What makes these people so different?
FleaMarket
Veteran
From another thread. I wanted to explore without taking away from the original topic.
@person said:
@Kotishka said:
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.
My sister is really into those stories by people who have had horrific childhoods only to escape and break the patterns, like in your last example. This has raised the question in me that I've never really gotten an answer to. What makes these people so different, that they're able to do this with their lives? I think this is kind of what positive psychology is trying to answer, not just what our pathologies and traumas are that cause us misery and stress. But what are the positive qualities that bring people striving and flourishing.
If only looking for just the positive qualities its easy to miss the neutral or hide from the negative ones. I think its those regular neither positive nor negative qualities that lead to the striving and flourishing. Mainly the qualities of knowing and of heart release.
Two aspects of knowing come to mind that can help lead to positive change.
One aspect could be the knowing of one who's suffered one of the worst things imaginable. When you've experienced it, you know. You know when you've felt the worst thing possible, that you've felt it. You know it. That comes with a sort of power of knowing the experience of the thing. Others who've never experienced it can only know it intellectually. They have to imagine the experience and most are dearly afraid of actually experiencing it. People think about their greatest fears often. But the ones who've gone through it don't have to be afraid of the imaginations like others. They know. I think there's a relief that comes with that knowing where others feel anxiety. Its in that relief the heart has an opportunity to open. Because it already took the wound and knows it. It doesn't have to be afraid like others.
Another aspect could be the knowing of one who's experienced their greatest desires. Imagining and achieving greater and greater desires are what drive a lot of people. People have desires for different things but the infatuation and imagination is similar. Some people get their greatest desires. In getting their greatest desire there often isn't much else left to do but go for it again. Why settle for a lesser desire when your greatest one is accessible? So again and again and again until that greatest desire becomes meaningless. And then again. They know the experience of having their greatest desire in abundance and all the details of what that really means. People who haven't experienced it can only know it intellectually. They have to imagine the experience and many can't do much else but imagine the experience of achieving their greatest desires.
In both cases the neutral quality of knowing allows for a freedom from some of the mind's greatest fixations. Greatest fears and greatest desires. And when you free up that many resources, you can do a lot with em. Like focusing on striving, or flourishing, or just on the breath.
Comments
It’s true that wisdom is often born of great adversity. Like Diederik Wolsak, who founded the Choose Again movement and who spent his youngest days in Japanese internment camps in WW2, or Victor Frankl, who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning partly about his experiences in concentration camps.
But they are the exceptions. For every person who manages to rise above his early childhood adversities, there are another hundred whose lives are crushed. Diederik Wolsak described clearly how his early experiences shaped him into an angry man with addiction troubles until he managed to turn it around in his forties and fifties, became a psychotherapist and started his movement.
I personally know someone who suffered abuse at the hands of a priest when he was young, then joined the Green Berets in Vietnam and suffered tons of trauma there. He's the only one left out of his 100 some group that hasn't either died over there or killed themselves after coming back. He's had many struggles with his PTSD and continues to suffer to this day. But he is probably the kindest, gentlest person I know.
My curiosity isn't merely an intellectual pursuit. I think knowing the answer to what makes people resilient and capable of rising above will help give us tools that can help others live better lives.
I think over the years I've also increasingly embraced the idea of anti fragility. That humans need some level of stress and struggle to really grow and flourish. Or the Japanese notion of kintsugi, or what Ajahn Brahm says about the bent and crooked trees seem more beautiful to him than the straight trees. A line from a show I've been watching expressed gratitude for the pain and stress of life rather than regret or aversion, "I'm grateful for my pain, its what's brought me to where I am today."
To be clear, I'm not saying pain is a good in and of itself. Only in conjunction with the repair does it provide a benefit.
I have experienced great hardship - mostly in the realm of mental health troubles.
I know what happens if you do nothing, do not struggle to better your situation and yourself. Nothing happens, it even gets worse. I did this for (far too many) years.
I know too firsthand what happens if you do struggle to better your situation and yourself. Slow progress at first, uneven progress, but longterm benefits that you could not even dream of.
