Best Of

I was reading the "No Buddhist Quotes" thread and the latest quote by Mate stood out.

“The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else’s imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!”

― Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

He talks about the problems of individualism in one breath and then here he says impositions from others are false and that real being is all about us. I don't get it, it sounds completely absent from any sense of living with other people. Like, its really important to have connections and community, but we all should live like we're the only one who's views matter.

What I mean is, when being in community we need to be aware of and consider other individual's and the group as a whole's interest. It doesn't seem possible to me to be fully genuine and be in community, unless that necessarily small community also happens to align with your own authenticity. If you're a member of a motorcycle club, there is some expectation from the group that you come riding a motorcycle and don't want to join in by driving your Prius. You can join a Prius group instead, but at some point have to interact and cooperate with the motorcycle club. At that point there needs to be some sort of accommodation and the community's interest imposes constraints on us.

Its possible I truly don't get it, the attitude is pretty alien to my mind. But that doesn't mean I'm right. Is there another way? Am I missing something? Is there a way to be fully authentic and be part of community? I'm genuinely asking.

Trauma is not really a blaming of the world for one’s troubles though. It is incorrect coping, often because the person doing the coping does not have the skill or context to correctly relate to what is happening to him. That trauma exists and malforms our lives is beyond doubt, it’s just whether you choose to be kind enough to yourself to see it.

There is such a thing as toxic positivity, which is thinking that is insensitively positive, and in effect blinds you to what is really going on.

There are structural situations which make certain decisions or scenarios much more likely. There is still some autonomy as not everything is solid and determined. Your self-concept is modeled by what surrounds you, by what you engage with, and your own specific dispositions. This goes from your temperament, to your parents, to your local and global sociocultural milieu which composes your reality.

I have seen people repeating patterns that trace back to their parents, and these to their own parents. It reminds me of kamma and habits (unskillful actions) which are inherited and copied. To help them realise these connections does alleviate and provide a path towards change. This does not mean to blame the world and adopt the role of victim. This ends up making people spiteful, angry... a full of new unskillful means!

The story of an annoyed Yama comes to mind. I refer to it constantly: the Lord of Death hearing two people suffering from their misdeeds, blaming their past kamma. Yama replied: it was you that commited those actions!

🙏🏻

Pd: one case I can share is the following family. Missing father (fighter for Frente Polisario) and a mother that could not take care of them. Environment of war, horror, and poverty in Western Sahara. They tried their luck emigrating to Spain. One stayed. The others returned.
1. Became a soldier at the Frente Polisario.
2. Became a drug addict and homeless.
3. Studied in Rabat and ended up becoming a university philosophy professor.

This last example surprised me. He managed to defy all odds and predictions. He managed to break what seemed to be his determined path. Not everything is as fixed as it seems, but the power that those "structural configurations" might have upon humans is a possible and, unfortunately, common reality.

@Jeroen said:

@person said:
What do you mean by social expression? You mean like genuinely being part of a group, like the example of proudly belonging to a motorcycle club? Or a nation in your example, to socially express yourself as proud to be an American can be a problem in some areas of the country these days.

Not really, merely that European people tend to identify more as members of a social fabric consisting of family, community like neighbourhoods, city and province members. There is more adherence to the idea of unity here. It’s kinda hard to describe, but for example my stepfather gets a socially funded budget to buy care in the home from the government because of his Alzheimer’s.

Like I've said, I must live in some sort of cultural bubble, this sounds like the type of people I live with. Maybe the difference is community I know comes more directly from the people in it, rather than mediated through the government?

I've listened to a few interviews of him. He does say things to balance his overall presentation, I guess they come across to my ears as some level of lip service. He probably thinks it but doesn't truly believe it deep down. Maybe he's just not my cup of tea?

I have a lot of respect for Dr Maté, I think he cares deeply for his patients and for wider society. That’s why I find this book so gripping, it is ultimately so human, and it makes an argument on multiple levels for how capitalist society has failed to create an environment that is as healthy for humans as what might be natural. Yes there is a lot of affluence, life expectancy is up but there is also a lot of disease, suffering and premature death.

If you don’t like his message, maybe it’s because of your own attachments? There will probably be quite a few people who choose for their way to make a living rather than listen to an argument about how our culture is toxic and we need to make some drastic reforms to the way we live in order to be healthier?

Not sure how to put this politely, but the argument that if you don't like something or agree with part of it is due to some deficiency within said person is really demeaning. I'm pretty able to live a healthier life without feeling the need to blame the world for my difficulties. Again, its not so much about the points as it is the tone, its judgmental and overly neurotic to my ears.

@person said:
What do you mean by social expression? You mean like genuinely being part of a group, like the example of proudly belonging to a motorcycle club? Or a nation in your example, to socially express yourself as proud to be an American can be a problem in some areas of the country these days.

Not really, merely that European people tend to identify more as members of a social fabric consisting of family, community like neighbourhoods, city and province members. There is more adherence to the idea of unity here. It’s kinda hard to describe, but for example my stepfather gets a socially funded budget to buy care in the home from the government because of his Alzheimer’s.

I've listened to a few interviews of him. He does say things to balance his overall presentation, I guess they come across to my ears as some level of lip service. He probably thinks it but doesn't truly believe it deep down. Maybe he's just not my cup of tea?

I have a lot of respect for Dr Maté, I think he cares deeply for his patients and for wider society. That’s why I find this book so gripping, it is ultimately so human, and it makes an argument on multiple levels for how capitalist society has failed to create an environment that is as healthy for humans as what might be natural. Yes there is a lot of affluence, life expectancy is up but there is also a lot of disease, suffering and premature death.

