June 2011
Personality
What is the personality?
Some elements of the personality existed before birth. Some are formed by nature, some are a result of the biological character and some are a result of experience. Some parts of the personality are the result of the research to find an individual way. The prospect of a reward or an oncoming danger stimulate our thinking. We try to find a solution which gives us a good feeling.
What can I do to live without sorrows, successful,independent, accepted and loved? Our thinking focuses primarily on those wishes. Not the truth is the first goal of our thought, but the benefits we can achieve.
Our perception is mainly oriented on our advantages. Food, health, partners and good feelings are important for us. For a better success, we resort to tactics that adulterate our perception of reality. Repression of thoughts that do not fit our goals and avoiding troublesome thoughts can help us to concentrate entirely on our success. For that reason we may arrive at prospects, being in flagrant contradiction to a candid and open view. We often see strange ideas on other people, but on our own rather not. We like to see ourselves as upright and intact, as wonderful and as good people. To achieve this, we have hardly inhibitions to reinterpret the reality in our favor and to ignore displeasing parts of reality.
Because of his purposeful perception, a human being perceive the world in a similar way as the librarian's dog perceive the library.
Non-objective perception of reality, in service of individual interests, is normalcy and not an exception. It helps us to justify acts for which there exist no justifications. The uncertainty of individual character is the cause of bad things that happen again and again. Our dear and helpful neighbor may be ready to kill us tomorrow. Many past events show the dangerousness of humans. War and extermination occurs often enough and worldwide. In a country, the people decided with over 90% of the votes in favor of a criminal regime. On the base of popular religious literature was concluded that slavery is normal and OK, and that the man and he alone is the crown of creation. This sounds oppressive. But we can also emphasize that people who are able to terrible acts can be kind and helpful, when circumstances are more advantageous. Perhaps they will accept a great risk to save a life or maybe they will give a difficult and laborious assistance to someone.
If we think that human are good or bad does not much matter. But it is important to integrate him in a culture that emphasizes constructive properties and the ability to heal.
Composition and collapse of personality
The personality helps us to win. We learn to focus on profit, to ignore what does not matter to us and to repress what is not welcome. The habit of thinking and acting in such a way leads to an imbalance, that we call “boundedness”. Influences from outside: traditions, economics, religion, politics, science and myth can enrich or mess up our view of the world. Power on others is often abused with the goal to enslave people rather than to lead them to greater freedom and to more independence. Countless individuals, organizations and ventures are working every day with the purpose of obscuring our vision in favor of their interest.
There are exceptional situations where the personality collapses. The habit of repression of objective truth may collapse in the moment when we meet the "true love", maybe the first love! Suddenly, life seems at once very different, very colorful and real! The personality of children is also more open. People living in natural conditions have a better ability for entering in an exceptional state, trance etc. Drugs or a shock may topple the usual strategies. A human deprived of his usual personality, experiences his life as completely different. A loss of personality may also occur close to death, if the connection to ordinary life begins to be incomplete.