Morality and Self Realization

                                               Morality and Self Realization

                                                     by Marco M. Pardi

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for in our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”  Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) Reflections, 195, ed. Volker Michels, 1974

Social science classes, including Anthropology, have a tendency of enculturating the young while seeming to talk almost exclusively about the enculturation of other people.  Some instructors may probe more closely into the individual constellations sitting in the seats before them.   But largely the individual student is left to infer his own reality from depictions of the reality making process for others.  Societies, and the cultures they share – albeit at a superficial level are peopled with faceless beings more conveniently labeled as members of a group than as wondering, doubting, safely conforming individuals living a public veneer over a private life.  The message, especially in the West seems to be, “Look, you can use our conceptual tools to box the others. Of course, you yourself are free.”

That the enculturation process is vital to human (all Primates) development is beyond question.  Through this process, lengthiest in humans, the infant is developed from a helpless organism to a – relatively – autonomous individual.  Ethology has helped us to understand the permutations of this process in non-human animals we hitherto had dismissed as ruled entirely by instinct.  Anyone who has rescued orphaned wildlife has sadly discovered the role learning plays in the maturation process.

In my early college years I was part of a pre-med class touring a State facility for what we now call “severely developmentally disabled.”  Suffice to say this facility, little more than open bay barracks with a few isolation rooms,  has long since been closed and is quietly spoken of only by those who remember; more recent generations apparently do not need this information.  Within the several barracks distributed over a broad campus one could see crowds of entities that, to varying degrees, challenged the definition of Human.  Although the facility was called a Training Center, it was immediately evident that even the most rudimentary training was, for the most part, deemed irrelevant and/or impossible.  These entities spent their days milling about, getting fed and having diapers changed and bottoms wiped. Graduate Psychology students from the nearby university moved about gingerly, writing notes and, if they were new, trying to communicate in some way.

But what of us, what of the “normally developed” people of this world?  Never mind the origins of the hoops through which we daily jump, why do we jump at all?  Enculturation provides us with not only the act, but with the justification for the act – the sense that “it is the right thing to do”, “everyone does it, and they do it this way”.  One must not harm others, unless they: wear a different uniform; speak a different language; worship a different god…….. and all that. But that’s a later lesson.  For “Our nation’s finest.”

Enculturation, then, is deeply permeated by reasons for and reasons against thoughts, words, and deeds.  One test of the depth of your enculturation is to spend time with children in the “Why years”; see how far you get before yelling, “Because I goddamned said so, that’s why!!”  Ah, now it’s clear.  Perhaps different from the bar of soap one gets in the mouth for repeating words one was allowed to hear but not say.  Or the hot water filled enema plunged up the rectum to purge whatever unapproved thoughts, words or intentions might have sought refuge there.

Enculturation erects for us an Idealized Other, the big boy who doesn’t cry, the big girl who smilingly defers to all, especially male, authority, the young person who strives to work hard so one day he or she might rest, the young man who throws himself on a hand grenade to save his buddies.  The message, particularly for males in Western cultures embodies a profound cognitive dissonance; “Stand on your own two feet; be your own man; do not depend on others” while at the same time saying “Be a good citizen; obey the law; be a good example for others to follow.”  If everyone’s a leader, who are the followers?  Undeveloped children.   

What of the children who, from the start, see through the process, the children who have been to Oz and have seen behind the curtain?  How do we classify children who listen, observe, and come to understand that the enculturation message variations from one adult to the next and the apparent, if subtle, conflicts between what an adult says and what they do betray a superficial validity to the game which throws the entire endeavor in doubt?  Such children learn to “game the system”, perceiving situational correctness and modeling it externally while living privately, even covertly.  For them, a visible deviation from the norm brings correction or retribution from the authority figures perhaps including severe punishment.  But that is not the real threat.  The real threat is the disclosure of the child’s true persona, the persona for whom enculturation is only skin deep.

