Self-esteem is a term used by almost everyone these days. I often find myself talking to people about this concept but very quickly realise that neither the person that I'm talking to nor myself have any idea what precisely we mean by this. So do we mean that a person thinks highly about themselves because they do? Or do we mean that everyone has a scale somewhere in their mind where they measure their self worth at any given time based on what other people think about them? Or something else entirely?
Over the years I've started to build up a mental list of the properties that self-esteem has:
1. It distorts reality
2. It varies from day to day, place to place
3. Too little is very painful
4. Too little makes people act in desperate and self-destructive ways
5. Too much makes a person very difficult to deal with
6. Despite being called 'self'-esteem most people don't give it to themselves.
7. The qualities that a person has that boost their self-esteem are quite subjective.
First I want to talk about where people get self-esteem.
Some people just seem to be content and happy with themselves and their lot. Others are disappointed and with their bodies, lives and lot in life. There are lots of theories as to why self-esteem varies so much across the population. Most of them relate to how our parents raised us, did they encourage and praise us as children or were they jealous and over critical? Others suggest that it is a genetically determined trait and that naturally some people think they are awesome and others think that they are trash.
I'm not completely satisfied with either of these viewpoints because self-esteem can vary a from day to day and sometimes minute to minute. Therefore there is definitely some plasticisty in self-esteem. When I'm poor I don't feel very attractive, but give me a wad of cash and I instantly feel sexier. Also, when my friends hug me and tell me how much they appreciate me I feel much happier about myself. Also, when people don't smile at me or respond when I say 'good morning' to them I often feel low for the rest of the day.
For an interesting article about how happiness spreads click here.
So it would appear we get a good portion of our self-esteem from other people. This is a very important point... having friends and family who reinforce a positive self-image is something one can control to a degree. As always with these things one would want friends to reciprocate any pro-esteem building activities in as close to equal measures as possible. But at the end of that day this is the reason why 'no man is an island' <-- a great deal of our happiness depends on positive communications and experience with other people.
Then there's the fact that ones perception of the world is altered dramatically depending on how much self-esteem they have. People with low self-esteem under estimate their value, over estimate the importance of other people, deny themselves things other people would freely take and often develop a cynical and bleak view on relationships. Whereas people with high self-esteem will over estimate their importance, dismiss other people as being less valuable and feel entitled to give themselves more breaks and perks thn other people. They will also think life is pretty damn good to them except for all of the other useless people getting in their way, perhaps.
I find changes in my self-esteem level disconcerting because I can see how they alter my spending patterns and decisions in relationships. Again, I'm a bit of a control freak and desire consistently in what I do so changes in self-esteem make me feel doubtful about my intellectual and creative abilities. Although really, unless the change is dramatic it doesn't appear noticeable to most people and I really do enjoy the odd spending spree!
When one has very low self-esteem one is left virtually defenceless and continuously embattled in relationships... it seems like a cruel trick because just having higher self-esteem can rescue struggling relationships but low self-esteem seems to destroy them totally even if the initial problems weren't that serious.
So surely it is best to have high self-esteem rather than low self-esteem? Well... I think the dangers of suicide and emotional trauma are lower for people with high self-esteem but at the same time everyone has worked for a boss whose high self-esteem does nothing back create frustration and inefficiently in the work place. Some form of moderation for self-esteem is needed. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest we just ditch this whole concept of self-esteem because it just isn't helpful: it is unclear what it means and actually serves to create more confusion about where real problems lie.
The more I think about it the problems of self-esteem are all just problems of relating to people. Fix your relationships with people and the esteem problems will disappear. The key to having good relationships is having them rooted in honesty, empathy and mutual reciprocation of needs. These elements all help to curb delusion and get things into perspective.
To illustrate what I mean by the lack of perspective and the delusions of self-esteem let's look at the things that boost people's self-esteem.
Being physically attractive
Being appreciated for kindness
Being listened to / respected
Being accepted as a valuable part of a community
Being talented in a rare or unique way
Physically attractive people feel good about themselves because everyone around them treats them with special attention and admiration. Not because they deserve it but because they might have won a genetic lottery. I'm unconvinced by this genetically superior argument as a great number of important people in history were physically ugly, infertile or homosexual and not beautiful heterosexual models of physical perfection. Rabbits demonstrate to us that want breeds quickly and efficiently isn't necessarily useful or desireable to civilisation. If you want to know more about how physically attractive people are really a burden on society read this article carefully.
So really, what all of these things point too is that by treating everyone with kindness, respect and dignity we can eliminate all self-esteem problems. By treating some people with special reverence simply because they are higher up the heirarchy or they look like great sex warmed up then you're unwittingly creating/perpetuating the very social order that grinds down on everyone. While investing time into developing a useful skill or talent is a sure way to boost your happiness.
I'm an atheist and I've just argued through reason that kindness, respect, understanding and self-discipline are universally good ideals to strive for. I did this without appealing to a supernatural entity. What's more, my explanation why it is so can be tested by experiment and observation. Also that maybe we should seriously consider deleting the concept of 'self-esteem' from our lexicons because it moves the focus away from what we can do to what we are. We can't change what we are, but we can change what we do.
15 January, 2010
12 January, 2010
Hiatus
Dear fans and followers,
Although I'm bursting at the seems with ideas to write about, current events in my life are too overwhelming for me to find the time write another installment just yet. Be assured though that once I'm fully rested with some spare time I'll tell you what I've learned recently.
Yours sincerely,
Aristotle
Although I'm bursting at the seems with ideas to write about, current events in my life are too overwhelming for me to find the time write another installment just yet. Be assured though that once I'm fully rested with some spare time I'll tell you what I've learned recently.
Yours sincerely,
Aristotle
02 January, 2010
In the Absence of Fear
I was thinking about my next thought experiment last night. It is a simple but profound one. Imagine yourself in a situation, maybe with a friend, talking to a superior, shopping or planning your next life changing decision. Think about what you would normally do in this situation. Then think about what you would do in that situation if you had no sense of fear.
When I find the actions of myself and my friends predictable it is only because I have gotten acquainted with what scares us. Knowing what scares someone allows one to accurately predict their reaction to a situation... but I think you'll find as I did after running that thought experiment through your mind a few times to its logical conclusion that the end result is extremely unpredictable and even suicidal in behaviour.
But it is interesting, yes? Just how many of our decisions in life are made out of love (in this sense our desire to do something we personally believe in) and how many are made out of fear (in this sense our desire to manage our insecurities)?
I have developed this model of insecurity management vs creative adventurism to explain human decision making.
Insecurity management is about making decisions to placate our fears relating to death, harm, loss, rejection, ostracism and uncertainty. These fears could be real, such as avoiding walking across a floor covered in glass shards with bare feet, or they could be imaginary, such as fearing that someone is telepathically reading your mind. I personally think purely imaginary fears are quite rare and the vast number of fears people have do have a rational basis. What I'm far more concerned with is over expressed fears. That is fears we respect even though the consequences of ignoring them are next to harmless or less severe than if we did otherwise.
Self-consciousness is a good example of this. A person may fear that they have a physical defect, which honestly, we all have physical defects so that is a rational fear, so they avoid social interaction because they're afraid of people not accept them because of it. While it is quite distressing to realise that you might have a physical defect that limits your enjoyment of life compared to other people, the consequences of fearing that other people will reject you and thus avoiding social interaction altogether are far more harmful than ignoring that fear.
