Preach Commented on Peace Making and Inner Transformation by TheraP

2009-01-04T02:58:02Z

I greatly admire your hope for peace. We need you for your basic ambition. But I disagree wholeheartedly with your proscription for attaining it, the core of which is in the following quote.

The task is to simply "take in" all the pain, terror, suffering, sadness, anguish, hostility, madness of things going on - seen on television, the internet, the newspapers. Take it in. Let it sit there. Dwell with it, painful as that is. Allow this world of hurt to dwell in your heart. Without doing anything more. Take it into your heart. And dwell there. Cry some tears, if you need to. .... If you try this, slowly - over time - you will find a change occurring within your heart.

This proscription is perfectionistic, unattainable. No one can tolerate repressed hurt. It's repressed because it's impossible to endure. Thus, your prescription creates more of the problem it's designed to reduce; it makes people more angry at themselves--for being unable to attain this supposedly attainable ideal. We see this in the PC movement that has terrorized racists for being racists; note that many of the judgmental views of racists are, like your view of violent people, velvet gloved but subtly harsh, perfectionistic ones.

Moreover, your underlying psychological explanation--that people are failing to tolerate their pain--misses what many of us think is the root problem, unacknowledged self-hatred. Violent people especially are suffering from devastating levels of self-hatred. Asking them to sit with that, which you're implying, is a proscription for suicide. It is well-established that a high percentage of incarcerated serial killers, for instance, kill themselves. That's what happens when their distractions are taken away from them.

It can seem obvious that your proscription has the cart before the horse. Especially in the case of violent people we want to affect, empathy for others comes reliably only from having been profoundly empathized with. The vast majority of therapists who work with violent people echo your approach; they are trying to get them to empathize with victims. It doesn't work. It's moralistic, subtly judgmental. What's working is genuine, intellectually credible empathy for the perpetrators. Once profoundly empathized with, they naturally feel for others. That's just human nature. If you are loved, you will love others.

Speaking now as a Christian theologian and minister of the Gospel, I disagree with your view of Jesus. His example wasn't centered on sitting with torment. It was caring for and respecting troubled people no matter what they do or say--unconditional love/respect. That's the heart of the Christian message. It's not focussed on other's suffering and sitting with one's torment as preconditions for loving others. It's focussed on seeking unconditional love for yourself.

Preach Commented on The Problem is Not Executive Compensation or Greed by Nathan Newman

2008-12-26T06:31:11Z

False dichotomy.
Plotocrats are horrendously greedy, taking exponentially more than the average worker. And they created the system.

Think on the fact that greed is the only problem that social scientists haven't studied. It's taken for granted as a good think at every level of society.

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Preach Commented on Peace Making and Inner Transformation by TheraP

Preach Commented on The Problem is Not Executive Compensation or Greed by Nathan Newman