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  %STYLES KINDS RELATIONSHIPS ELEMENTS PEOPLE ROLES 900227

     There are many different kinds and styles of personal
relationships  based upon many different kinds and  styles
of   conceptions  of  what  personal   relationships   are
possible, proper, desirable, conceivable, etc.

     Some people interact with each other as do balls on a
billiard  table;   bumping  into each  other  without  any
internal  sense of identity or purpose:   objectively  and
without any fundamental sense of consciousness. They treat
each other as objects without personal considerations.

     Other people interact with each as combatants who are
engaged  in  zero-sum games where what one  wins  somebody
else  must lose.  According to the rules of  their  deadly
games  they  cannot  afford to  communicate  honestly  and
intimately   with   any  other   person,    for   intimate
communication might let essential secrets out which others
can  use against you.  They enter into essentially  lonely
and alienative relationships with others;  like spy versus
spy.

     There  do exist communities in which people  actively
cooperate  with each other in open,  honest,  intimate and
meaningful  ways.   Some  people  do work  as  members  of
coherent  teams to fulfill mutual goals.  They do not  see
each other as contestants seeking to win and own a limited
number  of  goods;   but as cooperators in  creating  more
goods,  where the more which is given,  the more everybody
has to enjoy.

     Some people relate to each other as actors on a stage
and in a drama; people cast into roles which are not their
own  creations,  but the creations of some unknown  others
who  are  not really present.  They cast each  other  into
prisons  by casting each other into roles from which  they
are  not  to  escape.   They do not let  each  other  play
themselves in authentic presence and living.

     Some  people cast themselves into restrictive  roles,
unwilling  to  invent themselves;  unwilling  to  conceive
themselves, and unwilling to be born anew in creative ways
which  were not cast in the past.  They are  unwilling  to
play themselves,  because they have been discouraged  when
they did try to play themselves in the past;  other people
were unwilling to relate to them as themselves, being able
to  relate  to  them  only  as some  role  which  was  not
themselves.

     Some people play exclusively professional or job-cast
roles;   doing  what  the  profession  or  job  calls  for
according  to some script written by some unknown and  un-
present  other(s).  They are able to relate only to others
of  their  own  kind and are made  very  uncomfortable  by
people who are playing themselves openly and honestly.

     Some  people play to each other the roles  of  victim
and oppressor,  addict and codependent,  child and parent,
etc.   Each role needs the contrasting other role for  the
acting to continue; and each is insecure in the absence of
the  other role being played according to some  oppressive
script.

     Some  participants  are imprisoned  in  comprehensive
collusive  games  of mutual self deception;   all  playing
roles of oppressors and victims in ways in which there are
no  clear oppressors or victims,  because all participants
are both oppressors and victims. They are so confused that
they    cannot   reflect   upon   their   own    reflexive
relationships;   and  regard the whole process  to  be  an
objective  reality  which can be analyzed in terms of  its
elementary objective parts.

     Truly  liberally educated people have been  liberated
from mutually exclusive styles and kinds of relationships.
Liberally  educated  people do not yield to  coercion  and
manipulations  in which roles are imposed;  and people are
not   free  to  play  themselves  openly,   honestly   and
authentically.   Few people are truly liberally  educated;
because most administrators,  professors and teachers  are
not secure enough to encourage their students to transcend
the  manipulative  processes  of  their  instructors   and
administrators.

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