Just to clarify I'm being very broad in my definition of physical defects in the above paragraph, I'm including beauty spots, facial assymetries along with more serious ones like heart and kidney defects. Defects that make us less than perfectly beautiful are present in everyone and the source of much anxiety for most people - even though they are hardly life threatening by themselves. They are far more dangerous when we over express our fear about their impact on our lives.
Pushing against insecurity management is creative adventurism. This is our desire to explore new experiences. New romances, deeper connections with existing relationships, new hobbies, new interests, new ways of doing the same thing. Basically our desire to be creative and inventive. From fixing a squeaky gate to changing our career. This is our desire to grow, explore and live.
This sounds really beautiful, and it is because this is where we get our enjoyment out of life. Pushing new frontiers. This is what makes life worth living.
It is also the biggest source of insecurity in our lives.
It is the source of our desire to put ourselves into harm's way, it is our desire to stop an abuser, it is our desire to risk our friendships and money for something that very likely will not be worth the cost of losing that money or those friends. It is our desire to challenge our society, parents and leaders... which might lead to greater freedom, happiness and prosperity... or to brutal and fatal retaliation from them. Making the first move into unexplored territory is always the scariest venture. Even if just for the risk of putting in weeks, months or years of effort into a project, book or relationship only to find it leads nowhere.
So... insecurity management is important... it keeps us safe, and our lives stable and predictable. But it doesn't make us happy either.
Then there's creative adventurism which offers us all the thrills and excitement of living. But it just might kill/destroy/harm us in the quest for a better life.
Clearly the two sides of this see-saw need to be in balance somehow. We need to work on our insecurities and discover if we over express them or if we have too many that they cripple our ability to enjoy life. Sometimes we need to look at our desire to challenge and attack the status quo and ask if you're investing your time in a rebellious act that is actually helping yourself, your friends and your community... or just creating new problems for them?
This is all about becoming less ignorant about why one does certain things so that we can both be more productive and enjoy our lives more.
When I find the actions of myself and my friends predictable it is only because I have gotten acquainted with what scares us. Knowing what scares someone allows one to accurately predict their reaction to a situation... but I think you'll find as I did after running that thought experiment through your mind a few times to its logical conclusion that the end result is extremely unpredictable and even suicidal in behaviour.
But it is interesting, yes? Just how many of our decisions in life are made out of love (in this sense our desire to do something we personally believe in) and how many are made out of fear (in this sense our desire to manage our insecurities)?
I have developed this model of insecurity management vs creative adventurism to explain human decision making.
Insecurity management is about making decisions to placate our fears relating to death, harm, loss, rejection, ostracism and uncertainty. These fears could be real, such as avoiding walking across a floor covered in glass shards with bare feet, or they could be imaginary, such as fearing that someone is telepathically reading your mind. I personally think purely imaginary fears are quite rare and the vast number of fears people have do have a rational basis. What I'm far more concerned with is over expressed fears. That is fears we respect even though the consequences of ignoring them are next to harmless or less severe than if we did otherwise.
Self-consciousness is a good example of this. A person may fear that they have a physical defect, which honestly, we all have physical defects so that is a rational fear, so they avoid social interaction because they're afraid of people not accept them because of it. While it is quite distressing to realise that you might have a physical defect that limits your enjoyment of life compared to other people, the consequences of fearing that other people will reject you and thus avoiding social interaction altogether are far more harmful than ignoring that fear.
Just to clarify I'm being very broad in my definition of physical defects in the above paragraph, I'm including beauty spots, facial assymetries along with more serious ones like heart and kidney defects. Defects that make us less than perfectly beautiful are present in everyone and the source of much anxiety for most people - even though they are hardly life threatening by themselves. They are far more dangerous when we over express our fear about their impact on our lives.
Pushing against insecurity management is creative adventurism. This is our desire to explore new experiences. New romances, deeper connections with existing relationships, new hobbies, new interests, new ways of doing the same thing. Basically our desire to be creative and inventive. From fixing a squeaky gate to changing our career. This is our desire to grow, explore and live.
This sounds really beautiful, and it is because this is where we get our enjoyment out of life. Pushing new frontiers. This is what makes life worth living.
It is also the biggest source of insecurity in our lives.
It is the source of our desire to put ourselves into harm's way, it is our desire to stop an abuser, it is our desire to risk our friendships and money for something that very likely will not be worth the cost of losing that money or those friends. It is our desire to challenge our society, parents and leaders... which might lead to greater freedom, happiness and prosperity... or to brutal and fatal retaliation from them. Making the first move into unexplored territory is always the scariest venture. Even if just for the risk of putting in weeks, months or years of effort into a project, book or relationship only to find it leads nowhere.
So... insecurity management is important... it keeps us safe, and our lives stable and predictable. But it doesn't make us happy either.
Then there's creative adventurism which offers us all the thrills and excitement of living. But it just might kill/destroy/harm us in the quest for a better life.
Clearly the two sides of this see-saw need to be in balance somehow. We need to work on our insecurities and discover if we over express them or if we have too many that they cripple our ability to enjoy life. Sometimes we need to look at our desire to challenge and attack the status quo and ask if you're investing your time in a rebellious act that is actually helping yourself, your friends and your community... or just creating new problems for them?
This is all about becoming less ignorant about why one does certain things so that we can both be more productive and enjoy our lives more.
01 January, 2010
Atheism and Ignorance
Last night someone I love told me that they had decided to marry someone they had first met about two weeks earlier and asked me to wish them luck. (Yes, this has happened to me before at least once). We've been friends for almost 18 months now and I've found her to be very thoughtful and intelligent on every topic... except romantic relationships. When a child talks about love at first sight and Disney-like fairy tales of meeting the handsome, dashing and perfect man it's cute. When someone with a post graduate degree talks about these things to me I quickly find myself pondering if maybe virginity is something that ought to be lost at the earliest convenient time in ones life.
She asked me to wish her luck... I couldn't think of a better way to describe the situation.
See this is where sexually knowledgeable and sexually ignorant cultures diverge.
A sexually ignorant culture prefers arranged marriages and people never talking about sex. Why? Because if you don't know anything about boys/girls and having sexual relationships with them then making a choice is very scary - thus having that choice made for you is something of a relief... especially since the people making the decision are sexually experienced (aka the parents). The next 'advantage' is that if one only has one sexual partner and one type of sexual experience then one will assume that that's all sex is. So when people talk about sex non-descriptively, that's what one will imagine it to be.
But what if you hear friends talking about their sex lives and they seem more interesting and exciting than your own? Once knowledge of other people's sex lives becomes known to you the tendancy is that one will start to compare ones sex life to theirs and start to wonder, "Do I have the best sex life I could have?"
How does a sexually ignorant culture deal with this? Demanding better sex? Demanding the right to explore their sexuality? Demanding to know what this sex thing is all about?
No. They simply don't talk about it. That's why we don't talk about sex with our friends over dinner. Because if we lose the protective shield of our ignorance about sex then we are going to be assaulted by our insecurities. We are going to start asking ourselves uncomfortable questions like:
I am a good lover?
Is my partner a good lover?
Is our sex life the best it could be?
Would I enjoy sex more with that person than my spouse?
