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 %DISINTEGRATIVE DEFENSE VULNERABILITY SECURITY JOY 890804

     To  survive  each organism and person must deal  with
external threats to its integrity. One cannot survive when
one is torn apart and so has no integrity.

     The  dilemma  is that among the  various  alternative
ways of dealing with external threats to integrity,  there
are defensive procedures which undermine integrity just as
surely  as  does an external attack.  Choosing  to  defend
oneself  by techniques which internally undermine your own
integrity is not really better than losing your  integrity
due  to external attack.  It may be worse;  e.g.,  if  the
external   threat  is  just  imaginary  and  the  internal
destruction of your own integrity is very real.

     How  are  we  to protect ourselves  against perceived
external  threats to our integrity without destroying  our
integrity in the process?

     First  we  need   to  be careful  to  understand  the
natures of integrity, security, and vulnerability; and how
they relate to each other.

     If  we   seek   to protect our  integrity  by  trying
to  achieve  invulnerability,   we thereby  sacrifice  our
security  and undermine our integrity.  This is so because
our  security  is  our  freedom  to  be  vulnerable;   and
defensive  measures undertaken to achieve  invulnerability
sacrifice our freedom to be vulnerable in the effort to be
invulnerable.   Our personal and communal integrity depend
critically  upon  our  freedom to be open  and  honest  in
informative dialogue; upon our freedom to be vulnerable.

     If  we  seek   to protect our  integrity   by  trying
to confuse,  mislead, and misinform our enemy,  we can not
help but confuse,  mislead and misinform ourselves in  the
process.   The  more  we  use  misleading  statements  and
behaviors  to undermine the integrity of our  enemy,   the
more we undermine our own integrity in the process.  Since
we do not trust everybody and every part of our own being,
we use techniques of confusion,  misleading behaviors  and
dis-information  on  parts  of  our team in  the  name  of
security.   Such distrust is disintegrative and undermines
the  integrity  which  the  techniques  were  designed  to
defend.

     There   are   many  forms  of   defense   which   are
disintegrative  and do not promote security which  is  the
freedom to be vulnerable.  It is foolish to burn down your
own  house to defend it from the disintegrative  behaviors
of your enemy! Such behavior is confused!

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