Om att boosta egot...

Denna bok fanns med i senaste boktidningen för Barnens bokklubb och jag reagerade direkt negativt. Varför behöver unga kvinnor (människor) egoboostas? Vad är det som gör att de saknar självkänsla?

Borde man försöka börja där, om det är möjligt, istället för att tillföra den saknade självkänslan liksom utifrån?

Om man lyckades med det skulle det ge ett bättre resultat både för individen OCH dennas/dennes omgivning? Samt ett resultat som var längre räckande? Kanske räckande hela livet ut?

Om Blondinbella.

Se den amerikanske psykologen Jonathan Rottenberg i t.ex. "The Pitfalls of Seeking Happiness."

Och se Alice Miller om självbedrägeri.

Och apropå det där med Me first...

The indifference as hidden violence - on social dilution…

the beauty of the nature (photo: S. Thomas).

One of the chapters in Wikström’s book has the title “The indifference as hidden violence – on social dilution.”

There he writes that many seem to have a proper job finding themselves. They are working hard on finding themselves.

Too many reference points are in constant movement. New ideals come and pass in a few weeks. The compass needle isn’t even spinning. It has disappeared.

The share of time people see real persons seem to be shorter and shorter compared to the time occupied with ‘social’ relations with people one don’t know except via media.

And this is tragic, and all too common? But why is it like this?

Since the human being is playing together with more and more people (all TV-series’ different gestalts not to forget) at the same time as she meets them during more fleeting spaces of time a social dilution occurs. When the human being – as a pure survival instinct – is thinning her relations to other people out, it becomes the more important to cultivate her own inner being. My addition: maybe needed too?

He writes further about something I think is interesting: passivity constitutes hidden violence. Many people distance themselves from physical violence in words. In the next moment they show that they assuredly want but cannot manage to get into other peoples’ sufferings. Maybe the present time’s wealthy north-European is witnessing the sort of cruelties that in the future will be seen as as barbaric as the abuse of women seem for us today: the leaning back indifference.

But is it the people in power, with most resources, who do something, are taking responsibility? Or who are they working or even fighting for? Who are trying to take the burden on their shoulders instead? Even though they have just a fraction of the money and power other people have. Who take the guilt on them? Who are accusing themselves for being indifferent, selfish, thinking only on themselves, and who are not?

It’s not a social construction; women and children in Africa are starving to death by actual undernourishment, while people in the rich world are buying bigger and bigger and more gasoline consuming SUVs. This is called omission sin. Embarrassed he writes this to himself too (though I am not sure he owns a SUV!).

Maybe it’s so that those same persons whom once upon the time were eating lentil soup, stood on the barricades and accused the big companies for arrogance now are members of the cigar smokers club or the fountain pen’s association. Large-eyed kids are seeing their parents betraying their old youth ideals:

“Not even they are caring, why should we then?”

They (those parents) are showing the arrogance and cynicism they reacted at once?

Showing moral pathos is seen with suspiciousness:

“Wasn’t the 68-generation a little overstrung? Look at the big golf bags they are conveying to Arlanda now [airport outside Stockholm] and what sort of wines they are tasting in Toscana!”

Consumism, entrepreneurship, profit maximizing, Neoliberalism and market powers, buy and sell are code words. They are seldom called in question.

So the questions return – who sees the weak and try to do something – commonly and long-term. Where are the models whose pathos apply to other people, to the ones that cannot manage, cannot afford or aren’t strong?

Who are showing placards where it is written that how positively a person even thinks about himself there is fragility in the existence/life nobody can turn away from? The tragedy comes sooner or less.

Then “if you want a thing done well, do it yourself” isn’t true or the solution, but the human being is entirely in the hands of other people. So who liberates and canalizes the engagement potential (many people are only interested in their own personal projects entirely, are only seeing themselves?? And why?)?

See Arthur Silber in his essay "The Indifference and Denial that Kills" . I also searched on the obedience culture on Silber's blogg and got this hit.

