--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <authfriend@...> wrote:
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@>
> wrote:
> (snip)
>> Well then, why don't we just forgive Robin for his past
>
> Why don't we hope that Robin can forgive *himself* for
> his past?
I do not think that is necessary. The past is past. We ARE ourselves, it is
redundant to think of ourselves as something we can converse with as if we were
something else; the more one meditates, the less something else exists anyway.
To me forgiveness is the final relaxing of that clenched heart that one has
when one supposes one has been wronged in some way. You become free of the
entanglement of the fallout from that event. Whatever might be up with Robin,
those whom he harmed would give him more space to heal, if that is necessary,
if they forgave him, that is they let go of that clenched heart. Letting go is
much harder than it seems because it is not a willful act, it is a spontaneous
letting go, and so one never knows when it will happen, if ever.
Personal self-directed recrimination is of no real value, more important is
that whatever happened, that it never happen again. If one has some dark thread
weaving though one's life, softening that and hopefully having it disappear is
what spirituality is for, otherwise that dark thread has to be restrained with
forces external to it, like being put in prison or being isolated from society
in some way. But it is always best if one takes that transformation as a
personal project; it always seems as if there is some threshold of perception
that one must pass over before the transformation becomes feasible.
>> and then shoot him.
>
> And then, since we don't have any evidence to the contrary,
> treat him like a normal human being, mental-health-wise?
>
> You are right about no evidence. These
>> are surmises on my part. Whether he has what would be
>> termed a psychiatric illness or not, if we take an average
>> human being in the centre of the Bell curve, no matter what
>> Robin is, I do not think he would be near the center of
>> that graph.
>
> I'm not sure "average human being" really means anything.
> But I agreed with you several posts back that Robin wasn't
> "average" in many specific respects. Why that would suggest
> to you some kind of personality disorder, in the absence
> of any evidence of same, is peculiar, to say the least.
What evidence do we have that anyone is normal or does not have a personality
disorder, how does one gauge this? If a typical example cannot be created
('average human being'), or even if it can and is meaningless, then any metric
that describes or shows a person's deviation from that also has no meaning, no
utility. I think we all have some largely unconscious benchmark in our minds by
which we measure the behaviour of others in relation to what we already think
we know. It is largely unconscious because we are not aware of how we do it,
much like riding a bicycle - how do we know we are staying in balance? - the
process is silent and hidden.
By your benchmark, if I were an average human being, then average human beings
would be pure malicious vengefulness. Our benchmarks about others are floating
benchmarks because they are influenced by what we like and dislike, they are
generally not free of those feelings and perceptions, or our current situation;
on a day we are feeling good our benchmarks may be more tolerant than when we
are feeling rotten. None of these senses we have about others is based on
factual evidence, it is based on our interpretation of our interactions, and if
there is some kind of factual evidence, such as an e-mail, a document, a
letter, a video, even then we fall back on our interpretation of that evidence.
When we use our mind for interpretation, we are always dealing with second-hand
knowledge or second-hand hypotheses that depend on our pool of previous
experience; and that pool might be relatively clear water, or a sewer, or a mix
thereof.
If you feel free to say I am pure malicious vengefulness, why should I not have
the same freedom to say Robin, you, or anyone, is a psycho? I just think there
is something very peculiar about Robin compared to what I am used to in human
interaction, and am trying to find a way to describe it in terms of what I
know, or think I know. Psychology, and particularly psychiatry, is hardly a
mature science. As laymen, we sometimes use these benchmarks developed in these
disciplines, probably rather inexactly, to attempt to figure out our fellow
human beings.
