by Zara » Wed Aug 07, 2013 7:58 am
Pat wrote:So where does inspiration fit in? By this I mean when we find others whose examples we wish to emulate, literally wishing we were 'more like them.' Granted, it is their behavior, or values/principles, that we wish ourselves toward, but is it not seeing a lack in ourselves, a wish to be different?
<smiles> Now you are changing the formulation of the question from asking about acceptance/rejection of the physical body to asking about acceptance/rejection of psychological qualities. New question, new answer: Because intentional changes in the structure of one's psyche are very possible, I believe that, yes, we can certainly strike a balance between a self-acceptance of present identity while seeking out new directions to grow. This is the point of childhood, after all, and of a thriving adulthood: to emulate models of competency and increase in maturity over time. I wish to maintain the caution, however, of remaining aware of the motivations behind such desires for change. Asking WHY? is essential to understanding whether or not genuine self-acceptance is operant in each person's internal lifestyle.
Pat wrote:While behavior might be more easily changed, coming to accept a change in values or principles is not.
I think "coming to accept a change in values or principles" may be describing shifts in personal paradigm, or worldview. Is this the case? I can agree that changes in behavior, per se, tend to happen more quickly than changes in principles/paradigms, for behavior changes indicate that we are adapting to new conditions in our lives, and life is anything but static. But both behavioral and philosophical changes are fraught with difficulties, and both behavior changes and values/principles changes happen throughout one's lifetime. Paradigms are the questions we do not think to ask, the assumptions we take as given facts. Sometimes answers sneak in through the cracks within our worldviews before we ever ask a question, and initiate changes we may not even be aware of. Just some interesting facets of being, which you've called to my attention.
Pat wrote:How does one cultivate a personal sense of 'normal' by which to live, that in reality (for the sake of argument), sets one so apart from the rest of civilization, that one is, in effect, excluded?
First, just to check in, did I communicate the idea that the mainstream uses exclusion/rejection to reject psychological and/or physical deviations from its own norms? I wished to suggest that exclusion/exile as a legal consequence in the Tunnels performs a different function than societal exclusion/rejection in the world Above.
Second, you ask an awesome question, my friend. One cultivates a personal, even an exclusive, sense of human "normal" by evaluating each component of one's life experience and prizing everything therein that is genuinely beautiful. Making your own decisions about what is beautiful, and what is not, will set you apart from the common mode of "normality." I guarantee it.
Pat wrote:...yet 'no man is an island' springs to mind...Are humans not at core a communal animal?
First John Donne, now Aristotle. Sweet.
My answer: Some humans are communal animals. And some are not. Many more humans are NOT communal than our culture wants to admit. The communal ones keep deciding that all humans OUGHT to be at core a communal animal. So the dominant opinion is that communal civilization (as it has come to exist in the world) is the one right way to live.
Pat wrote:The other aspect I am trying to think through about all this is how are we to live in community with one another if we all individually define ourselves by rejecting whatever does not fit with our defined self acceptance?
Perhaps through respectful empathy. By recognizing that each person is performing the same work of identity-construction that I am, but in his or her own unique, and uniquely valuable, way. By also recognizing that something I have rejected from my own identity may well be an important piece to someone else's identity. AND through the willingness to protect and support the identities of others with the same vigor I protect and support my own self. Living in community requires us to decide as a community which potential identity-bits are unwelcome in the world we share. So we may determine that an impulse to steal, for example, must not be an element of a good and normal identity. That bit then needs to stay outside the community. But plenty of other bits are welcomed and encouraged.
Pat wrote:Where does civilization vs anarchy come into it?
Consider how often civilization and anarchy are presented as opposites on a positive-negative value scale. Yet anarchy is simply a less popular form of civilization. Now, if by anarchy you mean social disorder or chaos, we're back to mainstream fears about what is expected/assumed to happen if we fall out of step with mainstream lifestyles. In history, social chaos results from disasters and catastrophes. A volcano erupts. A war erupts. A government falls. A plague disrupts the health and safety of entire communities. Yet mainstream fear takes these images out of context and tells us: if you, oh individual citizen, shirk your responsibility to this society or fail in your dutiful conformity, you bring about the end of the world. In reality, deviations from norms stretch boundaries, test the validity of communal precepts, and instigate change. It keeps whatever dream a civilization is dreaming flexible and alive. Without the security to be a nonconforming self or subgroup, if one chooses, without the freedom to question business as usual, without allowance for diversity, without that touch of humane chaos, a society stagnates or implodes...or explodes, sharing the misery. You end up with the fall of the Roman Empire, or the American Civil War, or the rise and collapse of the Third Reich, or a community that loses Vincent and Father to a cave-in because no one chose to help Mouse rescue them. And in the meantime, you must endure a culture that persecutes and exploits fellow human beings for their differences.
