoanalytic theory of neurosis is basically a study of how children control anxiety. Human reaction to the environment is delayed and controlled by the ego. Unlike all other animals the human can take some time to analyze and choose a response. It is obvious that the first concern for the developing ego is to learn how to control this ever present and overwhelming stimulus-response that can result from anxiety. The ego does this by ‘housing’ this anxiety within the ego, thus, no longer does the human organism respond directly to anxiety but the ego controls the response by ‘taking over’ this anxiety.
Freud considered this ‘taking over’ of the anxiety impulse as being a form of vaccination of the total organism. “The growing identity “I” must feel comfortable in its world, and the only way it can do this is to experimentally make the anxieties of its world its own…The anxieties of the ego’s world are at first the anxieties the child feels with its handlers. A good many of them are the anxieties of its trainers. And so we see in microcosm how a child owns his own control, his own central perceptions, his own humanness, by a fundamental adaptation to his social world.”
Becker associates with the work of Alfred Adler who has developed a major revision of Freudian Oedipus Complex theory regarding the postulation by Freud of a hypothetical event that happened way back in the dim recesses of time. This postulated event has been given the name the Primal-Horde theory: “this was the theory about the crises in the humanoid horde, when the young males, tired of being deprived of females by the dominant male, turn on him and kill him, and take possession of the females—their own mothers.”
Freud was clear regarding the nature of anxiety in a child. One source of this anxiety was “the trauma of birth, the child’s initiation into utter helplessness and dependence; and the fear of castration that was awakened by the child’s own sexual urges…Thus his major anxiety, over the loss of the protective and loving mother, is a problem stemming from his relentless search for pleasure.”
Post-Freudian scientists pinpoint where Freud went astray. There is general agreement that the infant is not driven by instincts of sexuality and destructive aggression. “There is absolutely no evidence that this new type of animal carries over viciously competitive instincts of the subhuman primates. He has phased them out, and replaced them with a new nature: pliable, instinct-free.”
A major revision of Freudian theory finds that while the child’s anxiety is based on helplessness; it is not based upon genetic instincts but is based upon the child’s life situation and in his social world. Becker concludes that Alfred Adler’s theories are still current in the mid and late twentieth century because the child does not bring to his relationship with his mother any basic innate desires but he brings a generalized need for physical closeness and support.
“It is technically correct to say that the child is object-oriented rather than pleasure-oriented.” The anxieties of life are communicated to him not because of the strictly scheduled toilet-training or bodily cleanliness but because of the lack of joy and spontaneity in the child’s environment. This causes him to shut up within himself and makes him try extra-hard for basic security. The adaptation is a kind of confusion about what the world wants of him.
The child’s confusion centers on the comprehension that he is only a body not yet fully a symbolic animal. The more his confusion with the adult world the more he falls back on his body as a way of getting along. This affirmation of body is his question ‘does the mother value his body—him or not?’
Do you agree with me that the world of meaning for any creature, i.e. that self-determination or freedom, is bounded by the measure in which that creature is able to react to its perception of the world?
Quotes from “The Birth and Death of Meaning” by Ernest Becker
Full Version: Freedom, meaning, and anxiety
QUOTE
Do you agree with me that the world of meaning for any creature, i.e. that self-determination or freedom, is bounded by the measure in which that creature is able to react to its perception of the world?
Reaction implies internal programming rather than conscious awareness. Reaction implies unconscious activity not made by choices in understanding but rather habit.
There is a saying that we use only 5-10% of our brain capacity. Some disagree when measuring the brain activity while scanning or mapping certain areas of the brain.
There have been studies that show how certain areas of the brain become less active during sleeping and dreaming and the areas that become active during sleeping and dreaming become less active during waking activity.
Abraham Maslow did a study of the hemispherical activity during what he called a peak experience. He measured the activity of both hemispheres by connecting an EEG to the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes of the left and right hemispheres of the brain in waking activity. What he discovered was that the individual hemispheres were chaotic and the frequency responses and actions were different.
Then he measured these two hemispheres during the experience of what is called a peak experience, such as the experience of feeling love or, watching a sunset at the beach, or when the mind is relaxed in deep meditation and he found that the two halves became coherent rather than chaotic.
What children are born with is innocence or the lack of conditioning that creates unconscious reactive response and behavior. What they are born into is conditioning and beliefs.
It is during their physical growth that they absorb ideas or programs of thought which are passed on from their parents, television, books, schools and friends which are themselves conditioned by peers and parents and media which set the stage for the thoughts and ideas of what is real. How to be popular, what kind of drink to consume in order to be up with the crowd, what type of clothes to wear, car to drive and what success means to society and individuality.
More importantly the innocent child is full of love rather than fear. It is born with a mind that has an underdeveloped conscious awareness of fear and habitual reaction. What it senses of itself and its surroundings before it is born is its own consciousness which is not bound by any conditioning.
What it is filled with from birth are physical and emotional boundaries, created by conditioning fear and separation.
There are some schools of thought that say the child’s mind comes with the memory of its spiritual mother and father, of being unconditionally supported and surrounded with love and spiritual nourishment in which there are no conditions to create discomfort or feelings of separation, this being the essence of their own consciousness or the awareness of consciousness itself.
Being born into a physical body the physical parents are often related to as being the same spiritual parents, who are now in charge of their physical comfort and well being. Residing in this awkward physical body that doesn't seem to function very well in that it feels hunger, cold, and heat, and leaks from orifices it hasn't any control over, the awareness of the baby has not adjusted to the environment or the mechanisms of the vessel it now resides in let alone the environment in which the vessel is surrounded by.
During the process of conditioning it learns that as it feels hunger its food source doesn't always make itself available at any instant. Where before it experienced hunger it was always full with love and energy, now if it feels hungry, what it learns is that if it cries the large body that comes to give it food comes but not always right away, possibly thinking the reason it is not immediately attended to the instant it becomes aware of hunger is because it is not worthy or important or by some reason has become separated from its source of love.
The bodies that it learns to associate itself with as the physical mother and father rather than what it remembered as its spiritual mother and father (its own unbounded consciousness) are now busy and consumed with activity rather than constantly surrounding the subtle senses of its awareness. This is a condition of separation in a sense that becomes exacerbated by the conditioned responses that follow while struggling to learn how to communicate in the clumsy body in which the awareness now resides.
