Self-Reliance (moral, reject, choice, evolve, creation)

[coberst]

Self-Reliance

When I speak of alienation I am speaking about wo/man’s alienation from his or her nature. I am speaking of the fragmentation of the individual. I am speaking of the fact that part of what we are is being defiled and rejected by the manner in which we live in our society.

A general theory of alienation would be a body of knowledge about how human freedom and responsible choice is constricted. Evil is that which makes it impossible for sapiens to realizing their potential; this knowledge would be an expression of what are responsible human powers and how society limits the expression of those powers.

Emerson, considered by many as the top moralist in American history, understood these facts when he stated the important challenge to all wo/men to be self-reliance. He felt that self-reliance was the “keynote of American democracy”. Whatever should limit human self-reliance works against the nature of wo/man. The great challenge to education was to develop a comprehensive theory of the limitations of self-reliance and to teach this to all Americans.

To achieve such a goal demanded that science comprehend what all humans strive for. Emerson was convinced that sapiens strived after meaning and the creation of meaning. The crux of self-reliance then was how to advance the self-creation of human meaning.

Science informs us that greed and destructive behavior are not in our DNA but in the society we create. Evil is created by our natural propensities to use our fellow sapiens to satisfy our search for meaning. Human evil is often proportional to human weakness.

“Weakness for man means shallow and narrow meanings, and lack of critical awareness of who one is, and what he is striving for…By developing his critical reason, man can free himself from a large measure of the evil that exists in his social world…It results from the fear of free choice, from the inability to assume responsibility for unique actions and meanings. On the individual level this means that the weak man is the empty man, the manipulated one, and the manipulator of others—the masochist and the sadist. On the social level it means the frightened scapegoat, the warmonger. On both levels it means clumsy, shallow, uncritical, rigid aesthetics, destructive ways of satisfying one’s striving, ways that take a toll on one’s fellow men.”

Quotes from “Beyond Alienation” by Ernest Becker

[charles brough]

I think the reason why no one else has responded yet to your post is that they did not know how. I think you are trying to express a feeling of alienation and a feeling of anger against society for leaving us hanging and feeling like this. To some extent, we all feel that, but very few are able to express it because they don't know what it is.

Perhaps you do and have a specific complaint. You just failed to communicate it to us.

In any case, I will continue on the assumption you really cannot be specific. Other people are not as honest as you and just grab some "Cause" so they can have something to hate and rail against and thus feel union and togetherness with others also focussing against the same thing.

That may seem like cynicism but it is a fact that we have evolved as social animals and we have to depend upon language and a common ideology in order to survive in such large groups as our societies have grown into. In other words, we can feel comfortable mostly in only small intimate groups of less than fifty people including children, the size of groups we evolved in.

We cannot build civlizations in such small groups as our instinctive repertoire fits us for. So we build belief systems and hold them in common so we feel more at ease with all those who believe together.

Ah Ha! However, religions don't do the job very well. They break up and splinter into thousands of pieces. That leaves us with no society! We are abandoned. We feel rootless and fill with stress. Social problems accumulate and society slips into a state of disintegration.

That is where we are now.

You do have a right to feel the way you do; others feel it also.

I have a friend who drew a circle on a piece of paper for me. He pointed inside the circle and said, "that's society." Then, he drew an "x" outside of the circle and said: "This is me. I live ouside of the circle. When I have to conduct business or need something, I go back into the circle and take care of it quickly; then come right back out as quick as I can!"

Nobody likes society anymore. Even the social science forums are almost bare. Sociologists get no respect at all. There is almost nothing in Google under "society." It is, after all, the enemy that criminals attack. Now it is spreading to terrorists.

I won't go on and, perhaps, bore you, but I would be happy to continue later if it turns out I have helped. I can be reached through my website.

[coberst]

Charles

Thank you for your interest.

I post with a purpose. My purpose is to convince people that our world would be a better place if we raised significantly the level of intellectual sophistication. I try to raise interesting and important ideas so that some reader may become interested and curious and go to the books to discover just what the idea is all about.