Why value love over dominance?

Started by Ragnarok, September 09, 2021, 10:37:25 AM

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John Lamb

#60
Quote from: Ragnarok on September 09, 2021, 10:37:25 AM
After digging deep into the abyss of myself, I came to a horrible realization - all of my spiritual praxis, prayer, mediation, liturgy, etc. for my whole life has been for the glorification of myself. That is, I really detested being "me". I still do. I have no real pragmatic utility except for being tall and above average intelligence (which is meh compared to the geniuses today). Never good at sports, uncoordinated, ugly-ish, and some level of neuro-atypicality (I'm not autistic or anything, but I never felt "normal" - I never really felt satisfied from the pleasures of life; they grew old really quickly; I never really cared about pleasing anybody socially, never really cared about petty social hierarchy dominance rituals, never really had a friend group or relationships, never really cared about any of this; and I always needed, at least once a week, alone time in my room).

In reality though, a lot of this stems from just feeling socially inferior and not wanting to bother. Because I am. I am socially inferior.

So religion was the perfect way to escape from all of this and find some way I could raise myself above others. By being morally virtuous, by being ascetic, by having discipline and restraining from the pleasures of life, I could ascend and become higher than all. As a parallel, I could become a Saint and laugh condescendingly at people below me.

But the truth is, despite wearing the moniker of "Catholic", "Orthodox",  "Christian", I never showed any "love" or compassion to anyone who I felt didn't deserve it, and if I did, it was all motivated by pleasing God or others. Nor do I see any pragmatic value in it aside from me being selfishly motivated.


All real forms of love seem to be biconditional. A tit for tat. A mother loves her son because of biological biases and the pleasure from seeing her son love her back. Your friends only value you because they feel like you bring some value to them, and vice-versa. Your boss gives you a raise because you either performed great work or society obligated him too. Your lover loves you because of lustful satisfaction. Etc.

And really, even for those who claim to show unconditional love, so often the "I" is the center of it. "I" volunteered at the soup-kitchen because "I" wanted to feel good about it. "I" felt that God told me I should. How often will someone at a soup-kitchen hug a broken down poor family who never feels loved for no reason?

I really don't see why I should. Nobody has ever showed me love unconditionally. I always have to provide value to them for them to even care. Why should I take a step forward and show them unconditional love?

And really, what about the role of dominance in life? Even from teenage years, it seems innate for us to want to dominate others. We create social status hierarchies of dominance based on wealth, attractiveness, social extravertedness, etc., with a bunch of losers at the bottom who are neither pretty, wealthy, or extroverted. Even contemporary Western society today is built on such vanity; even politics. When we see political enemies that we hate, we raise ourselves above them and view them as lesser. Look at all those redneck incestuous GED hicks who won't get the Covid vaccine, who vote for Trump! Look at all those Leftist SJW pink hair dyed manchildren with their Sonic the Hedgehog toys!

I mean dang it, even reading the Bible shows nothing but petty dominance disputes. Who should be the King of Israel based on his countenance? Whether a Galilean could be the Messiah, and really, ultimately, "God has dominance over all, so if you don't submit yourself, He will exercise dominance over you and burn you forever"


It just seems like life is survival of the fittest, and if you aren't fit, die off.

So why not value dominance over unconditional compassion?

You're kind of right, but it doesn't matter. Dominance, in the end, is just the pursuit of love by other means. People go in for dominance because it's a way for the ego to experience love or esteem without letting down its guard, its defenses. That's a doomed experiment. By definition the weight of the ego is always going to get in the way of love, because ultimately the ego can only love itself (narcissism).

That's what Christ's humiliation, suffering, and death is all about : the ego has to completely die to itself in order for authentic love to come through. The dominant powers can look down on Christ as weak and pathetic, but the joke's on them because their fleeting dominance is only a scared, fearful way of grasping for love, which they are too cowardly to seek in an honest and authentic way like Christ does.

You don't have to be as perfect as Christ though to experience some form of genuine love, or at least the beginnings of it. It sounds like you're at a stage where your ego just needs to give up a certain hardened position or thought pattern, and then you can move on to something real again. That's overcoming the ego like Christ, just on a smaller scale. Nevertheless it's still absolutely necessary. I'm working through this myself in my own life.