Crying becomes a tool to gain attention, to communicate discomfort when the body is cold, soiled or wet, or hungry.
Until the child becomes understanding of the new parents language it uses what it can to communicate with these giant beings of whom it has now become dependent on for comfort and maintenance.
During its period of growth it becomes more aware of the conditioning that is passed on from its new mother father God, in what is right and wrong, how to worry about all the things that are dangerous and frightening in the world, and more unfortunately when it is appropriate to feel feelings and express them.
Once the child learns language it no longer is allowed to cry when it wants to or to express everything that moves through the mind and nervous system, but rather it is expected to express subjectively and intelligently according to house rules. Conditioning begins to dull the innocence of the child as it is subdued by the teachings of the parents in their limitations of democratic beliefs that have saturated the minds of individual awareness prior to what the child experienced in itself before its birth.
continued..
continuation..
By the time the mind matures into its adult body it has become sufficiently programmed to act out of habit and conditioned response to what it has remembered of its past experiences and now seeks to project itself into probable futures filled with boundaries and dark spaces of fear and expectation that are created from superstition and belief.
The average adult now thinks some 50 to 60,000 thoughts per day according to a study done by Scientists at the Stanford Research Institute. Most of these thoughts are of meaningless repetition based on the past which create more stress in the body than peace and relaxation that exists when living in the present moment and innocently experiencing the now.
The mind is consumed by belief and distractions of habit, and these habitual thoughts have a direct affect on the nervous system and the overall health of the body.
The mind of habit is not the master of all of this, in fact what has been discovered in some of the experiments done by Maslow is that there is a conscious awareness that exists beyond any conditioning that has a direct affect on the mind and the body, and that it is mostly ignored in the state of conditioned response or during what is known as the 10% thinking level or conditioned mind.
As the mind is stilled from the activity of conditioning and the 60,000 thoughts that it whirls about without any conscious awareness, it becomes coherent and self aware.
One thing that should become evident is that the idea of someone asking themselves who am I or what am I doing here, and what is the meaning of life is not a conditioned response but the lifeline that still exists in self awareness or innocence of conscious awareness.
Separation of self and spirit creates a conditioned memory, with a point of reference that is bound to limitation, anxieties created by fear and belief, identification with past memories and internal programs passed down from beliefs created by the fear based programming of our parents and peers.
When the consciousness of an individual becomes self aware, rather than consumed after being slimed with habitual conditioning and emotional addictions, it learns to step back and witness conditioning rather than absorb its self in conditioning. This is a return to innocence or expanded conscious awareness. Innocence is often mistaken for ignorance but in fact it is the conditioned mind that ignores the potential that exists outside of habit and addictions, to following self limiting and self destructive programs and beliefs.
Often we think we aren't good enough, or something is too difficult for us to achieve because of these thoughts of self worth and internal programming passed down from our outward environment and our habit of attaching ourselves to negative points of references that live in us as memory or belief.
It is very much a reality that we can by our own effort and focus direct the mind to a more expanded point of reference so as to remove our attention from the addiction to this internal programming. Once the mind gets a taste of this expanded point of reference it begins to remember the potential that existed in itself before it layered itself with the imaginings of others based on habit and fear.
It is self evident that we do not all think the same and it is not by genetic disposition that we are subject to lack of choice or the belief that we have no choice in situations where some become successful and others do not. Our lack of emotional stability and destructive internal programs do not prevent us from thinking, tho they sometimes influence us.
If we honestly believed the things that influence us into accepting negative realities was beyond our own determination to make a change we would not attempt to heal the addictions that are present in our society.
Gambling, drugs, even sexual addictions are a result of a mind that is obsessed with finding an escape from its self while spinning in the 60,000 thoughts it has daily. This is a mind that is clouded from its potential, a mind that has an atrophied awareness of its connection with peace, stillness and innocence. But it is not a mind that is different in its source or manufacture than a mind that is still, happy, coherent and self aware.
It is just a mind that is like the computer that has ineffective programs that are being used by a distracted operator . Once the operator removes the distraction he becomes aware of the inefficiency of the internal programs, removes them and replaces them with those that allow the system to operate more efficiently.
The brain and the body are not the masters of conscious awareness. The mind is much more than the flesh and blood that sits within the case of bone that grows on ones shoulders.
Psychologists are often determined to analyze the programming within the brain but are often themselves unaware of the consciousness within themselves that is trying to reach beyond internal programs to the awareness that accepts or rejects programs, and to the reality of the awareness that is beyond unconscious programming. If they could understand it themselves they could understand it in others. Instead psychologists try to find the mechanism at fault within the brain, rather than nourish free will and choice that has hidden itself behind the hypnotic affects of belief and conditioning. To do that would necessitate that they themselves be free of limitation and influence by having anchored their own awareness in the unbounded potential that exists within themselves and their patient. You can't lead someone to unbounded freedom unless you know unbounded freedom. Psychologists know reason and experience passed on from books and teachings relative to conditions rather than condition-less experience and knowledge.
You can point the way to relative freedom if you yourself have some belief in freedom but that is only going to lead one to their own idea of freedom in and amongst the ideas that surround that relative belief. Then telling them that their relative beliefs are incorrect without giving them a greater experience only creates a temporary rearrangement of thought that is bound to find its way back to habit, unless the psychologist finds a way to repress the habitual thoughts with some kind of drug, or the patient discovers themselves a more expanded point of reference.
Some believe in mind control and mind conditioning. Some see this as a destructive process that takes place in secret military operations or religious cults, but few recognize the destructive programs that live within the imaginary identification of the American dream when it allows a government to support an educational system that prides itself on teaching and supporting aggressive competition that accepts success even if it means leaving others behind. This system accepts graduating students that cannot read, it accepts starvation and disease, and it accepts greed or good conscience to ignore what is not seen, in the allowance of special interests which also ignore the majority who do not share in the profit but are the means of their profit.
This is the 10% level of the mind at work. It is an unconscious mind, a mind that is conditioned by response and not a mind that utilizes its ability to re-cognize, intuit and relate to all that exists around itself. It is a mind that is hypnotized by Television and radio, the news and gossip created by fear and misunderstanding.
It is a mind that lives in individuality and separation rather than in union with all peoples all beliefs and all of creation. It is an unimaginative mind, a selfish mind and a non spiritual mind.
