We Fear the full Intensity of Life

[coberst]

We Fear the full Intensity of Life

Humans seek to be more than animals. We seek to be gods or at least propagate that level above animal and below God.

That which promotes life is good that which promotes death is evil. “Evil lies not in the hearts of men but in the social arrangements that men take for granted.”

Wo/man lives a debased life under tyranny and self delusion because s/he does not comprehend the conditions of natural freedom. Sapiens need hope and belief in themselves; thus illusion is necessary if it is creative for life, but is evil if it promotes death.

A psychodynamic analysis of history displays saga of death, destruction, and coercion from the outside while inside we see self-delusion and self enslavement. We seek mystification. We seek transference; we seek hypnotists as our chosen leaders.

We seek the power to ward off big evil by reflexively embracing small terrors and small fascinations in the place of overwhelming ones.

Courage is the fundamental qualifying quality for being a hero. So, why are we all so naturally cowardly? Our goal is to be a hero and we lack the courage to be so.

We constantly struggle for a life that has meaning. All meaning for us is associated with that which comes to us from the outside. Our sense of self is derived by looking at others for determining who and what we are. “Our whole world of right and wrong, good and bad, our name, precisely who we are, is grafted into us; and we never feel we have authority to offer things on our own…we feel ourselves in many ways guilty and beholden to others…indebted to them for our very birth.”

Abraham Maslow spoke of our being fearful of standing alone. We fear actualizing our potential. We have the urge to ‘be all we can be’ but we fear to attempt the fulfillment of this urge. “We fear our highest possibility…we even thrill to the godlike possibilities we see in our self…yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness.” Maslow coined the phrase ‘Jonah Syndrome’ to mean the evasion of the full intensity of life.

The Jonah Syndrome is a justified fear of losing control and being torn apart—to even being killed by the experience of being all we can be. Otto Rank spoke of our natural feeling of inferiority in the face of the transcendence of life and creation.

Quotes from “The Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

i'm sorry, Coberst, but what is this wishy-washy stuff doing here?

[Lynx]

Life can be a rollercoaster, with exhilirating highs and abysmal lows. Some people don't like rollercoasters.

[JimmyJazz]

We Fear the full Intensity of Life

Humans seek to be more than animals. We seek to be gods or at least propagate that level above animal and below God.

That which promotes life is good that which promotes death is evil. “Evil lies not in the hearts of men but in the social arrangements that men take for granted.”

Wo/man lives a debased life under tyranny and self delusion because s/he does not comprehend the conditions of natural freedom. Sapiens need hope and belief in themselves; thus illusion is necessary if it is creative for life, but is evil if it promotes death.

A psychodynamic analysis of history displays saga of death, destruction, and coercion from the outside while inside we see self-delusion and self enslavement. We seek mystification. We seek transference; we seek hypnotists as our chosen leaders.

We seek the power to ward off big evil by reflexively embracing small terrors and small fascinations in the place of overwhelming ones.

Courage is the fundamental qualifying quality for being a hero. So, why are we all so naturally cowardly? Our goal is to be a hero and we lack the courage to be so.

We constantly struggle for a life that has meaning. All meaning for us is associated with that which comes to us from the outside. Our sense of self is derived by looking at others for determining who and what we are. “Our whole world of right and wrong, good and bad, our name, precisely who we are, is grafted into us; and we never feel we have authority to offer things on our own…we feel ourselves in many ways guilty and beholden to others…indebted to them for our very birth.”

Abraham Maslow spoke of our being fearful of standing alone. We fear actualizing our potential. We have the urge to ‘be all we can be’ but we fear to attempt the fulfillment of this urge. “We fear our highest possibility…we even thrill to the godlike possibilities we see in our self…yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness.” Maslow coined the phrase ‘Jonah Syndrome’ to mean the evasion of the full intensity of life.

The Jonah Syndrome is a justified fear of losing control and being torn apart—to even being killed by the experience of being all we can be. Otto Rank spoke of our natural feeling of inferiority in the face of the transcendence of life and creation.

I disagree.

[Decolonize The Left]

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker is an amazing book, but it does not need to be quoted out of context to make a point which is ill-explained...