What I'd say is give up on the self-improvement crap. It's not going to work as long as you're in this frame of my mind, and it's only going to make you feel more miserable and frustrated with yourself. This is my experience, and the reason why is obvious. What people today call "self-improvement" only addresses our secondary or superficial aspects. That's fine if your primary sense of self is secure, but if not, all that focus on your secondary characteristics is just going to remind you how fundamentally miserable you are. It's a worthless endeavour. And that includes religion and spirituality inasmuch as they are about "washing the outer cup", as Jesus says, and not the inner cup. Washing the inner cup doesn't mean prayer, meditation, and getting all your thoughts to be pure and religious either. That's still the outer cup. The inner cup is who you are, your identity or self-definition. From that identity you can build a pure and religious life, but only if the identity is based in truth and authenticity.

It's obvious whereabouts you're going wrong with your identity or self-definition. It has something to do with seeing yourself as a social outcast. However, only you know in particular just what this means and how you specifically define it.

Pay close attention to the words you use to describe or define yourself, especially when you're being most blunt and automatic. It's these very words you have to contend with, just like Jesus in the wilderness having to contradict Satan's words. Basically it's all about finding new words, contradicting what you've been saying about yourself and finding a new way to define yourself. And not arbitrarily either, but describing yourself more authentically.

"Social outcast" is a definition that will stay with you to the end of time if you choose it. It'll cling to you for the rest of your life and even the afterlife, until you decide to give it up. It will be a self fulfilling prophecy as well. You'll experience loneliness because that's what you expect, and more importantly, it's what you think is right, appropriate, what you "deserve" as long as this is who you are or who you think you are.

You've have had some really harsh experiences when you were younger of feeling isolated. The question is whether you're going to keep reproducing those feelings within yourself for the rest of your life. And you can do that; the human mind can sustain it. Eventually though, if you really want to "improve" — and not just in a superficial moral or aesthetic sense, but in a real sense where you actually feel and are happier — you're going to have to forgive the cruel treatment you've experienced (and there's no need to pretend it wasn't cruel), forgive mankind for whatever you hold against it (even if you're quite justified), and above all redefine yourself as something else. And the potential for that is very clearly there already. You call yourself an outcast but at the same time you make effort to reach out to people, however small. Even on here for example. That means you have a social being, a social person within you. Why not accept that as being more true to who you are, and see the "outcast" in you as a bleak exaggeration built up over years of hurt feelings and resentment? If you can say to yourself, for example, "I'd honestly rather be socially available and active than isolated and alone", you've already answered the question. It's just you have to answer it fully and in a way that finally answers the voice in your head saying, "No, I don't want that, because I don't deserve it, I'm better off alone, I'm not of any value to anyone, people don't respect me, people are corrupt and not worth knowing anyway, etc." If you can overcome that you'll have made an enormous step to conquering your ego like Christ did, and it would be the most authentically religious and spiritual action you could make in your life right now. Certainly better than joining a monastery out of despair.
"Let all bitterness and animosity and indignation and defamation be removed from you, together with every evil. And become helpfully kind to one another, inwardly compassionate, forgiving among yourselves, just as God also graciously forgave you in the Anointed." – St. Paul

John Lamb

Quote from: Ragnarok on September 13, 2021, 10:55:12 AM
Quote from: james03 on September 13, 2021, 10:50:37 AM
You're trying to drink from a fire hose.  Get a well paying job (if you don't have one), develop a group of male friends, and chart out slow improvement.  Worry about the smoking hot Trad lasses after you make some improvements.  Do it young.  You don't want to be the creepy 35 year old scamming on 17 year old Trad girls in the chapel.   

Life is a fire hose, and if you don't drink from it, you die of starvation. It is what it is.

I've been "self-improving" for several years now, and each and every time I get knocked to the floor, I'm reminded that I'm so far from "normal" that there's nothing I can do about it - you become a tangled spider web where if you try to lift up one area of your life, the 3 other areas at the bottom will knock you back down. And each and every time I suffer for self-improvement in the hopes of something greater and am knocked to the floor, I get a tiny glimpse about the futility of it all, how there's an infinitesimal amount of improvement and how if I can't improve one aspect of my life, I won't be able to improve my life in toto. It's like a trying to outrun a hamster wheel - futile.

I'm in my mid 20s. Like it's over at this point to get on the treadmill if you aren't on it already. 

I'm at a point where after getting knocked back to the floor the nth time, I'm just done trying to get back up. Just starve at this point.

