From the book "The Psychology of Self-Esteem" by Nathaniel Branden, circa 1969...recommended by a friend. The essence of the book is that, like food, water, shelter, security, etc. "self-esteem" is also a vital human need and that if goes unmet in many regards, pathological behaviors and tendencies ultimately arise. Anyway, the passage of particular interest was this:
pp 167-8: "Then there are the persons who are basically lacking in intellectual sovereignty. The worst guilt is reserved for this psychological type, i.e., those whose approach to moral judgments is authoritarian. In such cases, the force of their moral beliefs derives, not from rational understanding, but from the say-so of "significant others" [sic "experts/authorities"]. And when the authorities' rules are breached, there is no healthy core of inner sovereignty to protect the transgressors from feelings of metaphysical worthlessness. To themselves they are nothing but their bad actions. This is one of the reasons why pathological anxiety is often experienced as fear of the disapproval of others. "Others" are perceived as the voice of objective reality--calling them to judgment. It is among such persons that guilt is most often a conscious part of the anxiety experience. Also, it is among such persons that the anxiety itself is likely to be most severe."
This matches up very well with David Hawkins' work on developing his scale of consciousness in which he suggests that the lowest rungs of the scale are shame and guilt in which the person locked in these emotions is unable to properly apprehend reality and distinguish truth from falsehood.
What I found most interesting in this passage was the feelings of "Metaphysical Worthlessness". I'm translating this as a sense of purposelessness emanating deeply from within.
My rough translation of our current predicament is: The cabal is deliberately trying to create these pathological disorders through popular culture and then preying upon these people by creating the appearance of "Popular causes" (I support the next thing) that then temporarily fills the void of the NPCs/SJWs "metaphysical worthlessness" for a short while. In short, these people are 'adrift at sea' with a deep sense of purposelessness that are easily recruited to sustain the next "insane" thing they throw at us.
I'm curious as to what you all think of this...please share/discuss!
I'd be interested to hear what you come up with, because this is a very tough nut to crack.
Repairing damage from trauma is notoriously difficult. Nearly all psychotherapy and self-help approaches involve STRENGTHENING defenses (i.e., making the person even MORE neurotic, because neurosis IS the repression of feeling).
That can lead to a CHANGE of defenses / symptoms which can be an improvement (more focus on exercise, less focus on alcohol for instance) but can just as easily be the reverse. And defenses / symptoms include things like high blood pressure that aren't usually visible or noticed, but which can have health effects.
Recidivism among psych patients, or for that matter those trying to eat less to lose weight or otherwise change their own behavior, is very high, and I don't know of anything that has a magic-bullet effect on reducing negative defenses / symptoms from emotional damage.
Alcoholics Anonymous is probably among the more effective approaches and even here, opinions, information, and study results are all over the map. But the format of people with a common problem coming together supportively with the same goal of changing a particular behavior problem is sound, I believe, either as a stand-alone approach or an adjunct to something else. Church is a similar example, which has of course been around far longer than AA. Such approaches don't work magic (they can't remove the trauma driving unhealthy behavior) but they CAN help, to one extent or another, millions of people to remove or at least lower the amount of unhealthy behavior they express and thus improve their lives.
These are all good points. I certainly don't think it's going to be easy. But I'm honed in on one simple concept at the moment. All these people feel unworthy, lacking a purpose in life, so they seek ways to escape these existential feelings.
Escapism from reality....put as simply as possible.
They need to re-engage with what's here and now, not with what was or what might be. This would include processing and INTEGRATING traumas, which isn't easy I understand. But failure to do so leads to further degradation, further DIS-INTEGRATION, further fragmentation of the mind (neuroses, psychoses).
So there are really only two choices. To integrate or to continue to disintegrate.
I'm just trying to get my mind wrapped around the ESSENCE at this stage. But I'm interested in your take on where I'm at thus far. I realize major, serious trauma is a difficult situation, no matter what. I don't think there's any "quick fix" other than facing it head-on, which many are not ready to do.
P.S. BTW, I think psychiatry and popular psychology are mistaken about a great many things. Not to say this sort of counseling doesn't work out for some people. But my hunch is, for those where traditional counseling, or AA or other mainstream approaches actually worked out well, it was the individual who ultimately had to make the choice of integration over continued disintegration. Just an early hunch. I could be wrong.
