Can we talk?

[coberst]

Can we talk?

In his book “The Assault on Reason” Al Gore informs me that he concluded after talking to many candidates of both parties in the 2006 election cycle that they had spent two thirds of their campaign funds on thirty second TV ads.

If that is not an indication of a shallow minded irresponsible citizenry I do not know what is. The political candidates recognize that the way to get votes is to follow the Madison Avenue advertising approach of bombarding the citizens with sound bites.

Al goes on to explain that part of the problem rests in an early childhood syndrome called “attachment theory”. Attachment theory is a relatively new theory of development psychology, which states that infants develop very early in their lives an attitude toward their relationship to the world resulting from their relationship in the first year of life with their parents.

Children take on three general attitudes:
1) The child learns that s/he has significant control of the world because the parents responded consistently and quickly to the child’s needs.
2) The child develops “anxious resistant attachment” when the parents respond inconsistently to the child’s pleas.
3) In the worst case the child receives no emotional response to its pleas.

The point I wish to make is that we were all raised in various manners and as a result of that raising we develop deep seated attitudes toward the world that significantly affect the rest of our lives is not recognized by us and then dealt with.

Must we journey through life handicapped by these early attachments developed in the first few years of life? It seems reasonable to me that if we learned to be self-critical we can, probably with difficulty, make significant changes in our life. I think that this process might be what Maslow was talking about when he developed the hierarchy of need.

Abraham Maslow defined a hierarchy of needs to be:
1) Biological and Physiological (water, food, shelter, air, sex, etc.)
2) Safety (security, law and order, stability, etc.)
3) Belonging and love (family, affection, community, etc.)
4) Esteem (self-esteem, independence, prestige, achievement, etc.)
5) Self-Actualization (self-fulfillment, personal growth, realizing personal potential, etc.)

This hierarchy made us conscious of the obvious fact that we did not fret about the absence of self-esteem if we did not already have security nor did we worry about security if we did not have water to drink or air to breath.

The pinnacle of needs Maslow labeled S-A (Self-Actualization). In “The Farther Reaches of Human Nature” 1971, Maslow speaks of these needs and he apparently (as far as I know) introduced this new concept S-A as in “mid-stream rather than ready for formulation into a final version”.

Maslow said “The people I selected for my investigation were older people…When you select out for careful study very fine and healthy people…you are asking how tall can people grow, what can a human being become?”

What do you think about self-actualization?

Self-Actualization: The Peak of Human Achievement

[beautyscientist]

Can't quite see where you are going with this one.

[coberst]

Originally Posted by beautyscientist

Can't quite see where you are going with this one.

The problem is that few people understand the nature of frames and the force these frames have. When people do not comprehend they are unable to look behind the curtain. Another big problem is how to frame the issue to fit your value system.

Another good example of the power of good framing was the success of the conservatives in reframing the inheritance tax into a death tax.

I wish to make people aware of the meaning of self-actualization and to encourage them to achieve this human need by becomig self-learners.

People embedded within an ideology have a point of view that to them is universally true and is natural. They do not comprehend that they are using a linguistic frame. Take the pro-life church going individual. To that person the killing of a baby is not a frame but is reality. Likewise the pro-choice individual considers that the only rational way to look at the matter is from the choice view point. Ideologies are powerful because most of the individuals have the truth and the truth is whatever the truth of the ideology is.


I think that we must take "intellectual" off the pedestal and recognize that those we consider to be intellectuals today have failed us. They have sold out and have become hired-guns for the plutocracy. We must develop new intellectuals and we can do that when we recognize that adults can become self-actualizing self-learners and thus delelop them self into intellectuals.

What is meant by intellectual? I suspect you would get ten different answers from ten different people but I will tell you what it means to me.

Intellectual activity is exploring and enthusiastically utilizing this marvelous brain we were all given at birth. I suspect the normal adult brain is in neutral almost all of his or her life. When we finish schooling most people seem to consider their intellectual search for ‘truth’ is over. In fact most people do not even examine such an idea.

An intellectual life is a life in which the search for truth and meaning becomes an important hobby. The person with an intellectual life spends as much time trying to understand as s/he spends learning how to hit a golf ball properly.

All of us pass through a schooling system that is designed to fill our heads with the knowledge we need to get a good job. Our schooling prepares us to become strong and industrious workers and voracious consumers. We have been prepared to become maximizers of production and consumption.

