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This is http://www.essayz.com/a8909161.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.} ========================================================== %GUIDE LIGHT VALUE IDEAL MYTH METAPHOR ROLE MODEL 890916 In our lives we are guided by our own guiding lights. Our guiding lights may be in the form of metaphors, myths, stories, central values & ideals, role models, technologies, etc. We may have chosen our guiding lights either consciously or unconsciously. They may have been given to us and we accepted them consciously or unconsciously. We may never have realized that there might be alternative guiding lights. We may think of our life as a journey, competition, contest, dream, story, tale, comedy, tragedy, struggle, mission, battle, war vision, essay, relationship, ship, etc. Each such metaphor can serve as a guiding light in terms of which we make sense of our life. Everything else in our life may fall into place in terms of such a guiding light. All our communications and interpretations may revolve around some such central guiding light. Our life may be organized around some central myth which we take to be unquestionably "true" and reliable as a guiding light; telling us how things really are. We and others who respect and share such a myth communicate and understand each other in terms of the shared myth; and fail to understand others who do not respect the myth. We may share our myth by telling stories of heroes and how they struggled to fulfill our myth; stories of set-backs and advances which inspire us to struggle likewise to be the best we can be. We may live in terms of ideals and values which tell us how we should behave, what we should achieve, what we should do and should not do in order to be most acceptable. Our self confidence and self esteem may depend upon how successful we are in living up to our ideals and values. We and others may make judgments and accept/reject ourselves and each other in terms of the degree of perfection achieved relative to our ideals and values. We may have grown up with an instinctive respect for specific people we have known or known of, and adopted them as central role models in our lives. We seek to be like them and do to the kinds of things which they have done in the way we see them as having done what they have done. If we share a common role model or set of role models we understand each other and are able to cooperate effectively, and look suspiciously upon others who do not share our particular role models. We may be preoccupied with knowledge and techniques for getting things done. If so we will be led to do what our knowledge and techniques make possible for us to do. If we are preoccupied with hammers we try to solve our problems by pounding. If we are preoccupied with saws we try to solve our problems by sawing. If we are preoccupied with computers, we try to solve our problems and dilemmas with computers, etc. We seek to serve as technocrats who are lead by techniques. In each instance we are lead by some guiding light. The nature of our lives depends much upon the nature of our primary guiding lights, the differences which may exist within guiding lights of a particular nature, and upon the ways in which we combine their influences upon us and others. We are able to understand and cooperate with others to the extent that we understand and share in their guiding lights as being trustworthy. We differ from each other fundamentally when we follow guiding lights of differing natures: in metaphors, myths, central values & ideals, role models, technologies, or other forms. Those people who are guiding their lives in terms of metaphors will have difficulty communicating with those whose lives are guided by verbalized rules and regulations which seek to conform people to some particular ideals and values. They all in turn will have difficulty communicating with technocrats whose lives follow wherever their techniques leads, even when that cannot be seen in advance. Usually we, as technocrats, cannot see where technology will lead us, or what it will do to the quality of our inter-personal relationships; for technocrats show little care for such considerations. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================