People say that arranged marriages are more successful because they don't have as high a divorce rate.
I am aware that this is a ridiculous statement for many reasons but just for now I'm going to ignore most of them and focus only on one problem with it.
If you've only had sex with one other person, who's only had sex with one other person then your sexual experiences with that person define what sex is. If the sex is great, then you think sex is a beautiful positive thing you want your children to discover and explore. If the sex is bad then sex is a disgusting, horrible thing that you want to protect your children from. Hold onto this thought and keep in mind who decides arranged marriages.
Ok, the sex is great, great. But if the sex is bad, which is quite likely because while sex does come naturally, great sex requires practice, learning, dedication and knowledge... which is hard to get if no one talks or writes books about it (I'm so glad to live in a country full of magazines and books about sex, even though we don't often talk about it openly, because this means even two virgin lovers can potentially have great sex too) then we have a problem... but the marriage is fine.
Firstly, why is the marriage fine? Well, they're ignorant to how much better their sex life could be so they don't have any sexual problems in their marriage to worry about. So that's one less pressure for a marriage to end up in divorce.
Secondly, why is this a problem? People who think sex is bad tend to project that viewpoint into every aspect of their lives. I'm talking about people we all know: those who hate/despise sex workers, sluts, women, men, homosexuals, bisexuals, people who enjoy or are relaxed their sexuality etc...
These people are everywhere: doctors, teachers, priests, friends, etc...
These people are ignorant about sex, and sure, part of sex is uncomfortable, bad and harmful... but if it didn't have any good aspects we wouldn't care about it so much either. These people only know a small part about sex but the danger here is that because people don't talk about sex in detail there is a perception that this is all there is to know. Therefore these people feel that they actually know all there is to know about sex. That reassurance can give them the confidence to say and do harmful things to many people... not because they are mean people, but because they sincerely think they are helping them.
Ignorance is what enables good people to do and say bad things.
If you don't want to hurt someone, then you need to get informed.
But the death of ignorance comes at a price, just like in my earlier post describing my personal lost of religious faith.
If you're married to the only sexual partner you've ever had... and you somehow get a hint that something else is happening in the world of sex... maybe you heard the neighbours fucking next door. Maybe you heard to girls gossiping at the bus stop about penises. Maybe you heard a boy describing to his friends what happens when his girlfriend orgasms. Maybe your partner has had sex with someone else. Maybe you just have an intuitive feeling... what if there is more to sex than this?
Then each night, you might lie awake for awhile after sex and wonder. Is this all? Am I lucky? Am I even satified? Am I miserable because I'm not fully reaching climax? Is it normal the way I feel when I'm inside/penetrating them? Am I moody because I don't enjoy sex?
Such anxiety can be dealt with one of two ways:
1. Pathologically: fear, loathing, disgust, misery and hatred.
2. Growth: curiousity, exploration, courage to challenge the habits and the personal dogma of ones sexuality.
As an atheist, I feel that am committed to option 2. I will only live once and I will not let myself spend it hating myself and my fellow human beings. Why hate someone for simply being who they are? As if they had a choice in the matter!
It is now time to go back to why it was so apt for my friend to be wished luck.
When one makes a decision where one knows the situation, one does not ask for luck.
But when one is embarking on a dangerous and uncertain journey that one is helpless to influence the outcome of then one is left with nothing they can do but to wish, pray and hope for good luck.
This is the difference between ignorance and knowledge.
It is so simple. Ignorance is just intellectual laziness. If you take a stand on a topic or a decision without first considering all of the other possibilities and alternative within reach. Then you deserve the consequences of your decision... and even if you somehow stumble blindly onto a good fortune... do you honestly deserve to take the credit for something you didn't work for?
She asked me to wish her luck... I couldn't think of a better way to describe the situation.
See this is where sexually knowledgeable and sexually ignorant cultures diverge.
A sexually ignorant culture prefers arranged marriages and people never talking about sex. Why? Because if you don't know anything about boys/girls and having sexual relationships with them then making a choice is very scary - thus having that choice made for you is something of a relief... especially since the people making the decision are sexually experienced (aka the parents). The next 'advantage' is that if one only has one sexual partner and one type of sexual experience then one will assume that that's all sex is. So when people talk about sex non-descriptively, that's what one will imagine it to be.
But what if you hear friends talking about their sex lives and they seem more interesting and exciting than your own? Once knowledge of other people's sex lives becomes known to you the tendancy is that one will start to compare ones sex life to theirs and start to wonder, "Do I have the best sex life I could have?"
How does a sexually ignorant culture deal with this? Demanding better sex? Demanding the right to explore their sexuality? Demanding to know what this sex thing is all about?
No. They simply don't talk about it. That's why we don't talk about sex with our friends over dinner. Because if we lose the protective shield of our ignorance about sex then we are going to be assaulted by our insecurities. We are going to start asking ourselves uncomfortable questions like:
I am a good lover?
Is my partner a good lover?
Is our sex life the best it could be?
Would I enjoy sex more with that person than my spouse?
People say that arranged marriages are more successful because they don't have as high a divorce rate.
I am aware that this is a ridiculous statement for many reasons but just for now I'm going to ignore most of them and focus only on one problem with it.
If you've only had sex with one other person, who's only had sex with one other person then your sexual experiences with that person define what sex is. If the sex is great, then you think sex is a beautiful positive thing you want your children to discover and explore. If the sex is bad then sex is a disgusting, horrible thing that you want to protect your children from. Hold onto this thought and keep in mind who decides arranged marriages.
Ok, the sex is great, great. But if the sex is bad, which is quite likely because while sex does come naturally, great sex requires practice, learning, dedication and knowledge... which is hard to get if no one talks or writes books about it (I'm so glad to live in a country full of magazines and books about sex, even though we don't often talk about it openly, because this means even two virgin lovers can potentially have great sex too) then we have a problem... but the marriage is fine.
Firstly, why is the marriage fine? Well, they're ignorant to how much better their sex life could be so they don't have any sexual problems in their marriage to worry about. So that's one less pressure for a marriage to end up in divorce.
Secondly, why is this a problem? People who think sex is bad tend to project that viewpoint into every aspect of their lives. I'm talking about people we all know: those who hate/despise sex workers, sluts, women, men, homosexuals, bisexuals, people who enjoy or are relaxed their sexuality etc...
These people are everywhere: doctors, teachers, priests, friends, etc...
These people are ignorant about sex, and sure, part of sex is uncomfortable, bad and harmful... but if it didn't have any good aspects we wouldn't care about it so much either. These people only know a small part about sex but the danger here is that because people don't talk about sex in detail there is a perception that this is all there is to know. Therefore these people feel that they actually know all there is to know about sex. That reassurance can give them the confidence to say and do harmful things to many people... not because they are mean people, but because they sincerely think they are helping them.
Ignorance is what enables good people to do and say bad things.
If you don't want to hurt someone, then you need to get informed.
But the death of ignorance comes at a price, just like in my earlier post describing my personal lost of religious faith.
If you're married to the only sexual partner you've ever had... and you somehow get a hint that something else is happening in the world of sex... maybe you heard the neighbours fucking next door. Maybe you heard to girls gossiping at the bus stop about penises. Maybe you heard a boy describing to his friends what happens when his girlfriend orgasms. Maybe your partner has had sex with someone else. Maybe you just have an intuitive feeling... what if there is more to sex than this?