I have said, or indicated in other posts how displeased I am at the casual application of very specific terms, the “common usage.”  Perhaps the most frequently misused psychological term is paranoid, deriving from the ideational spectrum classified as paranoia, a spectrum which may have any of several root causes.  And, I do not doubt there are many who would consider the child I have thus far described and conclude I am describing someone on their way to becoming a sociopath, or even psychopath.  Interestingly, Webster’s 9th Collegiate Dictionary can cite only a circa 1885 lexicon entry for psychopath and a circa 1923 lexicon entry for psychopathic personality (“….clear perception of reality except for the individual’s social and moral obligations…..”).  Similarly, the same resource cites a circa 1944 lexicon entry for both sociopath and sociopathic (“relating to or characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior or a psychopathic personality”)  Nice loop back to psychopathic.  When in doubt, cover all the bases.  My copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, DSM-IV-TR (text revision) 2007, provides no entry for either sociopath or psychopath.  To be sure, I checked the DSM-V, the latest and most controversial edition.  As with DSM-IV, the closest you can get to either of these terms is “anti-social personality disorder.”           

At first this seemed odd.  How could an ostensibly exact science based document simply gloss over or leave out asocial in favor of anti-social, not contradicting this confabulation, especially when the general public is far more likely to encounter simple dictionary definitions rather than science based definitions?  Could it be tacit admission that the dictionary entry, based more on commonly accepted usage than on science itself, is improper and thus deserving of a quiet averting of the head?  Or could it be that we are saying, albeit quietly, that asocial is not a pathology?

Indeed, asocial and anti-social are two very different things.  Asocial, like asexual or amoral, is a stance which simply recognizes, as in sexuality or morality, that the dictums of enculturation are socially based, not intrinsically applicable to the individual,  and therefore individually irrelevant.  It is not against as in anti.  The philosophy of Buddhism includes marvelously insightful sayings used in guidance.  One of these reminds us that the degree to which we dislike something is the degree to which we are attached to that something.  However, when like or dislike do not apply, that something is simply present but irrelevant.  When walking across campus, if I hear someone yell, “Hey, stupid!” I do not turn around.  I do not look for the speaker and answer “Yes?”  Nor do I object to the utterance.  I know I’m not stupid, so the utterance is irrelevant to me.

But is every social dictum irrelevant?  No, not if one wishes to survive.   The child born into this awareness or the adult arriving by effort learn, sometimes painfully, that while they live individually in a transparent cocoon, its outside surface scrawled and graven with social claims to what is right and wrong, good and bad, peering out at the judgmental society closing around them they, in almost all cases, do not have the power to live alone.  John Donne was right: No Man is an Island.   The appearance of conformity is required for survival.  And, since people are largely so shallow and imperceptive, this generally works. 

But this cynical view can carry the seed of its own destruction.  A “healthy” individual recognizes his ultimate connection to others, albeit oblique, when he understands the meaning of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  A healthy individual realizes the ultimate paradox: That successful life for the individual is successful life for the group.  Records abound of individuals either lost to society by accident or locked away from society by intent devising their own internal society, of their own construction, and surviving through their interactions with these phantoms.  While this may seem a case for the DSM,  how is it different from what each of us does in our daily interactions with flesh and blood people?  Do we not imbue them with likes and dislikes and personality traits and failings as we define them?  Ever “been wrong” about someone?

The self realized person walks in a nimbus, a social cloud jointly made by others and himself.  That the others may be largely unconscious of their role in the creation and maintenance of this cloud is irrelevant;  the nimbus is vital to survival. 

In Strategic Air Command I took the eye test for combat pilots.  A part I distinctly remember was a thin shaft of glass, like a ruler, laid on a white tablet in front of me.  Thin black zeroes were marked at intervals on the glass.  My job, timed, was to quickly discern those on the top of the glass from those on the bottom of the glass.

The self aware person is able to gaze out from the glass of his cocoon and discern the mores, the rules, the assumptions placed there from outside and to understand what drove him to scribble his philosophy of life on the inside.

“We do not yet know when being alone will lead to creative ‘social, artistic, philosophic or characterological performances’ and when mental illness will be the outcome.”  Gregory Zilboorg (1890-1959) As paraphrased by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: selected papers pf Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. 23. ed. Dexter M. Bullard. 1959.