At this point, why not just care only about myself? Why not try to find my own inner-divinity where nobody's judgment can take away from my own worship of myself, where I am valuable because I AM, rather than trying to seek it outside myself through God and others? I may be in Hell, but why not be ruler of it? Own it up? Accept it? Stop trying to delude myself into being something I'm not - God willed me destined for Hell. Just like some angel had to eventually rebel, someone's got to be damned during the Last Judgment. So why not just accept my place in the cosmos as a damned soul, unworthy of any love. Grace is a gift, and He created me in Original Sin and never gave me one inkling of Grace other than my marginally superior intelligence, a curse of the worst curses. Maybe to love God is to love no one but myself, because He has created me as unlovable. Maybe I should stop fighting against His Will and accept it. Many are called, few are chosen.

If God really wanted to save me, He would at least give me a break because I'm way past my breaking point; if you are having these thoughts, it's like over.

He never did though. He could've thrown me some raft through someone, but He didn't. In fact, He did quite the opposite. He poked holes in the few rafts He gave me. And when I ask why, I just get silence, these static eyes, looking back at me.



I appreciate the theatricality, it's just like Milton :laugh:

You should care about yourself, and in a way, you should be the ruler of your own realm. That's what the Bible says the saints will be, after all. It's just it doesn't have to be a hell-realm. It can be a heaven if you want; it just means you have to invite others to share in your "divinity" and your glory instead of egotistically hoarding it for yourself.

I think one of the great mistakes Christians make is thinking that true holiness and humility means beating yourself up incessantly til there's nothing left but a burnt, withered stump. That glorifying God means actively demeaning yourself. No, you can be, and should aspire to be, a glorious being like you describe, just one that's free of all the taint of petty pride, envy, resentment, bitterness, hatred, etc. You SHOULD find value in yourself because you ARE, and not seek value from God as though from an extrinsic source. God is within you. God loves you simply for being, and you should love yourself simply for being. That's the divine image in you that you should, in a way, worship. Not in a narcisstic way, but in a humble and grateful way. The problem is you've got all this darkness, pain, and ego-delusions that are constantly getting in the way of the image of God in you, so whenever you turn to yourself for some value and recognition you only see this foul and corrupt thing. But is that really who you are, and who God made you to be? Love yourself, yes, even "worship" yourself, but don't do it out of spite and self loathing, for contempt of who you really are and what you really want.

"I despise myself for being so weak as to need social love and acceptance. I despise myself for not being admired. Therefore, I'll tread on myself and make a demon-possessed god out of myself to become as glorious in my mind as I think I ought to be, as God ought to have made me but wrongfully denied me." This is the kind of demented misery and sickness that does lead you to hell. It's better to see through such insanity and laugh it off. Never take "yourself" (your petty ego) that seriously. It's infinitely better to be a homeless alcoholic even than a "god" of that sort. Whenever you feel like that you should give up everything and pretend the world doesn't exist or is just a dream for a moment, and just go back to being a child and enjoy something simple for a while.
"Let all bitterness and animosity and indignation and defamation be removed from you, together with every evil. And become helpfully kind to one another, inwardly compassionate, forgiving among yourselves, just as God also graciously forgave you in the Anointed." – St. Paul

John Lamb

#62
Final thought, don't condemn yourself to pain, loneliness, isolation. You have that power. It's part of having a soul. You can bless yourself, and you can curse yourself. Break your curse, stop cursing yourself. Otherwise it will simply remain on you forever. God isn't to blame, because He can't remove the curses you insist on placing upon yourself. I know in my own life that this is exactly how it works.

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Curiously enough, the curse (or blessing) you put on yourself is defined by the words, the very words, that you use to define it; as well as by the power of intention that you put behind them. This is where both the old-fashioned Church and witchcraft got it right about the import of words.

I think people tend to put curses on themselves in moments of crisis in their life. I know I went through a very bad experience as a teenager, and essentially I said some very harsh words about myself in anger and self-contempt, and those words stuck with me shaping my whole life and my whole attitude towards it for years and years afterwards. The Church's sacraments and blessings don't necessarily remove such curses either, at least if you keep subconsciously repeating them.
"Let all bitterness and animosity and indignation and defamation be removed from you, together with every evil. And become helpfully kind to one another, inwardly compassionate, forgiving among yourselves, just as God also graciously forgave you in the Anointed." – St. Paul

Ragnarok

#63
I agree with much of what you've said, and I've spent several days contemplating it, John.