Pat wrote:Why is it awkward for Catherine to respond? Why have Vincent comment on her face?
The possiblities you identify could well be in play in that scene. For myself, I think that Catherine's awkwardness in answering may stem from her sudden realization that Vincent has never seen her uninjured face, and that having such wounds cosmetically "fixed" is outside Vincent's realm of experience. Catherine's wealth repaired her face. Recall that Carol Stabler, also injured, did not have access to such resources, and the nerve damage to her face was never fixed. A person from Vincent's world would be in the same boat. It's another indicator of the differences between the worlds. I think Vincent comments out of pure wonder. It's not in him to regret Catherine's healing. In Barbara Hambly's novelization, the author has Catherine consider the very question you have raised, and also quickly reject the notion as being inapplicable to Vincent's motivations.
Pat wrote:Is Catherine succumbing to societal pressure to 'look normal' by getting the surgery?
Shortest answer, yes. BUT I think it's important to keep in mind that in Catherine's context, the plastic surgery is considered a medically essential step in the healing process. In the paradigm of her world, she's undergoing emergency surgery to repair an organ (her skin) just as vital to her life as her bones or her heart.
It's very interesting to me to witness Catherine's cultural development during Season One. By "Temptation," at mid-season, she has reoriented her values so that she is able to tell her surgeon she'd rather keep her remaining facial scar rather than order further surgery to remove it. She also has to argue with him a little, to resist the state of Normal she used to share with him, because she has entered into a different society now, a society which incorporates much different pressures and freedoms. She is deciding for herself what is beautiful and what is not.
~ Zara
[quote="Pat"]So where does inspiration fit in? By this I mean when we find others whose examples we wish to emulate, literally wishing we were 'more like them.' Granted, it is their behavior, or values/principles, that we wish ourselves toward, but is it not seeing a lack in ourselves, a wish to be different?[/quote]
<smiles> Now you are changing the formulation of the question from asking about acceptance/rejection of the physical body to asking about acceptance/rejection of psychological qualities. New question, new answer: Because intentional changes in the structure of one's psyche are very possible, I believe that, yes, we can certainly strike a balance between a self-acceptance of present identity while seeking out new directions to grow. This is the point of childhood, after all, and of a thriving adulthood: to emulate models of competency and increase in maturity over time. I wish to maintain the caution, however, of remaining aware of the motivations behind such desires for change. Asking WHY? is essential to understanding whether or not genuine self-acceptance is operant in each person's internal lifestyle.
[quote="Pat"]While behavior might be more easily changed, coming to accept a change in values or principles is not.[/quote]
I think "coming to accept a change in values or principles" may be describing shifts in personal paradigm, or worldview. Is this the case? I can agree that changes in behavior, per se, tend to happen more quickly than changes in principles/paradigms, for behavior changes indicate that we are adapting to new conditions in our lives, and life is anything but static. But both behavioral and philosophical changes are fraught with difficulties, and both behavior changes and values/principles changes happen throughout one's lifetime. Paradigms are the questions we do not think to ask, the assumptions we take as given facts. Sometimes answers sneak in through the cracks within our worldviews before we ever ask a question, and initiate changes we may not even be aware of. Just some interesting facets of being, which you've called to my attention. :)
[quote="Pat"]How does one cultivate a personal sense of 'normal' by which to live, that in reality (for the sake of argument), sets one so apart from the rest of civilization, that one is, in effect, excluded?[/quote]
First, just to check in, did I communicate the idea that the mainstream uses exclusion/rejection to reject psychological and/or physical deviations from its own norms? I wished to suggest that exclusion/exile as a legal consequence in the Tunnels performs a different function than societal exclusion/rejection in the world Above.
