I am extremely "left brain", which means that you need to mix me equal parts with "right brained" people. @cause-no-harm and I have been conversing, and your remark resembles some that he has made.
By "unselfish", I mean "wholesomely connected", which is also my definition of "love" as in the Love Teaching of Jesus (or of Hillel). For me, as well as for @cause-no-harm I think, it is all about connection.
Me speaking of my "war on selfishness" exposes the pattern of my thinking as the thinking of a warrior. My life is the life of a warrior, in the sense that I experience life as a constant battle in which I face enemies who use force to try to destroy me.
But even a warrior cannot sustain himself on a battlefield for more than a few minutes. Without a "village", a warrior has nowhere to retreat in order to rest and recover, and he also has nothing to fight for, no reason to be a warrior.
My thirst for community, for a village, is thus as urgent as is my thirst for "blood". I'm speaking metaphorically here; my activism is not violent, and my fighting occurs with words in a courtroom.
I see. interesting. Are you familiar with Tom Campbell work? If you have time I recommend listening to him on YouTube. - https://www.youtube.com/user/twcjr44
I've done a test once to see if I am left or right brain and the results showed that I am exactly in the middle - which explains my balance between the world of logic and intuition.
Just watched a few minutes into two of the videos I found there. They were very long videos. (4+ hours each.) Perhaps in our conversation I will get a sense of his ideas as you've understood them.
I'm new here and would be pleased to become acquainted with you, your thoughts, whatever you want to share.
Sure, I will be happy to share some of his ideas with you. There are few short videos (2 minutes) there that try to give a description about his theories, maybe you can try them? https://www.youtube.com/user/twcjr44/videos
Thanks. I watched this one:
It's only two minutes long, so the following comment might well fail to comprehend what he has to say.
I have the same skepticism regarding his idea that I have with a similar idea promoted by @cause-no-harm. In a nutshell, in a world that is inherently violent, becoming caring and giving and nonviolent will not bring you peace. It will bring you death. (To see this, imagine a group of monkeys in a jungle all deciding to become nonviolent and caring and giving. Assume that they live in a place where food is plentiful, and there is a second group of monkeys who are starving and violent.)
Humanity has no hope of improving its situation until it UNDERSTANDS its situation. Groping toward an understanding of our situation, an analytical understanding, will require centuries of hard work in various social sciences. Perhaps 200 years from now, humanity will be able to transform its situation through personal transformation. But today, if any individual or group does that, it will merely create a vacuum into which force and violence will flow to exploit the absence of an opposing force.
See my village/hunt metaphore in my blog. The village mode of thinking (empathy giving compassion etc.) is appropriate for the village. It is not appropriate for the hunt or on the battlefield. The village/hunt metaphore isn't really just a metaphore. It remains the way of human society and of Nature, and it will always be so.
I completely understand what you mean. In his long videos Tom does talk about it too and he talks about the low level of consciousness of human beings at the moment (nursery level as he calls it) and talk about ways of growing in consciousness. At the same time he talks about acting rationally and obviously act when you need to and not put yourself in unnecessary danger. I guess in his case you need to give the time to listen to longer videos (the fire chats or really good, where people asks him questions). Defending yourself is one thing - initiating violent or aggressiveness is another. We should all act as we want everyone else to act, be a role model, an example.
These ideas actually make the world more dangerous. They are naive. I'm not trying to be confrontational. We are just beginning to encounter each other. I don't mean to attack you or anything like that. Just saying that I see things differently. I'm more of a "peace through strength" kind of thinker who sees unilateral disarmament in a hostile world as foolish. If you were a woman living in a village of my village/hunt metaphore, the violent reality of our environment would be self evident to you and you would have no thought that personal change could change that violent external reality, because it would be obvious to you that the character of the jungle is a given and that the men and women of a village must conform to that reality rather than expect that it will conform to them.
These are all just first reactions. Thank you for listening.
No worries. I'm not sure though that you understood me, unless you believe in initiating violence even if you are not under any attack? I have a feeling that you put what I said in a specific box, as things have to be black and white for you- that's because some of the things you said in your reply to me - I didn't even say or mentioned, it's your assumption that this is what I mean.. anyway, thanks for listening too. I like a discussion that involve more questions, and not assumptions, but it's harder in text I think.
And by the way - I'm more optimistic than you - I think it will take 20-50 years for the big change in human beings..
Don't let me or anyone else tell you that you cannot do what you envision doing! If it gets you out of bed and fills your heart with passion, that's life and you will make a difference!
Thank you for your words. I do try to live like that, and follow my intuition and my heart 9and my logic too). I've always been a 'rebel' in a way that I keep asking questions. I think the best teaching is your own experiences, and this is what I follow. I wish you good night :-)