Freedom comes in self awareness, not reaction to relative ideas within the limitations created in belief and misunderstanding that comes from unconscious programs of identity and behavior. The ego recognizes itself according to belief and becomes belief.
Consciousness is not bound by the ego. Unless one makes the choice to allow the illusions of the ego to rule out of ignorance or the ignoring of Self awareness and the acceptance of internal programs as being the determining factor and rule of who you are, it is very much possible to wake up from the dreams that are created by the addictions to ego identification.
All it takes to make a change is the determination to rise above the self limiting fear based beliefs that people carry about their own being. To recognize the limitations that are the toad-like sense of self worth that follow the idea that you cannot change or make a change in yourself and in your environment. Knowledge and awareness of these things and someone who can guide you to a point of reference that is not limited to relative beliefs because they do not live bound by relative beliefs in themselves but in an unbounded state of conscious awareness can be the key to psychological and physical stress releif.
Anyone can think, but when thinking in a body filled with stresses that are both physical and psychological, thinking becomes subjective and erratic rather than clear and objective.
Removing stress from the nervous system allows one to be clearer in their thinking and one becomes more objective.
Being able to step back from any experience and see it more clearly allows one to both assess reality from greater awareness and make the decision to engage or not in the experience with wisdom rather than from ignorance. This objective witness lives within the conditioned or stressed mind and body, one need only give it a little attention to reawaken it and allow it come forth. It already lives in each and everyone and it often speaks to us in a subtle voice. It is often ignored for the louder voice that screams of conditions and belief.
These two voices are like the cartoon angel and devil that sit on either shoulder that represent the left and right hemispheres of the brain, the logical and intuitional sides of the brain. When they are working together they create a balance. When they are working independent of each other they create discord and tension in trying to rule each other with extremes.
When logic rules without a muse it becomes dogmatic. When intuition rules without logic it become ungrounded and separated from reality.
Freedom is a state of astute awareness and balance within the mind and outward in experience. It exists in all experiences rather than in an isolated experience surrounded by the threat of intrusion.
It can only exist within a mind that is free of conditioning rather than one that is reactive to conditioning and beliefs and individual perceptions.
If one was to say we react to the unbounded truth that exists in freedom from relative programming I would have to say that reactive behavior would be a natural state of being, and one that leads to greater happiness and permanent expansion, such as Joseph Campbell described when he said "Follow your bliss."
I think that reaction and knowing are often mistaken for the same thing.
When one follows their heart it can sometimes defy any reason but the knowing it must be done overrules any reasoning or subjective programming. Most tend to compromise themselves by lending themselves to the conditioning of subjective programs rather than the risk of extending ones self beyond their programs and beliefs. People become less alive in that they have lost their innocence to expectation and attachment to projected outcomes.
By the time the mind matures into its adult body it has become sufficiently programmed to act out of habit and conditioned response to what it has remembered of its past experiences and now seeks to project itself into probable futures filled with boundaries and dark spaces of fear and expectation that are created from superstition and belief.
The average adult now thinks some 50 to 60,000 thoughts per day according to a study done by Scientists at the Stanford Research Institute. Most of these thoughts are of meaningless repetition based on the past which create more stress in the body than peace and relaxation that exists when living in the present moment and innocently experiencing the now.
The mind is consumed by belief and distractions of habit, and these habitual thoughts have a direct affect on the nervous system and the overall health of the body.
The mind of habit is not the master of all of this, in fact what has been discovered in some of the experiments done by Maslow is that there is a conscious awareness that exists beyond any conditioning that has a direct affect on the mind and the body, and that it is mostly ignored in the state of conditioned response or during what is known as the 10% thinking level or conditioned mind.
As the mind is stilled from the activity of conditioning and the 60,000 thoughts that it whirls about without any conscious awareness, it becomes coherent and self aware.
One thing that should become evident is that the idea of someone asking themselves who am I or what am I doing here, and what is the meaning of life is not a conditioned response but the lifeline that still exists in self awareness or innocence of conscious awareness.
Separation of self and spirit creates a conditioned memory, with a point of reference that is bound to limitation, anxieties created by fear and belief, identification with past memories and internal programs passed down from beliefs created by the fear based programming of our parents and peers.
When the consciousness of an individual becomes self aware, rather than consumed after being slimed with habitual conditioning and emotional addictions, it learns to step back and witness conditioning rather than absorb its self in conditioning. This is a return to innocence or expanded conscious awareness. Innocence is often mistaken for ignorance but in fact it is the conditioned mind that ignores the potential that exists outside of habit and addictions, to following self limiting and self destructive programs and beliefs.
Often we think we aren't good enough, or something is too difficult for us to achieve because of these thoughts of self worth and internal programming passed down from our outward environment and our habit of attaching ourselves to negative points of references that live in us as memory or belief.
It is very much a reality that we can by our own effort and focus direct the mind to a more expanded point of reference so as to remove our attention from the addiction to this internal programming. Once the mind gets a taste of this expanded point of reference it begins to remember the potential that existed in itself before it layered itself with the imaginings of others based on habit and fear.
It is self evident that we do not all think the same and it is not by genetic disposition that we are subject to lack of choice or the belief that we have no choice in situations where some become successful and others do not. Our lack of emotional stability and destructive internal programs do not prevent us from thinking, tho they sometimes influence us.
If we honestly believed the things that influence us into accepting negative realities was beyond our own determination to make a change we would not attempt to heal the addictions that are present in our society.
Gambling, drugs, even sexual addictions are a result of a mind that is obsessed with finding an escape from its self while spinning in the 60,000 thoughts it has daily. This is a mind that is clouded from its potential, a mind that has an atrophied awareness of its connection with peace, stillness and innocence. But it is not a mind that is different in its source or manufacture than a mind that is still, happy, coherent and self aware.
It is just a mind that is like the computer that has ineffective programs that are being used by a distracted operator . Once the operator removes the distraction he becomes aware of the inefficiency of the internal programs, removes them and replaces them with those that allow the system to operate more efficiently.
The brain and the body are not the masters of conscious awareness. The mind is much more than the flesh and blood that sits within the case of bone that grows on ones shoulders.
