> but i really don't get it...how can people not > be horrified, how can they not see the freakin flaws of the whole situation
fear and denial can be very strong. many parents don't see that the other parent is beating or moloesting their children. they do see it of course, but deny it. it is not exactly like lying-they convince themselves it is not happening.well of course it is lying but of a different nature. children convinve themselves that their abusing parent(s) is good and they are bad. protecting the self. The annihilation of self is a primitive fear in all of us and very strong. we fight like hell(not the nz one) to maintain our meaning structures. when we cannot we get sick, have nervous breakdowns which is really the collapse or our meaning structures, and the consequent threat to our self. so we have to build new meanign structures. This is not weird or unusual. we lal doit to some degree or other. Our world changes and we suffer and we have to develop a new world view. A very common example is grief over the death of a loved one-the death casues a significant alteration to our word view, our meanign structures. It changes our world. It takes time to accomodate that change in our psyche. It is also extremel;y painful, thus we fight it. We deny it, we get angry, we get very sad and then we accept it(or we get stuck at one of the first 3 stages). Accpetence in esence means we have changed our meaning structure to a new one which enables us to live again. It can take a long time and it doesn't have to be in order-ie. onecan be sad way before one is angry. This process we go thru over any sort of loss-love, jobs, friends, pets, health, childhood. When we don't go thru the process, when we get stuck in denial a multitude of problems arise. Thus we can get people applauding a criminal. Or we get people addicted to various things. If we get stuck in anger we become unpopular and maybe become criminal in our behaviour. Unfortuantely, it not simply a case of deciding you willnot let this happen. It is about knwledge. if you don't know about these things, about yourself, you cannot deal with it. Knowledge really does bring freedom. bw colin
