"Self", as the Center to Self Awareness

Atlas Shrugged


‎"Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws—and he will have cut himself in two."
S2C4

There is something insincere about people who try to patronize others. But, perhaps, their patronizing attitude is due to their superior opinion of themselves as the "saviors of the world".
 
It is imagined that one cannot be a "Christian" if one has concern for oneself, one's own family or cultural values. That is absurd. Christian has as many meanings as there are cultures, because Christiainity is compliant to different values, primarily, I believe, due to Protestantism. "Faith" can mean anything and does in American culture. I think we should seek to keep it that way, otherwise, we will limit America's foremost value, liberty.
 
The above quote suggests that to defy one's values and one's commitment to them, is to "cut oneself in two". Why? Because men are made to make choices about what they respect, admire and want to accomplish for themselves and their families. This is a motivation to set goals. And goals to accomplish inevitably lead to benefitting society.
 
When one is prone to be taught to "feel sorry for" and pity, then one is not respecting, or admiring another. And this "feeling" of pity/compassion is demeaning and demoralizing to those that are also meant to set goals and excel.
 
Expectations in America are individualized, so there is not "one way" to view life and its purposes, or value. And that is as it should be, otherwise, some willl always be defining their life by another's need. And that leaves a co-dependent relationship that is not healthy or beneficial to either party.
 
Value what you value and know why you value it. This is the only way to "own your own life" and defeat "class warfare" and give your own life purpose and meaning.

Longings of the Heart

I just read a number of beautiful eulogies from former students of Alan Segal and had to share one of the quotes from his book, "Life After Death".

 "Religion's imagining of our hereafter also seems to say the same - our 'immortal longings' are mirrors of what we find of value in our lives. They motivate our moral and artistic lives. Our longing itself deserves a robe and crown, nothing less. If humans can be, in Hamlet's words, 'in apprehension like a god,' do we not deserve his epitaph: 'flights of angels sing us to our rest'?" (p. 731).

I think this is a beautiful quote that resonates within my own heart about the "human value" of valuing and determining. These longing of value deserve a "robe and a crown"! His students described a man who talked of transcending oneself. He obviously found that he could do that through the students he left behind.  Alan must have been an artist in creating his scholarship of early Christian and Judaic communities and using classical literature to defend or support the "human element" of such literature.

After that , what more can be said?

Social Problems Have Different Solutions.

Social problems have many different solutions, depending on how one understand and evaluates them. Take for instance homosexuality.

Does one see the homosexual as a human being, first and foremost? Or does one see the value of society's order and structure of primary importance? So, then, it is defined as "sin" or "crime"?

How is homosexuality understood?
As a behavior where the homosexual doesn't deserve equal respect or dignity as to human value?
Why? Because of "sin" or society?

As a abherrant behavior? is this abherrancy something that is something beyond the control of the individual homosexual, like genetic or upbringing?
Or is there a predisposition to this behavior and the individual choice of the homosexual is what makes for morality, as to society's "good"? or is homoseuxality to be the next social change because society's values are really dependent on boundaries around relationships? It is loyalty and stability in relationships that structure and maintain society's order?

The questions about what is "Human Nature" and where the  needs of the human and societal needs and values intersect are important and significant to address, if one wants to allow for liberty of conscience and the value of human choice.

How Can We Support the Deficit?

What is Moral or Responsible about continuing to enlarge our national debt? Do we really believe that responsible choices define moral value and virtue? Then, none of us should support  increases to our national debt!. This is the "ideal" of free societies, otherwise we become enslaved to our debt, which will determine overtly or covertly our policies.

If government continues to undercut private business, while cozying up to large corporations, then, I believe unemployment will continue to increase. And when unemployment increases,  on a large scale, then the practical needs at hand make for "collective demands for justice"! And collective demands for justice means government intervention with social programs that increase individual dependence on government as "provider". Or, such demands for justice means revolution, because human choice has been limited by government's partiality to corporate interests .Isn't this the means of totaltalirinism? The end of revolution is "social order", which won't be promoting human value or choice, unless government gets back to supporting the rule of law. Government will then, be a co-cercive means of controlling human choice and value.

Large corporations base their "need" on utility, which isn't based on the ethical or moral demands of responsible behavior, but what is most expedient to the needs at hand. Profit is the end. While profit is not immoral, it is only a necessary end to "good business". But, when profits outweigh any other considerations, human life becomes a means to the end of justifying enslavement of the employee.

Both profit of corporations, and employee agreement must be based on the interests of both parties, not an undermining of human choice and value.

Now I Get IT (Kant Must Be Proved)

A long time ago when I was in undergraduate school, I had a professor who idealized Kant. He would uphold the value of the "habit of virtue" and "human flourishing". His ideal was acting according to a "standard" of habit, as "human flourishing " was the goal.

Another professor that I had also wanted to do a "study on Kant", just as another liked the idea of an Eastern Christology. These liked the idea of virtue in a world that is filled with dishonestly (The Noble Lie) and personal gain. So, what these aspired to was a behavioral experiment of sorts.