Psychologists are often determined to analyze the programming within the brain but are often themselves unaware of the consciousness within themselves that is trying to reach beyond internal programs to the awareness that accepts or rejects programs, and to the reality of the awareness that is beyond unconscious programming. If they could understand it themselves they could understand it in others. Instead psychologists try to find the mechanism at fault within the brain, rather than nourish free will and choice that has hidden itself behind the hypnotic affects of belief and conditioning. To do that would necessitate that they themselves be free of limitation and influence by having anchored their own awareness in the unbounded potential that exists within themselves and their patient. You can't lead someone to unbounded freedom unless you know unbounded freedom. Psychologists know reason and experience passed on from books and teachings relative to conditions rather than condition-less experience and knowledge.
You can point the way to relative freedom if you yourself have some belief in freedom but that is only going to lead one to their own idea of freedom in and amongst the ideas that surround that relative belief. Then telling them that their relative beliefs are incorrect without giving them a greater experience only creates a temporary rearrangement of thought that is bound to find its way back to habit, unless the psychologist finds a way to repress the habitual thoughts with some kind of drug, or the patient discovers themselves a more expanded point of reference.
Some believe in mind control and mind conditioning. Some see this as a destructive process that takes place in secret military operations or religious cults, but few recognize the destructive programs that live within the imaginary identification of the American dream when it allows a government to support an educational system that prides itself on teaching and supporting aggressive competition that accepts success even if it means leaving others behind. This system accepts graduating students that cannot read, it accepts starvation and disease, and it accepts greed or good conscience to ignore what is not seen, in the allowance of special interests which also ignore the majority who do not share in the profit but are the means of their profit.
This is the 10% level of the mind at work. It is an unconscious mind, a mind that is conditioned by response and not a mind that utilizes its ability to re-cognize, intuit and relate to all that exists around itself. It is a mind that is hypnotized by Television and radio, the news and gossip created by fear and misunderstanding.
It is a mind that lives in individuality and separation rather than in union with all peoples all beliefs and all of creation. It is an unimaginative mind, a selfish mind and a non spiritual mind.
Freedom comes in self awareness, not reaction to relative ideas within the limitations created in belief and misunderstanding that comes from unconscious programs of identity and behavior. The ego recognizes itself according to belief and becomes belief.
Consciousness is not bound by the ego. Unless one makes the choice to allow the illusions of the ego to rule out of ignorance or the ignoring of Self awareness and the acceptance of internal programs as being the determining factor and rule of who you are, it is very much possible to wake up from the dreams that are created by the addictions to ego identification.
All it takes to make a change is the determination to rise above the self limiting fear based beliefs that people carry about their own being. To recognize the limitations that are the toad-like sense of self worth that follow the idea that you cannot change or make a change in yourself and in your environment. Knowledge and awareness of these things and someone who can guide you to a point of reference that is not limited to relative beliefs because they do not live bound by relative beliefs in themselves but in an unbounded state of conscious awareness can be the key to psychological and physical stress releif.
Anyone can think, but when thinking in a body filled with stresses that are both physical and psychological, thinking becomes subjective and erratic rather than clear and objective.
Removing stress from the nervous system allows one to be clearer in their thinking and one becomes more objective.
Being able to step back from any experience and see it more clearly allows one to both assess reality from greater awareness and make the decision to engage or not in the experience with wisdom rather than from ignorance. This objective witness lives within the conditioned or stressed mind and body, one need only give it a little attention to reawaken it and allow it come forth. It already lives in each and everyone and it often speaks to us in a subtle voice. It is often ignored for the louder voice that screams of conditions and belief.
These two voices are like the cartoon angel and devil that sit on either shoulder that represent the left and right hemispheres of the brain, the logical and intuitional sides of the brain. When they are working together they create a balance. When they are working independent of each other they create discord and tension in trying to rule each other with extremes.
When logic rules without a muse it becomes dogmatic. When intuition rules without logic it become ungrounded and separated from reality.
Freedom is a state of astute awareness and balance within the mind and outward in experience. It exists in all experiences rather than in an isolated experience surrounded by the threat of intrusion.
It can only exist within a mind that is free of conditioning rather than one that is reactive to conditioning and beliefs and individual perceptions.
If one was to say we react to the unbounded truth that exists in freedom from relative programming I would have to say that reactive behavior would be a natural state of being, and one that leads to greater happiness and permanent expansion, such as Joseph Campbell described when he said "Follow your bliss."
I think that reaction and knowing are often mistaken for the same thing.
When one follows their heart it can sometimes defy any reason but the knowing it must be done overrules any reasoning or subjective programming. Most tend to compromise themselves by lending themselves to the conditioning of subjective programs rather than the risk of extending ones self beyond their programs and beliefs. People become less alive in that they have lost their innocence to expectation and attachment to projected outcomes.
Joesus
I have only begun to study psychology but I do think that I have a pretty good idea of much of it. Most of it I have learned from reading the works of Ernest Becker. Most of what I have learned leads me to disagree with much that you write here but I shall only comment about your view of habit.
One significant advantage engineering, physics and much of the natural sciences has is that they speak in mathematical terms. The individuals often speak in formulas or mathematical verbiage that is clear and concise and understandable by all the members. The use of every day words like habit can be confusing because of a lack of clarity. One might also think of attitude as a proper way to describe what I call habit.
What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.
My understanding of character and the quotations that follow concerning the nature of character are taken from “Habits and Will” by John Dewey http://www.alexandercenter.com/jd/johndeweyhabits.html.
I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.
Habits also control the formation of ideas as well as physical actions. We cannot perform a correct action or a correct idea without having already formed correct habits. “Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction.” “The medium of habit filters all material that reaches our perception and thought.” “Immediate, seemingly instinctive, feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior is in reality the feeling of habits working below direct consciousness.” “Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will.”
We display an attitude toward most any subject. An attitude cannot be described explicitly but is a notion, which is an inference, based upon behavior. We are all inclined to behave consistently to a situation and this behavior is attributed to our attitude. Our attitudes can be observed by others and the quality of such attitudes is judged based on observed behavior.
Britannica specifies that attitude is “a predisposition to classify objects and events and to react to them with some degree of evaluative consistency.”
If I consult my inner self I cannot focus upon an attitude but can infer such an attitude based on behavior. If I wish to become conscious of my intuition I can through observation of behavior describe the attitude, which, in turn, allows me to ascertain the nature of my intuition.