So, for me, the possibility of bettering our situation and ourselves is not in question, I know it can be done. Even if 'authorities' say that it cannot be done, it still can be done.
What to me is an open question is why some people start struggling and why some make moderate and some massive efforts.
All of the great success stories of overcoming hardship that I have read - and I love and seek them out - have apparently included great effort over a long period of time, starting with one small step, and then another, and another... until it snowballs into a beautiful life.
I happen to listen to an interview with the author Barbara Kingsolver this morning about her book Damon Copperhead. The main character is one of these people. She didn't offer much insight into the causes for this sort of quality aside from some speculation that genetics may play a role.
I don’t know if that is true for everyone @marcitko … if it all came down to effort and drive, then everyone who was driven would be happy and successful. It doesn’t come down to success either. I think it has a lot to do with a degree of inner wisdom, of knowing what you need yourself to take the next step.
I'd agree there are far more lives destroyed than those who overcome, and extreme suffering is certainly not necessary but it can be a means to an end. In a sense the Buddha, first given all his greatest desires, went and nearly starved himself to death and suffered a great deal. The result of that attempt was being able to cross off that pathway as a potential pathway and earnestly try a new way without having to wonder, because he experienced it and knew. He'd experienced and knew, both the attaining of great desires and the near-death suffering. Knowing doesn't solve much on its own. Something has to be done with that knowledge. It has to be applied somehow, examined in such a way it leads to the striving and flourishing.
When I'm stuck, if I examine my behaviors, I usually have toxic waste running through my mind. Replaying bad memories, imagining bad people getting theirs, wishing it would be different, wondering if I deserved it and so on. It's a big enthralling mental/emotional horror story. This spills into behaviors and actions when left to proliferate. Eventually seeking some form of self-soothing or being jolted aware when someone far less deserving receives my unfortunate misdirection of frustration. It stems from what I'm entertaining in the mind which I'm not always aware of.
So maybe after knowing the experience, the next component could be being aware of what the mind and feelings are doing with that knowledge. Being an observer to the mind and feelings rather than enthralled participant. If so, how does one practice being an observer to themselves and their behaviors?
What I did initially that I found helpful was to start by practicing 3rd-person-view observing. Having come from a gaming background, many games you play your character with 3rd person perspective. The camera sort of hovers behind them as they run around the world and do stuff. This provided me a jumping off point to view myself in my mind as if in 3rd person mode. So maybe for me the question of how to practice is to experiment and explore using things I'm already familiar with.
Polarities are within everyones experience to some degree. Retuning to a Middle Way or internal mechanism?
Constant leaving and entering anew.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalyāṇa-mittatā
Perhaps, the question of "What makes these people so different", delusionally assumes that humanity has some level of sameness that most share when contrasted with those others we judge as being different.
Looking closer, can a fluidity take the place of those same identities when their ephemeral natures are seen to be no more substantial than any dream that we cling to?
I wonder, if psychology ponders the machinations of the various arisings of the human condition, where spirituality simply aims at a transcendence of those limitations.
I say, proudly showing off my own prejudicial dreaming's.
I'm a little hazy on the details but I believe there are four ways mentioned of progress for those on the way: fast/slow, painful/painless. Progress may also described as a gentle sloping beach with a somewhat sudden and steep deepening. There are other ways described but these two come to mind.
On the gentle sloping beach with an abundance of sand its easy to get distracted building a sand castle. But it happens, and happens often for people like me. Getting tangled up in the labeling and differenciating of various identities and mechanisms.
Maybe described another way as attempting to plot a course through the fluidity by using those ephemeral identities as landmarks not dissimilar to using floating, moving kelp paddies to plot a course across the ocean. An intellectual examination of scientific understandings in hopes to further the spiritual journey. Sort of slow and painful papanca.
Though when exploring something so completely unfamiliar as the way, there can be some benefit to associate it with something already understood, even if not entirely accurate, even if just for a short time until deeper understanding. It could be helpful for bridging a gap in understanding and help with future insights as understanding builds upon itself. Such as when transcendence is not yet well understood.
I suppose the danger to following such a method is things will need to be unlearned when further understandings come around or else it might be confusing when moving landmarks are no longer accurate.
