Some of the world's greatest architects might suggest that the greatest prisons are those that have been built of cast Iron, reinforcement and concrete.
However, I'm going to suggest that the most enslaving prison man can be kept in is the prison of his own mind, the prison of his beliefs, the limitations of his thinking, and the nature of his own relative subjectivity.
The mind can be humanities own worst enemy with it's self defeating conversations with itself alongside its limited understanding of how we can most effectively pursue the things that we want most in life.
There was an ancient Greek Philosopher called Plato, who over 1500 years ago made an interesting statement in one of the things that we can often value the most in life...
our opinions! Plato claimed: "Opinion, to be nothing more than the medium between certainty, and complete ignorance", which may or may not have completely undermined many of the bold and courageous statements that other philosophers, religious leaders, intellects and many of those in the education establishments have committed their lives to for centuries.
Now I'm sure, everyone's going to have different 'OPINIONS' on this rather controversial statement, but in turn I'd ask; How valid are the worldviews, beliefs and opinions that many of us build our lives upon, that so often we would even go to war with others in the attempt to defend? It is without doubt that maintaining a healthy emotional state is dependent on having a true understanding of who you are the reason I say this, is because 'who you believe you are' will determine the choices and decisions you make throughout your life.
Every person in the world has their own unique version of reality, based upon their emotional responses to the experiences that they've encountered throughout the extent of their lifetimes.
Generally, people seldom take complete responsibility for their decisions, behaviours and actions in relation to the consequences that others may experience as a direct result.
Our Western 'blame and claim' culture leads us to blame the government, our education system, family backgrounds, GOD, or our closest relationships for our own personal failures, flaws, imperfections and mistakes opposed to growing up, and taking full responsibility for our actions, who we are and the messes we can sometimes create.
Our society's culture is unquestionably one that passes the buck, placing responsibility unto anyone or anything else to make our lives work, which as a result, demands the littlest amount of effort on our behalf's.
In life, you'll only achieve to the level of expectations you have upon yourself; this means, you will NEVER EVER exceed the limits of your own personal expectations.
This is important, as it can be easy to fall into the trap of believing that our life conditions are just to be accepted and that the quality of our lives are determines by our external circumstance (i.
e.
our work, relationships, financial starting, rank, status or level of social contribution).
Who you believe you are, will determine how you act and how life practically outworks itself.
I want to look at two concepts here; called 'Self-Esteem' which is the 'NOW' you, its the you your going home with tonight, and your self-concept, which is your 'ideal' you, the person you always hoped you'd become someday.
It's easy to 'show off' to others by trying to justify our beliefs and subjective opinions through the things that we do, however taking responsibility for the progress we make in our lives requires a far greater depth of maturity and personal responsibility which isn't something that the greatest percentage of people are willing to do.
Inside your mind, there are the two you's reaping havoc in your soul (your soul being your mind, your free will and your emotions), these are the conflicts we experience in our daily thinking.
The problem with subjectivity is that it's generally self-consumed, based upon our personal experiences, preferences and opinions - and we know what Plato had to say about opinions now! It's interesting how we often define self-esteem.
It can be defined by people declaring their feelings upon the basis of where they view themselves in life, High self-esteem being associated with 'good' feelings whereas low self-esteem is associated with 'negative' and low feelings.
I.
e.
If we're having a happy day, life will be generally good, however if we're not having our expectations met one day, life becomes generally BAD! We all have dreams right??...
we all want to believe deep down inside that we've got some sort of special gift or uniqueness that in some way we'll be able to use and in turn somehow make the world a better place.
But most people dabble through life with little awareness of the HUGE CAPACITY we have to develop and grow when we focus our attention on simply mastering ONE area of our life! This is what gives us controlled focus, like a laser beam that'll cut through anything that gets in the way of your achieving whatever you want to achieve with your life.
Your beliefs are REAL to you, subjective or objective, and they're YOUR reality, formed in childhood, when we're unable to reason and generally, completely dependent on others.
Over the last few years I've learnt that the greatest adventure we can go on in life is the journey of self-discovery, growing to understand why you are the way you are, and why you do the things you do.
Getting more stuff, getting drunk, one night stands is all nice and meets a short term need but it's never enough to sustain you.