Then each night, you might lie awake for awhile after sex and wonder. Is this all? Am I lucky? Am I even satified? Am I miserable because I'm not fully reaching climax? Is it normal the way I feel when I'm inside/penetrating them? Am I moody because I don't enjoy sex?
Such anxiety can be dealt with one of two ways:
1. Pathologically: fear, loathing, disgust, misery and hatred.
2. Growth: curiousity, exploration, courage to challenge the habits and the personal dogma of ones sexuality.
As an atheist, I feel that am committed to option 2. I will only live once and I will not let myself spend it hating myself and my fellow human beings. Why hate someone for simply being who they are? As if they had a choice in the matter!
It is now time to go back to why it was so apt for my friend to be wished luck.
When one makes a decision where one knows the situation, one does not ask for luck.
But when one is embarking on a dangerous and uncertain journey that one is helpless to influence the outcome of then one is left with nothing they can do but to wish, pray and hope for good luck.
This is the difference between ignorance and knowledge.
It is so simple. Ignorance is just intellectual laziness. If you take a stand on a topic or a decision without first considering all of the other possibilities and alternative within reach. Then you deserve the consequences of your decision... and even if you somehow stumble blindly onto a good fortune... do you honestly deserve to take the credit for something you didn't work for?
31 December, 2009
Atheism and Sex
Sex is one of my favourite topics. I spend a great deal of time thinking about it and I don't just mean in the sense of erotic fantasies, although I can't deny that a I do do that too. If you read the newspapers and the billboards you might think that Australian society generally is quite comfortable with the topic of sex... but my experience has generally been the opposite.
Sure, I can sit down with most men and have a discussion over which women are the most attractive, which quickly turns into an argument in my case because I'm quite comfortable pointing out that my tastes in women are not conventional, but if I wanted to bring up a more emotional topic like how I feel at the point of ejaculation then no way! Australian men quickly turn into prudes far too uncomfortable to talk about sexuality with any degree of insight or seriousness.
Strangely, Australians will often criticise foreigners, such as muslims, for being sexually repressed. Yet some of the 'sexiest' people I know are muslims. 'Sexiest' is in parenthesis because really, I don't think many people seriously think about what sexy is... I will get to this in more detail shortly. What I want to make clear at this juncture is that when it comes to talking about emotions and sex Australians are as repressed as that undifferentiated mass of muslims they like to contrast themselves against.
I can see that comment upsetting a lot of people already... good that's part of what I do here. :)
Where religion comes in for me, well I was raised catholic and I was left without any doubt that sex was a disgusting thing. Sure no one ever said explicitly to me that sex was disgusting. But at the same time no one talked about it except in awkward and uncomfortable tones... or in jokes as a rude topic. When ones only exposure to sex (because it is a taboo subject) is from dirty school yard jokes one starts to think that sex is just as unspiritual and dirty as those jokes.
But as a teenager, deeply interested in sex, I came across wicca and paganism. They treat sex in a completely different way... sex is a beautiful, sublime and spiritual experience. Both men and women are encouraged to think of their sexuality as divine and a beautiful aspect of themselves. Whereas catholicism was bent on convincing me that my sexuality was sinful and the pathway to the devil.
Although I am an atheist now I learned a great deal from my reading of wiccan texts on sex. Far more than I ever learned from the Bible... which seems to focus on the proverbial sexual appetite of King David to the point of ridicule and the justification for Lot's multiple acts of incest with his underage daughters. Jesus is a sexless or homosexual figure whom I never felt connected to as a sage on sexuality.
I feel that dogma has deeply harmed our sense of sexuality... because there is no aspect of humanity more involved in creativity and imagination than sex. Dogma stifles creativity and for this reason I feel the religious dogma is usually doomed to be sexophobic in the long run.
Why is sex a creative act? Firstly, the best sex is in ones head. Sure, 1 in 50 people have a face and body that just screams "great sex" but often they have a personality that screams "get stuffed" too. No, for most of us the key to great sex is in our imaginations: in love letters, poems, stories, pillow talk, sexting and erotic fantasy. When I first read about some of the testimony from the witch trials I vividly recall being in the school library feeling profoundly uncomfortable. I was reading about accused witches describing sexual encounters with the devil in graphically detailed confessions, after being tortured of course, and it was giving me powerful erections. I never told anyone this because I felt embarrassed and disgusted with myself. But clearly, there was something in those sexual fantasies created by these poor sexually repressed women that was exciting. Yes, sex with the devil must have been a lot of fun: dangerous, forbidden, exciting and unrepressed.
This brings me to one of the biggest problems of relationships today is keeping sex interesting. Think about this, we as a species have relationship problems because we don't know how to keep sex interesting. If you think this doesn't sound absurd then you've probably been living in a sexually repressed culture all your life. We are surrounded by a huge variety of entertainment forms and we don't ever get so bored of them as we do with our sexual partners. We can keep ourselves going to movies all through our lives, because although our tastes in films might change as we get older we never get bored of new movies so long as they're different, creative, dramatic and interesting.
And yet we get bored of sex? Something that we actually have an orgasm over? Something in my head just screams *crisis* whenever someone hints to me that they aren't satisfied with their sex life.
Again, we don't talk about it, we don't ask about it, we don't give each other practical advice on how to make sex better. Instead we suggest people modify their bodies artificially or through diets and exercise to achieve a sexiness that will rescue us from our woeful sex lives.
In church, no one asks for a genuine prayer from the heart like:
"Dear God, please relieve our poor humble sex lives of their boredom. Send me and my friends passionate sexy and considerate lovers who are not clingy yet deeply respectful. Make sure they are free of STDs and no unwanted pregnancies result. Teach them to touch us in just the right way to maximise the pleasure of our orgasms and find happiness through the bodily means you so generously bestowed on us for this purpose,"
No one would feel comfortable saying that out loud in a church and nor would anyone in the audience likely feel comfortable listening to it... but really... who doesn't secretly wish for a prayer like that to come true?
And as exciting as that prayer is, it still misses the point. Sexiness, like happiness, is all in the mind. If we want great sex we shouldn't be spending so much time worrying about the body. Instead we should be worrying about the heart.
For me, some of the biggest impediments I've had to enjoying sex is worry, fear and guilt. Worry because I'm terrified of disappointing my sexual partner, mostly because no one told me some really important information... like how to have sex - yes, some of you may laugh and say it just comes naturally, but when you've never seen a vagina before, much less felt the inside of one then it's a pretty nerve wracking experience. The kind of nerve wracking experience that gives a man temporary impotence from worry. Just briefly on that point, generally the best cure for impotence is to slow down, relax but not to give up. Instead we tend to ridicule and laugh at men brave enough to admit to having this problem making it much worse... to me that sounds like a psychological strategy to make other men infertile. Interesting, yes? Men can be bitchy too, although they're probably far less aware of what their psychological blows are meant to achieve.
So yes, the how to have sex was never adequately described and in my catholic sexual education, mostly given by female teachers (who obviously felt awkward talking about it to classrooms full of teenage boys), and I graduated with an absurd idea that the vagina was two squiggles of ink on a caricature of a woman. I wonder what the girls imagined a penis to be like? Although a penis is probably more self-explanatory than a vagina which is still a mystery to me to this day and I'm sure it is a mystery to many many women too.
