cage Community Group
group for people with some depth who enjoy debating theories. if you have an opinion on anything, throw it in - works better with some good arguments to support it though :P
we r living in such a greedy selfish society there is lack of morals and sense of community it makes me feel sad and lonely what does other people think why r peopele so scared to mix??
a very just point. but its hard i think for alot of people because life and society has become very Social Darwnistic. (fitest survives) (s)he whos has the money holds the world i guess.
would it be lonley though cageddreams? perhaps one doestn know the difference if that is they way they were rasied. if they are nutrured and brought up on the principal that "money is happiness," then they may see no problem with it.
Morose-Mary
i find that controlling the state of mind is actually one of the simplest things to do. where it gets difficult and i guess what you might have meant would be focus. Focus to be fully aware of the present moment and most importantly focus to be able to pay attention to what our mind is doing. That can be extremely difficult at times but when its there, there is nothing simpler than rationalizing our own thoughts and emotions which in turn gives us full control of our minds. However, when we loose that focus, the mind, its thoughts and emotions have a tendency to take over, run amok and make life quiet unpleasant :/
morose -
when we talk about what life and society has become, objectivity can be quiet difficult as we do see these through our individual eyes. "life and society has become very Social Darwnistic" is just a perspective. I concede that way too many people share that unhealthy perspective but that doesn't make it any more real just like the vast majority of people on this planet believing in a 'god' does not mean some old guy in the sky calls the shots. I know its a cliche but life really is what you make it and 'society' is simply the people you interact with and how you interact with them. From my perspective, "(s)he whos has the money holds the world" is false and its more a case of "(s)he whos has the money is wasting their life on greed and (s)he who has found peace within themselves laughs at them".
As for people with unhealthy perspectives seeing no problem with themselves, and i think a similar point was made in another topic about harmful people; is the disappointment with this because we'd like to see them hurt? does that make us any better? and from a different angle, isn't that even worse for them? at least if you can see the problem, you can improve, whereas not seeing it condemns you to being that way! there is also the pleasure of appreciating the value of something even if you don't have it. For example, I might be slightly disappointed that I don't have the skills to express my emotions in an artistic way but I still take pleasure in seeing others do so. I'd say that's a lot better than having those talents and not being able to appreciate a piece of fine art.....ok, i think i might be getting lost a bit, hope some of that makes sense.
It basically comes down to what we were discussing in another topic about the brain hierarchy; emotions are a part of our primitive brain, which still exists because its essential, and rationality or the ability to model and analyze, our prefrontal brain. We need both there but whether we have a healthy or unhealthy mind depends on who runs the show.
If prefrontal is the boss, it can decide whether an emotion is rational and useful and let it run its course or let it die (by not letting it attach itself to thoughts or memories as emotions can't survive without a supporting thought or memory) accordingly. But, if the primitive brain is in charge, the emotions use the prefrontal to add substance to themselves and create a reality for us that matches the emotion, hence the lovely world when we're feeling happy and the hell like world when we're experiencing negative emotions.
So yey to emotions :) just gotta keep them on a leash ;)
Life is more complicated than it used to be. Some people will stop showing their concern for others because they've had their efforts come back to bite them in the a**. Some people persist in their efforts. But I see fewer people who make acts of kindness a lifestyle because our time is generally filled with our own personal agendas.
What I love to see is the elderly reaching out and mixing. Their confidence is admirable. I hope I remain capable of doing that because I get quite concerned about the inability to make real connections. They grow sparser as the years go by.
I think you are right, Shantih, but how has this happened? Why have people become so self-interested? I know the pace of modern Western lifestyles can be fairly hectic but, if we can't see beyond our own needs, then we are missing so much.
Coming home in the bus tonight, I was reminiscing with a friend I had not seen in years. We were recalling tales of our children and I remembered on one occasion my older son came home appalled that his wee brother was fighting with a P7 boy (in Scotland children spend their fitst 7 years of schooling (5-12) in a primary school). I feared for my son because he had had a hard time previously from bullying. When he came home, I challenged him about fighting and he told me that this lad was picking on a younger boy and he had to defend him (no matter that he was a lot younger too!) Sadly, this same son suffered a massive brain haemorrhage but what I have learned about my son is that, although he may have been socially unaccepted because of some mental health problems, he fostered relationships - consoling friends in grief, rescuing a young lad who was trying to hang himself (the lad eventuallu succeeded in committing suicide), intervening to prevent fights, walking scared young girls home, etc, etc. It seems my son had no self esteem but an abundance of esteem for others. I often ask myself how much I dare intervene - do I want the hassle, could it put me in danger. He never had these thoughts - only those of what was right and justice. Sorry to digress, but this son is only 31 and he is probably going to a care home because he cannot live independently.
As for old folks, I know what you mean. I like to think that, with age, comes wisdom. I certainly know much more now than I did 30 years ago. I have been able to watch, experience and learn. I am not sure that it is necessarily confidence that allows them to reach out and mix. It is their lack of self consciousness. Now there's a thought - self conscious -> self interest?
I do feel our paralysis is owed to fear. I believe people are basically good and we are living in a sick society. And we are able to overcome much of it if we try.
now, when it comes to humans possessing both compassion and cruelty, i'd like to add a third worldview, amorality! i agree that people are no more or less compassionate or cruel but the disturbing change is in levels of amorality.
we are basically apes and our interactions with each other has never been much different to them; we form social groups which are held together by compassion and co-operation but also require the establishment of a group hierarchy which fosters competition and occasionally cruelty that comes with it. Then there is cruelty to outsiders, which is once again due to competition, this time for territory, resources etc.
interestingly enough, compassion and cruelty are more similar than different in that they both involve the use of our frontal lobes to model how the recipient feels and thinks and how our actions will influence that. They are just different ways of using that same model.
amorality on the other hand, comes out of not using that tool at all, which basically reduces others to the level of objects in our environment. we might use the model for people whose actions directly impact our lives but everyone else is no different to the trees we drive by.
the scary part is, the increase in amorality actually makes sense in an evolutionary way and is not likely to change unless the way we live changes drastically! life, or more accurately, the system we live in, is more complicated and there are WAY too many of us. if our minds are already spending too much of its resources modeling the system we live in, adding models of all the people we encounter as well does create an overload so people resort to not modeling anyone that does not directly effect their lives.
some of us, i think i can speak for people here and danny as well, insist on being apes and continue to feel compassion and try to find some way or even just hope of returning to that way of life. some do this but become damaged through their life experiences and use that mechanism for cruelty. But, most are blindly evolving towards being amoral ants that simply react to stimulus provided by the system they live in :(
I seldom like to talk about being the victim of anything. I also have to curb myself from too much ranting about the ills of society. I can really go off on a tangent - secret societies and that sort of thing. But I do believe we are victims of an insidious degradation of our abilities to make sound decisions, to even be fully conscious. Whether there are motives beyond big business wanting to make profits, who can really say? It seems money alone is sufficient motive to do the damage.
I ponder it and I can't fathom how, when we as humans who are so driven by our social needs for cooperation and competition, we care about poverty, we care about our planet, we give to charity, we strive to better ourselves; we are still so dismally unable to accomplish any more than we do. With our drives, surely we would never consciously choose to degrade our morality. Yet it has happened.
the cumulative effects of an inhumane environment subtly plays on each of us causing a certain fearful groupthink mentality that is self-sustaining. it is truly pathetic.