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             %NON-COERCIVE VULNERABILITY & INTIMACY 850324

     Few  people  like  to be forced to be  vulnerable  or
intimate.   It is only when intimacy and vulnerability are
freely and mutually chosen (because of mutual desire which
is free of coercion)  that intimacy and vulnerability  are
experienced as positively meaningful and desirable.   When
one  or  more  powerful  people force  one  or  more  less
powerful people to accept intimacy and vulnerability, then
the whole experience lacks integrity, is unsatisfying, and
undermines  the personal and communal integrities  of  the
participants.     Intimacy  and  vulnerability   are   not
inherently desirable regardless of context.

     Just as few people like to be forced to be vulnerable
or  intimate,   so also,  few people are helped  by  being
denied  the  opportunity  to  be  intimate  in  vulnerable
relationships.     Intimacy  and  vulnerability  are   not
inherently evil regardless of context.  Few people like to
be forced to avoid intimacy and vulnerability.   Yet those
who have come to fear vulnerability and intimacy,  because
of  coercions  which they experienced,  are  prone  to  be
coercive  in  efforts  to keep  others  from  experiencing
vulnerability and intimacy;  i.e.,  experiences which they
regard   as   essentially  evil, because  of   their   own
experiences   of  coerced  intimacy   and   vulnerability.
Coercion  of one kind can not be corrected by coercion  of
another   kind.      Coercion generates  defensiveness  in
efforts to avoid vulnerability which is feared.

     We   are  secure  when  we  are  free  to  be  safely
vulnerable    and   intimate    without   any    coercion.
Defensiveness    does   not  generate    such    security.
Defensive technologies do  not assure such security,   for
they  are  predicated upon the use of  force and power  to
coerce,  to force others not to  do what  they  are intent
on doing;   or  to  frustrate  their efforts.     No  kind
of  coercion  can  be the means  to   the  elimination  of
coercive vulnerability and/or intimacy.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
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