However, I can't help but feel like love and dominance are intertwined. I think what was so disheartening to me is that when I put efforts on myself to self-improve, noticing just all the tiny ways that people started treating me better, even if I'm not at the level I would like. And that only led me to analyze a lot of stuff that led me to some deep and dark truths about life.

The homeless deformed beggar, even if someone like Francis of Assisi teaches us that he is the perfect image of Christ, doesn't receive authentic love unless people do it out of some kind of paternalism and obligation to their religion. Why? There's no dominance whatsoever. No resources collected, and people are repulsed by him, no social dominance, and no means to eat enough to become physically strong and be dominant in that sense. Just a life of cruel suffering for that person.

The person who receives all our love in our society are celebrities. People who have some kind of innate talent to their being that makes them successful, whether that's pure beautiful appearance or even just humor.

Even if the celebrities are "fake", hedonic, and socially dysfunctional to some degree, they have a path towards the "genuine love" you speak of that others don't by virtue of their dominance. It's far easier to take the wealth you've earned, find a loyal partner, put on sackcloth and shake your first cursing the Babylon that's Hollywood when you've gone through that experience. As an example, Mark Wahlberg, who used his celebrity career to shift gears to various business interests, including running his own car dealership in Ohio.


You might just say that "well, that's just life, it's inherently hierarchical", but that only begs the question of "why?", especially when from a Christian perspective, such higher hierarchical position only leads to greater temptation / attachment to hedonic pleasure.

I can accept the Irenaean response of "well, you wouldn't be able to experience genuine love if there weren't false forms of it" - okay, but why is it that fake love seems to provide a better pathway to real love than real love per se?

The only solutions that the ascetic religions provide is something related to life after death - Heaven, better karma, etc. - evening things out.

Either way, when one's mind looks too far into the abyss, one can't help but come to the conclusion that existence is intrinsically evil at some level. At least from the perspective of those religious traditions.


ChairmanJoeAintMyPrez

Quote from: Ragnarok on October 08, 2021, 10:35:05 AM
The person who receives all our love in our society are celebrities. People who have some kind of innate talent to their being that makes them successful, whether that's pure beautiful appearance or even just humor.

That's not love.  It's fascination.  Love is willingness to sacrifice oneself for the good of another.  I think Pierce Brosnan was a great Bond, but I'd never take a bullet for him.

If you improve yourself and people are nicer to you, unconscious instincts cause them to see you as someone of higher value, and they start trying to earn your approval.  This isn't really sacrificial love.  Whether they would sacrifice for you is probably unrelated.  Not easy to gauge through simple daily interactions.

Quote from: Ragnarok on October 08, 2021, 10:35:05 AM
love and dominance are intertwined

You might have hit something here, if we substitute the word "authority" for dominance.

I love the people under my authority (in the true self-sacrificial way) vastly more than I love anyone else.  If I didn't, I'd be a pretty lousy father.  The same must apply to our spiritual fathers and political leaders as well, but unfortunately, it often doesn't.
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Ragnarok

#65
Quote from: ChairmanJoeAintMyPrez on October 08, 2021, 10:43:57 AM
You might have hit something here, if we substitute the word "authority" for dominance.

I was more speaking about "love" to the dominant person, not from the dominant person.


Practically speaking, if you don't have dominance at some level, you wouldn't have recognized authority.

You have authority over your children by virtue of their reliance on you for food, money, guidance, etc. Were they to become self-sufficient and detest you, your authority over them would de facto cease.

ChairmanJoeAintMyPrez

Quote from: Ragnarok on October 08, 2021, 10:54:24 AM
Practically speaking, if you don't have dominance at some level, you wouldn't have recognized authority.

You have authority over your children by virtue of their reliance on you for food, money, guidance, etc. Were they to become self-sufficient and detest you, your authority over them would de facto cease.

No, I have authority over them because they are my children.  I also have authority over my wife and have since the day we were married, even when she also worked (pre-kids).

This idea of authority deriving from dominance is just a rewording of "might makes right," which is wrong and uninteresting.

Joe Biden might live in the White House and take passes at our freedoms, but he doesn't have legitimate authority because he was never elected.  On the other hand, a Catholic Bishop has the legitimate authority to excommunicate a functional apostate like Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi, but none of them exercise this authority for reasons unknown.
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