This is http://www.essayz.com/b0006191.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.} ========================================================== %PROTECT PRIVACY INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS VULNERABLE+000619 %WEAK POOR SICK THIRSTY HUNGRY YOUNG ELDERLY DEVILS+000619 %CONTENTIOUS DOMINATION SYSTEM DOMINEERING BEHAVIOR 000619 We are confronted with dilemmas when we seek to: 1. Protect people's rights to privacy; i.e., choosing with whom to be involved in open and honest intimate relationships --- and 2. Protect weak, young, and vulnerable people's rights to be protected against: (a) The invasions of their rights to privacy and (b) Their rights not to be dominated by supporters of "The Domination System"; e.g., by domineering people who feel called to guide, discipline, intrude, and control without limits. Supporters of "The Domination System" are often emotionally immature and/or mentally ill-at-ease; willing to rush in where angels fear to tread, trying to control relationships which have not been given to them to control, and which cannot truly be controlled by "outsiders". Such dominant "supporters" are often participants in collusive games of mutual self deception; games which must be protected, at all costs, against the threats of open and honest people to describe the games openly and honestly --- so that all people might see, transcend, and subvert the dishonest games. Such supporters are often addicts and their codependent supporters. In any case such addicts and supporters hide the real nature of what they are doing; from themselves, from each other, from their children, and from their victims. It is usually not at all obvious or simple to see what can be done to graciously describe, understand, transcend, and subvert the disintegrative systems which such supporters of "The Domination System" create and maintain. Just as emotionally immature supporters of "The Domination System" are not helpful when they intrude into the privacy of emotionally mature people who are involved in open and honest intimate relationships --- so also the emotionally more mature people are not helpful when they refuse to show some reasonable consideration for others by limiting their more intimate moments to occasions of privacy --- so as not to embarrass unduly those who are threatened by public intimacy. However, supporters of "The Domination System" go beyond reasonable boundaries when they DEMAND that people who are involved in open and honest intimacy in private --- surrender their privacy and go public to say what they HAVE been doing in private; or go public to say that they have NOT been doing what some emotionally immature domineering people have imagined has been improperly done in private. Domineering people who refuse to tolerate differences among people who are: gentle, humble, gracious, merciful, generous, helpful, open and honest --- do not help anybody through their efforts to play dominant roles in other people's private lives and relationships. Righteousness does not entail conformity to any mandatory pattern of behaviors. Rather righteousness entails being participants involved in and facilitating the evolution of relationships which are: gentle, humble, gracious, merciful, generous, helpful, open and honest. Righteous people cooperate in right relationships and graciously threaten the disintegrative: collusions, addictions, and domineering ways of the supporters of "The Domination System" within their communities. Healthy people of integrity do not live entirely in terms of: rules, commandments, prescriptions, formulas, proscriptions, disciplines, doctrines, etc. They show daily respect for other people's particular desires, needs, fears, hopes, aspirations, embarrassments, etc. Supporters of "The Domination System" find that showing such respect severely undermines their opportunities to move towards complete domination. They are preoccupied with the tools which facilitate domination; rather than with the essential foundations for healthy and integrative relationships which are open, honest and balanced. Healthy people of integrity are not dominated by a sense of duty to reject and alienate themselves --- so as to punish themselves for failing to conform properly to some required pattern of behavior or non-behavior. They understand that such rejection/alienation is disintegrative --- and do not respect or honor it within themselves or within others; as do supporters of "The Domination System". Those dominant people who do respect and honor such reflexive rejections/alienations --- see them as efficient ways to insure proper conformity in keeping with the demands of "The Domination System". From their own point of view --- it is efficient to place upon creative non-conformists the burden of punishing themselves for their failures to conform properly. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================