Understanding Primitive Motivation
In a free market world, people transact and interact with one another on the basis of free, uncompelled choices in their own best interests, rather than being dictated by the will of another.
In reading the letters and editorials in the local newspapers, their offerings are almost exclusively of the mentality that simply presenting the authentic facts and letting people make up their own minds, are not an option or their purpose. The autocratic editors pre-select only those articles that make people do/think whatever it is they want them to -- usually under the mistaken notion that they are more enlightened than everybody else. They are the Boss, “the experts” (bureaucrats)-- so if people don’t do as they say, they get punished and disciplined until they have the right attitude of accepting their proper places and the “right” authorities, which are invariably themselves.
These people have anointed themselves as the leaders because they are “enlightened” -- or “liberal” for short. How one makes such people have an insight into their own behaviors and the understanding of others, is the problem of cultures and individuals dealing with those they presume share the same values of freedom and independence that they do -- and why they cannot understand that it is not sufficient to just insist that one be “reasonable,” to ensure one’s safety and security.
People who believe that it is proper to force others to their own will no matter what, think lying, cheating, and killing others is justified in achieving those ends. Such people have to be controlled and monitored -- but fortunately, they are not most people. They are roughly 5%, who because of their destructive behaviors, have a disproportionate impact on the rest -- and disproportionately highest effect among themselves.
That is to say, violent (criminal) people, inflict the greatest destruction among similarly violent people -- and in that fashion, tend to self-regulate their own influence. While it is true that criminals victimize innocent people, they tend to victimize those who share similar values -- of also being inclined to abuse and exploit the people they fraternize with.
So one of the great and necessary skills, is to be able to discern that manner of motivations and orientation in others -- and remove oneself from that exposure and proximity, in favor of those one can transact and interact in good faith and a high degree of confidence in sharing an understanding. Rather than being “politically incorrect,” this is what all life forms do -- find and create those conditions that favor their survival, rather than allow themselves to be extinguished or live their lives under great hardship, duress and disadvantage equally randomly.
Treating each appropriately, is not having double-standards and being contradictory, as the guilty will accuse, but having one standard for the fair treatment of all. Responses that are inappropriate to the event, is not consistent with the overall objective of creating a “more perfect” (better) life, that should be the right of everyone, and not just the right of a self-anointed few. That is what one is discerning and discriminating for -- and not heed the demands and commandments, that one should not determine these matters for themselves, in their own best interests -- even making it illegal to act in their own self-defense and better judgment, claiming that they voted to surrender those “inalienable rights” -- fairly and squarely, in a democratic process.
posted by Mike Hu @ 7:06 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Unfortunately, this is the kind of mentality that dominates a lot of physical, as well as intellectual and emotional conditioning. Only rarely do people think they can instruct with an appeal to one's own good judgment and highest faculties.
Instead, the teaching (conditioning) is to override all those basic impulses of life so that one becomes increasingly distrustful of their own judgment and intelligence, and not uncoincidentally, more dependent on the professional others.
It wasn't always that way. The movement towards increasing professionalization and specialization (which is also the fragmentation of life), didn't begin to accelerate until the latter half of the 20th century -- before being reversed by the decentralization of control and authority that characterized institutions -- with the concurrent disempowerment of individuals.
That was the increasing sense of powerlessness and control over one's own life -- despite being created initially to enable -- it turns out, the behaviors that perpetuate those problems.
Thus, health care became about keeping people in bad health perpetually in that condition as their steady stream of revenue. Education became about undermining the confidence to think for oneself -- or discover the truth of anything for oneself, and not simply accepting truth, from the properly "certified" authorities. That was the intellectual climate of the Dark Ages.
That why a lot of that kind of education, and particularly at the highest levels, is just flattering themselves as the most "esteemed" people in the world, which they can do as long as they can exclude all but the most naive and undiscriminating.
A lot of people's "work," consists almost entirely of determining who has "seniority," and therefore should be "boss," so they don't have to do any work -- but get the most pay, because they have the most seniority.
It's like watching the animal shows that mesmerize people will their preoccupation for dominance. That's pretty much what primitive societies and motivation is all about. One gets to the top so that one doesn't have to do anything anymore -- but tell everybody else what to do.
That's familiar to most people as the old P.E. classes -- usually determined by that same selection process. And because of all that negative conditioning, people don't want to have anything to do with it -- as soon as they can escape from the control of these petty despots.
Unfortunately, that is particularly true of some of the best and the brightest people -- who then think they are "getting over," by getting into terrible condition, convinced as they are, that smart people don't do exercise -- not if they can avoid it.
Smart people don't subject themselves to such abuse -- in not just exercise, but all the venues and activities.
That part usually is easy to see -- and a lot of people can relate to.
Less obvious is that the kind of exercise people choose to do and the manner in which they do those exercises, REINFORCES their present condition rather that brings about change. The is the reason most abandon exercise programs because they see no change.
Effective exercise, immediately brings about change, and as one continues, becomes even more skilled at effecting those changes. Muscles (exercise) produce change -- immediately. How that is not self-evident and logical is one of the great wonders of exercise academia -- that they are so uncertain about what they are talking about, that they have to pretend to be scientists and create a jargon divorced from reality -- as proof that they are intellectual.
One of the great secrets of the modern world is that most people are completely developed -- rather than the illusion that they are brilliant, but don't use their intelligence to be at their highest level of fitness.
The great champions are invariably the smartest athletes -- not only in their sport but overall. They apply that winning approach to everything they do -- always trying to master what they do, rather than in thinking as the mediocre do, that just going through the motions, pretending to be engaged in what they are doing, is enough. They also do everything that way.
Yet they can't understand why it is that some people get great results and others get no results and hate what they are doing. It never occurs to them that they may have improper instruction -- as they've never learned to challenge authority but have only obeyed what somebody told them to do -- all their lives.
A few lucky ones, and hopefully everyone someday, will find a teacher who reveals that the known is only the known, and not the limits of what is knowable.
Muscles can be trained to put one in the shape one wants to be in. The trouble is that most people have no idea of what shape they want to be in because all the models they see of people around them are in similarly bad condition -- and why it makes sense to go to a gym at least once a week, to see what people in good shape look like -- unless they all look out of shape.
That was how the original gym rats were inspired thirty years ago. They did what the best athlete in the gym did -- and learned that way, and not just what some certifiably out of shape person says he ought to do.
Only in these times do we think that a person is an expert because he he's never done what he is the expert in.
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