Facades…

I bought a new parasol on Friday, had to use my creativity to keep it on place! :-) Let's see how I solve this? And I bought new cushions to my sun-chairs too. There was nothing to choose on though, but I had no patience to go to another shop so I bought these. But they are ok. :-) I have ONE pile of books on the balcony (my small, narrow,but nice balcony) and a lot of unread books in my book shelves. And I write a lot in my books (so I have to buy them, I can't borrow them at the library).

Loudly and spontaneously thinking a warm summer's day… Madeleine Åsbrink writes at page 20 in her book that many of us clench our teeth and put up a facade which isn’t true or genuine. The work this demands takes a lot of power and doesn’t lead to any (or minor) change(s).

Many are afraid of what they shall meet inside. And ask themselves if it isn’t better clenching their teeth, buying a new house, changing partner or traveling around the world. Maybe life is good enough as it is (my comment: denial of needs)?

And she writes at another place in her book that many maintain that they feel well thinking of others in their environment. I can hear an internalized parents’ voice saying this. This made me think: What is a sound, healthy egoism and what is an unsound, unhealthy (also came to think of politics again: neoliberals admiring Ayn Rand for instance, interpreting and using her ideas to fulfill needs that are perverted in fact, are they trying, insensitively and egoistically in a way that harm others; trying to fill childhood needs, to fill a hole or gap that is bottomless, they will never get enough, but probably more and more instead)?

A sound, healthy egoism (should one choose another word, less loaded) is one where you are capable of caring about yourself, feel where your boundaries are etc. An unsound, unhealthy is the one where other people (the society and environment) have to pay for what you do…

A sound, healthy is the one where you constructively protect yourself, where neither you yourself or anyone else gets harmed.

She writes about people feeling feelings of meaninglessness over the life they live. And these feelings have come after many years of struggles to achieve and live up to a lot of things? Of course feelings of emptiness catch us up if we aren’t living our own lives really?

The soul – and body – is screaming??

“Stop fighting and start to live!”

The symptoms can take different shapes, all from returning lumbagos to deep depression (and all from constant anxiety to panic disorders). The reactions are stronger and more severe the less one live ones own life. And how many actually live genuine, true lives? But some do more than others, and don’t get so severe problems?

Åsbrink thinks a thumb rule is that the earlier you acknowledge the problems the shorter rehabilitation time, the quicker the recovery.

And she also writes about forces taking over, when one is no longer I contact with ones own will and ones own inner voice. It’s “achievements, and doing”, the environment and an inner slave-driver that has taken the control. Many mix these forces with their own will she thinks and say things like:

“I think this is fun and should have continued as I did before if the body hadn’t said ‘no’!”

Another one says:

“I want more than my body manages.”

Came to think about what Jenson and Bosch writes about needs and denial of needs… And what they write about mixing childhood with adult needs. And what needs aren’t possible to fill any more, needs that should have become filled then and that we ought to feel the pain connected to this truth and the realization of it. And needs we could (and maybe also should) feel here and now.

They think we have a defence, the False Power Denial of Needs defence, which the child resorted to to protect itself towards the truth. Because if I as child denied needs that didn’t’ get filled I couldn’t be hurt either. Maybe the child could even deny what actually happened. This was necessary then, but today it causes problems. As adults we continue with using these defences and we do it automatically they mean. We continue to defend ourselves against things we don’t have to defend ourselves against any more. Things we should be able to survive the truth of (though probably very painful realizations).

Both men and women use this defence, denying their needs, giving them a false sense of power, a power they don’t need. But we need other sorts of power today as grown ups?

Hmmm, yes, this was really loud thinking...

PS. Another blogger wrote:

“But let’s start at another place, and who knows where this posting will end? Let’s see. That’s exactly what has become so nice with blogging; one start at one place and from time to time end at another place then you thought of [when you started writing].”

Yes, that’s exactly how it can be! Reading this was a comfort! :-)

But the story which followed wasn’t so nice or happy, rather sad…