Searching for me

Our spirit is our centre, our core. Whether or not it continues as a soul after death is not the point here, so I use spirit to refer to that psychological central place of our existence. In using the term, I infer only psychological structures and processes, no religion.

Every one has a spirit, the core of psyche, but not everyone understands their spirit or is in touch with it. It is easy to become detached from it, since daily life, work, family, friends, pressures and trials engage us in ways often inconsistent with what we may on reflection, choose. Our spirit is not necessarily congruent with what we do each day good intentions are not enough.

Modern psychological theory has it that via our mind, in particular, the cognitive and conceptual structures we use to ‘see’ our environment and our place in it we substantially construct our own spirit. The knowledge we use in constructing ourselves is the same as that used to ‘see’ the tree. We have private knowledge of ourselves, but it is not special knowledge. As offered in the Johari window, others may also have knowledge of us we do not know, but could if we seek it.

I ‘see’ my spirit as a structure in my psyche I call it the ‘I of I’, visualized for me, as a peaceful lake with depth into the very center of me.

The ‘I’ is the active part - roles, relationships, goals, purpose, work, family, etc. Many years ago, while conducting a senior management executive leadership workshop we were discussing roles and the role complexity of their every day life, I asked the group if they ever got lost in their role structures, such as acting as the CEO at home, or with friends, etc. They all put up their hands, I was quite surprised, first at the fact they understood exactly what I was talking about, and second they so immediately were willing to be open and honest about it. It was agreed that losing oneself in daily roles is losing touch with something important in ourselves, a loss of identity, a loss of a sense of ‘who I am’, this way for this one, this other way for that, but who am I?

The ‘I of I’ does not act, it is not an aspect of any role, it lies behind all roles and is the centre of my being in any roles - it is who I am. The ‘I of I’ is the centre of the spirit, always there, constant, perhaps at times troubled, such as when we move beyond merely sad to depression defined as an affliction of the spirit. Surrounding the ‘I of I’ are the thoughts most precious to us, those thoughts that give depth and substance to our being, we could call them values, but I mean beyond that common term, something closer to the inherent difference between perhaps an Pygmy of the Congo rain forest, and a native born New Yorker.

Some years ago, I read a book on the Mbuti. The author Colin Turnball described how when escorting a Pygmy out of this forest they stood on a hill, and the Pygmy asked ‘what were the insects’. It took the author some minutes to understand that the Pygmy referred to cattle grazing a field some miles away, that for the Pygmy in the forest with distance measured in feet not miles, anything so small had to be insects. This is a profound example of living circumstance and its impact on how we think and ‘see’ the world about us.

Other aspects of our worldview arise from ideas and ways of thinking as deeply ingrained. They are just one-step removed from the ‘I of I’, part of our kernel we call our spirit. To secure our way of life, to develop and improve, then we need understand these ideas, this way of thinking, we need ‘see’ it as part of our kernel, embrace and cherish it, accept our personal responsibility within it, and be willing to defend it.

We need understand the way of thinking that is our heritage for this heritage lifted us to where we stand today. Should we continue to fail in our ethical obligations to our heritage, then our great grand children may well look back and say ‘oh, what an opportunity they had’.

Limits to culture

Culture is carried in mind, from one generation to the next, both shaping each generation and being shaped. Without mind, culture degenerates to a collection of artifacts.

Culture is a big term, with a particular culture encompassing the collective output of some particular group of hominids. There are aspects of current culture we can happily forego - such as some tastes in music or art - for our culture embraces all music and art, which includes those aspects of which we may not approve or like. We can only ignore those aspects, for to do otherwise is to impose on some people tastes and values that we choose.

Imposition of my view on others brings forth another aspect of what has been called culture, but I suggest in a modern world needs redefining.

Separating social structure from culture

Some years ago in Auckland, we had the Centre Point Community, where it emerged that there were illegal activities, with an adult sexually abusing children, and people rightly jailed. However, there is another issue - before the illegal activities emerged - that was the right of these people to live as they choose. I disagreed with the Community values and philosophies, but I was prepared to defend their right to exist provided it stayed within the law, or legally protested current law.

We also had the divisive Springbok tour. I could protest, and make my disagreement visible, but to use force to stop people doing legally allowed conduct, subverts something fundamental. I could not forcibly seek to stop other people who disagreed with me from attending those games. I am not convinced we have actually moved beyond the subversion of that principle, and today we still pay the price of forgoing values so profoundly important we do not realise the malaise facilitated, that one group has the right forcibly to stop another group doing that which they legally can merely because the first group disagrees. Without social self-discipline, we have anarchy, more accurately what happens is the progressive implementation of control and regulation that intimately undermines that which it so loudly proclaims to protect: our freedom to choose.

Around 60 BCE, Julius Caesar conquered Europe. Rome then dominated Europe for some 500 years, but only by force of arms, or the threat. The European tribes were never pacified, adopting Roman ways without losing their sense of who they were. Then around 400 CE the ‘barbarian’ tribes sacked Rome. What then emerged from the dissolution of the Roman Empire was ‘tribes’ became ‘countries’.

Our western way of life focused on the right of individual freedom traced to this beginning, the ferociously held view of these ‘barbaric’ European tribes of the right to self-determination. Likely, the foundation of this view traced even more deeply hundreds of years prior to 60 BCE.

