This is http://www.essayz.com/a8912252.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.} ========================================================== %LOVERS RESPONSIVELY COOPERATE COMMUNITY SALVATION 891225 Lovers focus their attention upon cooperative efforts to promote both communal and personal integrity; they are cooperative builders. Cooperation entails significant communications which are open, honest, timely, relevant, reliable, helpful; and so are integrative. Lovers do not focus their attention upon isolated objective efforts, preoccupied with achieving individualistic personal salvation because of concerns with: regret, shame, pride, control, discipline, perfection, imperfections, blame, fault, punishment, reward, etc. Preoccupations, preconceptions, misconceptions, concerns, etc. which stand in the way of people participating in significant communications which are open, honest, timely, relevant, reliable and helpful--- thereby stand in the way of love's integrative work of building communities of integrity. The way may be blocked by attention being focused upon isolated objective efforts which are focused upon achieving individualistic personal salvation through attention given to regret, shame, pride, control, discipline, perfection, imperfections, blame, fault, punishment, reward, etc. Love builds communities which are strong because they are well connected and flexible; not because they are perfect in rigid systematic structures free of irregularities. The perfection of regularity which excludes irregularities is often brittle, rather than tough or robust. Technocrats tend to build brittle systems which cannot respond to exceptional situations with integrity. Lovers build flexible structures which are alive in creative ways to cope with exceptional situations so as to promote tough integrity. Lovers do not build brittle legalistic, moralistic, or systematic ethical structures to regulate personal communications which are the essence of integrative personal relationships. Lovers facilitate communication, rather than try to regulate communication. Lovers do not prescribe what should be; they openly and honestly describe that which they know through their experiences. They listen attentively to each other. They thus learn from their own and other people's experiences. Lovers do not conform themselves to previously conceived ideal forms of being and behaving; they cooperate in conceiving new ways of being and growing true to themselves and each other---by being open and honest with each other in secure contexts which they create for each other. Lovers enjoy their communal salvation in cooperative efforts, not in individualistic competition. If particular lovers are not perceived in these ways it may be because: (1) They are not really authentic lovers, (2) They are being perceived through preconceptions which distort how they are perceived, (3) These conceptions of what it means to be authentic lovers are perceived in distorted ways, and/or (4) authentic perceptions of authentic lovers would be too threatening to be accepted as being true to what is perceived as real life. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================