Yes, absolutely. I'll have more to say about your overall comment later, when I have a bigger chunk of time to work with.
Great, I appreciate it. I appreciate your thoughts and contributions Narg!
Jungle Jean: The Life and Times of Jean Liedloff, the Woman who Transformed Modern Parenting with The Continuum Concept by Geralyn Gendreau
The Continuum Concept: In Search Of Happiness Lost by Jean Liedloff
September 5, 2022
Morpheus11 --
I've written a longish reply and set it aside. Instead, I'm going to focus on Jean Leidloff, author of The Continuum Concept: In Search Of Happiness Lost, first published in 1975 and IMO one of the most important books on psychology and the human condition ever written.
A biography of Liedloff was published last year by Geralyn Gendreau who met Jean in the mid-1990s, when Jean was in her late 60s. Her book is every bit as excellent as The Continuum Concept and expands upon Jean's observations and theory with an extended look at Jean herself and how her experiences helped shape her views. Further, it shows that Jean's deep understanding of human nature and of her own early life did not heal her of the emotional wounds inflicted on her younger self, but did improve her life in a number of ways.
As a young girl, Liedloff had a powerful experience while alone in a forest glade -- a glimpse of her real, healthy self and of the world as it should be. She describes the experience in The Continuum Concept and Gendreau retells that story in her biography of Liedloff (in Chapter 2). That experience guided, centered, and enriched Jean for the rest of her life.
If you've not already encountered Liedloff, I recommend you start by visiting Amazon and downloading the free sample of Geralyn Gendreau's Jungle Jean: The Life and Times of Jean Liedloff, the Woman who Transformed Modern Parenting with The Continuum Concept.
Read the Prologue and Chapters One and (if the Sample goes this far) Chapter 2. That will either knock you out, or I've misread our conversation.
Liedloff spent years with primitive tribes in the Amazon and saw first-hand how different people are when they grow up without the heavy emotional repression so common in the world.
From Chapter 3 of Gendreau's biography of Liedloff:
BEGIN QUOTE
She climbed up ten yards and perched high on a rock. From that vantage point at a distance from the action, she noticed a curious fact. There, before her, was a group of men engaged in a single shared task. (Lugging a canoe up a steep, rocky ravine). Two of them were tense, frowning, losing their tempers at everything and everyone, cursing in the distinctive way of Tuscan men. The Tauripan guides, on the other hand, were having a fine time of it. They were laughing at the unwieldy canoe and making a game of the battle with gravity and rock. Between pushes, they showed off their scrapes and bruises. When, once again, the canoe would wobble forward, pin one, then another of them underneath it, they responded with amusement rather than upset. The fellow who was held barebacked against the scorching granite invariably laughed the loudest -- once he could breathe again.
All the men were doing the same work. All were experiencing strain and pain. All were sweating in the blazing hot sun. There was no difference in their situations except one -- Jean and the Italians had been conditioned by their culture to believe that such a combination of circumstances was at the very bottom of the scale of wellbeing. What's more, they were quite unaware they had a choice, any other option, as to how they could experience that situation.
The guides were equally unaware of their choice. These supposedly primitive people had also been conditioned to deal with their circumstances in a particular way. They knew what lay ahead but hadn't spent the days before the trek wallowing in dread -- quite the contrary. They approached the portage in a perfectly merry mood. They seemed to revel in the camaraderie. Each forward move of the canoe was viewed as a victory, a cause for celebration.
. . . So pure was the sweet freedom she had experienced that afternoon, she vowed to live that liberation ever after. But within a few days, the sweetness gave way to the tyranny of habit, to the great pull of conditioning that only sustained conscious effort can countermand.
END QUOTE
The difference in the two groups of men -- both in their behavior and in what we infer about their inner experience -- is jaw-dropping.
I'll point out that calling the difference between the natives and first-worlders "conditioning" is as misleading as would be using that term to describe the difference between a paraplegic on crutches and someone who can walk normally. Something much deeper and more entrenched than "conditioning" is involved in both cases.