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  %COMMUNITY RESPONSIBILITY ADDICTIVE CONTROL GOALS 901101

The   community   which  regards  its  members  as   being
responsible  for the results of their efforts  to  achieve
goals,  is a community which sets the stage for  addictive
behavior  through  which people try to control much  which
cannot be controlled.

Citizens  try  to be in control of whatever  they  believe
they will  be held responsible for.  If citizens  will  be
held  responsible  for how others feel,  they will try  to
control other people's feelings.  If citizens will be held
responsible  for  what  others think,  they  will  try  to
control other people's thoughts.  It is disintegrative for
a community to lead its citizens to believe that they will
be  held responsible for turns-of-events over  which  they
cannot   be  in  full  control.   Such  beliefs  lead   to
disintegrative,   addictive and codependent collusions and
behaviors.

It  is  counter-productive to believe  that  personal  and
communal  integrity  can  be promoted  by  holding  people
responsible  for  impossible kinds and levels  of  control
over events. The nature of healthy responsibility needs to
be  defined and understood in a way which  avoids  leading
citizens  to  try  to  control  what  cannot  be  honestly
controlled in healthy ways. Dishonest expectations lead to
dishonest    beliefs,    behaviors,     perceptions    and
communications.

When  we expect that which cannot be honestly regarded  as
possible, we are entrapping ourselves in dishonest prisons
of  our own construction.  When a community expects of its
citizens  that  which cannot be honestly  regarded  as  in
their power to fulfill,  the community entraps itself  and
its citizens in dishonest prisons of its own construction.
Escapes  from  such prisons are miracles,   not  technical
achievements.  No level of scholarship within the paradigm
of the community can lead the way out of such a prison. No
technique  or  technology can destroy the walls of such  a
prison  or  show  how  to break out of  the  prison.   The
prisoners in such a prison do not want to get out, because
they  do not know about being in prison,  or know what  it
would be like to be out of prison.  In ignorance they fear
the unknown outside of the prison. In terrible familiarity
they  prefer  their  disintegrative  life  inside  of  the
prison.

Our  expectations of our selves and of each other can lead
us  into prisons of our own making,  and imprison us there
in ways we cannot transcend. We then need help in learning
to want to escape,  and in transcending the walls which we
created  through  our disintegrative expectations  of  our
selves and of others.
                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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