The capacity to imagine and conceptualise has negative as well as positive consequences because they predispose anxiety states that culminate in a defensive form of denial. The tragedy is that the same defences that enable us to survive the emotional pain of childhood and existential despair are not only poorly adapted and limit our personal potential for living a full life, but they without doubt lead to negative behaviours toward others thereby making the cycle of destructiveness. Inconsistently, with our system of our social beliefs and religious beliefs that are a source of spiritual comfort, relief from a sense of aloneness and interpersonal distress also polarise people one against the other. Threatened by people with different customs and belief systems, we mistakenly feel that we must overpower or destroy them.
With all of the advances of science and technology, if one takes a proper look at the world situation today, one must consider it to be utter madness. Millions go hungry, genocide reaches epic proportions, ethnic strife and prejudice are universal, there is mass killing in the name of religion and warfare remains a viable solution to our differences. With better, more efficient weapons and less reason, and technology outrunning rationality, human existence on the planet may well be extinguished. Feeling and compassion are a significant part of our human custom, but when faced with overwhelming primal pain, we develop defences to minimise our suffering.
Cut off from our feelings, we are desensitised to ourselves and are more likely to become self destructive or act out aggression toward others.
To alter this negative legacy requires a depth of emotional knowledge and compassion as well as the belief and staying power to pursue this endeavour against all odds.
With a deep insight and feeling that we all share the same fate and recognition that death is the great leveller, there is hope for a one world view characterised by respect, love and concern for all of our fellows. Our faith is that by learning how people are damaged and later defended, gradually eliminating faulty parenting practices and developing a better understanding of human nature and weakness, we can significantly influence the fate of human beings in a positive direction.
In this regard, comprehending the issues involved in discussing about an ethical approach to life necessitates a deep knowledge of human mind and especially the importance of understanding defence formation. Defences formed in childhood as a necessity for emotional survival also preclude to varying amount the formation and living out of a truly moral existence. Personal damage caused by excessive criticality, rejection or outright hostility on the part of parents predispose children to become adults that are hurtful to others.
There is no way to become innocently defended unless a person lived in total isolation. Whether we are aware or not, the ways we distrust and distort other people does significant damage. It hurts those closest to us, in particular our children, and then extends outward. In conclusion, society represents a pooling of individual emotional defences, and it is these defences and their subsequent damage to other people that is perpetuated in the world at large. It is manifested in a failure to achieve empathy and compassion for others, outright prejudice, ethnic cleansing and religious warfare.
The appropriate education about our emotional defences, how they are formed and how they function is essential to achieving insight into the subject of equality and diversity. It is unlikely that a person, who lives tunefully within him/herself, is not defensive and respects other people; would raise a hand to inflict damage on others. People with an open, feeling and compass reading can shape a peaceful world that illustrates concern and equality for all.
- What do you think?
- Does this matter?
- Or just leave things as they are?
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