But the secret to great sex is not where you put and touch the various genitals. The secret is being receptive to the experience of having sex. And being receptive is about being comfortable, feeling sexy and excited all at once - all things that happen in the imagination (and with the devil, apparently). The words one says to ones lover leading up to sex are as important, if not more so, than the places and ways you touch them.
I've come to the conclusion that if you can play make believe comfortably with someone as though you were still very young children, then your potential for awesome sex with that person is very high. Strangely, we discourage day dreamers and imaginative children... do we want to make our sex lives boring? Do we want to stomp out the divine spark of creativity in our bodies?
One final illustration.
When experiencing orgasm inside a woman I used to feel guilty and dirty for it, because I felt like a parasite trying to infect an innocent woman with my seed. I've heard couples fighting and women say things to hurt their partners to encourage this perception: that men are parasites just trying to spread their genetic disease to women then run away. Let me tell you as a man nothing is more deeply troubling to my soul to think of myself like that. Instead, when I orgasm now I think about how I'm potentially physically merging with this woman whom I love and admire. Part of me, merging with part of her to create a new life made from the two of us accepting each other.
I think the catholics have it all wrong. I think they actively encourage sexual perversion and the cheapening of sexual experience. I think they're very good at telling themselves that they hate sex because they love it so much. In any field of study, anyone who is proud of being ignorant is generally considered a shameful fool, so why are catholics so proud to be ignorant about sex?
I don't know about how most other religions regard sex, because they don't talk about it either... or maybe they just don't talk about it to prudish catholics, I just don't know. But being conscious and knowledgeable of ones sexuality is a spiritual and divine element to a human being in my opinion.
Sure, I can sit down with most men and have a discussion over which women are the most attractive, which quickly turns into an argument in my case because I'm quite comfortable pointing out that my tastes in women are not conventional, but if I wanted to bring up a more emotional topic like how I feel at the point of ejaculation then no way! Australian men quickly turn into prudes far too uncomfortable to talk about sexuality with any degree of insight or seriousness.
Strangely, Australians will often criticise foreigners, such as muslims, for being sexually repressed. Yet some of the 'sexiest' people I know are muslims. 'Sexiest' is in parenthesis because really, I don't think many people seriously think about what sexy is... I will get to this in more detail shortly. What I want to make clear at this juncture is that when it comes to talking about emotions and sex Australians are as repressed as that undifferentiated mass of muslims they like to contrast themselves against.
I can see that comment upsetting a lot of people already... good that's part of what I do here. :)
Where religion comes in for me, well I was raised catholic and I was left without any doubt that sex was a disgusting thing. Sure no one ever said explicitly to me that sex was disgusting. But at the same time no one talked about it except in awkward and uncomfortable tones... or in jokes as a rude topic. When ones only exposure to sex (because it is a taboo subject) is from dirty school yard jokes one starts to think that sex is just as unspiritual and dirty as those jokes.
But as a teenager, deeply interested in sex, I came across wicca and paganism. They treat sex in a completely different way... sex is a beautiful, sublime and spiritual experience. Both men and women are encouraged to think of their sexuality as divine and a beautiful aspect of themselves. Whereas catholicism was bent on convincing me that my sexuality was sinful and the pathway to the devil.
Although I am an atheist now I learned a great deal from my reading of wiccan texts on sex. Far more than I ever learned from the Bible... which seems to focus on the proverbial sexual appetite of King David to the point of ridicule and the justification for Lot's multiple acts of incest with his underage daughters. Jesus is a sexless or homosexual figure whom I never felt connected to as a sage on sexuality.
I feel that dogma has deeply harmed our sense of sexuality... because there is no aspect of humanity more involved in creativity and imagination than sex. Dogma stifles creativity and for this reason I feel the religious dogma is usually doomed to be sexophobic in the long run.
Why is sex a creative act? Firstly, the best sex is in ones head. Sure, 1 in 50 people have a face and body that just screams "great sex" but often they have a personality that screams "get stuffed" too. No, for most of us the key to great sex is in our imaginations: in love letters, poems, stories, pillow talk, sexting and erotic fantasy. When I first read about some of the testimony from the witch trials I vividly recall being in the school library feeling profoundly uncomfortable. I was reading about accused witches describing sexual encounters with the devil in graphically detailed confessions, after being tortured of course, and it was giving me powerful erections. I never told anyone this because I felt embarrassed and disgusted with myself. But clearly, there was something in those sexual fantasies created by these poor sexually repressed women that was exciting. Yes, sex with the devil must have been a lot of fun: dangerous, forbidden, exciting and unrepressed.
This brings me to one of the biggest problems of relationships today is keeping sex interesting. Think about this, we as a species have relationship problems because we don't know how to keep sex interesting. If you think this doesn't sound absurd then you've probably been living in a sexually repressed culture all your life. We are surrounded by a huge variety of entertainment forms and we don't ever get so bored of them as we do with our sexual partners. We can keep ourselves going to movies all through our lives, because although our tastes in films might change as we get older we never get bored of new movies so long as they're different, creative, dramatic and interesting.
And yet we get bored of sex? Something that we actually have an orgasm over? Something in my head just screams *crisis* whenever someone hints to me that they aren't satisfied with their sex life.
Again, we don't talk about it, we don't ask about it, we don't give each other practical advice on how to make sex better. Instead we suggest people modify their bodies artificially or through diets and exercise to achieve a sexiness that will rescue us from our woeful sex lives.
In church, no one asks for a genuine prayer from the heart like:
"Dear God, please relieve our poor humble sex lives of their boredom. Send me and my friends passionate sexy and considerate lovers who are not clingy yet deeply respectful. Make sure they are free of STDs and no unwanted pregnancies result. Teach them to touch us in just the right way to maximise the pleasure of our orgasms and find happiness through the bodily means you so generously bestowed on us for this purpose,"
No one would feel comfortable saying that out loud in a church and nor would anyone in the audience likely feel comfortable listening to it... but really... who doesn't secretly wish for a prayer like that to come true?
And as exciting as that prayer is, it still misses the point. Sexiness, like happiness, is all in the mind. If we want great sex we shouldn't be spending so much time worrying about the body. Instead we should be worrying about the heart.
For me, some of the biggest impediments I've had to enjoying sex is worry, fear and guilt. Worry because I'm terrified of disappointing my sexual partner, mostly because no one told me some really important information... like how to have sex - yes, some of you may laugh and say it just comes naturally, but when you've never seen a vagina before, much less felt the inside of one then it's a pretty nerve wracking experience. The kind of nerve wracking experience that gives a man temporary impotence from worry. Just briefly on that point, generally the best cure for impotence is to slow down, relax but not to give up. Instead we tend to ridicule and laugh at men brave enough to admit to having this problem making it much worse... to me that sounds like a psychological strategy to make other men infertile. Interesting, yes? Men can be bitchy too, although they're probably far less aware of what their psychological blows are meant to achieve.
So yes, the how to have sex was never adequately described and in my catholic sexual education, mostly given by female teachers (who obviously felt awkward talking about it to classrooms full of teenage boys), and I graduated with an absurd idea that the vagina was two squiggles of ink on a caricature of a woman. I wonder what the girls imagined a penis to be like? Although a penis is probably more self-explanatory than a vagina which is still a mystery to me to this day and I'm sure it is a mystery to many many women too.