- August

[gilhyle]

Humans seek to be more than animals. We seek to be gods ......I know many people who have never worried about their stance relative to animals, indeed with the division between city and countryside, it is common for people not to reflect at all on whether they are more or less than animals. Many people simply dont think about it. I also know of very few people who seek to be gods.


he conditions of natural freedom.I know of no such thing. THe 'natural' condition is one of enslavement to the political economy of nature, which for living beings is one characterised by the constant inadequacy of resources to needs. Hardly freedom.

I observe, in addition, that the animals we are supposedly striving to be better than are presumably in the condition of natural freedom towards which we are meant to be striving. ahem.


Courage is the fundamental qualifying quality for being a hero. So, why are we all so naturally cowardly?Presumably if we were "all" so cowardly, there would be no such thing as heroes, so we would not have the concept.


We constantly struggle for a life that has meaning. Actually many of us dont worry about that at all !

Of course Becker, Maslow and Rank all have their interesting points.......just dont take it too seriously

[coberst]

gilhyle

An example of natural freedom might be a person who has never had any exposure to either religion or nationalism. Can you imagine how free such a person might be if s/he had never listened to any priest, preacher, or rabbi.

I was born in 1934 during the Great Depression. Dad drove a city bus in Amarillo Texas. My family moved to a very small town in Oklahoma before my first birthday; I had four siblings at the time we moved from Texas to Oklahoma to manage a small café and hotel that was then being managed by my uncle who wished to return to farming.

During the next 15 years my family managed that café and hotel. The building and the business was owned by an absentee landlord, Mr. Ruttzel. The operation was a 24/7 job that took the total energies of all members of the family as each of us became old enough to work.

This operation allowed my parents to raise a large family in reasonably comfortable conditions throughout the depression and war years of World War II.

What is the meaning of ‘hero’? I have taken one definition from the dictionary and have modified it to represent my comprehension of this concept of ‘heroic’. Heroic is a concept meaning a “determined effort [directed to achieve good or deter evil] in the face of difficulty”. In this definition I define ‘good’ as being that which promotes human life and ‘evil’ as that which promotes human death.

I think that there are degrees of heroic action. Some heroes are greater than others depending upon the circumstances of their action. To be a hero often requires courage and often causes personal hardship.

On a scale of one to ten I would classify the following people as heroes in most people’s judgment:
Mother Theresa (10)
Police and firemen entering the burning buildings in 9/11 attack (8 to 10)
My mom and dad (7)
Men and women fighting in Iraq: our side (5 to 10) their side (?)
Youngster really trying to make good grades in school (7)

The psychologist Alfred Adler said: “The supreme law [of life] is this: the sense of worth of the self shall not be allowed to be diminished.”

Heroic actions are our means for maintaining our self esteem. Without heroic action we cannot maintain our own self-esteem. Self-esteem is self-respect. We judge our self as to the degree of worthiness for respect. We rely partially upon the judgment of others but that respect from others is filtered by our own judgments to how heroic our actions are.

[b]It appears that we must feel self-esteem or we suffer mental illness of one degree or another. I gain self-esteem by reading lots of stuff, writing about that stuff, and posting that stuff on this forum, i.e. I am a self-actualizing self-learner (6).

[Lynx]

It appears that we must feel self-esteem or we suffer mental illness of one degree or another. I gain self-esteem by reading lots of stuff, writing about that stuff, and posting that stuff on this forum, i.e. I am a self-actualizing self-learner (6).
I believe I understand.

[gilhyle]

Heroic actions are our means for maintaining our self esteem. Without heroic action we cannot maintain our own self-esteem. Self-esteem is self-respect. We judge our self as to the degree of worthiness for respect. We rely partially upon the judgment of others but that respect from others is filtered by our own judgments to how heroic our actions are.

Coberst, I think my point stands : namely you make general statements about the human condition and the nature of human beings which are, in effect, mythical. The vast majority do not conform to the types you portray, notwithstanding that some do.

You personal story is a one of characteristic behaviour of responsible parents of strong character (if I understand you correctly). But the relevance is not clear to me. I suspect I agree with you about the strength of character required to work hard and raise a family well. But I dont believe that as an objective fact, our sense of self-esteem ACTUALLY relies on us considering ourselves heroic...I would be interested to see the test data on that.

BTW Mother Theresa....no thanks. This was a woman who preached to the poor of calcutta that they should die on a hard floor, because material comforts were not for their soul and went to private comfortable hospital conditions herself. I dont begrudge her her comfortable end....I begrudge her the ideological nonsense she foisted on the poor she helped...but which she helped only within the constraints of her own perverted ideology.