Quote:
Originally Posted by bluedragon  My questions are not hypothetical at all. I do want to join a humanitarian organization. If I know that I am determined not to lie under any circumstances, I should tell them. Otherwise they may ask me a simple thing thing that I will refuse to do, and they will feel betrayed. By joining an organization or a firm, you make an implied promise to serve that firm and to do what your superiors tell you to. They count on you. What if they ask me a simple thing such as to lie on the phone and say that a manager is not in the office when he actually is, or something like that. I can really compromise them and their image if I lie. The may unknowingly put their confidence in the fact that I will tell a small lie, and then, if I refuse, they will have nowhere to go and they will be exposed. I would be treading a fine line with this kind of attitude, so I am hoping to find more clarity. Do you think someone who is aligned with truth would like in such situations? Would you, Steve, supposing you would ever get a job? |
It's situations like this where I find virtues start to fall apart a bit.
It's very hard to know exactly what you're entering into all the time. I think it becomes quite a struggle to try to consider and maintain your standards, and in doing so, make sure you're maintaining the standards (i.e. values) of everyone else you come into contact to. And what about the people you come into contact to through your direct influence? How do you even deal wit that, if at all?
I found that model far too complicated. It was like I was trying to sort out the world. And in doing that, all the while I knew there was potential for me to be wrong... potential for things to fall inside my blind spots (whether visual or mental).
Perhaps my "feel good" approach is a bit of a cop out answer to some, but for me, I seem to be far more effective when I listen to my intuition and focus on my feelings instead of actions.
I guess it helps that I'm fairly intuitive and get insights from (what I'd call) my spirit guides--insights that seem to be a little more preconitive than my prediction abilities seem to be (although I don't separate my predictive abilities from intuition... my logic and doubt would like to, heh... but my experiential side is fine with relaxing into reality and not questioning it so much) and, as such, such insights prove to be very valuable.
I tend to get a bit of resistance from the people around me when it comes to the approach of making it my dominant intent to feel good, kind of like a psychic gets a lot of flack for simply being psychic, but perhaps the thing that produces the best results in my life is listening to my intuition. And if I consider that (what you could call the "objective" results, even though I don't think they're really are objective results) along with the fact that trusting and heeding intuition and paying attention to how you feel tends to feel good (what you could call the subjective results--the subjective benefits), this feeling good stuff seems to make sense.
What's interesting, though, is the diversity that arises from this approach. What feels good to me might not feel good to you. The logical, virtuous part of me still has trouble with that, but when I take the time to listen to my feelings, I feel like I'm more connected to a deeper sense of more holistic wisdom, and on some intuitive level, letting people live seems much better than pushing against what they do, regardless of whether what they do would feel good to me or not.
For me, it also helps to notice that (in my experience) all the people who inspire positive things in the world seem to feel really good while they do it and, at least, put more attention on focusing (and getting others to focus) on some sort of good-feeling vision or way of being than they do on pushing against things.
So I'm not saying this is a model that everyone should adopt, but I am sharing what seems to be working for me in response to your quote which seemed so very relevant considering some of my recent experiences.