But the secret to great sex is not where you put and touch the various genitals. The secret is being receptive to the experience of having sex. And being receptive is about being comfortable, feeling sexy and excited all at once - all things that happen in the imagination (and with the devil, apparently). The words one says to ones lover leading up to sex are as important, if not more so, than the places and ways you touch them.
I've come to the conclusion that if you can play make believe comfortably with someone as though you were still very young children, then your potential for awesome sex with that person is very high. Strangely, we discourage day dreamers and imaginative children... do we want to make our sex lives boring? Do we want to stomp out the divine spark of creativity in our bodies?
One final illustration.
When experiencing orgasm inside a woman I used to feel guilty and dirty for it, because I felt like a parasite trying to infect an innocent woman with my seed. I've heard couples fighting and women say things to hurt their partners to encourage this perception: that men are parasites just trying to spread their genetic disease to women then run away. Let me tell you as a man nothing is more deeply troubling to my soul to think of myself like that. Instead, when I orgasm now I think about how I'm potentially physically merging with this woman whom I love and admire. Part of me, merging with part of her to create a new life made from the two of us accepting each other.
I think the catholics have it all wrong. I think they actively encourage sexual perversion and the cheapening of sexual experience. I think they're very good at telling themselves that they hate sex because they love it so much. In any field of study, anyone who is proud of being ignorant is generally considered a shameful fool, so why are catholics so proud to be ignorant about sex?
I don't know about how most other religions regard sex, because they don't talk about it either... or maybe they just don't talk about it to prudish catholics, I just don't know. But being conscious and knowledgeable of ones sexuality is a spiritual and divine element to a human being in my opinion.
23 December, 2009
Discogia and Becoming an Atheist
When asked why I became an atheist I usually answer with a stock standard answer like, "There just isn't any imperical evidence for the existence of god and there are far more likely explanations that fit the facts and evidence that is available and these explanations do not require the existence of god to work,"
This statement might well be true but it doesn't actually convey any of my personal or emotional experience with coming to terms with living in a universe without a god in it. In truth my loss of faith was driven not my intellectual needs at all, but by emotional forces at work within me.
To understand why it felt so unbearable being a Catholic one first needs to understand the concept of cognitive dissonance. Notice that the feeling doesn't have a specific name, instead they just refer to it as involving a mixture of secondary emotions like: anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, embarrassment and stress. However, none of these secondary emotions adequately describes the primary feeling. I have adapted the term 'discogia' to describe this feeling.
As a young Catholic I spent a great deal of time worrying about whether or not I would go to hell if I died. See, although many people say that I was a quiet well behaved child I nonetheless knew better. I had frequently lied to, stolen from, harmed and decieved many people (including my own family), albeit these were petty crimes typical of a child in retrospect. However, it was very clear to me that I had committed serious crimes and injustices to other people. God was very clear on this and he watched everything that I did and he knew my thoughts so I couldn't lie to him. I had no explanation for my actions except that I was evil. Therefore I was going to hell. When I confessed my sins to the priest he assured me that my sins were not that important and I would be forgiven.
This is where I started to feel discogia creeping into my life in a big way.
See, god hates sin, god is perfect, god created man, god created hell to punish sinners and god loves us. Why then would got create man in such a way that his natural tendancy is to sin? Then after he has sinned throw him into a lake of fire to burn in torment for all eternity... but still love him?
Also, if god created man why make him capable of sinning so easily? If he was perfect and all powerful surely he could have at least done a better job? As for free will this puzzled me the most because I was in love with science at the time and science could predict the future, albeit in limited ways, but the fact that science works at all implies that free will can't actually be free.
I remember being in grades 5 and 6 worrying frantically about this problem. I tried over and over again to write stories that were original... but everything was copied from something I'd seen, read or heard before... all I was doing was reproducing somebody else's ideas and mixing them with another persons. The creativity needed to produce truly free will didn't exist. In retrospect the knowledge and power needed to achieve free will is on a scale well beyond human capability. The conclusion was stark... I was just a machine. Worse than that, a sinful machine doomed to hell... because apparently a loving god had created me this way just for this purpose.
At the time my solution was clear, become a priest so that I could get on god's good side and it would all be ok. Although... god wasn't exactly someone I felt comfortable trusting either. I had been very disturbed by the angel of death killing all of egypt's first born. In mass I had heard that god asked Abraham to kill his only son as a sign of faith, true, he stopped him but later on God would actually kill his only son and I never could understand why he did that. God was actually scaring me quite a lot. Could my father kill me like god did? Just to make a point about how far he could go? Or what really confused me at the time was why would god deliberately forced his son to get himself killed (it is mentioned in the gospels that Jesus had the option of escape but god pushed him into it) then get angry with humanity for killing his son?
The feelings of discogia just got worse and worse as I grew older. But I didn't want to give up on god. So I started off by deciding that the old testament was garbage and focussed only on the new testament... then I started to get bothered by inconsistencies between the gospels which could only be explained if the writers weren't perfect/inspired by the holy spirit but just ordinary men. In which case they could have got it wrong. I also remember being bothered by Jesus' complete lack of a comprehensive schema or world view. His message was devoid of detail and practical advice. By my teenage years I had come to realise how childishly simplistic the words and messages of the bible were compared to the sophistication of later authors. I had to wonder if these were learned men at all writing it.
So eventually I turned to deism. God existed, but it was not for me a mere mortal to interpret his will. Then gradually the importance and role of god in the world grew less and less as I dealt with each remaining instance of discogia by putting in place scientific and rational ideas that dealt with the facts better than the religious one - although by this stage I was in university studying philosophy. When I started philosophy that's when I started gaining serious ground on the overwhelming sense of discogia that I had been ensared in. But that's still too simple an explanation for an emotional level.
It hurt.
Losing god in my life hurt me a great deal... it must have taken me 1,000 steps to get from Catholic to atheist. I was a wiccan in between and a pagan between that. For each step I removed one unpleasant feeling of discogia and replaced it with a sharper more painful realisation of my limitations, mortality, ordinariness and insignificance.
To become an atheist I had to give up these things:
That I was special and unique because I was part of a brilliant plan.
That my body was a work of art, not a randomly arranged set of genetic instructions.
That I would live after death.
That I would eventually see my friends and loved ones again.
That I could achieve anything because god doesn't make junk.
That there was justice in the universe.
That I would always be rewarded if I did the right thing.
That there was such a concept as a 'right' thing.
That I was loved no matter what I did.
That humanity was being looked after and cared for from above so it would all work out in the end whatever happened.
That good things will just come to me if I wait for god to deliver them.
^ That's an awful lot to lose. It hurt. It hurt so much one month I just couldn't sleep at all from fear of death. It hurt because religion had been my iron shield against insecurity in my life. Once I lost that shield I felt tiny, helpless and small. Becoming an atheist was not a quick, easy or effortless task. In this short passage I cannot describe how painful it was. I wasn't suicidal, rather the opposite... I was scared of stepping outside my door in case a car hit me on the foot path and it was all over.
Life after god was only painful to reach because I had had my hopes raised to outrageously high levels by religious education beforehand. If the feeling of discogia hadn't been so awkward (it wasn't painful, just awkward) I never would have given up on religion because those defences against uncertainty were wonderful.
