liveonearth | Entries tagged with attachment

I think everybody
should get rich and famous
and do everything they ever dreamed of
so they can see
that it's not the answer.
--Jim Carrey as quoted in Forbes.com

Most humans exist somewhere on that line between enslavement to destructive habits at one end and total consciousness and nonattachment at the other. In exactly the same way, freedom of choice can be represented as a continuum. Realistically, very few people could ever be found operating at the positive extreme, truly conscious and consistently free.
--Gabor Mate, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, p305.

Oct 21 in A Year with Rumi
( poem )

( ... )

A relationship that strays from one's prototype is limbically equivalent to isolation. Loneliness outweighs most pain. These two facts collude to produce one of love's common and initially baffling quirks: most people will choose misery with a partner their limbic brain recognizes over the stagnant pleasure of a "nice" relationship with someone their attachment mechanisms cannot detect.

from A General Theory of Love p161.

So it is with emotional knowledge. In the first years of life, as (a child's) brain passes from the generous scaffold to the narrow template, a child extracts patterns from his relationships. Before any glimmerings of event memory appear, he stores an impression of what love FEELS like. Neural memory compresses theses qualities into a few powerful Attractors--any single instance a featherweight, but accumulated experience leaves a dense imprint. That concentrated knowledge whispers to a child from beneath the veil of consciousness, telling him what relationships ARE, how they function, what to anticipate, how to conduct them. If a parent loves him in the healthiest way, wherein his needs are paramount, mistakes are forgiven, patience is plentiful, and hurts are soothed as best they can be, then THAT is how he will relate to himself and others. Anomalous love--one where his needs don't matter, or where love is suffocating or autonomy intolerable--makes its ineradicable limbic stamp. Healthy loving then becomes incomprehensible.

Zeroing in on HOW to love goes hand in hand with WHOM. A baby strives to tune in to his parents, but he cannot judge their goodness. He attaches to whoever is there, with the unconditional fixity we profess to require of later attachments: for better or worse;, for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health. Attachment is not a critic: a child adores his mother's face, and he runs to her whether she is pretty or plain. And he prefers the emotional patterns of the family he knows, regardless of its objective merits. As an adult his heart will lean toward these outlines. The closer a potential mate matches his prototypes, the more enticed and entranced he will be--the more he will feel that here, at last, with this person, he BELONGS.

--p160 A General Theory of Love

http://mediamatters.org/action/drlaura/
(you can listen to what she said here, it's 7 minutes long)

Media Matters wants to chastise Dr Laura Schleissinger who spoke about racism on the radio, calling her comments racist and "breathtaking". She is a bit feisty and sometimes rude, but I don't think she is a racist. Apparently she has said some things that "attack" lesbians as well, but I haven't heard them to know what I think of her position there. I have never listened to Dr Laura before, FYI, so the clip above is all I know about her. I essentially agree with her point with regard to racism and black activist culture, but it is such an unpopular position as to cause trouble. Most people can't wrap their heads around it. The truth that she sees is that the black PC position on racism has become "hypersensitive" to isolated words/references, and is too easily triggered by comments which are not actually racist. Some blacks become unable to see that not every remark that mentions blacks or contains the word nigger is inherently racist. For example, I'm not racist, but by agreeing with Dr Laura (or putting "nigger" in print) I could be labeled such. Even Media Matters didn't get it. Media Matters is a useful media watchdog that busts A-holes (Beck, Limbaugh) in the news constantly, demanding apologies and inciting public outcries against public figures. Media Matters calls Dr Laura insensitive and over the top. But I think they need to look in the mirror, and think a little bit harder. I would call her cranky and tired of reverse racism. PCness limits our ability to communicate frankly about important issues by making some words taboo. I want the media to listen and hear and report on what they understand, not to enforce PCness.

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INTERESTING TIMES

are better than no times at all.

Entries tagged with attachment

QotD: Jim Carrey on Wealth and Fame

QotD: the Continuum Between Enslavement and Freedom

Rumi Poem: Consider What Choices

Melancholy Mourning

QotD: Bonded and in Pain is better than Lonely

QotD: on Human Attachment

Media Matters Misses the Point on Racism and Black Culture

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