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From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Emotions and choice
Message-ID: <1447@peora.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Aug-85 21:21:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: peora.1447
Posted: Tue Aug  6 21:21:39 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 01:46:04 EDT
References: <5557@cbscc.UUCP>  <591@unc.UUCP>
Organization: Perkin-Elmer SDC, Orlando, Fl.
Lines: 94

>>> I'm a (almost totally) self-actualized individual and I   <--- from me.
>>> KNOW that my emotions are my own CHOICE.  Yes,
>>> folks, choice.
> 	Sorry, luv.  If you give someone else responsibility for and
> control of your actions and reactions (EMOTIONS, is what I'm talking
> of) then you are living through them, not through yourself.  If this
> is what you want, then it is your choice.  (gee, there's that word
> again.)

My goodness.  When I wrote my original posting on the popular cult of
self-actualization, I had not read this posting, since it was a very old
one, and I had meant to skip over it.

I don't generally make it a practice to criticize people in a direct manner,
but the above comments (written both by the same person) do incense me
somewhat.

First of all, I do not really believe that "a (almost totally) self-act-
ualized individual" would say they were so.  That is a dismally vain and
pompous thing to do.

Instead, it gets quite to the heart of the matter which I was commenting
on more generally previously.  When I was a graduate student, I can recall
a seminar they had there which was supposed to help you attain self-act-
ualization.  In those days, there was a magazine of social-consciousness,
called "Versus," which frequently wrote penetrating commentaries on such
things (it was later censured out of existence by the Panhellenic Council,
because it suggested that some sorority members were not sincere in their
charitable behaviours), which sent a reporter to this seminar.

What struck me about this seminar -- and I will state this rather bluntly --
was that this seminar taught you something along these lines:

	1) Self-actualization involves recognizing that you are in full
	   control of your life.

	2) Because you are in full control of your life, you don't have to
	   experience any bad emotions if you don't want to.

	3) People may try to make you not be in full control of your life;
	   they may place demands on you, or you may have an emotional
	   dependence on them.  This is very bad.  You can tell it is very
	   bad, because sometimes it makes you feel bad, and it makes you
	   feel bad because you have not maintained full control of your
	   emotions.

	4) Therefore you should realize that you are responsible to no one
	   but yourself.  When you feel bad, it probably means you are
	   developing an emotional interdependency with someone else, and
	   you shouldn't do that, because YOU ARE A SELF-ACTUALIZING PERSON!

As I stated earlier, this is a philosophy derived from pathological cases and
transplanted into the world of fairly healthy individuals.  It is true that
there exist people who have problems of emotional dependence.  For such
people, the above philosophy is a first step in a successive-approximation
to moderation in this dependence.

At the same time, this same philosophy is an absurd one in the everyday
world.  Now, it is hard for me to make an argument for this, because to do
so would involve issues of moral relativism, and I know that there are some
cheerful moral relativists waiting out there in the wings, and I just don't
want to get into that long, pointless, tiring line of cold philosophical
reason that attempts to demonstrate the shortcomings of moral relativism.
So instead, I will just state an opinion:

	It is my opinion that you have a responsibility to care,
	to a reasonable and healthy extent, about the welfare of
	your fellow human-being -- not all of them, just those in
	close proximity to you.  Only a few of them, in fact,
	because there are a lot of people in the world; but I feel
	you have a moral responsibility in this respect.
	It is true that you cannot help all the people in the world,
	and you have to realize this; but it is a sad thing
	that the world is this way, and you should try to help out
	when you can, when you are truly needed.

In a less opinion-based way, however, I will say that I don't think the
people Maslow described were the sort of people this strange notion
of self-actualization attempts to produce.  Maslow noted that they could
sometimes be cold; that they could abandon long-term friends if they felt
that that friend had betrayed some basic principle of theirs; and that
they tended to be detached.  However, I think he also perceived them as
definitely caring individuals.  I furthermore seriously doubt that very
many of them would make statements about their position of strength, then
go on to further berate someone by accusing them of failing as human
beings, "by choice".  Among other things, he viewed them as very
"democratic," and I doubt they would have perceived these distinctions in
people, other than in observing that they did certain things that were not
perceived as particularly good or just.
-- 
Shyy-Anzr:  J. Eric Roskos
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