Understanding things as not-self and subject to arising, changing, and fading away begins differently for different people based on their specific conditions and understandings. But I think it ends the same for everyone committed to path.
You can believe what you want but the fact remains those beliefs are tied to a story and that story is unnecessary and something you're choosing to participate in. What's more is you share those opinions openly which can be confusing or frustrating to people who read it. You once argued that exact point but you may have forgotten. A little lost in the weeds these days are we? A few too many stories in front of the eyes hmm? Forgot how to leave your self at the door before rushing off to the next great adventure? Nothing new, just a return to a usual cycle. Sit on that stool a little longer, you have twigs in your hair and look like you could use the rest.
Spoken with love
Hmm arguing with yourself is not a good sign… I’m still reading Gabor Maté’s book on trauma and the toxic culture, and have just arrived at the chapters on mental health, he seems to agree that diagnoses are only useful as a shorthand for a set of symptoms and don’t speak to causes.
@how
Humanity does present a certain level of sameness in the material sphere. In Buddhism you could present this as our preference for unskillful means. Usually these are quite attractive on the short-term and poor on the long-term (if we add reincarnation, really poor on the super-long term too!).
Neuropsychology puts now really fancy labels to the origin of some of these unskillful behaviours and has mapped out different areas in our brain that are affected or the origin of some of these: poor attention and impulsiveness can mean something is wrong in your prefrontal cortex; a strong drug habit turns into a modification of your certain areas of your brain, etc.
Perhaps in the spiritual-metaphysical realm, it could be argued that a return to this "oneness" (all beings are Buddhas), breaking away from the 10,000 differences is the path towards liberation. It does help to bring compassion and end the three poisons (in my case).
Psychology takes care of the materialist cases (antipsychotic medicine for schizophrenics, cognitive-behavioural therapy for anxiety disorders); but this does not mean that the door to spirituality needs to remain closed and rejected because of it is lack of "measurable" aspects. One thing I've learnt from my Zen practice is how some things just fall and "make sense" on its own without any further thought / discussion. This can be dangerous though! Perhaps I'm completely deluded and I'm falling into traps. Then I tend to examine it using the 5precepts and 8NP.
I think psychology should remember where it came from: philosophical and religious studies regarding the ailments of the human psyche. While the material field has provided a lot of help and insight (better treatments, longer life spans, etc) it should not fall into the trap of their material view as the possession of absolute truth and consider that this scientific-materialistic path is a straight line heading towards the end of all suffering through science. New sources of suffering will eventually emerge unless we tackle the essence. That essence which is ahistorical and has been following us, for good and for bad, since bygone times....
Maybe. A fun way to openly change an opinion past the edit limit.
That makes sense. Just reading most of the names, it's just a labeling of a symptom. "Anxiety, depression, bi-polar" doesn't really explain much about why someone is. What's he say about speaking to the causes?
He says that disease is a process that encompasses a person’s entire life, from their early childhood conditions, trauma, work stresses, past and current mental wellbeing, to name just a few salient factors.
It’s a good book, makes a lot of sense. He says the reason so few people talk about trauma is because they don’t want to acknowledge society’s flaws, and that we might have to do things to make significant changes.
That's a reason I've not heard before. I wonder what so many find troubling or difficult about acknowledging society's flaws. That might be something we take for granted in the west though now that I think more broadly about it. We have unusually large mouths here and using them is protected in our constitution.
I'm not sure I'll get the book as I have not been reading most books I've purchased lately but I do like many of his insights.
Nutshell answer.....We do...
https://www.abc.es/xlsemanal/a-fondo/putin-psicopata-diagnostico-james-fallon-neurocientifico.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-es-es
Interesting article, in Spanish unfortunately. An interview to James Fallon, a "social psychopath". He has dedicated part of his research into studying psychopathy. He does present what seems to be an interesting balance between genetics and environment.
He defines himself as a secondary psychopath and thanks his peaceful and loving upbringing. This, according to himself, avoided a path that would either been suicide or antisocial actions (murder). He also defines how there is another type, the primary psychopath: in this case a good upbringing is crucial but, sadly, not so decisive: they are "walking timebombs".