This is http://www.essayz.com/a9809251.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.} ========================================================== %BACKWARD FEAR AVOID CHERISH CONFUSE ORIENTED SIN+980925 %ALIENATION CONTROL INTEGRITY WHOLE HEALTH EVILS 980925 We often get things all backwards. We want and get what we ought to fear. We fear and avoid what we ought to cherish. We become personally: confused, disoriented, mis-informed, prejudiced, blind, deaf, lost, and dumb --- and do not want to know what our conditions are. We ought to fear alienation; but want and get more --- in ways which inevitably engender alienation. We refuse to acknowledge that alienation is inevitably the fruit of our wanting and getting --- what we think and feel that we must have to be whole. Our wanting, thinking and feeling that we must "have-and-control" to be "whole"---is what leads to our personal and communal fragmentation, disintegration, and destruction. (The three columns below are each to be read slowly from top to bottom; not fast, or from left to right.) We ought to fear alienation which is inevitably engendered due to our: ########################################################## # # # # # BEING # HAVING # CONTROLLING # # # # # ########################################################## # # # # # Superior # More # Others # # # # # # Possessive # Possessions # Possessions # # # # # # In-control # Won # Perceptions # # # # # # Threatening # Dominance # Experiences # # # # # # Higher # Control # Fears # # # # # # Deceptive # Weapons # Knowledge # # # # # # Invulnerable # Defenses # Truth # # # # # # Secretive # Secrets # Money # # # # # # Proud # Arrived # Insights # # # # # # Arrogant # Technologies # Relationships # # # # # # Better # Connections # Friendships # # # # # # Self-Righteous # Made-It # Intimacies # # # # # ########################################################## We often get things all backwards. We want and get --- what we ought to fear. We fear and avoid --- what we ought to cherish. We become personally: confused, disoriented, mis- informed, prejudiced, blind, deaf, lost, and dumb --- and do not want to know what our conditions are. We lose track of the fact that what is essential in life is cooperative personal relationships --- which entail open and honest dialogue --- facilitated through the exchange of free gifts of security --- enjoyed as the freedom to be safely vulnerable. Instead we get it all backwards --- seeking to achieve security as the freedom from vulnerability in open and honest dialogue within intimate personal relationships --- and so we cooperate in being coercive, manipulative, violent, and alienative. We thus engender both personal and communal disintegration --- and fall apart; both personally and communally. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================