An intellectual life is one we must create after schooling so that we can create our value system more in tune with what we are as intellectual beings than what we are as consumers.

[NotesMaeve]

*Stumbles in with a shirt that reads "Consumer AND Aware" and her f**k me heels on.* O hai! Know what I like about actual intellectuals? They're funny and they like to generate discussion. I'mma go buy me a Don Ed Hardy purse now. Bai! *Stumbles out.*

[Acting Like Godot]

Coberst:

What BeautyScientist was trying to tell you is that your post isn't very coherent.

There isn't any clear connection between attachment theory, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the intellectual life and irresponsible citizenry.

Or if there is any connection, you aren't making it clear.

[Bruce Achterberg]

Yeah, I don't really get it either... at least not well enough to make a reply that has a good chance at being a response to what you actually wrote about. I could throw lots of ideas at you that resonate with what you wrote, but that'd take a lot of time, so I need something more targeted before I can reply.

Also, is your thread title a question posed to the users of the forum (ie. "Pavlina forum users, can you talk with me for a while about this topic?"), or a rehetoric that is supposed to make us think about whether or not "we" (ie. humans, society, etc) can talk?

Anyway, to give you a brief, possibly on-topic reply:

-----------------------------------------

I can put most people I've encountered into one of the following categories:

(1) people who want to improve greatly
(2) people who say they want to improve greatly but show no signs of it
(3) people who want to improve greatly, show signs of effort, but aren't really getting anywhere
(4) people who don't want to improve

So, what does this mean? Clearly that not everyone values self-actualisation, but some people do.

I believe it largely comes down to your context -- how you see the world will determine whether or not you believe improvement is important. That said, what gives rise to our context? What makes us select one context over another?

Obviously there are things like environmental conditioning that you can't control -- or can you? It really depends on your model of reality. Eg. Do you believe in incarnation and that we get to plan our life before we incarnate, or do you not?

In my experience, I've found that my life is a result of some sort of internal guiding force. As long as I can remember, I've had this ability to discern what is and is not right for me, and it goes far beyond preference, conditioning, etc. Perhaps the very reason I'm conditioned in the ways that I am is because I was prone -- or perhaps drawn -- to that conditioning in the first place.

So yeah, while you certainly think self actualisation is important, some people don't, and I think it's important to understand "why" that is if you are to be effective with any attempts to share your message. You’re essentially trying to advocate something without *really* knowing whether what you are advocating is even important (you may “think” it is, but you don’t really know). That said, that path will lead you into endless complexity, so my advice is this:

Right now, you don't know what the best life is to live because you don't know the nature of reality (we can conjecture, but really, we all know squat). So, instead of trying to figure that out directly, share your message with those who resonate with it, and optimise your mental model of reality as you go, but don't try to force your context upon others.

Because you don't know the true nature of reality, you don't know whether or not your context (ie. that self actualisation is important) is actually the most beneficial. Perhaps, from your limited perspective, it may seem to be, but you could be really, really wrong. So instead of worrying about all that, look to your base intentions and stay true to them, connecting with those who resonate with your particular message.

This is the path I've chosen, partly because it seems to be the most empowering, and partly because it seems like an intelligent way to live.

Hopefully this post has given you a new way to look at things and has gotten you out of “fixing” mode (assuming you were in it in the first place). I once thought “fixing” the world was intelligent, but I ultimately found that mindset limiting and mainly the result of conditioning that didn’t serve me. But take from this post what you will...

[Brutha]

Thinking in frames and pattern actually is the thing that makes us human and seperates us from a computer.
You can't think without patterns. The intellectual has more patterns (frames) and ways of thinking at his disposel than the average man, not less patterns as you suggest.

[coberst]

Bruce

Maslow placed this need for self-actualization as the last need because he recognized that few individuals reach this level of accomplishment for various reasons.

I discovered that when he tested this idea he came to the conclusion that less than 5% of the adult population managed to reach this level of need. However, if we in the United States managed to convince 4% of our adult population to reach this level we would have 150 million times 4%, which is equal to 6 million self-actualizing individuals.

I have little doubt that such a group could change the world.

[coberst]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Thinking in frames and pattern actually is the thing that makes us human and seperates us from a computer.
You can't think without patterns. The intellectual has more patterns (frames) and ways of thinking at his disposel than the average man, not less patterns as you suggest.

I agree that we are pattern driven animals. However,in our capacity as creative animals we can use our imagination and thus fly high into the unknown and create new levels of compasson and understanding.