If you don’t like his message, maybe it’s because of your own attachments? There will probably be quite a few people who choose for their way to make a living rather than listen to an argument about how our culture is toxic and we need to make some drastic reforms to the way we live in order to be healthier?

I like a lot of what he says about the problem of alienation and disconnection in the world today. To me though his words fall too much into a good/bad dichotomy rather than seeing the interplay of connection and individuality.

I think I must live in some sort of cultural bubble. There's the research that says that the most and least materially successful people are the givers, the distinction has to do with avoiding the takers. Successful people I know are that way because they are industrious and maintain and add value to their world, and they are generous and build strong connections with others. They aren't status driven, they do what they do because they enjoy creating and want to share it with others. But they also gate keep and reject those who would take advantage and not seek to contribute in kind. So I agree that status seeking and the other ills he highlights have downsides, I more push back on the overall tone (which I've done elsewhere with Mate). It comes across as a wholesale rejection into the "bad" pile and becomes blind to the positive aspects of individualism and the down sides of collectivism.

Everything is a balance, and the problem is, is that because conditions change you have to be continually rebalancing. ~Dan Carlin

A big part of the reason our western society has moved to an unhealthy level of individualistic attitudes is a reaction to the way collective cultural attitudes oppressed many individual's genuine expression.

People need one another, and a sense of belonging is vital to human well being. But an intrinsic part of belonging to a community is modifying one's attitudes and behavior to allow for social cohesion. Even an attitude of "no judgements" and "all are welcome" impose constraints on those who want to be able to choose who they invite to their party or want people to remove their shoes in the house.

My predilection would be if individuals could realize the importance of relationship and community and make the voluntary choice to be part of various collectives. I can see a big potential pitfall of that way of doing things though. That we all form small pockets of groups that have very different habits and language with no over arching sense of belonging to other groups, such that our tribal instincts kick in and conflict increases, or we fall into a sort of modern day Tower of Babel situation.

@Jeroen said:
There’s also a book of his that has been making some waves, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture which I have heard very good things about and may have to read.

I’ve been watching a few YouTube videos where Dr Maté talks about this book, and the more I hear about it the more I think this is an important book about western society and how it functions. I will definitely be getting a copy. I’ve collected a few quotes from it…

“Time after time it was the “nice” people, the ones who compulsively put other’s expectations and needs ahead of their own and who repressed their so-called negative emotions, who showed up with chronic illness in my family practice, or who came under my care at the hospital palliative ward I directed.”
― Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

“A society that fails to value communality — our need to belong, to care for one another, and to feel caring energy flowing toward us — is a society facing away from the essence of what it means to be human. Pathology cannot but ensue. To say so is not a moral assertion but an objective assessment.

"When people start to lose a sense of meaning and get disconnected, that's where disease comes from, that's where breakdown in our health — mental, physical, social health — occurs," the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Bruce Perry told me. If a gene or virus were found that caused the same impacts on the population's well-being as disconnection does, news of it would bellow from front-page headlines. Because it transpires on so many levels and so pervasively, we almost take it for granted; it is the water we swim in.

We are steeped in the normalized myth that we are, each of us, mere individuals striving to attain private goals. The more we define ourselves that way, the more estranged we become from vital aspects of who we are and what we need to be healthy. Among psychologists there is a wide-ranging consensus about what our core needs consist of. These have been variously listed as:

• belonging, relatedness, or connectedness;
• autonomy: a sense of control in one's life;
• mastery or competence;
• genuine self-esteem, not dependent on achievement, attainment, acquisition, or valuation by others;
• trust: a sense of having the personal and social resources needed to sustain one through life;
• purpose, meaning, transcendence: knowing oneself as part of something larger than isolated, self-centered concerns, whether that something is overtly spiritual or simply universal/humanistic, or, given our evolutionary origins, Nature. "The statement that the physical and mental life of man, and nature, are interdependent means simply that nature is interdependent with itself, for man is a part of nature." So wrote a twenty-six-year-old Karl Marx in 1844.

None of this tells you anything you don't already know or intuit. You can check your own experience: What's it like when each of the above needs is met? What happens in your mind and body when it's lacking, denied, or withdrawn?”
― Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

“Is it possible nevertheless that our consumer culture does make good on its promises, or could do so? Might these, if fulfilled, lead to a more satisfying life? When I put the question to renowned psychologist Tim Krasser, professor emeritus of psychology at Knox College, his response was unequivocal. "Research consistently shows," he told me, "that the more people value materialistic aspirations as goals, the lower their happiness and life satisfaction and the fewer pleasant emotions they experience day to day. Depression, anxiety, and substance abuse also tend to be higher among people who value the aims encouraged by consumer society."

He points to four central principles of what he calls ACC — American corporate capitalism: it "fosters and encourages a set of values based on self-interest, a strong desire for financial success, high levels of consumption, and interpersonal styles based on competition."

There is a seesaw oscillation, Tim found, between materialistic concerns on the one hand and prosocial values like empathy, generosity, and cooperation on the other: the more the former are elevated, the lower the latter descend. For example, when people strongly endorse money, image, and status as prime concerns, they are less likely to engage in ecologically beneficial activities and the emptier and more insecure they will experience themselves to be. They will have also lower-quality interpersonal relationships. In turn, the more insecure people feel, the more they focus on material things.

As materialism promises satisfaction but, instead, yields hollow dissatisfaction, it creates more craving. This massive and self-perpetuating addictive spiral is one of the mechanisms by which consumer society preserves itself by exploiting the very insecurities it generates.

Disconnection in all its guises — alienation, loneliness, loss of meaning, and dislocation — is becoming our culture's most plentiful product. No wonder we are more addicted, chronically ill, and mentally disordered than ever before, enfeebled as we are by such malnourishment of mind, body and soul.”
― Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture