by logansrun 61 Replies latest jw friends
JWs don't realize the damage they are doing when they turn their backs on their df'd family.
Oh yes they do...that's why it's done.
What is the punishment given to prisoners already incarcerated? SOLITARY CONFINEMENT.
The Dubs are all incarcerated...and use SOLITARY CONFINEMENT DF'ing and/or shunning quite effectively.
u/d(of the front gate of the prison is wide open...all you have to do is walk out class)
jgnat,
Good morning!
OK, I can go along with your dislike of the word “Ideal”. Let’s replace it with “optimum” then. Does a human strive to reduce his requirements for survival to minimize pain, or does he work at building an optimum life, even if it involves effort and pain? It seems also, that you have confidence that evolved human beings can avoid pain altogether by convincing ourselves it doesn’t really hurt.
Even "optimum" is subjective at best. My "optimum" life no doubt is quite different than yours. Nevertheless, I will agree with you that most all humans have some vague idea of what their optimum life would be like. No doubt it would include loving and being loved as this seems to be hard-wired into our brains. No argument from me.
Can we avoid pain altogether? I doubt it. Physical pain will, of course, hurt and can only be minimally reduced. Emotional pain, on the other hand, can substantially be reduced. Hence we have therapists. I think one of the important factors in reducing psychological disturbance is not being needy or demanding that life cater to us.
You go on to talk about my "minimalist" approach to life:
Do you see how your minimalist approach would lead to a deprived and shortened life?
It could. I'm not saying that anyone should not strive for more than the bare essentials in life though. I think you are getting confused with that point. I'm all for striving for success, love, some approval, etc. But, the difference lies in the fact that you don't need those things to survive or even to have *some* enjoyment in life. (Theoretically speaking I'm not sure that someone who experienced no success, approval or love could experience any enjoyment in life. There probably has never been an adult human who has not to some degree experienced these things)
I haven’t said that, I am pretty sure. I am refuting your statement that love is not a human need. All I have to argue is that love is a human need by broadening the definition of need. I maintain a need is more than the minimum.Well, now we are just arguing semantics. We define "need" differently. What I call strong desire or want you refer to as need.
Humans need to reach for the optimum because the alternative is a devastating loss of potential, a wasted life.
False dichotomy. You also are setting up the majority of the human race for a "devastating life" since most people will never, ever attain their "optimum" life. My solution is to be content with the bare essentials and strive like hell for the other "nice" things in life like love. If you get them, fine. If not, that's too bad but you can get by without them. You don't need to have an optimum life to be minimally happy.
You said this but didn’t prove it. All you stated is that babies goo instead of talk. Does that necessarily mean that their development is insignificant, or that their needs don’t speak to the hard-wired needs embedded in all of us?
I'm not sure why you drew this conclusion about my view of children at all. Babies are undergoing very important cognitive developments in their first few months and on into the years of childhood. It is simply a fact of science, though, that a baby's brain is very different from a normal, adult brain. To extrapolate baby needs to adult needs seems to me to be rather obviously problematic.
According to your personal view of minimalist requirements as needs that may be true. But I maintain the minimalist approach is wrong. Human needs are broader if our goal is an optimum life. Lack of love shortens human life.
Perhaps. And, I repeat, that I'm not stating to just go for the "minimalist" life.
My instinct is telling me this is a dead end. But I’ll have to think harder as to why. From my own experience, my thinking alone gets me in to trouble. My mind can justify a cruelty or lead me to bad judgement. That marvellously complex brain that can be so useful at time can also deceive itself in to a cognitive dissonance loop.
Perhaps your mind just needs better critical thinking skills and training.
I am much better off when I translate my thinking in to acts of creation. I can then observe the result, confirming whether my approach is effective or not. Observation cures me of my own folly.
All true. I agree. Observation of our behavior is essential.
So again, a mind alone can consider itself perfect, until it has to interact with another mind.
Our minds will never be perfect. We often do better in life when we interact with another mind, but we don't need to do so. In fact, solitude is also very important in life, some people being naturally more prone to being with others and some being more introverted and introspective. Guess which type of person I am.
The resulting conflict if handled well, can result in a meeting of minds. There’s that social interaction and connection again, creating more optimum experience.
From fish to horses is a huge evolutionary leap. Fins are dropped and cud and hoof are built. It’s not nearly as much a leap from horses to gibbons and monkeys. And as I am sure you will agree, it is a tiny jump from primate to human. There’s not a single primate that lives alone as the snail. I’d say it’s a safe bet that we are included in the animal group that requires social interaction to survive.
In the enviornment we evolved in you are probably correct. The enviornment of daily life has changed for humans, though, and our brains and genes have not kept up with the change. This fact is at the root of many human psychological problems, in my opinion.
Rejection is decidedly physical, as it includes the deprivation of touch and eye contact and all kinds of subtle visual cues that tells the victim they are no longer welcome.
Bah. I think you're stretching things. A disapproving stare doesn't literally hurt you. Besides, all these body language cues require interpretation and thinking about the interpretation. I've met many a people that seemed "cold and distant" only later to find out that they really liked me.
:Frankl, well, he said a lot of poetic thingsAd Hominem. Don’t use him to support his argument then turn around and dump him when it doesn’t suit.
A very good point. Touche.
The whole point of Frankl’s lessons in the prison camp is that people rise above minimum requirements.
And they do this through their thinking, as Frankl points out in his book Man's Search for Meaning.
I don’t think you will find happiness, simplicity, or uncomplication logansrun, from trimming your life to the minimum. I suspect rather that we as human beings are our best when we reach for optimum experience. If there’s a relationship worth salvaging, do it.
I totally concur. Now, how will you misinterpret this response to you?
I'd better point something out, though. Really, none of the ideas that I have espoused in this thread are original to me. They're straight out of the system of psychotherapy known as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy developed by Dr. Albert Ellis. I personally find his philosophy of life the most intellectually honest and emotionally rewarding.
B.
I'm going to take a slightly different tack, in this response. So far a lot of emphasis has been placed on our need to receive love. What about our need to express it?
I'll give an example.
I spent this last weekend with my sister and her family. Whilst there I fell asleep on the couch, only to be awoken by a sloppy kiss on the neck from my nephew. I didn't stir, as I was just awakening from slumber. He promptly wandered off, to happily play in the garden.
Why did he do that? What did he gain from it? Since he received absolutely no feedback from me, what kind of exchange took place?
I would posit "none", by most normal definitions, however that little three-year-old felt the need to express something, though unreciprocated. I would warrant that life doesn't get much more beautiful than that!
I'll give a second, more mystical example.
What is meant by "God is love" and "Man is made in God's image"?
I believe that even at a rudimentary level, most folks can agree that "primitive" man (by our "enlightened" 21st century standards) acknowledged that love was the ideal of existance. Not a superficial desire or want, but a genuine "soul-level" need - both to give and receive.
It's perhaps exemplified in the family unit, whereupon taking a partner genuinely can bring an individual to look outside of themselves, perhaps for the first time. That is a divine, defining moment, as far as a reduction in the egoic existance is concerned.
Our minds will never be perfect.
No?
Speak for yourself, but my mind is perfectly adequate to the tasks to which I put it, thanks. It fulfills all my needs as a processing machine and repository of experience. There are times in which my recall is not as I would wish, however the searching for that required often unearths other things to bring to the melting pot. Barring illness and degeneration, I hope that will always be the case.
Herein is perhaps the advantage of the aged. The wealth of experience that is brought to bear upon a situation, rather than the simplistic "logical" choice, bereft of multitudious ethical ponderings.
LT,
I'll go along with the idea that it feels very nice to engage in the act of loving.
Also: Are you telling me you have a perfect brain
B.
LT,
I spent this last weekend with my sister and her family. Whilst there I fell asleep on the couch, only to be awoken by a sloppy kiss on the neck from my nephew. I didn't stir, as I was just awakening from slumber. He promptly wandered off, to happily play in the garden.
Why did he do that? What did he gain from it? Since he received absolutely no feedback from me, what kind of exchange took place?
I would posit "none", by most normal definitions, however that little three-year-old felt the need to express something, though unreciprocated. I would warrant that life doesn't get much more beautiful than that!
Humans are malleable animals susceptible to social learning. We depend on it, to a certain extent. It could very well be that your nephew was enculturated to kiss you. He also might have expected you to wake up and recirprocate, hence he would have something to gain by this act of love. And, of course, the positive feeling he gets from giving you a kiss is reinforcment to do it again.
Even a person who willingly dies for another gains something from his so-called "selfless" act. That is, the positive feelings he has prior to giving his life for others.
I'll give a second, more mystical example.
I'm not going to go there...
Prompt reply, logansrun, nice. Are you saying that since people MANAGE to survive without love, it is not a requirement and therefore not a need? You've danced around it but not addressed it; according to your definition of need (semantics if you will) surviving a lifetime is a human need. People don't live so long without love. So, then, by your definition, would love not be a human need?
People don't live so long without love.
Would you care to expand on that thought, jgnat? Examples (besides the well-worn example of babies and little children)?
B.
Did all ready. Homeless people and seniors have shortened lives without love.
Homeless people and seniors have shortened lives without love.
That's only because they think they need it. If they gave up that silly idea they would live longer, no doubt. Besides, your example is simply anecdotal. You think it's true, but I have yet to see evidence of it's truth.
B.
Damn. Where's chat when you need it?
