This is http://www.essayz.com/a8906041.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.} ========================================================== %COLLUSION SURVIVE BLOCK ESSENTIAL INTEGRITY SKILL 890604 For a collusion to survive it must block many essential integrative skills; i.e., skills which are essential to personal and communal integrity. A collusion cannot survive if the participants in the collusion become honestly aware of the elements of the collusion and how the elements of the collusion are related to other elements of the collusion in the daily lives of the participants in the collusion. For a collusion to survive its participants must regard the survival of the collusion as the one most important consideration in their lives; even more important than their personal and communal integrity. Such a view is of course absurd, foolish, irrational, self-destructive, idolatrous, insane, etc. Yet for participants in a dominant collusion the collusion blocks all the human skills which might reveal to them how absurd, foolish, irrational, self-destructive, idolatrous, insane, etc. are behaviors which are mandated by the collusion. It is essential to the survival of a collusion that all such liberating skills be blocked, for all forms of honesty are threatening to a collusion. To participants who are fully dedicated to the survival of a collusion not only are some forms of dishonesty forbidden as part of manipulative techniques; all forms of honesty are a threat to the integrity of the technocratic techniques of their collusion. To a fanatical participant in a collusion all forms of honesty are blocked by various forms of taboos. It is of course essential to the survival of the collusion that all such blockages be invisible. The following essential integrative skills must be blocked for a collusion to survive. The ability to: Listen openly and honestly to what others are expressing as the nature of their experiences, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, convictions, fears, etc. Express openly and honestly to others the nature of your own experiences, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, convictions, fears, etc. Be aware in meditation of the nature of your own experiences, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, convictions, fears, etc. Analyze the connections between your choices and the natural consequences of carrying out choices through decisions and actions. Perceive the differences between and among elements, relationships, processes, realities, etc. which must be con-fused for the collusion to survive. Believe that anything so absurd, foolish, irrational, self-destructive, idolatrous, and insane as a collusion could be real and survive for any length of time. Collusions are illustrated by the self destructive behaviors of people who are ADDICTED TO: alcohol, caffeine (coffee, tea, cola, pop), nicotine, other drugs, food, work, sex, power, research, scholarship, religious fanaticism, political fanaticism, corporate success, personal success, and perfectionism as fixes for what they see as being wrong in their being themselves. To each kind of addict the elements, relationships and dynamics of their particular collusion are hidden, obscured, confused, concealed, invisible, unreal, impossible, etc. Such must be the case for their peculiar world to survive. Any other world view is experienced as a threat to their own dysfunctional world view, their only paradigm. There is in each kind of collusive addiction a pattern of disintegrative processes which may be partially understood in terms of the concepts of: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, medicine, psychology, sociology, economics, theology, etc. It is essential to the survival of a collusion to separate and confuse all such partial understandings and so to make proponents of each way of understanding to think that their partial way of understanding is a complete understanding with integrity in and of itself. For a collusion to survive it must block ALL essential integrative skills; i.e., all skills which are essential to personal and communal integrity. Honesty is taboo to participants in a collusion, yet deceptions must appear to be honest for the collusion to survive. This puts participants in a collusion in double binds all the time; thus ill-at-ease and dis-eased. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================