"God was in Christ reconciling the world," The language is theological, but the experiment was a human one. This is a belief in a divinized human being, a saint, if you will. But, can one "create" a saint from the outside, that is, "form" a person by manipulation, and control?

Yes, I think this can and does happen, but not to those who are attuned to such manipulation and controls. These are those who have "understood that language all their lives. And the greater offense is the betrayal of everything that was good, noble and kind in the world. What they thought was to be trusted has left a gaping hole in the heart and life.

What God wants is Personal Sacrifice, as this is True Faith. One is to die for a cause, alto one might not know what the cause is really for. And yet, one is to believe that "God loves them, personally"! No, it is not God loving the Sacrificed; it is God loving others through the sacrifice. This is the life to be embraced, as this is maturity.

 But, isn't this an object lesson to those that want to do such social engineering? and manipulation of the "facts" and the life or another human being? Faith has to be a peronsl choice of value, not an engineered social experiment.

Evil is not understood as an objective, but a personal experience. This justifies what science does to prove the validity of faith. It doesn't seem short of Facist.

Humans might not be equal in all their abilities, but that doesn't negate their individual value. This is why I've been blogging about individualism. Without intellectual humility, "social" or "collectivity" leads to genocide. This is proven by social psychologist. It is group behavior at its worst!

Our nation has gotten to the point of dividing over "the good" or "the right".  And it is collective thinking. And caught in the midst of these fights are those that have lost hope altogether, because of the life left to them.

My brother's suicide taught me that one cannot tell another what is "right", because the personal weight of what seems "the right" might be the "last straw". Was my brother's suicide a lack of faith? Would one judge his life as a life that lacked "character"? I just wonder how his life really matters to those that make such judgments!

The Necessity of Protecting Civil Liberty

Civil liberty was borne on the heels of oppression of a certain sex, or ethnicity. This is what has prompted civil rights and minority rights.

Although I believe in civil liberties, because free societies are what allow for differences, which is humane, I don't think that the best way to promote civil liberties is by creating a law to protect such a right. Laws define what society maintains as a 'standard" or a "norm". Norms, by definition, discriminate. But, norms also protect society from disruption and instability.

Humans have the right to be different in their convictions and values, because humans should be self-governing. The "self" is what monitors and maintains the individual's values structure. Society must allow for such "liberty", but, not at the costs of stability.

In our country, we have recourse for our grievances. We can petition, protest, and litigate. These rights protect the value of civil liberty which maintains a humane environment for human flourishing. Certainly, we do not want to sanction a STATE or RELIGIOUS mandated system where human values are pre-determined without allowing individuals the right to choose. Choice furthers human flourishing by enabling the individual to evaluate, discriminate and come to terms with their own personal value system.

Civil liberty is about protecting the right of individual choice and individual values.

Suicide, the Market, the Eigth Commandment, and Human Value

While waitng for my husband to come our from his office this morning, I heard on the news that a woman had attempted to take her life. The reason was blamed on the market. Anaylsis was given that the woman "had other problems" besides her mortgage.

Just this morning I couldn't sleep, so I decided to get up and write on my blog. The subject was on suicide and human value. In that entry I argued that life's meaning was given within the context of community and when the social structures do not affirm the life, there can be the response of suicide. Suicide is not done within an isolated context, but an incident that illustrates what has happened over a lifetime. It's "speech/act" is of a de-valued life.

This morning"s sermon was on the Eigth Commandment, "thou shalt not steal". In the sermon, my pastor argued that the OT's boundaries were different from the NT's. The Old Testament regards the boundaries of self and other. He argued that the Sermon on the Mount asked us to "give all" without any regard for "self" in how, or what was required. In fact, if we do not give, we are stealing, in effect, for all things belong to God. While I agree with this in premise, I wondered to myself, and this was before hearing of this woman's suicide, how in disregarding another's improper behavior toward you would enlarge the "greater good"? Wouldn't it only empower evil? and make a statement to the guilty that there needs to be no guilt? My pastor went on to make an illustration of a burglary he had experienced, where this young man broke into his house on four occassions. Wouldn't it be appropriate to get him help? And wouldn't part of the help be reabilitation for his behavior?

Nations certainly don't maintain the NT's standard of "turning the other cheek", unless one adheres to pacifism. I find that the "ideal" of the Sermon on the Mount is just that "ideal" in an imperfect world. Idealism is impractical. What I really think my pastor meant and what I believe the Sermon on the Mount means is that possessions should not "own us". That means we are not making decisions based solel y on the market. But, that does not mean that we do not consider the market, otherwise there is no justice in our form of government. Justice is not what the Sermon on the Mount is about, but mercy. And certainly, my pastor was not asking us to disregard justice.

What does my blog's early morning entry, the woman's suicide, and my pastor's sermon have in common? A person's value....A person's value is worth more than the money he makes or has, and yet, if the community, state, nation, condones market values on life, then my pastor's sermon becomes an absurdity to the individual whose life has been weighed and measured by those standards and not loved and embraced as an individual.

I wonder if the woman who attempted to take her life, was only acting out what society's message to her was in the first place?