The reality of people
 

Just a start, see if you can add more of the same theme regarding the *real* nature of people and society...

1. No one is wrong or broken. People work perfectly to accomplish what they are currently accomplishing.

2. People already have all the resources they need.

3. Behind every behavior is a positive intention.

4. Every behavior is useful in some context.

5. The meaning of a communication is the response you get.

6. If you aren't getting the response you want, do *something* different.

7. There is no such thing as failure. There is only feedback.

8. In any system, the element with the most flexibility exerts the most influence.

9. The map is not the territory.

10. If someone can do something, anyone can learn it.

11. You cannot fail to communicate.

I'm not sure where you want us to go from here; but I'll add my own realities.

1. We teach others how to treat us.

2. Life is about personal growth -- but we have a choice to grow or not to grow.

3. Character traits are not negative or positive, they just are.

Re: The reality of people
 

Suprisingly, I can agree with #6, 9 and 11. See serious flaws in all the rest.

Sexymama hits the mark all around.:thumbsup:

1. People desire unity

2. People desire meaning

3. All meaning is metaphorical.

4. Knowledge is constructed.

5. As far as one gets in their desires is determined greatly by their choices, and the context of their environment.

Well said! :)

I don't think any of these describe the "real" nature of people. They're all simply one-sentence summaries of certain systems of belief, which may or may not be valid. I expect everyone will find some in the lists that they agree with and some that they don't. But each one would need to be debated separately in order to decide whether it was "real" or not.

Then pick away... what do you like and dislike, and why?

Re: The reality of people
 

Ok, here goes...

Depends what you mean by positive, but I doubt it. It's quite possible to take an action with the sole intention of hurting someone. Example, lashing out in anger without stopping to think about the consequences.

Not sure I understand this one. The intended meaning or the perceived meaning?

More likely, the element with the most flexibility is the most likely to be changed by another element that's exerting influence.

It would be nice if this was true, but the fact is that biology, genetics, etc. impose certain limitations. As much as I might want to be an olympic sprinter, fact is that because of my physical size, someone who invested an equal amount of determination and training but had longer legs would still win.

See #5. You may be communicating something, but it certainly might not be what you intended.

Only to the extent that any fact has no intrinsic value except what we assign to it. Character traits can certainly be negative or positive in relation to a particular moral code. I imagine a lot of people would have issue with the statement that callousness to the point of watching an innocent person die when it would cost nothing to step in and save them is not a negative trait.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=41857

There are lots of different theories for this one, it just depends on who you are. Me, I think personal growth is important, but it's not the end-all, worth pursuing for its own sake. It's simply a means of attaining happiness.

Unity with what? Other people? Some kind of universal soul? Debatable either way. What does it mean to be unified?

Again, not sure what this means (yeah, I know :rolleyes: ). How is it different to #4, all knowledge is a construct? Which, while I agree with it, gets into the issue of whether there is any absolute truth.

Unity: a sense of being that has some sense of agreement. Living in a world where nothing makes any sense at all is hard for people. I can't think of anyone I've ever met - sane or insane - that did not have some desire for comprehending their existence in a way that was sensical.

How unity is achieved, if it is achieved doesn't really matter. The journey for unity ranges the gamut of beliefs. From someone like the Dhali Llama to the most callous sociopath, everyone has some sense of values that they follow to lead them to understanding their existence enough to exist. Commiting suicide is an indicator that someone either thinks they will find unity in their death, or that they cannot find unity in their life. At the least, living without unity and a glimmer of finding it leads to depression.

As for meaning being metaphorical -

This is the nature of language. For instance, when I talk about a bathtub I am not actually dealing with a bathtub; I am dealing with my mental representation of a bathtub. All language is representative, which is the definition of what a metaphor is.

From this, it is easy to see how knowledge is a construction. Using language we create information, ideas, theories, etc. Whether the information is right or not doesn't even necessarily matter, it is a construct due to the way it is presented via metaphors using language.

Whereas I don't particularly believe in an "Absolute Truth", calling knowledge a construct doesn't disagree with those who believe in it. For example, seeing the Bible as literal truth is in concordance because the Bible is a construct presented via metaphors representing absolute reality created by God (if you think the Bible is literal truth).

That, I can agree with. I'd just never heard it called unity before. No question that people seek meaning in their lives, or that the inability to find some kind of coherence can lead to all sorts of mental problems.

Language is certainly metaphorical, but I disagree that all meaning is too. The brain doesn't naturally think in terms of language. Babies have to be taught to speak.

So sensory data is a form of knowledge that's not a construct. If someone pricks you with a pin, you know that it hurts, even if you don't know what a pin is. I'm proposing that there are some absolutes that exist based on how the human body is constructed, regardless of how we think about them: for example, pain = bad, nourishment = good.

Hopefully I'm not straying too far from your point here.

Well, you're addressing something that I wasn't really getting at. I agree that the body is very important in this process, but I should have spent more time differentiating "meaning is metaphorical" and "knowledge is a construct".

After experiencing pain, hunger, fear, and so on as a baby, the reaction to the event enters the child's schema (part of the knowledge construct). From then on, the meaning of the event is apparent. "I didn't like this previous experience before, so I will avoid similar experiences in the future." Even before language, the meaning of the experience is metaphorical because the one event represents all events just like it that could happen.

wow, it is amazing how few of these points i agree with so far. i'll subscribe to wilbjammin's #4 and 2/3 of sexymama's #1. Some of you cut your own legs off by describing everything as relative and metaphorical while giving a list of the *real* nature of something.