This is http://www.essayz.com/a9605261.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.} ========================================================== %PERSONAL COMMUNAL INTEGRITY PARADOX FULFILLMENT+960526 %NEEDS PRIVACY EXPECTATION INHIBIT AVOID SILENT+960526 %IGNORE LACK COERCIVE VIOLENT MANIPULATE TALK 960526 Personal and communal integrity flow from the paradoxical and simultaneous fulfillment of: *************************** ****************************** * * * * * 1. Personal needs * * 3. Communal needs for * * for privacy, * * creative initiatives. * * * * * * * * * *************************** ****************************** *************************** ****************************** * * * * * 4. Communal needs for * * 2. Personal needs for for * * expectation * * a supportive communal * * fulfillments, * * context, * * * * * *************************** ****************************** The development and sustenance of personal and communal integrity are inhibited by tendencies to avoid paradoxes and the integration of what appear to be contradictory needs. Numbers below suggest how letting one quadrant become dominant leads to the neglect of and/or attack upon another quadrant---and so leads by stages to the disintegration of community in regards to the remaining two quadrants. 4->1=>2&3: When communities gang up on creative individuals in coercive/violent ways in efforts to get creative individuals to fulfill immature communal expectations---creative individuals withdraw in one way or another from the immature community; psychologically and spiritually, if not physically. When personal needs for creative privacy are not honored, creative people who are seeking to maintain their personal integrity will withdraw from whatever threatens their personal integrity---even though such withdrawal undermines the integrity of the community which the creative people desperately need; and so it undermines the fulfillment of the communal need for creative initiatives. 4->2=>1&3: When communities fail to provide a supportive communal context for creative members of the community, such creative members feel an increased need for privacy and isolation---and so withdraw from providing the community the creative initiatives which it needs. "Things Fall Apart" as Acheebe wrote from Africa. 1->4=>2&3: When in misguided efforts to fulfill personal needs for privacy, some individualists ignore personal responsibilities for being involved in cooperative community-building efforts---communities often respond by withholding communal support for the creative individuals within the community and their rights to privacy; and so the community inhibits the creative inputs which it needs. 1-3->4-2: When creative individualists withdraw physically, spiritually and/or psychologically from their community of origin, and fail to participate responsively and responsibly therein---their community is likely to see them as not fulfilling communal expectations; and through disrespect is likely to gang up on creative individuals in coercive/violent ways, in efforts to get creative individuals to fulfill immature communal expectations. Such creative individualists lose even more of whatever advantages of communal support and/or context they may have previously had. 3->1=>2&4: When communal needs for creative initiatives are not recognized, named, described, talked about and honored---the personal needs of members of the community for privacy and for a supportive communal context are ignored. The community is likely to focus upon the fulfillment of coercive/violent expectations--- and so is likely to gang up on creative individuals in coercive/violent ways in efforts to get creative individuals to fulfill immature communal expectations. 2-3=>1&4: When personal needs for a supportive personal context are misunderstood or perverted---personal needs for privacy are neglected or attacked; and there is a tendency for the community to gang up on creative individuals in coercive/violent ways in efforts to get creative individuals to fulfill immature communal expectations. When considerations of one sector dominate over the needs pertaining to another sector the sectors fall apart and both communal and personal dis-integration occur. We need to look for ways in which to integrate the considerations of all for sector, for personal and communal integrity flow from the paradoxical and simultaneous fulfillment of the foci of all four sectors considered as a whole. Communal attempts to use coercion, manipulations and violence to control individuals' behaviors so that they "conform", "cooperate" and "contribute properly" to the community---eventually lead to dishonesty, withdrawal, rebellion, and worse. Individualistic attempts to deceive, conceal, withdraw, rebel, and be totally independent---lead to the disintegration of the community which is essential to personal meaning and fulfillment. These disintegrative patterns occur daily within the lives of nuclear families, extended families, gangs, neighborhoods, schools, churches, businesses, cities, professions, counties, states, nations, and political organizations. We all lose when we do not recognize, name, describe, and talk about such patterns and their integrative mirror images in which "right" and "left" are reversed. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================