We live in a specific culture which itself is specific to a certain time and a certain place. We only exist as human beings within culture. Without it, we cannot be human. Culture constitutes us, and gives us the means to become ourselves. Culture teaches us how to be human. To reject the human world would be to reject ourselves.
Do not go against the norm. Go with the flow. Only this way will you become yourself. Becoming yourself does not mean rejecting anybody or anything.'It has more to do with acceptance and openness, and then paring down what does not fit, than it has to do with rejection or opposition.
Personal power comes from our consciousness. Consciousness fosters independence and true individuality. From our true nature, which we develop from being in a culture, we respond in the world. Each of us acts on The world, or culture as culture acts upon us.
By our independent and freely made acts, individuals collectively change culture by our chosen responses to it. We do not change anything or anybody through opposition. That wastes energy and is for fools.
Do not oppose the world or culture because opposing culture makes no sense. Because culture is each of us. And each of us is culture. We have a voice in the world by becoming our unique selves within it. You can go with the flow without submitting to it. Go with the flow until you cannot. You will know when that is, if you know yourself. But to know yourself, and to know when to resist, you need to know the world.
I believe my son would have been a conformist if he could have. That is somebody that adheres to expected goals, priorities, and practices.
For a while my son wanted to be a Nurse Practitioner. He got the idea of nursing through me. I pushed him to enter a course for CNA's.
He completed the course and he learned that there existed a profession called Nurse Practitioner. He loved telling people that was his goal.
When he told people he wanted to be a Nurse Practitioner he got all kinds of good feedback and he basked in the glow.
It is just that he never did one self-started thing to reach that goal or any other goal related to a job or a profession. It was as if to him there could exist the goal....independent of effort, or choices or behaviors to realize it. It kind of just hung out there in the universe and he basked in its reflected glory. Without doing one thing.
Until at one point he stopped talking about it. Because he was going backwards, and backwards away from it. And then even he must have known.
To conform in this particular society we must do something individually. We, after all, are an individualistic society not a tribe or a collectivity.
To conform in our society an individual must do things, him or herself. Consistently. And that is what my son was unwilling to do. To try, consistently. By himself.
I do not know if this is because of deficit or choice, or if he can outgrow it.
To try means to adopt all sorts of practices and habits, that are consistent with achieving and succeeding: discipline, organization, self-consciousness and correction, dedication, self-control, even self-denial.
If I am honest with myself and with you, the truth is that I was a slow learner in most of these areas.
The difference between my son and I is that he is unwilling or unable to enter arenas or endeavors where he is even called upon to adopt these practices or habits. Or maybe it is the reverse. Because he will not or can not adopt these habits, he does not try many things.
Conforming in this age and place would be to get a job and try hard to keep it. Become independent and take on typical responsibilities. Have culturally specific goals and work to attain them. Behave in culturally designated appropriate ways.
All of these things, too, my son is unwilling or unable to do. Many of your children, too, have a hard time. Maybe they are revolutionaries in their times. Maybe they are the Romantics of our era. Maybe they would have fit better in another World. Like the Wild West.
Nerfie, do you need helpers on the ranch? They will work cheap.
My son needs others, but he has trouble acknowledging that this is so, and he has trouble conforming in the ways that engender his receiving sustained help from and acceptance by others.
He wants acceptance, but so far, he has been unwilling or unable to contain the elements of his personality that sabotage his acceptance by others and their wanting to help them.
If I translate this into the wisdom of the First Precept, it would be that my son opposes the world, still. He sees his freedom as something that he gains that is in opposition to others. He sees his freedom as being threatened by others. As something to be infringed upon or taken. He does not see personal freedom as something that is gained through habits and reflection, as one understands and lets go the extraneous and extricates oneself from the unnecessary and the frivolous.
He sees his autonomy as something that is in opposition to Society, not as something to be earned within it. He sees Society as cramping his style, so to speak. He sees the practices and habits that would harness his natural abilities, which are considerable, as confining. He sees practices that would address and compensate for his limitations as burdensome, extraneous and unnecessary.
And yet more than most people, he need the protections of Society. He needs others.
I wanted to take a break from my son. It is the fault of the first precept that I have not.
As I type this I wonder if my son's recent rage, is related to a dawning awareness of his personal quandary, and a belated at least partial acceptance of the First Precept. It would be quite a hopeful thing if it was.
I want to write one more thing, to close.
All of you are going to vote me off the Island because I am going on and one.
Mental illness as a concept is very new. It only really originated as an organized concept in the 19th century. All of the diagnoses are really a new thing. I will not bore you with a history, but I will say this.
To me, this society is very demanding upon its people. And offers us really very little help to shoulder the burdens of life. We are largely alone, unless we are very lucky. That is one of the miracles on this board. Because many of us do not have anywhere else to share.
My son, you all know, had a very hard time as an infant. I loved him a great deal. Maybe if my son had had models. Brothers, a father. Mentors, other male figures. He could have done it. Maybe that would have provided him the emotional security, the bonds to feel that he could go forward. And not be alone.
There was nothing really there for him when he grew up to help him be autonomous. It turns out he could not do it alone. And we know, he needed to reject me.
There are people that believe my son is lacking in the qualities that would allow him to mature in a normal way. I am talking here about the psychiatrist who I speak to on the phone who has never met my son. Who I have not yet fired. I cannot knowingly kill the messenger.
Cedar, it is not that I will not consider drugs. It is what in the world would I do then. At least now, I can agonize and hope I discover something, anything. If it is drugs, what could I do?
My son has another opportunity. We will see how it goes.
There is just so much heartache. I hope we soon get to the precept that addresses that, to move beyond it. I fear we will not.
