This is http://www.essayz.com/a8704231.htm         
Previous-Essay      <== This-Essay ==>     Following-Essay
Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words.
{Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.}
==========================================================
                  %USER CONTROL OF PERSONS DETACHED 870423

     Alienation  is  a consequence of using persons  in  a
detached   way.   What is alienative treatment?   Treating
people  as   objects   with  objectivity,   as  means   to
unilaterally chosen ends, as a manager controlling objects
without a will of their own, as "its" in "person"-"object"
relationships;   while avoiding  any personal presence  of
one's own spirit in the relationship:    such treatment is
alienative  and   so disintegrative.   Such detachment  is
promoted as a means to control, not as a means to breaking
off attempts at being in control.   Detachment may be used
as  a  means for either gaining control,  or as a  way  of
letting  go  of  attempts to be in  control.    There  are
important differences between the two kinds of detachment.

     Attachment is often part of the process of trying  to
be in control;  asserting ownership and power to dominate,
to control.   Attachment as a means to being in control is
not the same as intensive personal presence,  involvement,
spiritual    participation,     intimacy,   vulnerability.
Attachment as a means to being in control is not mutual in
an integrative way;  it is alienative  in that it involves
attempts to use people, paradoxically,  in a detached way.
Attachment  as  a  means  to  being  in  control  involves
personal/spiritual  detachment;   avoidance  of   personal
involvement,    personal    presence    and  of   personal
presentation.    I-Thou  relationships  are  avoided  when
seeking  to  be  in control.   "Hello"  is not said  in  a
spiritual way, but in a manipulative way.  In the I-It way
the I by seeking to control "it"  becomes an object in  an
I-It objective world of  cause  and  effects  which can be
understood, predicted and controlled in objective ways.

     Personal   presence,   participation,   intimacy  and
dialogue   entails   vulnerability.     Vulnerability   is
inconsistent with being in control.   Those who feel  that
it is important to be in control must,  therefore,   avoid
vulnerability.   Yet,  vulnerability is intimately related
to  security:    security  is  the freedom  to  be  safely
vulnerable.    Thus  people  who choose to try  to  be  in
control can not be free to be safely vulnerable and so can
not be secure; they must be defensive by their own choice,
and so can  not be secure.   This is the trap of all forms
of addiction  to:   alcohol,   drugs, sex, work,  weapons,
spending, eating,  power, manipulation, etc.  Addicts lack
self-esteem,  seek  to compensate   through   attempts  at
control,    alienate   themselves,   avoid  intimacy   and
vulnerability, and so disintegrate themselves and others.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
==========================================================