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  %INDEPENDENT ACHIEVE SALVATION REJECT ACCEPT LOVE 890719

     When  a community accepts the notion that its members
must achieve their own salvation/acceptance;  it sows  the
seeds of the disintegration of its members,  and the seeds
of its own disintegration.

     When   members  of  a  community  cannot   count   on
acceptance as communicating members of the community, they
must  earn  membership in the community by  conformity  to
some standard of behavior.  The more clearly specified the
standard  of conformity is,  the more coercive it is.  The
less clearly specified the standard of conformity is,  the
more  easily  it can be used as the grounds for  rejection
from   communication.   In  either  case  there  is   dis-
integration.

     Members  of  such  a community may  be  rejected  for
accepting others on insufficient grounds.  To play safe it
is better to reject when in doubt,  than to accept when in
doubt.

     People  who  want to stay in good standing in such  a
community  must adopt the attitude that they are on  their
own to earn acceptance; they must be self sufficient,  not
counting   on  gifts  of  charity,   love,    forgiveness,
redemption, etc.

     In  such a community it is clear that those who  make
good have done so on their own,  and have clear grounds to
be  proud  of their accomplishment,  and they  have  clear
grounds  for  looking down upon those who  have  not  made
good.  Those who have not made good have no grounds for  a
healthy self esteem,  and act accordingly in addictive and
codependent ways.

     When  a community accepts the notion that its members
must achieve their own salvation/acceptance,  it sows  the
seeds for the disintegration of its members,  and sows the
seeds  for its own disintegration through  addictions  and
codependent  support of addictions,  as  rejected  members
seek to achieve emotional security in the face of communal
rejections.

     As  rejected members seek desperately to gain control
of  others'   inclination to  conditionally  reject/accept
them,   they try one form of addiction/codependence  after
another as the hoped for means to achieve salvation.  They
become    technocrats   seeking   the    best    effective
technique/means  to salvation and security in the  absence
of any freedom to be vulnerable. Their defensive maneuvers
heighten   pre-existing  insecurity  and  dispositions  to
understand,   predict  and control human behaviors as  the
best means to salvation.

     Such  a  disintegrating community needs  to  honestly
accept  the fact that meaningful security is the  freedom-
to-be-vulnerable   which  is  given  as  a  gift   through
acceptance  into the community of dialogue without  regard
for individual achievements and failures.  Given that kind
of  security,  self esteem is not threatened and there  is
little   motivation  to  engage  in  addictive/codependent
behaviors.

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