So, for me, I became an atheist not because I thought more clearly than others... but because I felt more strongly than others. I find it awkward telling people that's there's no god or religious dogma is bad. Not because I don't believe it... but I know that every time I say it I'm pushing someone down another of those 1,000 steps that eventually leads to peace of mind... but every step hurts a great deal too and unlike god, I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.
This statement might well be true but it doesn't actually convey any of my personal or emotional experience with coming to terms with living in a universe without a god in it. In truth my loss of faith was driven not my intellectual needs at all, but by emotional forces at work within me.
To understand why it felt so unbearable being a Catholic one first needs to understand the concept of cognitive dissonance. Notice that the feeling doesn't have a specific name, instead they just refer to it as involving a mixture of secondary emotions like: anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, embarrassment and stress. However, none of these secondary emotions adequately describes the primary feeling. I have adapted the term 'discogia' to describe this feeling.
As a young Catholic I spent a great deal of time worrying about whether or not I would go to hell if I died. See, although many people say that I was a quiet well behaved child I nonetheless knew better. I had frequently lied to, stolen from, harmed and decieved many people (including my own family), albeit these were petty crimes typical of a child in retrospect. However, it was very clear to me that I had committed serious crimes and injustices to other people. God was very clear on this and he watched everything that I did and he knew my thoughts so I couldn't lie to him. I had no explanation for my actions except that I was evil. Therefore I was going to hell. When I confessed my sins to the priest he assured me that my sins were not that important and I would be forgiven.
This is where I started to feel discogia creeping into my life in a big way.
See, god hates sin, god is perfect, god created man, god created hell to punish sinners and god loves us. Why then would got create man in such a way that his natural tendancy is to sin? Then after he has sinned throw him into a lake of fire to burn in torment for all eternity... but still love him?
Also, if god created man why make him capable of sinning so easily? If he was perfect and all powerful surely he could have at least done a better job? As for free will this puzzled me the most because I was in love with science at the time and science could predict the future, albeit in limited ways, but the fact that science works at all implies that free will can't actually be free.
I remember being in grades 5 and 6 worrying frantically about this problem. I tried over and over again to write stories that were original... but everything was copied from something I'd seen, read or heard before... all I was doing was reproducing somebody else's ideas and mixing them with another persons. The creativity needed to produce truly free will didn't exist. In retrospect the knowledge and power needed to achieve free will is on a scale well beyond human capability. The conclusion was stark... I was just a machine. Worse than that, a sinful machine doomed to hell... because apparently a loving god had created me this way just for this purpose.
At the time my solution was clear, become a priest so that I could get on god's good side and it would all be ok. Although... god wasn't exactly someone I felt comfortable trusting either. I had been very disturbed by the angel of death killing all of egypt's first born. In mass I had heard that god asked Abraham to kill his only son as a sign of faith, true, he stopped him but later on God would actually kill his only son and I never could understand why he did that. God was actually scaring me quite a lot. Could my father kill me like god did? Just to make a point about how far he could go? Or what really confused me at the time was why would god deliberately forced his son to get himself killed (it is mentioned in the gospels that Jesus had the option of escape but god pushed him into it) then get angry with humanity for killing his son?
The feelings of discogia just got worse and worse as I grew older. But I didn't want to give up on god. So I started off by deciding that the old testament was garbage and focussed only on the new testament... then I started to get bothered by inconsistencies between the gospels which could only be explained if the writers weren't perfect/inspired by the holy spirit but just ordinary men. In which case they could have got it wrong. I also remember being bothered by Jesus' complete lack of a comprehensive schema or world view. His message was devoid of detail and practical advice. By my teenage years I had come to realise how childishly simplistic the words and messages of the bible were compared to the sophistication of later authors. I had to wonder if these were learned men at all writing it.
So eventually I turned to deism. God existed, but it was not for me a mere mortal to interpret his will. Then gradually the importance and role of god in the world grew less and less as I dealt with each remaining instance of discogia by putting in place scientific and rational ideas that dealt with the facts better than the religious one - although by this stage I was in university studying philosophy. When I started philosophy that's when I started gaining serious ground on the overwhelming sense of discogia that I had been ensared in. But that's still too simple an explanation for an emotional level.
It hurt.
Losing god in my life hurt me a great deal... it must have taken me 1,000 steps to get from Catholic to atheist. I was a wiccan in between and a pagan between that. For each step I removed one unpleasant feeling of discogia and replaced it with a sharper more painful realisation of my limitations, mortality, ordinariness and insignificance.
To become an atheist I had to give up these things:
That I was special and unique because I was part of a brilliant plan.
That my body was a work of art, not a randomly arranged set of genetic instructions.
That I would live after death.
That I would eventually see my friends and loved ones again.
That I could achieve anything because god doesn't make junk.
That there was justice in the universe.
That I would always be rewarded if I did the right thing.
That there was such a concept as a 'right' thing.
That I was loved no matter what I did.
That humanity was being looked after and cared for from above so it would all work out in the end whatever happened.
That good things will just come to me if I wait for god to deliver them.
^ That's an awful lot to lose. It hurt. It hurt so much one month I just couldn't sleep at all from fear of death. It hurt because religion had been my iron shield against insecurity in my life. Once I lost that shield I felt tiny, helpless and small. Becoming an atheist was not a quick, easy or effortless task. In this short passage I cannot describe how painful it was. I wasn't suicidal, rather the opposite... I was scared of stepping outside my door in case a car hit me on the foot path and it was all over.
Life after god was only painful to reach because I had had my hopes raised to outrageously high levels by religious education beforehand. If the feeling of discogia hadn't been so awkward (it wasn't painful, just awkward) I never would have given up on religion because those defences against uncertainty were wonderful.
So, for me, I became an atheist not because I thought more clearly than others... but because I felt more strongly than others. I find it awkward telling people that's there's no god or religious dogma is bad. Not because I don't believe it... but I know that every time I say it I'm pushing someone down another of those 1,000 steps that eventually leads to peace of mind... but every step hurts a great deal too and unlike god, I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.
20 December, 2009
Atheism and Love
I was chatting to a friend yesterday about a topic that related to my previous post about Atheism and Marriage. That is, how much effort one should put into a relationship and is it possible to actually have a relationship involving more than two people?
I said in that post, "The only real problem is that we often lack the social skills to have one good friendship in our lives... much less three." This statement probably sounds shocking to many people, but honestly, how many people do feel helpless in doing away with the endless cycle of problems they seem to have in many of their friendships?
I would like to put forward my viewpoint that we're approaching relationships in the completely wrong way. We're looking at a friendship as an end goal: security, love, kindness and compassion whenever we need it. Truly, friendship is the greatest gift a human being is capable of giving, and often it is taken for granted or dismissed casually in statements like "we're only friends." While friendships are all of these things... we're expecting them to just 'happen' naturally and spontaneously. Once an international student asked me: "are we friending?" They used the wrong verb, but in so doing they produced a whole new concept: friendship as a process.
I believe that friendship is a process and all processes require one to put energy into it. No two people are exactly alike... most often they aren't even close to it. So you'll probably never meet a person with whom you agree with them on everything. So, you're going to have conflicts and disagreements with that person, it is inevitable. So how to do you deal with them? Generally, because laziness is a good survival strategy for any organism, we use the least personally demanding option. We can: ignore it, deny it, ridicule it, guilt/shame them into changing their mind or keep it to themselves and so on. But to accept, investigate, discover, understand and appreciate the difference requires more effort.
