The Overwhelming, Overweening Therapeutic Avalanche In Modern Consciousness (1 Viewer)

[FBG Moderator]

Please keep this on the topic and not the little swipes at other posters. Thanks.

This can be a good thread. Please don't ruin it.

What swipes?

The deleted posts where posters seemed more interested in insulting other posters than actually discussing. Please don't do that. Keep it 100% on the topic and not other posters.

 

[rockaction]

As an ardent individualist, this is not the conclusion that I ever saw myself drawing, but I can't deny what's in front of my own two eyes.

This is going to sound really stupid, but my law school entrance essay was about autonomy and individuality vs. community and shared being. Given who I'd worked for and the record I'd left, I sort of had to explicitly state that I'd found the sort of radical individualism assumed proper in my previous circles was lacking something very serious, and that as radically individualist as I might seem from my record, there was a communitarian streak developing in me as I got older and watched things going the way they were both on a macro level and in my own life.

It could be a function of aging, IK. We are more vulnerable as we age and we're closer to death. We depend more on the status quo than those starting out. That might have something to do with it, too.

What is the ultimate goal in life?

The pursuit of a bliss that is mindful of others, which will likely never be achieved by mortals like us?

Serious answer and I learned this from wikkid (sage). The ultimate goal in life is to do unto others as you would do unto yourself. I cannot think of a better maxim or decree that is also quite as impossibly aspirational. Yet it is a goal that is quite as good and infused with a plea for grace as any other maxim is.

I was actually a little surprised that you gave the answer you did about the ultimate goal of life, knowing what little I do about you, but going back to the beginning of the thread and seeing the post about communitarianism, it makes more sense now.

I'm sorry I haven't been around to read the thread and comment as deeply as I'd like. I think it might be a lack of articulation on my part, but I'm pretty sure that doing unto others as you would do unto yourself is (and I'm repeating myself because it's the best my lizard brain can handle) both an excellent maxim to attempt to adhere to and also an aspirational goal. I don't really know how it works, but I know that trying to break down which comes first and is more important (by that I mean if it is, as you asked, best realized via a strong and individually-developed sense of self whereby we can share our full, happy self with the community; or if a well-behaved and slightly conformist society that is often deferential to community standards and needs that fosters a strong sense of self and happiness leading to reciprocity of those qualities) is almost futile. I do think there are genetics inherent in happiness and that environment also matters so much.

I don't know. It strikes me that it will be a chicken-and-the-egg argument until there are more controlled studies about the nature/nurture element of personality and soul; not to mention the self-nurture/community-nurture portion of the nurture part of the equation that I brought up in the previous paragraph. I don't think we're going to be figuring it out any time soon, so I would just say that I think people are at their best both individually and within the community when they are doing to others as though they were treating themselves. I've just found, much like wikkid, that happiness follows the Golden Rule.

I am incredibly imperfect at the Golden Rule; therefore I know how aspirational a maxim (which is a neat paradox) the saying is. Aspirational commands are often the most difficult; this might be the most basic and yet most difficult of all.

I hope this makes sense.

 

[rockaction]

This can be a good thread. Please don't ruin it.

I'm happy that I've started the occasional thread that winds up thoughtful or good. I was just as guilty for taking a swipe at someone earlier in the thread (which was a long time ago) as maybe the recent ones that have been deleted (I haven't seen the recent ones), so I'll cop to it and ask others to remain cooler than I did.

The aspirational rule, again. (See my last post if confused by that, FBG.)

 

[KarmaPolice]

A bit late to the conversation but this is one of those social trends that I see as a too far the other way pendulum swing from what we had growing up and didn't like. I hope we find a better balance the other way, but I fear we won't. All I am saying is I'd guess most of us agree that stuff we saw from our parents and grandparents wasn't overall healthy and how we should behave as far as handling mental issues. Not sure the same amount agree, but what I am seeing is a too far in the other direction overcorrection. Instead of bottling up everything and not sharing emotions to the point of implosion, we now overshare and overfocus on how everybody is feeling at every hour of the day. Instead of demonizing and locking up people with mental illnesses, we now say say trivial things give us trauma, PTSD. We wear our emotions on our sleeves to the point I hear our employees talking about their meds and diagnoses in a bragging manner.

Along with a couple other trends I see we have gone from demonizing and isolating to celebrating and encouraging. I don't think either are overall healthy and we need to find a balance somewhere.