It’s been a while since we had a good old fashioned Ethical Dilemma debate and for the last few months a topic has been brewing in my mind. I thought I would write it out here and see if any of our fantastic readers can shed some light on this issue. Let me set the stage.
Here in South Australia we are about to have a State election. One of the big issues of the campaign is that the current Attorney General has used his powers to remove an R18 rating from the gaming industry as a means of censoring violent video games. The Attorney General has come under fire for this move as many groups (gamers, libertarians, etc.) believe that no censorship is acceptable, even if it is done with the motivation to protect children from bad images. Many people are worried that there is an increasing trend in Australia towards censorship; indeed the Federal Government is planning to censor the internet (with Google’s help) by the end of the year.
Here is the dilemma:
The politicians promise us that only extremely disturbing things will be filtered from the net. But still people are worried. Could it be that soon some movies will be deemed too violent or inappropriate for us to view. What about news that perhaps the Government doesn’t agree with? Is it right to censor video games from adults in order to protect children?
I would love to hear your opinions on the matter. South Australia has made world news for this and other recent censorship issues and I would be very interested to hear whether the world at large thinks this is a good idea.
“All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley
It’s the 1940s and our man, now just a small boy, is growing up in a middle class family with a bunch of brothers and sisters. Mom stays at home while dad goes to work. He brings home a very good income. Our man, still a small boy, is smart, athletic and showing a lot of potential. Everything is going swimmingly. As he grows up he plays sports, studies hard and looks after his siblings. Around age 14 his mother gets sick. A year later she is dead. Everything begins to fall to pieces.
A new mother
Within the year his father had remarried and this woman brings along two children of her own. She hated our man (now 15) and his brothers and sisters. She wants their father all to themselves. She does whatever she can to make their lives miserable; manipulated them against each other and against their dad. The father is too busy to notice that anything was wrong, he is absorbed in his own misery, too focused on diluting the grief with work. The things she did to our man would, these days, be classified as physical and emotional abuse.
At age 16 our man sits his final school exams having been skipped ahead a year due to his exceptional mind. He heads home happy in the knowledge that he will get a place at University in any course that he wants. He has done well. He can’t wait to see how proud his father will be. His wished his mother was there to see. As he walks up the darkened street towards home, bathed in moon and street light, he can see two box-like figures on his porch. What are they? As he gets closer he realizes they are suitcases. On top of the first one is a note from his step mother, “I have packed your things. Time to move out. Don’t bother coming inside“.
Un-Coping
This stage of his life is called un-coping. In reality, it probably extends well beyond the initial grief and lasts until the day he dies. He never really gets over the loss of his mother. He wasn’t taught how. There were no goodbyes, no post-death counseling sessions and very little support from his father. It was the 1950s and 60s and no-one talked about emotions, feelings or how to deal with a loss. You just got on with it.
So that’s what he did. He got on with it. He got on with drinking alcohol and gambling. He got on with meeting lots of women. But none of them dulled the pain forever and none of the girls replaced his mother. They didn’t even come close. Our man, now in his twenties, fell into line and joined the family business despite having dreams and aspirations and the ability to do other things. He did what his father told him to do, even when it wasn’t in his best interests. He never really learned how to be his own man. He was still un-coping with his tumultuous childhood. Perhaps by joining the family business he would win the attention of his dad.
Replicating the disaster
This stage of his life is called replicating the disaster. We might call it “having a family”. Having met a beautiful woman he decides to propose as soon as he can. She accepts the proposal, seduced and infatuated with his charm, wit and tendency towards popularity and success. Completely unaware that his drinking and gambling were becoming an issue, they have two children, one after the other and settle down in the suburbs.
Barely a week goes by where our man doesn’t fight with his wife. Occasionally they fight in front of the children. If they manage to conceal the arguments, the kids would notice the upset mother and the absence of the father. He was at the pub putting money into machines or on horses. Everyone knows it. Soon work colleagues and family friends know it. Our man has developed a reputation around town as a drunk, a gambler and a womanizer. His wife is, of course, the last to find out.
Quite unconsciously our man pushes his loved ones away. He would ignore them when he had free time and make himself busy when he could. His arrival home from work would be characterized by the shutting of doors, children heading to their rooms to bury themselves in books and video games, finding any way to escape his foul breath and poisonous attitudes towards immigrants on the news, stories of his work mates and clients and, above all, women. At an early age his children learned that he was no role model. It was a lesson they never un-learned.