When a mother tells her son “you must change your attitude”. The son cannot change the attitude directly but the son must change his intuition from which the inferred attitude emanates. This does become a bit convoluted but in essence when we wish to change an attitude we are saying that our intuition must be modified.
“Were it not for the continued operation of all habits in every act, no such thing as character would exist. There would be simply a bundle, an untied bundle at that, of isolated acts. Character is the interpenetrating of habits. If each habit in an insulated compartment and operated without affecting or being affected by others, character would not exist. That is conduct would lack unity being only juxtaposition of disconnected reactions to separated situations. But since environments overlap, since situations are continuous and those remote from one another contain like elements, a continuous modification of habits by one another is constantly going on.”
I have only begun to study psychology but I do think that I have a pretty good idea of much of it. Most of it I have learned from reading the works of Ernest Becker. Most of what I have learned leads me to disagree with much that you write here but I shall only comment about your view of habit.
One significant advantage engineering, physics and much of the natural sciences has is that they speak in mathematical terms. The individuals often speak in formulas or mathematical verbiage that is clear and concise and understandable by all the members. The use of every day words like habit can be confusing because of a lack of clarity. One might also think of attitude as a proper way to describe what I call habit.
What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.
My understanding of character and the quotations that follow concerning the nature of character are taken from “Habits and Will” by John Dewey http://www.alexandercenter.com/jd/johndeweyhabits.html.
I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.
Habits also control the formation of ideas as well as physical actions. We cannot perform a correct action or a correct idea without having already formed correct habits. “Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction.” “The medium of habit filters all material that reaches our perception and thought.” “Immediate, seemingly instinctive, feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior is in reality the feeling of habits working below direct consciousness.” “Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will.”
We display an attitude toward most any subject. An attitude cannot be described explicitly but is a notion, which is an inference, based upon behavior. We are all inclined to behave consistently to a situation and this behavior is attributed to our attitude. Our attitudes can be observed by others and the quality of such attitudes is judged based on observed behavior.
Britannica specifies that attitude is “a predisposition to classify objects and events and to react to them with some degree of evaluative consistency.”
If I consult my inner self I cannot focus upon an attitude but can infer such an attitude based on behavior. If I wish to become conscious of my intuition I can through observation of behavior describe the attitude, which, in turn, allows me to ascertain the nature of my intuition.
When a mother tells her son “you must change your attitude”. The son cannot change the attitude directly but the son must change his intuition from which the inferred attitude emanates. This does become a bit convoluted but in essence when we wish to change an attitude we are saying that our intuition must be modified.
“Were it not for the continued operation of all habits in every act, no such thing as character would exist. There would be simply a bundle, an untied bundle at that, of isolated acts. Character is the interpenetrating of habits. If each habit in an insulated compartment and operated without affecting or being affected by others, character would not exist. That is conduct would lack unity being only juxtaposition of disconnected reactions to separated situations. But since environments overlap, since situations are continuous and those remote from one another contain like elements, a continuous modification of habits by one another is constantly going on.”
Most of what I have learned comes through personal experience. Tho I have read a lot and heard a lot, what I find is real is what doesn't change.
People can agree on a lot of things but in the end the agreement is a collection of personal observations that lean toward a common idea or belief. Scientific process sometimes is made from what is currently available or technology that is current. Since technology and its ability to create expanded versions of rules and the rule of change is a constant I think what exists within the character of all is what I experience as a constant. Personalities change with attachment to moods and beliefs. What is observable in personalities that seem to remain a constant is habit. When I observe habits that are broken or changing personality or character changes, I can still see a constant underlying personality or character.
This is most obvious when you take someone who has a history of being violent to themselves and to others. Their character is seen as malicious or self serving but the character that emerges in the transition from selfish to selfless reveals something other.
There are scientific observations and then there are observations that are less structured.
If you take vanilla ice cream and package it as vanilla ice cream it become vanilla ice cream as a fact. If you give vanilla ice cream to 100 people and tell them it is vanilla ice cream they will then accept it as vanilla ice cream because you've told them it is and it is packaged as such.
There are many different versions of vanilla ice cream and many different packagings of vanilla ice cream. As Vanilla ice cream is made from one batch to another, ingredients vary slightly but the packaging remains as a marker for what is intended to be vanilla ice cream.
If their first taste of vanilla ice cream was of the container you fed to the 100 people and what they eat now is not of the same container but a different one and a different formula and they call it vanilla ice cream then they have out of habit made a generalization about the reality of vanilla ice cream.
Medical science approaches medicine from observation. A doctor takes a look at someone and makes an approximated assumption based on the container and its contents being somewhat like the container and its contents that was labeled with the symptoms it encountered when creating the first mark of habit or of conditioning or what we call learning.
A cold is labeled a cold because of the familiarity of its symptoms and it is applied to the container and its contents regardless of what the container looks like or what its contents are.
Psychologically this is how we are taught to think and accept reality. This is generalization and it is also science.
Doctors now have wavers to protect themselves against intrusion of factors that take away from generalizations. Basically they protect themselves from not knowing the details of each container based on a science that assumes all containers are the same and their contents all have the same characteristics. These waivers state that they (the scientists or doctors) cannot be held responsible for the accidental death or complications due to unforeseen, unidentified, analysis of contents within the container or patient at the time of treatment.
Basically they are saying we will do the best we can but if we are the cause of further complication or even death we will not be held responsible.
Personally I find it somewhat less than reassuring when a scientist tries to justify their reasoning with a waiver of responsibility.
Looking at the character of science in the medical profession, the underlying nature of someone who seeks to practice varies from one who genuinely has an interest in helping others because they have a connection to the the physical sufferings of humanity, to those who seek an elevated lifestyle and want a new Mercedes every year.
This is just an observation but having spent some time in a Hospital recently with someone who had fallen into a coma after having a stroke, I found the doctors and nurses out of habit are more apt to look at the negative side of recovery rather than the positive side of recovery.
Two different doctors came into the room to tell the family two different things. One said there is possibility of recovery, the other came into the room and said prepare for the inevitability of expiration, there is little chance for recovery.
In the last 6 weeks, regardless of the prognosis and attitude of the doctors and nurses who have continually spoke of preparing for the worst, and the fact that according to statistics and procedure there is little chance for recovery, the family, including myself witnessed and tuned into the psychological character of each of the doctors and the nurses.
