coberst

Can we talk?

In his book “The Assault on Reason” Al Gore informs me that he concluded after talking to many candidates of both parties in the 2006 election cycle that they had spent two thirds of their campaign funds on thirty second TV ads.

If that is not an indication of a shallow minded irresponsible citizenry I do not know what is. The political candidates recognize that the way to get votes is to follow the Madison Avenue advertising approach of bombarding the citizens with sound bites.

Al goes on to explain that part of the problem rests in an early childhood syndrome called “attachment theory”. Attachment theory is a relatively new theory of development psychology, which states that infants develop very early in their lives an attitude toward their relationship to the world resulting from their relationship in the first year of life with their parents.

Children take on three general attitudes:
1) The child learns that s/he has significant control of the world because the parents responded consistently and quickly to the child’s needs.
2) The child develops “anxious resistant attachment” when the parents respond inconsistently to the child’s pleas.
3) In the worst case the child receives no emotional response to its pleas.

The point I wish to make is that we were all raised in various manners and as a result of that raising we develop deep seated attitudes toward the world that significantly affect the rest of our lives is not recognized by us and then dealt with.

Must we journey through life handicapped by these early attachments developed in the first few years of life? It seems reasonable to me that if we learned to be self-critical we can, probably with difficulty, make significant changes in our life. I think that this process might be what Maslow was talking about when he developed the hierarchy of need.

Abraham Maslow defined a hierarchy of needs to be:
1) Biological and Physiological (water, food, shelter, air, sex, etc.)
2) Safety (security, law and order, stability, etc.)
3) Belonging and love (family, affection, community, etc.)
4) Esteem (self-esteem, independence, prestige, achievement, etc.)
5) Self-Actualization (self-fulfillment, personal growth, realizing personal potential, etc.)

This hierarchy made us conscious of the obvious fact that we did not fret about the absence of self-esteem if we did not already have security nor did we worry about security if we did not have water to drink or air to breath.

The pinnacle of needs Maslow labeled S-A (Self-Actualization). In “The Farther Reaches of Human Nature” 1971, Maslow speaks of these needs and he apparently (as far as I know) introduced this new concept S-A as in “mid-stream rather than ready for formulation into a final version”.

Maslow said “The people I selected for my investigation were older people…When you select out for careful study very fine and healthy people…you are asking how tall can people grow, what can a human being become?”

What do you think about self-actualization?

http://www.performance-unlimited.com/samain.htm

Ourcrazymodern?

You are what you are, damniit!
You are what you can be.
Take it, be it, do it.

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Unicase

Ahh... yes, some psychology threads.

I believe that self-actualization is whatever you make it to be. Whether smart or dumb, tall or short, sexy or ugly. For all we know, you could be faking yourself to others while creating a bigger picture for yourself in the end.

Whether you see the world in numbers, letters, pictures or scribble. "You are who you make it out to be you are" is what I believe self-actualization is about. Don't fret about the past nor future, but get moving on the present to what you want in the end. For all you know, it could be a long bumpy ride with many turning points to come.

Hain

"You are who you choose to be. Now choose!"

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ottopilot

You are what you eat, so eat something that you love.

Seriously, I believe most socialized adults are self-actualized but choose not to act on logic for emotional reasons. From politics to eating, we are constantly making choices. We often repeat choices that we know are not in our best interest.

It can be viewed as a study in cardinal utility. The total experience of that first beer just after cutting the grass is at times so gratifying. The second may be great, the third OK, then it becomes sort of mindless repetition. You may have initiated a behavior for a specific reaction, but keep hitting the redo button. I think we have a need to not analyze so much and we respond with mindless actions. But I also think we need to reinforce the good habits of discipline so we incorporate positive decisions in our automated state.

We usually know instinctively what we should do, but having the discipline to act responsibly is difficult by nature.

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Ourcrazymodern?

The fleeting nature
of the thoughts we bring ourselves
might corrupt them all.

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BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

tiger777

The type of self-actualization in which Maslow brings up isn't quite complete. He refers to man's desire for fulfillment and says a musician must make music a painter must paint etc, this only holds true for those who love doing that which they're good at and they believe in. So I think to further clarify it, self-actualization is more than simply becoming great at something it's the reasons behind the desire to become great at that something. No matter how great a painter may be if it isn't his passion and he doesn't believe in his work he will not be fulfilled. So I guess what I mean to say is what Maslow means is it's an individual finding something they believe in and devoting themselves with an intense passion to their art or whatever it may be.

Plan9

Man, all this shrink-speak shrivels my sack.

"Life is verbs, not nouns."

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Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

ScottKuma

I don't think Maslow's Hierarchy was meant to be thought about so literally - I view it as a gross generalization of the stages of personal advancement. You certainly can't, with any degree of accuracy, say to yourself, "Ok, I'm good on #1 & #2, let's work on steps 3 and 4!"

Personally, I have found that although steps 1 and 2 are fairly rock-bound, the higher stages seem to become much more muddled. I've often given the advice that to find belonging & love, one must have some self-esteem & self- love that seems to be implied by stage 4.

We are most certainly formed in a psychological sense by our early interactions with the world. Whether those interactions are ingrained as early as age 1, I'm not sure.

I see evidence of damage that I have done unknowingly to my daughter's psyche in her early years (Age 2 or 3: horsing around with her in the pool made her scared of water, which has resulted in major effort & push-back in our efforts to get her to learn to swim now at age 6). Note that I wasn't being meaning to scare her, per se, just the normal goofy-daddy stuff. Monitoring this and other parental fuck-ups has really caused me to pause & take a second look at my parenting skills.

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Ourcrazymodern?

Life, a noun,
requires living, yes?
A verb-form.

Damnit, Crompsin!

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BE JUST AND FEAR NOT