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  %PREVENT IDENTIFY PROFIT LEARN FROM MISTAKES LOVE 891108

     There   is  a  great  difference  between  preventing
mistakes on the one hand; and identifying, profiting from,
and/or learning from mistakes on the other hand.

     To prevent mistakes one must know a great deal,   yet
often  one  is  tempted to  interfere  coercively  through
manipulative  and  misleading  behavior in  the  lives  of
people  who  appear about to make a mistake.  When one  is
trying to prevent other people from making a mistake,  one
is  not  likely to recognize the mistakes one  is  oneself
making in trying to control other people's behaviors.

     It  is much more profitable to oneself and to  others
to   seek  to  identify  and  learn  from  other  people's
mistakes, than to try to prevent them.

     Even  here  it is often a mistake to  approach  other
people's   actions  with  the  notion  that   one   should
unilaterally identify their mistakes for them.  It is more
helpful  to approach other people with a desire to  be  in
open and honest dialogue with them so that together we may
learn from our experiences, whatever those experiences may
be.   It  is  often a mistake to  label  actions  and  the
experiences  which  follow as "mistakes".   Such  labeling
often leads to experiences of  guilt,  regret,  shame, low
self esteem,  rejection, alienation, etc. We need to learn
what  we  can  learn from the experiences  we  have  after
engaging in such labeling of some behaviors as "mistakes".
Through   such  learning  we  may  all  profit  from   our
experiences.

     We  need to learn from the experiences we have  which
flow from our attitudes and manners of speaking.  To think
of "women power" in mechanistic ways, rather than in terms
of liberating women to exercise political power,  leads to
degrading experiences relating to women.  We need to learn
what may be learned from degrading experiences relating to
women,   but  we will not so learn by  trying  to  control
women, or trying to control relationships involving women.

     To learn from our own and other people's  experiences
we need to attend as much to the quality of our attitudes,
assumptions,     values,    ideals   and    inter-personal
relationships;   as to the character of individual choices
and  actions.  The consequences of our individual  choices
and  actions  are rooted in our  attitudes,   assumptions,
values, ideals and inter-personal relationships;  not in a
mechanistic way in individual choices and actions.

     Individual  choices and actions lead to  consequences
in   ways  which  depend  as  much  upon  our   attitudes,
assumptions,     values,    ideals   and    inter-personal
relationships;   as they do upon the isolated choices  and
actions.    It  is  disintegrative  to  pretend  that  the
consequences flow from the choices and actions quite apart
from  the  context  within which the choices  and  actions
occur. People who create a context in which blame,  shame,
punishment,  guilt, etc. flourish; are just as responsible
for the disintegration found in such contexts,  as are the
people  who make individual mistakes within such contexts.
The  mistakes which such contexts engender will not  cease
until  their  is an understanding of  the  important  role
which  the  contexts play in creating the consequences  of
the individual decisions and actions.

     We  cannot  learn  from our own  and  other  people's
mistakes  unless  we  learn to see the ways in  which  our
communal  contexts help to create the consequences of  our
mistaken  actions.  We need to learn how to transform  our
communal contexts so that the consequences of our mistakes
are  not  so disintegrative.  We need to  create  communal
contexts  in which integrative learning takes place in the
face of all different kinds of decisions and actions.

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