I think that it is always worth the effort to seek to understand these differences in our friends. Like my ealier story with Pandora implies; curing a disease is more meaningful than simply exterminating everyone with the disease. For example: if we just killed every person with haemophilia or who carry the disease in their genetics we could eliminate this disease forever. However, if we cure haemophilia in the process we become far far wiser about how blood clots, how blood works, how blood is created, how our genetics work, how our genetics can be repaired etc... while one group can say "we solved the problem," the group that cured it can say, "we cured it, understood the problem, learned a lot more about ourselves and even improved ourselves both in wisdom and compassion (and maybe genetically as well?) through curing it,"
I get annoyed when people associate 'love' exclusively with romantic relationships. I honestly believe love was originally intended to describe friendships not romantic relationships. But somewhere along the line we've stopped thinking clearly about the fact that at the root of romance is sex, lust and reproduction - not love.
Rather 'to love' is an extreme form of the verb 'to like' and is rather disrespected in English to this end nowadays. But how can we love someone who is so different from us? Two ways, the first is that we're ignorant of how different we are to that person - this is an unstable form of love - secondly, we have put the effort into getting to know that person inside-out and we don't feel threatened by the differences we have. I guess I've just invented the terms 'weak love' and 'strong love' much like 'weak atheism' and 'strong atheism' (weak = ignorant, strong = informed).
The conclusion, if we want to love someone in the strong sense we need to put energy, time and effort into the relationship. We need to create an environment where the other person feels comfortable being open, honest and safe telling you their problems, vices and limitations - while at the same time the other person allows you to feel the same by putting in a recipricol effort. How can creatures such as ourselves full of prejudices, insecurities and ignorance do this? By changing, by listening, by growing in self-knowledge and knowledge about other people and where they're coming from.
I believe that if more people put the time and effort needed to bridge cultural, sexual, emotional differences that in the future the spontaneous formation of quaples and other complex social structures built upon the basic framework of friendship can become possible, easier and desireable. The thing is, almost everyone is capable of friendship and love... all that is required is a different perspective:
Why are the people who need love the most also the hardest to love?
Because love requires sacrifice and the harder you have to push yourself to love another person, the more you'll learn, grow and develop as an individual.
What about freeloaders and cheats?
If the other person won't put the effort you are putting into the relationship then it isn't going to work. There is nothing wrong in giving up on a person who doesn't try at all. While yes, you could still learn a lot from the endeavour, however, the one giving that much effort shouldn't expect or depend on it succeeding less they be compromised and exploited.
Again, there's nothing about sex in here because I don't see what it has to do with love. Friendship extends across all borders, including species (cats, dogs, pigs, horses etc...) and probably in the future it will include artificial intelligences as well. While saying that, loving the person with whom you have sexual intercourse with is a great thing... but I would hope that you're friends with the person you're having sex with first and that friendship is the root of the love. (Although if you're not friends with the person you're having sexual relations with and you're both ok with that I have no problems with that either - it just isn't my cup of tea).
I said in that post, "The only real problem is that we often lack the social skills to have one good friendship in our lives... much less three." This statement probably sounds shocking to many people, but honestly, how many people do feel helpless in doing away with the endless cycle of problems they seem to have in many of their friendships?
I would like to put forward my viewpoint that we're approaching relationships in the completely wrong way. We're looking at a friendship as an end goal: security, love, kindness and compassion whenever we need it. Truly, friendship is the greatest gift a human being is capable of giving, and often it is taken for granted or dismissed casually in statements like "we're only friends." While friendships are all of these things... we're expecting them to just 'happen' naturally and spontaneously. Once an international student asked me: "are we friending?" They used the wrong verb, but in so doing they produced a whole new concept: friendship as a process.
I believe that friendship is a process and all processes require one to put energy into it. No two people are exactly alike... most often they aren't even close to it. So you'll probably never meet a person with whom you agree with them on everything. So, you're going to have conflicts and disagreements with that person, it is inevitable. So how to do you deal with them? Generally, because laziness is a good survival strategy for any organism, we use the least personally demanding option. We can: ignore it, deny it, ridicule it, guilt/shame them into changing their mind or keep it to themselves and so on. But to accept, investigate, discover, understand and appreciate the difference requires more effort.
I think that it is always worth the effort to seek to understand these differences in our friends. Like my ealier story with Pandora implies; curing a disease is more meaningful than simply exterminating everyone with the disease. For example: if we just killed every person with haemophilia or who carry the disease in their genetics we could eliminate this disease forever. However, if we cure haemophilia in the process we become far far wiser about how blood clots, how blood works, how blood is created, how our genetics work, how our genetics can be repaired etc... while one group can say "we solved the problem," the group that cured it can say, "we cured it, understood the problem, learned a lot more about ourselves and even improved ourselves both in wisdom and compassion (and maybe genetically as well?) through curing it,"
I get annoyed when people associate 'love' exclusively with romantic relationships. I honestly believe love was originally intended to describe friendships not romantic relationships. But somewhere along the line we've stopped thinking clearly about the fact that at the root of romance is sex, lust and reproduction - not love.
Rather 'to love' is an extreme form of the verb 'to like' and is rather disrespected in English to this end nowadays. But how can we love someone who is so different from us? Two ways, the first is that we're ignorant of how different we are to that person - this is an unstable form of love - secondly, we have put the effort into getting to know that person inside-out and we don't feel threatened by the differences we have. I guess I've just invented the terms 'weak love' and 'strong love' much like 'weak atheism' and 'strong atheism' (weak = ignorant, strong = informed).
The conclusion, if we want to love someone in the strong sense we need to put energy, time and effort into the relationship. We need to create an environment where the other person feels comfortable being open, honest and safe telling you their problems, vices and limitations - while at the same time the other person allows you to feel the same by putting in a recipricol effort. How can creatures such as ourselves full of prejudices, insecurities and ignorance do this? By changing, by listening, by growing in self-knowledge and knowledge about other people and where they're coming from.
I believe that if more people put the time and effort needed to bridge cultural, sexual, emotional differences that in the future the spontaneous formation of quaples and other complex social structures built upon the basic framework of friendship can become possible, easier and desireable. The thing is, almost everyone is capable of friendship and love... all that is required is a different perspective:
Why are the people who need love the most also the hardest to love?
Because love requires sacrifice and the harder you have to push yourself to love another person, the more you'll learn, grow and develop as an individual.
What about freeloaders and cheats?
If the other person won't put the effort you are putting into the relationship then it isn't going to work. There is nothing wrong in giving up on a person who doesn't try at all. While yes, you could still learn a lot from the endeavour, however, the one giving that much effort shouldn't expect or depend on it succeeding less they be compromised and exploited.
Again, there's nothing about sex in here because I don't see what it has to do with love. Friendship extends across all borders, including species (cats, dogs, pigs, horses etc...) and probably in the future it will include artificial intelligences as well. While saying that, loving the person with whom you have sexual intercourse with is a great thing... but I would hope that you're friends with the person you're having sex with first and that friendship is the root of the love. (Although if you're not friends with the person you're having sexual relations with and you're both ok with that I have no problems with that either - it just isn't my cup of tea).
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