This is http://www.essayz.com/a9212131.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.} ========================================================== %COMPULSIVE OBJECTIVE BIND SUFFER LOVE FORGIVE+921213 %HUMAN SUFFER RESPOND REFLECT CARE CONCERN PREVENT+921213 %LEAD TEACH PROF POLITICS POWER OBJECT PARADIGM 921213 We need healthy reflexive role models to help us conceive of possible ways to relate to each other in healthy ways. We cannot invent for ourselves very many healthy ways in which to relate to each other; so we need to draw upon the inventions of other people who have lived before us. Yet we cannot learn well how to relate to each other in healthy ways on the basis of reading books, listening to lectures, receiving injunctions and commands, studying abstract statements, being punished for making mistakes, being restricted, etc. We learn most of what we learn about how to relate to each other in healthy ways, through how we watch healthy role models who relate to us and other people in healthy ways. If we have not had the opportunity to meet, watch, live with, respect, admire, copy and otherwise learn from role models who relate to other people in healthy ways; then we will have great difficulty in doing so ourselves. Our lack may exist because there are no such people in our geographic area. Our lack may exist because we have been lead to, or may have chosen to associate with people who do not respect, and do not associated with such healthy role models. Or, we may have been lead to, or may have chosen to internalize some ideals and values which have lead us to regard such healthy role models with much less than respect. In any case, if we have not met, watched, lived with, respected, admired, copied and otherwise learned from role models who relate to other people in healthy ways; then we will have great difficulty in doing so ourselves. Often college and university students who narrowly focus their academic lives in the intensive study of some narrow specialty---themselves become very narrowly focused persons; and lack associations with integrative role models who demonstrate healthy ways of relating reflexively to other people. This often happens in highly respected doctoral programs of study in exclusive universities where the focus is almost exclusively upon research and publication. There the dominant paradigms often devalue reflexive relationships, and devalue role models of healthy reflexive relationships; because there the emphasis is upon objectivity, scientific values and ideals, consensus about objective truths, conformity to professional standards, and gaining the respect of people who are noted for their lack of ability to relate reflexively to others. When such narrowly focused exclusive graduate school programs train future political, educational, religious, scientific, military, business and professional leaders; they set in motion a disintegrative chain reaction in which each succeeding generation becomes more narrowly focused in the absence of healthy role models of healthy reflexive relationships. The very success and respectability of such exclusive graduate school programs generate respectability for exclusivity in the circles of powerful leaders; an exclusivity which works to exclude from educational circles the very kinds of healthy role models who are essential to the personal and communal integrity of all the communities in the world. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================