How can I say this? Well, when your building the significance of your life on these things, you'll only end up needing more again next week to stop you from having more 'sad days'.
Getting more stuff will not give you long-term happiness you can reject this or accept this, or find out the hard way I did! The UK has become a nation dependent on counselling, many people hope that a fully qualified specialist will wave a magic wand that'll fix them that requires little effort from their behalf.
I know that many people subjectively believe they need counselling, but I'd suggest that what people really need, is TRAINING! Our society spends a fortune on stuff and counselling, instead of training people in how to live effectively.
What good is life counselling if you've never been taught how to live? We take driving lessons, an exam and a written test just to legally get on the roads but there's no road test for relationships, or parenthood, there could be a written test but there shouldn't be a road test does anyone know what I mean here? An example: There is no mandate in our society that helps people enter into what should be one of the most important relationships we can enter into as human beings marriage! People just jump into this without training, then fail, then subjectively state that marriage is a bad thing just because of the bad experience they had! I'm sure everyone in this room has either been affected by, or knows someone else who's been negatively affected by divorce.
Divorce is NOT COOL, but happens because most people go into it untrained.
So we watch Jeremy Kyle, or read HELLO magazine or some people may even go to a counsellor if they're brave enough to admit they don't HAVE all the answers! Now it doesn't matter what your problems are, work, money, relationships the most common root to the problems I see are a LACK of KNOWLEDGE, or true objectivity.
People believe the things they believe and will seldom question, if what they believe, is even true? All children dream about who they'll be when they're grown-ups grow up, and when they focus on these dreams often enough, they become a semi-conscious reality for them, which in turn will begin to guide and manipulate their behaviours and actions these kids will become whoever it is they focus on being.
And as adults, we are the same.
When children become adults, many of the habits and actions they carried out as children become history, tales and stories, along with any hope that they once may have had, of becoming the kind of people they once dreamt they'd be.
When children practice being the people of their dreams, they act as if they already are and call it pretending or make believe.
So ultimately, whether we move on from childhood and pursue our dreams or not, our personalities and belief systems continue to be moulded and defined, sometimes by achievement, but often by failure.
Our sense of inadequacy will stem from our failure, our knowing that we haven't yet become the kind of people that when we were young, we dreamt we'd once be.
Children learn ways to cope with hurts and rejections, doctors call them defence mechanisms, they're simply excuses and false beliefs they put in place to protect themselves from the disappointment in knowing that they haven't 'met their expectations' in an area of their lives.
Disappointment doesn't come from what we find in life, but from what we expect to find.
So if we're unable to find significance and security in whatever we're pursuing, we are disappointed based on our expectations not being met, not based upon what we find.
When we face disappointment in an area of life, we naturally resort to defending ourselves with the coping habits and defence mechanisms we learned as children.
Don't just take my word for this here, great psychologists such as Sigmund Freud developed theories based upon these things.
Did you know, the definition of insanity is to "continuously repeat the same actions expecting different outcomes?" In the same way then, it's probably daft for us to keep using the same coping habits we learned and developed as children.
As we cling to these coping strategies, we stay stuck in blame culture where it's everyone's fault but ours, for our failure to reach the goals we HAVE or HAD for our lives.
Without doubt, the motivation behind every decision we make is based upon whether or not, we believe will find security, significance or self-worth in whatever it is we choose to do.
It is unquestionably these three things that we need to feel fully alive and that we're making progress in our lives.
We need Security in our lives (we NEED relationships), we need Significance in our lives (we need a PURPOSE), and we to feel valued (and that comes when we accept an objective IDENTITY for ourselves).
So, when we don't find security, significance and value in the things we pursue, we're left feeling disappointed.
So it's not what we find in life that disappoints us but the failure to find what we expected to find! Q) Where do you get your security, significance and self-worth from? Whatever you put first in your life is the thing you place your faith in and whatever this thing is, is it guaranteed to last, and will it be strong enough to sustain you if everything else falls apart? I mean, if what you're putting first in your life collapses, will you collapse? I'm asking here what the foundations of your life are.