My observation:
Doctors engaged were both distant emotionally and intellectually being preoccupied with thoughts of personal content and of stress accumulated from the pressures of their job and fear of facing patients and families because the patients and families depended on them to solve their problem. This was and is something that doctors are not interested in and so they are psychologically focused on facts rather than tuned into the patient and their families.
I think they are taught to prepare themselves this way but aren't capable of projecting what that actually feels like in experience before they engage in practice.
I don't think any one is prepared for what they experience in life but if we approach each individual as if the contents are the same, or establish ideas and beliefs according to our personal points of reference we narrow the infinite into the finite.
The nurses were also preoccupied with thoughts of a personal nature and their ability to carry out their care varied. Some were able to put their thoughts aside and tune into the patient and give their attention according to the what was happening in the moment. However the majority were like robots, conditioned to work toward the productivity of the hospital and the need to get back to their personal lives. One out of 10 nurses gave the family hope of recovery. The rest spoke of the inevitable failure of conditions and as such didn't give much more than they felt was required to change the oil and check the pressure in the tires so the vehicle had what it needed to roll on to the grave.
Anyway despite the negativity of the staff, the family felt there was much more going on than the doctors were interested in seeing and tho some might feel it a bit woo woo, we saw something taking place for all of us as a growth opportunity and the comatose family member as the catalyst.
We saw a spark of determination in her where she would respond to the family, and barely respond to the medical staff. They never saw what we saw regardless of what we said to them, and so their prognosis was always subjectively negative.
Tho we never gave into the scientific observations of the medical staff we never really held them at fault for their shortcomings. We just accepted their behavior as the product of programming and habit and more importantly personal choice. The true nature of their capabilities and potential, were submerged under training backed by the math of statistics and the disconnection of intuitive reasoning and intellectual hammering. Of course it doesn't make you feel good about going to the repair shop if the mechanics aren't genuinely interested in their work and give the equipment little attention or respect, but that is what human evolution has produced at this stage of growth.
The patient awoke from the coma and is recovering. The Doctors aren't saying much of anything anymore, they're just preoccupied with other things. They like most people have lost touch with their true character which is more intuitive and united with their patients than they realize. The problem is that intuition leads them to the fear that lives within everyone rather than the potential that lives within everyone. Character is often seen and labeled as the container most accepted by the level that creates the standard rather than the potential that exists beyond all qualities and conditions. In other words they can't seem to find the energy to go beyond the fear because it lives so strongly within themselves.
Science has a difficult time establishing ideas without conditions and facts. Because they have to create standards by utilizing small parts of the universe rather than all of it, science has to make generalizations in order to reach expectations or goals in establishing reason of reality. Intuition is not developed because it is not a science that can be captured and measured and so we tend to establish character within parameters of generalization and projection.
IF we are truly of an evolutionary nature I find that establishing absolutes in change is sometimes amusing at best. What we observe is often ignored because someone of authority tells us that democratically we as a society have decided it is otherwise.
So the idea that you don't agree with me because of what you have read doesn't really impress me.
I do have an appreciation for the science that helped keep the patient from dying from the stoke. Without the surgeons efforts the hemorrhaging would have eventually led to her death.
In the final outcome it wasn't just the science that saved her it was both the determination of the patient to live, enhanced by the support and faith of the family coupled with the mechanical process of science.
The medical staff was the cold mechanical tool and the family and patient were the channel for the spiritual force that helped the tools achieve their goal. Obviously these tools had no identification of being anything other than a tool when on the job, so there had to be other forces at work.
The true character of a person can be observed but it has to be observed from a point of reference that isn't bound by statistics.
Just because they acted as tools it is plain to see they still have a spirit that is within the cold exterior of the container, but it takes one who knows that spirit to see it, especially if it is covered with internal programs that project such a stiff outer container.
That, you don't get from a book.
People can agree on a lot of things but in the end the agreement is a collection of personal observations that lean toward a common idea or belief. Scientific process sometimes is made from what is currently available or technology that is current. Since technology and its ability to create expanded versions of rules and the rule of change is a constant I think what exists within the character of all is what I experience as a constant. Personalities change with attachment to moods and beliefs. What is observable in personalities that seem to remain a constant is habit. When I observe habits that are broken or changing personality or character changes, I can still see a constant underlying personality or character.
This is most obvious when you take someone who has a history of being violent to themselves and to others. Their character is seen as malicious or self serving but the character that emerges in the transition from selfish to selfless reveals something other.
There are scientific observations and then there are observations that are less structured.
If you take vanilla ice cream and package it as vanilla ice cream it become vanilla ice cream as a fact. If you give vanilla ice cream to 100 people and tell them it is vanilla ice cream they will then accept it as vanilla ice cream because you've told them it is and it is packaged as such.
There are many different versions of vanilla ice cream and many different packagings of vanilla ice cream. As Vanilla ice cream is made from one batch to another, ingredients vary slightly but the packaging remains as a marker for what is intended to be vanilla ice cream.
If their first taste of vanilla ice cream was of the container you fed to the 100 people and what they eat now is not of the same container but a different one and a different formula and they call it vanilla ice cream then they have out of habit made a generalization about the reality of vanilla ice cream.
Medical science approaches medicine from observation. A doctor takes a look at someone and makes an approximated assumption based on the container and its contents being somewhat like the container and its contents that was labeled with the symptoms it encountered when creating the first mark of habit or of conditioning or what we call learning.
A cold is labeled a cold because of the familiarity of its symptoms and it is applied to the container and its contents regardless of what the container looks like or what its contents are.
Psychologically this is how we are taught to think and accept reality. This is generalization and it is also science.
Doctors now have wavers to protect themselves against intrusion of factors that take away from generalizations. Basically they protect themselves from not knowing the details of each container based on a science that assumes all containers are the same and their contents all have the same characteristics. These waivers state that they (the scientists or doctors) cannot be held responsible for the accidental death or complications due to unforeseen, unidentified, analysis of contents within the container or patient at the time of treatment.
Basically they are saying we will do the best we can but if we are the cause of further complication or even death we will not be held responsible.
Personally I find it somewhat less than reassuring when a scientist tries to justify their reasoning with a waiver of responsibility.
Looking at the character of science in the medical profession, the underlying nature of someone who seeks to practice varies from one who genuinely has an interest in helping others because they have a connection to the the physical sufferings of humanity, to those who seek an elevated lifestyle and want a new Mercedes every year.