Today, the Western Caucasians stand atop this depth of history, Rome gave us much culture, but the Barbarian tribes gave us the core of our social structure, the core of our spirit. With respects to Maori and Polynesian societies, they simply cannot offer this much, nor ever will.

History since has had the rant against the Crown by the barons called Magna Carta, the English Civil Wars, the French Revolution, the American Declaration of Independence, the first and second world wars, and the demise of the central planning of socialism as a viable social structure. The trend is the same, toward the idea I suggest will come to dominate human kind, namely “I want what is best for me, and I am damned if I will bow simply to your way”.

The problem is now ethical, how can I have my way without restricting or inhibiting others in pursuit of what they see as best for them? This takes us beyond mere culture, beyond questions of how I seek to live, especially as more and more there are those in our community who seek to live differently from me.

Individual freedom and western social structure

Tribes are gone, the world is complex; there are many, many points of view and ways of life, a ‘plural society’.

The modern western democracy has emerged over the last 2000 years so today we have core elements in virtually all free, democratic western societies.

• Paramount right of the individual to live as they choose within the law.
• Morality is not the basis of law, which can only rest on socially agreed and legally sanctioned ethical standards, such as only driving on a specified side of the road.
• Separation of powers, so state, religion, business, legislature, judiciary, police, etc all separate.
• Legislation to apply to all, so no race, creed or particular group singled out for persecution or privilege, and no exceptions.
• Socialized education, health, and some form of welfare.
• Democratic process for changing governments, without use of force.
• Demonstration is acceptable, but no one has the right to stop others going about legally constituted conduct.
• Transparency of state processes, especially as regards application of the law.

There are likely other items, but this sensibly conveys the nature of the list, and accurately differentiates this form of society from say Muslim society. This is not to say Muslim society is wrong. However, I would not choose to live under the core tenets, my spirit moulded by 2000 years of cultural history, is aligned fully with a western democratic way of life where I am me first, and then anything else second, whereas in Muslim society I am required by law to be Muslim first, and me second. This reversal of priorities is fundamental and can never be reconciled.

These fundamentals - what has been called ‘culture’ - needs to be redefined; we need to see the core of our western, plural, democratic, social structure as that, as core framework of social values we place above all others, it becomes non-negotiable, a kernel handed down to us over millennia.
Freedom, the core of our spirit, the closest idea next to the ‘I of our social I’, the nature of the social structure then flows from this idea.

As physical environment shaped the immediate perception of the Pygmy, so insight and understanding of our ideological history needs to shape the immediate perception of our modern world.

Living side by side

Who we are, intimately bound with the insight and understanding of how we have got to where we are. Yes, current place, New Zealand will shape that, but understanding the real nature of that shaping is far, far in the future. Yes, other societies, Maori and Polynesian, add some living tone. However, this must not detract or mask who we really are.

Today our society is of western heritage.

Today, I would like to think all would protect my right to live as I choose, as I would protect theirs, without reference to them, as they need never refer to me, merely with reference to the law, since I am as much part of this land as they.

We all stand before one law, non-specific of race or creed, as befits the tradition and core values that forge the central part of our social existence. This transcends culture, defining a core set of values with which we all live in the manner we each choose.

The first measure of our commitment freedom of the individual, to the core value our European tribal ancestors, is the extent our law is without race or creed. In this first measure we in New Zealand fail, for the Maori Parliamentary seats breach the measure. Muslim social structure also fails, it defined by creed, not by equal rights no matter creed, gender or viewpoint.

We are plural today, undone only in conflict. This is part of freedom's price, for freedom is a flower that blossoms only in fields fertilized with blood. Should you disagree, I suggest you check history, and the deaths in the name of freedom, tens of millions have regarded it a cause worthy of life commitment, this is the kernel of my spirit, it is where I come from and am committed to see progress.

Freedom, and only in freedom, will the human spirit soar, and only in disciplined commitment to ensure our western social structures is freedom secure.

Living side by side, we need all embrace the common aim of fulfillment through freedom, committing to the social structure that best enables our goals, and then within that social structure we live as we choose, and accept others may choose to live differently from us, even in ways we cannot abide but must accept.

Self-determination in the modern plural society is choosing how I will live and giving up the idea I have any right to direct how others should live. We need to embrace our common social structure, willing to defend the right of others to be, as they commit to our right to be, culture then expressing the group to which we gravitate and with whom we most identify and associate, while not losing sight of the broader western global social movement to which we all belong.

We need learn better how to accept the hard part of being free, namely, freedom is the demand to accept those very different from us, and offers merely the right to discipline ourselves. In embracing our freedom, showing our great grand children how to live fully within freedom, to become all that humans can be and more, greater than us, we must never compromise on our social structure that enables our freedom.

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Notes:

• By mind, I imply no metaphysics, referring only to the conscious aspect of the operation of the brain. For full discussion on existence of ideas, and of the mind see the papers at grlphilosophy.co.nz.
• The Johari window explores what we know of us, others know of us, neither know of us, and both know of us.
• See the poem The ‘I of I’ in the poetry section of grlphilosophy.co.nz.
• A role is a set of thoughts and actions linked to a set of circumstances, so lover, friends, disciplinarian, father, and mother are all examples of roles. Our lives structured by circumstances, which demand different roles; it is this that asserts role complexity of everyday life.
• See the paper ‘Causes of depression’ at grlphilosophy.co.nz.