Houses are visible but foundations are invisible, like our lives, our physical bodies are visible, but it is our invisible foundations that keep us upright and strong, providing us the support we need.
...
well, they should do anyway...
unless your foundations are a little bit flaky, backed up some subjective opinions or beliefs that mightn't be serving you as well as you'd like? The foundations of your life are your beliefs, and they're either strong enough to sustain you or they're not! If you believe in nothing good, or in any universal truth call it universal objectivity if you like, you have no foundations in your life that you can build upon.
Faith isn't a subjective belief, but a universal KNOWING, or True objectivity.
Subjective opinion is irrelevant as everyone's own unique worldview is their own, and once a worldview has been established, people are stuck with them 'unless' they are open and willing enough to receive new information that can enhance a chosen perspective.
Charles Kettering, was the head of research for General Motors in America for over 27 years, an American inventor who became famous for inventing the electric ignition for cars if he hadn't done this we'd all still be breaking our fingers on the old cranking handle engines! Charles said "I fully expect to spend the rest of my life in the future; therefore, I want to be reasonably sure what kind of future it's going to be!" I believe that Charles was right, as a man of great scientific understanding he knew the only direction he could go in life was forward this would involve building the kind of 'ideal life' that he wanted, not sitting back waiting for someone to hand him the golden ticket! Because Charles knew that if he was going to build a strong life, the strength of his foundations would ultimately determine how high and how far he'd be able to build.
When we pursue things in life with the sole intention of improving our feelings, we get stuck in a rut, in the rat race, we get caught up going round in circles and can very easily find comfort in our chaos, as pleasure seekers who just want to feel better about ourselves.
Getting stuck in a rut is easy, when you're just focused on feeling better about yourself.
You'll take second best for yourself; and eventually become desperate enough to follow your subjective beliefs to do anything you subjectively believe will make you feel better.
The 'rut' can become a comfort zone and the place you resort back to when things get tough.
You know things aren't ideal there, but at least you can survive.
rather than face the uncertainties of stepping out with the possibility of rejection and further failure in your life! Most people devote their lives to chasing stuff that'll simply make them happy; being led round in circles, by whatever provides these good feelings today as whatever this thing was, it'll also need to be pursued tomorrow to achieve these same good feelings.
Think about a depressed student who gets wasted every weekend to feel better about himself (or herself), although the short term problem gets fixed for a while, the same feelings of lowness always come back in the morning! The route to making PROGRESS in our lives begins, when we're strong enough to reject our wants for instant gratification and constant happiness then embrace our Self-Concept, which is ultimately who we really want to be in life.
This is when you GROW and make PROGRESS, by sacrificing the short-term pleasures of happiness for the long-term goal of being the you, you always wanted! If you think about it, virtually the whole worlds like this, people want what they want, and want these things NOW! For example; why do so many people choose one night stands over saving themselves for the right relationship (I mean, that's ULTIMATELY what everyone really wants), where others invest time and money into get rich quick schemes opposed to investing into a long-term business venture that they're actually passionate about! People naturally want the greatest amount of pleasure from the smallest amount of effort! When we begin to focus on to becoming who we WANT to be rather than being driven by just feeling better about whom we currently are, I can guarantee there'll be no comparison between the two you's.
The double minded man gets caught between how he currently feels about himself, and who he wants to be this is the 'War Inside' and the battlefield of the mind! What you believe about yourself is true to YOU (subjectively or objectively), and the beliefs you hold onto WILL determine how the rest of your life goes.
So if you don't know who you are (objectively), you'll never know how to act or behave! I honestly believe that the purpose of our being alive is to make a positive difference into the lives of others, somehow, in some way, not just commit to making money so we can have a nice life that's so empty! How do I know that? Because I've been there! Thinking about changing the world might seem like a daunting task in the midst of our naturally negative Scottish culture, but how about if changing the world can only begin through positively impacting the life of one person at a time is there anyone in this room that's even bothered? I don't suppose that it really matters what we do or how we feel if there's no ultimate truth, but if there is would it be worth exploring? Or we could just choose to debate an issue like the legalisation of cannabis, or something of an equally subjective preference? I wonder if I'm being objective in my warbling's here, or subjective oh woe is me, I'm such a wretched and double minded man!