This is just an observation but having spent some time in a Hospital recently with someone who had fallen into a coma after having a stroke, I found the doctors and nurses out of habit are more apt to look at the negative side of recovery rather than the positive side of recovery.
Two different doctors came into the room to tell the family two different things. One said there is possibility of recovery, the other came into the room and said prepare for the inevitability of expiration, there is little chance for recovery.
In the last 6 weeks, regardless of the prognosis and attitude of the doctors and nurses who have continually spoke of preparing for the worst, and the fact that according to statistics and procedure there is little chance for recovery, the family, including myself witnessed and tuned into the psychological character of each of the doctors and the nurses.
My observation:
Doctors engaged were both distant emotionally and intellectually being preoccupied with thoughts of personal content and of stress accumulated from the pressures of their job and fear of facing patients and families because the patients and families depended on them to solve their problem. This was and is something that doctors are not interested in and so they are psychologically focused on facts rather than tuned into the patient and their families.
I think they are taught to prepare themselves this way but aren't capable of projecting what that actually feels like in experience before they engage in practice.
I don't think any one is prepared for what they experience in life but if we approach each individual as if the contents are the same, or establish ideas and beliefs according to our personal points of reference we narrow the infinite into the finite.
The nurses were also preoccupied with thoughts of a personal nature and their ability to carry out their care varied. Some were able to put their thoughts aside and tune into the patient and give their attention according to the what was happening in the moment. However the majority were like robots, conditioned to work toward the productivity of the hospital and the need to get back to their personal lives. One out of 10 nurses gave the family hope of recovery. The rest spoke of the inevitable failure of conditions and as such didn't give much more than they felt was required to change the oil and check the pressure in the tires so the vehicle had what it needed to roll on to the grave.
Anyway despite the negativity of the staff, the family felt there was much more going on than the doctors were interested in seeing and tho some might feel it a bit woo woo, we saw something taking place for all of us as a growth opportunity and the comatose family member as the catalyst.
We saw a spark of determination in her where she would respond to the family, and barely respond to the medical staff. They never saw what we saw regardless of what we said to them, and so their prognosis was always subjectively negative.
Tho we never gave into the scientific observations of the medical staff we never really held them at fault for their shortcomings. We just accepted their behavior as the product of programming and habit and more importantly personal choice. The true nature of their capabilities and potential, were submerged under training backed by the math of statistics and the disconnection of intuitive reasoning and intellectual hammering. Of course it doesn't make you feel good about going to the repair shop if the mechanics aren't genuinely interested in their work and give the equipment little attention or respect, but that is what human evolution has produced at this stage of growth.
The patient awoke from the coma and is recovering. The Doctors aren't saying much of anything anymore, they're just preoccupied with other things. They like most people have lost touch with their true character which is more intuitive and united with their patients than they realize. The problem is that intuition leads them to the fear that lives within everyone rather than the potential that lives within everyone. Character is often seen and labeled as the container most accepted by the level that creates the standard rather than the potential that exists beyond all qualities and conditions. In other words they can't seem to find the energy to go beyond the fear because it lives so strongly within themselves.
Science has a difficult time establishing ideas without conditions and facts. Because they have to create standards by utilizing small parts of the universe rather than all of it, science has to make generalizations in order to reach expectations or goals in establishing reason of reality. Intuition is not developed because it is not a science that can be captured and measured and so we tend to establish character within parameters of generalization and projection.
IF we are truly of an evolutionary nature I find that establishing absolutes in change is sometimes amusing at best. What we observe is often ignored because someone of authority tells us that democratically we as a society have decided it is otherwise.
So the idea that you don't agree with me because of what you have read doesn't really impress me.
I do have an appreciation for the science that helped keep the patient from dying from the stoke. Without the surgeons efforts the hemorrhaging would have eventually led to her death.
In the final outcome it wasn't just the science that saved her it was both the determination of the patient to live, enhanced by the support and faith of the family coupled with the mechanical process of science.
The medical staff was the cold mechanical tool and the family and patient were the channel for the spiritual force that helped the tools achieve their goal. Obviously these tools had no identification of being anything other than a tool when on the job, so there had to be other forces at work.
The true character of a person can be observed but it has to be observed from a point of reference that isn't bound by statistics.
Just because they acted as tools it is plain to see they still have a spirit that is within the cold exterior of the container, but it takes one who knows that spirit to see it, especially if it is covered with internal programs that project such a stiff outer container.
That, you don't get from a book.
This is really the thousand year old debate on determinism or free will. I think the real question lies in this - if everything is determined, does it really make a difference whether or not we believe in free will?
Second interesting point I have to make is that if free will exists then believing in determinism could lower our exercise of that will. Thus I conclude that one should believe in free will, simply because if determinism is real then whether you believe in it or not will not make a difference.
However if free will is real, then it does make a difference as to whether or not you believe in it. Thus I conclude that it is the wise choice to believe in free will.
Second interesting point I have to make is that if free will exists then believing in determinism could lower our exercise of that will. Thus I conclude that one should believe in free will, simply because if determinism is real then whether you believe in it or not will not make a difference.
However if free will is real, then it does make a difference as to whether or not you believe in it. Thus I conclude that it is the wise choice to believe in free will.
QUOTE(maximus242 @ Mar 11, 2008, 05:15 PM) 
This is really the thousand year old debate on determinism or free will. I think the real question lies in this - if everything is determined, does it really make a difference whether or not we believe in free will?
Second interesting point I have to make is that if free will exists then believing in determinism could lower our exercise of that will. Thus I conclude that one should believe in free will, simply because if determinism is real then whether you believe in it or not will not make a difference.
However if free will is real, then it does make a difference as to whether or not you believe in it. Thus I conclude that it is the wise choice to believe in free will.
I think that you speak with wisdom.
Joesus
I guess that there is much that we learn from doing things. However, one thing that we might learn from doing things is that if we give attention to what the great minds have discovered we will move forward much faster and much further. Everyone reinventing the wheel seems like a foolish waste.
I guess that there is much that we learn from doing things. However, one thing that we might learn from doing things is that if we give attention to what the great minds have discovered we will move forward much faster and much further. Everyone reinventing the wheel seems like a foolish waste.
I think ignoring the obvious is not wisdom.
In my own endeavors, I witness others who take my words and give them their own meanings.
