Lynn raises some very important issues. Please see her comments which I have appended to the last posting below.
May I respond by saying that while I think, as I have said in previous posts, that we should resist the conditioning targeted against us by the media and advertising etc, which is only there to achieve their aim of selling us more stuff, I did not advocate living without boundaries.
I believe we all have a very useful, often overlooked, little mechanism which comes with the rest of the kit that we get handed at birth. It is called a conscience. Where it comes from and why it is there, I do not know. But I do know how it works. It alerts us with flashing lights and sharp whistles when we do something we 'shouldnt'. And if we ignore it we suffer pangs of guilt. We all have a conscience, although some nasty or greedy people are quite adept at not hearing the alarm go off, thus enabling them to carry on doing what they should not. I have also heard of at least one person who suffered a head injury, following which he was unable to distinguish right from wrong.
If you accept that we each have a conscience this implies that we arrive in this world fully equipped with a set of morals. We do not decide what these morals are because we are often taken by surprise when our conscience says 'Hang on, you shouldnt be doing that.' We did not program our conscience to only ring when we break this particular rule. But I may be wrong here. As Lynn asks, do we arrive knowing what is right and wrong or are they merely learned behaviour?
In short, we can use this conscience to set our own boundaries and by extension those of society. I think we can all agree that murder is not to be encouraged. Nor is stealing. Nor is lying. Each of these will ring a loud and clear alarm bell in your head. Can you think of others that set your alarm bells ringing? There are I suggest lots of grey areas. What about getting drunk? What about insulting someone? Not so clear signals here? Tricky...
There is a simple rule I read of once which said 'Is what I am about to do going to cause someone suffering? If so, I wont do it'. How about if we all lived by that one, would the world be a better place?
Another one I remember is in the old film Lost Horizon where the Abbot of Shangri-La tells the the hero Ronald Coleman the secret of true happiness. It consists of two words, he says, 'Be Kind.'
How do you think we could make this a Paradise on Earth?
2 comments:
This is interesting Bruv, and so was Lynn's post because I am interested to know how many boundaries are set by our conscience, and how many are set by our personality traits - or are they just one and the same thing - is your conscience a trait of your personality. For me, I feel that I have far too many boundaries and would like to knock down a few - which I think I am starting to do with these blogs - they are a great way of emptying your head with all the stuff you would love to say but never normally do. And you know what's funny, its just a few simple words, are the words in the title of this blog - these I feel have set me free (a little) "A Haven of Unconditional Love" - you only really experience this when you are a child - when you know that your parents will love you no matter what. When you get older you make your own decisions and who knows really whether they are right or wrong - sometimes they are and sometimes they are not - but then as Bruv said in another posting - who is to say what is and isn't right and wrong?
Sorry I am rambling - again! Phil this picture is great. Love to you all Swan
You know that you have my unconditional love Swan, as does everyone who pleases to drop by here. i used to run an Unconditional Love chatroom many years ago and so many people said how wonderful it was to find somewhere where they could be a child again. Sometimes they would say 'if you knew me you couldn't love me' but I had to disagree with them, as I am sure you would too. Often people feel that it is the pain in their life that makes them unlovable but this is just another good reason to love them.
For an example of unconditional love in action please read the Kats correspondence in the comments below.
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