This is http://www.essayz.com/a9212123.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.} ========================================================== %REJECT EXPEL DISFELLOWSHIP EXCOMMUNICATE ALIEN 921212 It is dangerous to be preoccupied with how to avoid being expelled by the manipulative members of an addictive community. To ask how that may be done and to view the question as the central question of our lives, is to ask the wrong question. Being preoccupied with that question is one of the central features of members of an addictive community; and one of the primary reasons that addictive communities lack integrity and disintegrate. Integrative communities take it for granted that the members of the community are ESSENTIALLY members of the community; that while members of the community have a responsibility to express openly and honestly what they think and feel about each other's behaviors and expressions, IT IS UNTHINKABLE that members of the community would be excommunicated, expelled, disfellowshipped, shunned, ridiculed, rejected, ostracized, etc.---because they did not conform in behavior and expression to some set of requirements regarding behavior, belief, conviction, expression, or life style. Membership in the community is taken for granted and is not questioned or threatened. Personal displeasure with some behaviors and expressions are freely expressed with feeling and honesty, and communal constraints may be imposed; but such personal displeasure is not thought of as reasonable grounds for expulsion of members from the community; no matter how extreme the displeasure may be. The members of a community who are rejected, excommunicated, ostracized, ridiculed, expelled, dis- fellowshipped, etc. are in a position to describe the dysfunctional aspects of the practices. The integrative role which they can play, to is openly and honestly describe how and why such practices lead to the disintegration of the communities which engage in such practices. The communities which engage in such practices are blinded by their collusions, addictions and codependencies; and cannot see the disintegrative consequences of the ways in which they practice deliberate alienation. Alienation is the essence of evil. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================