You can ask someone to memorize something and test them on it, but even after they memorize it, they apply their own meanings.
Teachers who are able to guide their students to stable Truths by enlivening what is inside of them rather than what they expect is inside of them based on second hand information they have reinvented in their own mind is wisdom.
Wisdom is a balance of the intellect and the heart not a collection of knowledge. Tho there is a tremendous amount of knowledge in the world new knowledge especially scientific knowledge is constantly discovered in and amongst the things that are established as fact.
Medicine is not an established wheel and its teachers and scientific explorers are always discovering new ways to re-invent the wheel. If they thought they knew what the wheel was they would have found drugs that don't need warning labels and they could administer treatment without having their patients sign waivers against holding them responsible for treatment. You hear it every day in the advertisements for medical products, "This medication may not be for everyone." The reason is that statistics are not a solid picture of a wheel that needs no improvement, when examining variables they have to be able to step outside the box.
There is little known parameters for learning to step outside the box and very few teachings that expand intuitive process and inner awareness to establish out of the box thinking.
Wisdom based on statistics is more conditioning and the establishing of reaction according to conditioning, it leaves little to the imagination or to the nurturing of free will.
Give me Teachers who have established themselves in their intuitive mastery and the ability to recognize the variables without struggling to step out of the box and that is wisdom. That is the scientist I recognize as wise, the one that says nothing is set in stone tho there are similarities in life and its surroundings, there is always more and no wheel that can be improved upon is an established wheel.
Humility will endeavor to find and acknowledge a true constant and allow for that which is not, and it will detach itself from pride and fear by staying objective and open to new experiences in creating the wheel anew in each moment rather than staying stuck and insisting the way it has been built is the only way.
Hopefully new cars and industry will be created that is inspired by the thought that paying $10.00 a gallon for gas and continuing to dump billions of tons of pollutants into the air and water is not a wheel I wish to accept as something that need not be reinvented.
The same science that is responsible for saving lives is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of people. Each year more than 98,000 Americans die from Hospital Medical Errors. 1,000,000 more are injured from medical errors. These are just scientifically generated numbers and those who made this determination actually believe the numbers are much higher.
Psychologically this is accepted by the administrators as not an ideal but it is acceptable on a business level and gives them cause to continue on this level with the protection of the waiver of responsibility. To me this sends a message that says, "Hey were not perfect but we're the best you got and this is as good as it gets."
The thing is, most doctors know that the majority of illnesses are born of stress and psychological discord. Yet Science in society has not found a way to heal the stress in society by teaching people from a young age to live without stress.
It might be that its hard to maintain business as usual if you can't make a profit off of human misery.
So psychologically the politics of an economic nature is more important than health care, because personal happiness based on wealth is more of value. Generate more wealth and you can pay for your doctor who is only qualified to make an assumption based on memorization of statistics and assumptions passed down from great minds who were themselves searching and summarizing their observations after reading some books and being taught by someone else who read a book......
I think in light of this perfection, this wheel can be re-invented.
In my own endeavors, I witness others who take my words and give them their own meanings.
You can ask someone to memorize something and test them on it, but even after they memorize it, they apply their own meanings.
Teachers who are able to guide their students to stable Truths by enlivening what is inside of them rather than what they expect is inside of them based on second hand information they have reinvented in their own mind is wisdom.
Wisdom is a balance of the intellect and the heart not a collection of knowledge. Tho there is a tremendous amount of knowledge in the world new knowledge especially scientific knowledge is constantly discovered in and amongst the things that are established as fact.
Medicine is not an established wheel and its teachers and scientific explorers are always discovering new ways to re-invent the wheel. If they thought they knew what the wheel was they would have found drugs that don't need warning labels and they could administer treatment without having their patients sign waivers against holding them responsible for treatment. You hear it every day in the advertisements for medical products, "This medication may not be for everyone." The reason is that statistics are not a solid picture of a wheel that needs no improvement, when examining variables they have to be able to step outside the box.
There is little known parameters for learning to step outside the box and very few teachings that expand intuitive process and inner awareness to establish out of the box thinking.
Wisdom based on statistics is more conditioning and the establishing of reaction according to conditioning, it leaves little to the imagination or to the nurturing of free will.
Give me Teachers who have established themselves in their intuitive mastery and the ability to recognize the variables without struggling to step out of the box and that is wisdom. That is the scientist I recognize as wise, the one that says nothing is set in stone tho there are similarities in life and its surroundings, there is always more and no wheel that can be improved upon is an established wheel.
Humility will endeavor to find and acknowledge a true constant and allow for that which is not, and it will detach itself from pride and fear by staying objective and open to new experiences in creating the wheel anew in each moment rather than staying stuck and insisting the way it has been built is the only way.
Hopefully new cars and industry will be created that is inspired by the thought that paying $10.00 a gallon for gas and continuing to dump billions of tons of pollutants into the air and water is not a wheel I wish to accept as something that need not be reinvented.
The same science that is responsible for saving lives is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of people. Each year more than 98,000 Americans die from Hospital Medical Errors. 1,000,000 more are injured from medical errors. These are just scientifically generated numbers and those who made this determination actually believe the numbers are much higher.
Psychologically this is accepted by the administrators as not an ideal but it is acceptable on a business level and gives them cause to continue on this level with the protection of the waiver of responsibility. To me this sends a message that says, "Hey were not perfect but we're the best you got and this is as good as it gets."
The thing is, most doctors know that the majority of illnesses are born of stress and psychological discord. Yet Science in society has not found a way to heal the stress in society by teaching people from a young age to live without stress.
It might be that its hard to maintain business as usual if you can't make a profit off of human misery.
So psychologically the politics of an economic nature is more important than health care, because personal happiness based on wealth is more of value. Generate more wealth and you can pay for your doctor who is only qualified to make an assumption based on memorization of statistics and assumptions passed down from great minds who were themselves searching and summarizing their observations after reading some books and being taught by someone else who read a book......
I think in light of this perfection, this wheel can be re-invented.
QUOTE(maximus242 @ Mar 11, 2008, 06:15 PM)
... Thus I conclude that it is the wise choice to believe in free will.
The fact that people who believe in free will behave differently (less passive) than fatalists is not only an example of free will in action, but actually a proof that it exists!
So given this proof, there is no choice to believe: one must believe a proof!
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