Second, you ask an awesome question, my friend. One cultivates a personal, even an exclusive, sense of human "normal" by evaluating each component of one's life experience and prizing everything therein that is genuinely beautiful. Making your own decisions about what is beautiful, and what is not, will set you apart from the common mode of "normality." I guarantee it.
[quote="Pat"]...yet 'no man is an island' springs to mind...Are humans not at core a communal animal?[/quote]
First John Donne, now Aristotle. Sweet. :D My answer: Some humans are communal animals. And some are not. Many more humans are NOT communal than our culture wants to admit. The communal ones keep deciding that all humans OUGHT to be at core a communal animal. So the dominant opinion is that communal civilization (as it has come to exist in the world) is the one right way to live.
[quote="Pat"]The other aspect I am trying to think through about all this is how are we to live in community with one another if we all individually define ourselves by rejecting whatever does not fit with our defined self acceptance? [/quote]
Perhaps through respectful empathy. By recognizing that each person is performing the same work of identity-construction that I am, but in his or her own unique, and uniquely valuable, way. By also recognizing that something I have rejected from my own identity may well be an important piece to someone else's identity. AND through the willingness to protect and support the identities of others with the same vigor I protect and support my own self. Living in community requires us to decide as a community which potential identity-bits are unwelcome in the world we share. So we may determine that an impulse to steal, for example, must not be an element of a good and normal identity. That bit then needs to stay outside the community. But plenty of other bits are welcomed and encouraged.
[quote="Pat"]Where does civilization vs anarchy come into it? [/quote]
Consider how often civilization and anarchy are presented as opposites on a positive-negative value scale. Yet anarchy is simply a less popular form of civilization. Now, if by anarchy you mean social disorder or chaos, we're back to mainstream fears about what is expected/assumed to happen if we fall out of step with mainstream lifestyles. In history, social chaos results from disasters and catastrophes. A volcano erupts. A war erupts. A government falls. A plague disrupts the health and safety of entire communities. Yet mainstream fear takes these images out of context and tells us: if you, oh individual citizen, shirk your responsibility to this society or fail in your dutiful conformity, you bring about the end of the world. In reality, deviations from norms stretch boundaries, test the validity of communal precepts, and instigate change. It keeps whatever dream a civilization is dreaming flexible and alive. Without the security to be a nonconforming self or subgroup, if one chooses, without the freedom to question business as usual, without allowance for diversity, without that touch of humane chaos, a society stagnates or implodes...or explodes, sharing the misery. You end up with the fall of the Roman Empire, or the American Civil War, or the rise and collapse of the Third Reich, or a community that loses Vincent and Father to a cave-in because no one chose to help Mouse rescue them. And in the meantime, you must endure a culture that persecutes and exploits fellow human beings for their differences.
[quote="Pat"]Why is it awkward for Catherine to respond? Why have Vincent comment on her face?[/quote]
The possiblities you identify could well be in play in that scene. For myself, I think that Catherine's awkwardness in answering may stem from her sudden realization that Vincent has never seen her uninjured face, and that having such wounds cosmetically "fixed" is outside Vincent's realm of experience. Catherine's wealth repaired her face. Recall that Carol Stabler, also injured, did not have access to such resources, and the nerve damage to her face was never fixed. A person from Vincent's world would be in the same boat. It's another indicator of the differences between the worlds. I think Vincent comments out of pure wonder. It's not in him to regret Catherine's healing. In Barbara Hambly's novelization, the author has Catherine consider the very question you have raised, and also quickly reject the notion as being inapplicable to Vincent's motivations.
[quote="Pat"]Is Catherine succumbing to societal pressure to 'look normal' by getting the surgery? [/quote]
Shortest answer, yes. BUT I think it's important to keep in mind that in Catherine's context, the plastic surgery is considered a medically essential step in the healing process. In the paradigm of her world, she's undergoing emergency surgery to repair an organ (her skin) just as vital to her life as her bones or her heart.
It's very interesting to me to witness Catherine's cultural development during Season One. By "Temptation," at mid-season, she has reoriented her values so that she is able to tell her surgeon she'd rather keep her remaining facial scar rather than order further surgery to remove it. She also has to argue with him a little, to resist the state of Normal she used to share with him, because she has entered into a different society now, a society which incorporates much different pressures and freedoms. She is deciding for herself what is beautiful and what is not.
~ Zara