Which stage are you in?
By zevi770 · March 9, 2012
The earliest state how every animal, and as our sages teach, man is born like a wild animal, we live in, is based on pain / pleasure.
God wired us, that we enjoy pleasure which is associated to things such as eating etc. which ensure survival, and we hate pain which is associated to things which could God forbid impinge on our survival.
Little children do not care about their pride or shame.
You can say to them good boy or bad boy until you are blue, but it is not an issue to them.
As we develop our intellect, pride and shame take over.
So at a certain point usually around 5/6 a child can simply be manipulated based on pride and shame.
Now what happens next is very interesting.
For once we develop into an identity – a notion of self with what is right and wrong based on what people or our few role models have educated us on, what they will give us pride or shame us for, a new somewhat obnoxious individual has emerged.
You see every pride and shame is actually different.
In severe cases people develop into social phobias as they have been so shamed by their caregiver they just don’t want anyone to shame them again.
In best case scenarios they are working on the pride system as they continue doing those things that will give them pride, compliments, praises, based on what their caregivers praised them for.
This is why we find remarkable uniformity in societies that have shame and pride on specific behavior, so say a Christian group will all behave in a certain way and for someone to not feel shame they wont step out of the boundaries of that group and for someone to feel pride they will do the best of that groups ambitions, this happens in all religious groups, sub-societies, that the consciousness of how to define shame and pride becomes the yardstick for fear and love / ambition.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Considering the simple fact that a profound value system was imposed, not chosen, by you, is already the greatest problem; but on a deeper level, shame and pride are really related to pain and pleasure, for the reason we feel shame is because we are afraid of losing the care of our caregivers and the reason we feel happy through pride is because we feel safe.
In other words, it too, is simply a survivalist mechanism, the proof being is, that a person may act in his personal capacity far different then he would to his group, if there was no fear or desire for shame and pride.
Ultimately we need to abolish both the pain / pleasure as well as the shame / pride regulatory system, for we are all under the ever watchful protection of God who has given us so many years, hours, seconds to live and no man will ever change that.
We need to look at the world through God’s eyes and it is only about good and bad, kindness or evil, selflessness or selfishness.