Behavioural And Psychological Adaptation To Society... (1)

...at best helps people to live with their illnesses. There is nothing emancipatory about doing so. Consider the state of each society themselves, its degree of: competition, acquisition, ego-affirmation, rationalization, judgementalism, encouragement of self-destruction, and individualism and/or its insistence on collective thought and conformity. Differing social approaches may favour what may amount to apparently very active modes of life, but in reality these stifle true growth and leave people lost and alienated and frustrated and bored. What is worse, without a will of their own people do not ever really know what is wrong with themselves. Psychological counseling and analysis under these conditions simply become techniques for directing people into the conformity that society sets up for them and prevents them from growing and developing as they should, given their own gifts for life. For example, Western peoples oppose the social integration that is inherent to both the Russian and Chinese models. But in doing so they accept the herd values of their respective societies. The stresses that this life creates produces neuroses in sensitive and intelligent people. Indeed, in the post modern world there has been no more remarkable device than this socially conforming herd psychological approach for preventing a society from the pain it should feel for not being fully alive to life. Contemplative prayer/living is anything but this.