Anger, Anxiety, Resentment, Stress, and Basic Humanity
psychologytoday.com
psychologytoday.com
Now, I'm not saying one of this point of view is right and the other is wrong, but at the very least there is a debate to have. Therefore it seems presumptuous to me to call one of them "basic humanity".
Philosophy, or in the present case psychology, should use accurate words as much as possible. IMHO "Basic humanity" is not satisfactory in that regard.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Genealogy_of_Morality
At some point, the knowledge is too dry unless transferred and having impact. People that want to change will look into what basic human virtues are, and more.
The rest will remain adamant no matter how appealing the approach is.
Sometimes professionals sum up things for the audience.
The more professional they are, and the less time they have, the more one hears : maybe, most likely, etc.
It's not that they don't evaluate the cases, it's the realization that a complete educative list will bore out the audience, and they will miss other, more basic, points.
So the Greeks certainly praised altruism in that sense, though there's a lot more to be said than that. One aspect of what you say seems correct. Christianity expanded the circle of the people you owed altruism.
(This isn't to speak up for this article, which seems really vague/content-free).
We become better persons by staying in touch with basic humanity, the survival-based capacity for interest in the well-being of others.
Basic humanity motivates respectful, helpful, valuing, nurturing, protective, and altruistic behaviors. In adversity it motivates sacrifice. In emergency it motivates rescue."
Fantastic article. In essence when we dwell on ourselves or our insecurities, we tend to get stressed out. When we act of out service mindset (give first) doing good for all(much harder in practice), where our own good is included, we will be more fulfilled in the long-term.
I found that a strong feeling of mortality brought upon me the basic humanity described in the article.
I immediately noticed a difference in how others treated me (and how I treated them) for the rest of the day.
But I do reject shame and guilt as motivation. For me this is just a mechanism of social coercion, especially for urban societies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(philosophy)
I'm intrigued by your mention of eudaimonia - I've been interested in the concept since coming across it in a computer game in my early teens - but I have a hard time finding discussions of it. Is there any reading material you could recommend that looks at the concept in more depth?
I am also close to epicureism (enjoying intellectual pleasure without interacting with busy world) and stoicism (quieting one's emotion) and studied buddhism for some time.
However I am impressed by how modern and contemporary are dilemmas brought by Diogenes. He had been a sort of investment banker charged with debasement of currency. He explained that he attempted to undermine the system (financial, capitalism) from within.
He rejected purse of material stuff (broke a chalice when realized that he could drink water from a his hands), real estate (living in a barrel), favors from those in power ('Stand out of my sunlight'). But most of all he criticized and ridiculed compromises and social mechanics of urban life. For me this is quite relevant today.
Psychology isn't all bad, since a lot more folks with severe mental illness can now go on to lead a much more normal life due to medication and coping mechanisms. Same for folks that go through trauma and have after-effects. But we are still refining this stuff, so some of it is going to be crap and there are going to be lots of pseudo-psychology fed to the uneducated masses.
Nutrition is somewhat similar. We simply don't have the knowledge to understand its complexities right now. But it isn't all crap: We understand connections between malnourishment and stunted growth, for example. Understand folic acid helps prevent birth defects and vitamin C helps prevent scurvy. To confound matters more, we have a lot of misinformation, partially due to politics and business practices. This isn't really confined to nutrition, though. Society is prone to reject new ways of thinking. Heck, the US pushed against modern "european-style" medicine back in the 1800's - they didn't think they needed science in their medicine or something like that.
- http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f...
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-s-cred...
- https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/05/25/was-the-crisis-in-socia...
I do understand some of that, and probably see more of the psuedo-science application than most: there is a psychological model of occultism folks follow, some of it heavily leaning on Jung's work... who didn't have passable education that we'd like now. And that was pretty common for early psychology: It was more akin to basic philosophy and unbased theories than science.
But I realize that is changing and I realize the good the system really does - my ex was schizo-affective (though he got diagnosed with regular schizophrenia after we broke up). Without the whole system, both the stuff based on shaky psychology and the more pure medical portion with the meds and psychiatrist, he'd have died - no exaggeration.
You don't appear to have presented any evidence or reasons that would make your hostile opinions a useful contribution here.
Methodologies have been devised, reproducible results have actually become an expectation, and psychology has benefited quite a bit from biology, computer science and information theory.