Sunday, August 02, 2009
Sense of Importance
We all want to feel important and useful, even indispensable. The ideal way is to simply be the best at what we do. Based on it's value to the world, we will be equivalently important. We will also have the security of being true to ourselves. If we are lucky to be raised by trusting, truly loving parents, that corraled and guided us vs. commanded and controlled us, we will, indeed, be self-fulled.
However, as we are growing up other peoples' expectations --first our parents, then our teachers, and our peers--are urged on us. Parents may want an offspring to fulfill their frustrated plans or go into a field that the parent thinks has riches and/or status--"My son the doctor." Teachers and the self-styled intellectual elite want everybody to have a collelge education. Peers, in contrast, often make fun of high achievers.
It takes and extremely strong-willed person to resist these kinds of pressures and most don't. As a consequence, people enter careers where the standards are not their own. They strive to achieve, not what they want, but what constitutes "sucess" and then feel empty when they get there. Rather than investigating the source of emptiness, they strive for more of the same, thinking that it is only a matter of not-enough--quantity vs. quality.
This striving can become compulsive and have an hysterical quality, when challenged. There becomes an obsessive reiteration of beliefs and formulas--often attempting to impose them on others in order to remove the challenge to their own insecurities. After all, if everyone does it--it's OK. Misery wants and needs company.
Any and all militants, save when there is truly an issue of personal survival, can be considered to be covering a fear--the fear that they will fail, because they know that their pursuit is acquired not inate. The key to recognition is their refusal to reason. Any argument or disagreement is met with either an ad hominum attack or an attempt to change the grounds of discussion. Commonly it is shifted to a a pseudo-moral plane, changing from a discussion of principle to a discussion of utilitarian ends, ignoring the means.
Unfortunately, understanding what is going on does not necessarily lead to conflict resolution. One cannot reason with someone who refuses to reason. All that is left is defense in kind--a refusal to agree, a clear statement of principle, and physical defense including retaliation, if necessary.
It is a canard to say one is "sinking to their level" to physically defend and/or retaliate. That is an attempt to subvert principle by turning it upon itself. Basically it is trying to say that high moral principle is defenseless so that lessor view may triumph. WRONG--it is morally incumbent on those who hold high principles to forward their principles rationally in all cases, refuse to compromise the principles, though the expression mhy be a compromise, and defend their principles by whatever means are necessary.
This is the lesson of Christian martyrs, WW I, WW II, and both Gulf Wars. Martyrs were justified that they died for their integrity; the allies in both World Wars triumphed over aggression, and the US and it allies won both Gulf Wars with a feeling of pride. {The later deconstruction by the left/liberal axis is a whole other topic.}
By doing what they knew to be right, all of these people became important both to themselves and to history.
However, as we are growing up other peoples' expectations --first our parents, then our teachers, and our peers--are urged on us. Parents may want an offspring to fulfill their frustrated plans or go into a field that the parent thinks has riches and/or status--"My son the doctor." Teachers and the self-styled intellectual elite want everybody to have a collelge education. Peers, in contrast, often make fun of high achievers.
It takes and extremely strong-willed person to resist these kinds of pressures and most don't. As a consequence, people enter careers where the standards are not their own. They strive to achieve, not what they want, but what constitutes "sucess" and then feel empty when they get there. Rather than investigating the source of emptiness, they strive for more of the same, thinking that it is only a matter of not-enough--quantity vs. quality.
This striving can become compulsive and have an hysterical quality, when challenged. There becomes an obsessive reiteration of beliefs and formulas--often attempting to impose them on others in order to remove the challenge to their own insecurities. After all, if everyone does it--it's OK. Misery wants and needs company.
Any and all militants, save when there is truly an issue of personal survival, can be considered to be covering a fear--the fear that they will fail, because they know that their pursuit is acquired not inate. The key to recognition is their refusal to reason. Any argument or disagreement is met with either an ad hominum attack or an attempt to change the grounds of discussion. Commonly it is shifted to a a pseudo-moral plane, changing from a discussion of principle to a discussion of utilitarian ends, ignoring the means.
Unfortunately, understanding what is going on does not necessarily lead to conflict resolution. One cannot reason with someone who refuses to reason. All that is left is defense in kind--a refusal to agree, a clear statement of principle, and physical defense including retaliation, if necessary.
It is a canard to say one is "sinking to their level" to physically defend and/or retaliate. That is an attempt to subvert principle by turning it upon itself. Basically it is trying to say that high moral principle is defenseless so that lessor view may triumph. WRONG--it is morally incumbent on those who hold high principles to forward their principles rationally in all cases, refuse to compromise the principles, though the expression mhy be a compromise, and defend their principles by whatever means are necessary.
This is the lesson of Christian martyrs, WW I, WW II, and both Gulf Wars. Martyrs were justified that they died for their integrity; the allies in both World Wars triumphed over aggression, and the US and it allies won both Gulf Wars with a feeling of pride. {The later deconstruction by the left/liberal axis is a whole other topic.}
By doing what they knew to be right, all of these people became important both to themselves and to history.
// posted by Bill @ 10:30 PM 