Alone again
This stage of his life is called alone again. If we are really honest, however, we might call it “still alone” because it was not like he ever really connected. But, the wife and family get tired of the gambling and the drinking and they pack up and leave. Our man, now in his 50s, moves back in with his father as the gambling had made renting a place too financially difficult, despite a $100k a year income.
Occasionally his kids stop by to see him, mostly to assuage their own guilt. These visits got less frequent however as the constant complaining and blaming of others grows too suffocating. Our man has, for all of his life, blamed others for his faults. Every weekend at the races was the fault of an inattentive wife. Every night at the pub was the fault of a slow-to-pay client. Every mistake was that of someone else.
How does it end?
And though our story ends, our man lives on. Alone. He has girlfriends, quite a few, actually. But they don’t stick around. Today’s women are too intelligent and independent for that. His children still visit him, three or four times a year. Normally they see a movie so they don’t have to talk to him. The darkness of the cinema works well for our man too, he doesn’t have to look at how grown up his children are, how much he has missed out on.
I can’t help but wonder how it will end. Will our man ever beat his demons? Is he ever going to be able to look in the mirror and recognize his faults? How long can a person hold a grudge against their mother and father? How long can he blame them? Most of all I wonder how our man can continue to engage in the very activities and habits that have caused him ruin. A life of great potential, blamed away, day by day.
The Ethical Dilemma discussions that we have here at The Daily Mind are fast becoming my favorite time of the month. I love sitting back and watching your educated but passionate comments roll in. Sometimes I get a laugh out of them, sometimes I walk away really quite upset. But I always learn something.
Today I want to look at two topics that have always been interesting to me; forgiveness and loyalty. I want you to read the situation (as always) and leave the most honest comment you can. Now, when I say honest I mean as “real” as possible. Try not to answer with what you would theoretically hope you’d do, but rather what you actually think you would do. Here it is:
You and your father are out for dinner one summer evening. Part way through the meal he excuses himself and goes to the bathroom. He is gone for a long time. A very long time. After a while you get worried and head to the bathroom to investigate. The door is locked. You knock and call out to him and he opens it and pulls you in whilst making sure no one is looking. There is a man lying dead on the floor. You ask what happened and you father explains that he killed the man after he had tried to steal his wallet. He orders you not to tell anyone. The two of you walk out and leave the restaurant.
What do you do? Do you call the police? Do you forgive your father and move on? What would you do in this situation? I am particularly interested in how your loyalties pan out and whether that affects your ability to forgive/dob him in. Does it make a difference that he is your father?
NOTE – All of these situations are hypothetical. My father has never killed anyone to my knowledge.
“A clear understanding of negative emotions dismisses them.” – Vernon Howard
Stress, depression, panic attacks and anxiety. The modern world is overflowing with emotional problems of all different kinds. And chances are you or someone you know has suffered from some form of emotionally unhealthy state. So how can we avoid these problems? Are there things we can do to prevent them coming about?
In this post I am going to present the lifetime guide to staying emotionally healthy. I hope it helps someone out there.
What is emotional health?
Before I present any ideas about emotional health I need to define it. Without a solid idea we really won’t know what were talking about and we will get lost.
Emotional health is not a single state of mind like “pleasure” or “joy” but an ongoing process. Emotional health is a conversation, a journey and above all it is work. It will change and you will go up and down. Even the most emotionally healthy person will have bad days. But those bad days are all part of the process, and they’re aware of it.
Emotional health is all about gathering new tools and methods to constantly better your mind. It is flux.
To be emotionally healthy you need to spend a lot of time being open and learning. As soon as you close your mind to new ideas or information you cut yourself off from the possibility of being healthy. This post could perhaps serve as a starting point. It is by no means the end point. Read, research, study and practice. And never give up, because emotional health is an ongoing process.
I have always found it extremely interesting that today’s society will place a massive emphasis on physical well being but almost nothing is done about the mental state. Unless you are suffering from serious depression or some other mental illness, you don’t hear anything about “working on your mind” or “developing emotional health”. And this is quite troubling.
Imagine how happy we could be if we spent as much time working with our emotions as we did running on the treadmill or cooking a healthy dinner. Imagine how different the world would be if there was less anger and more compassion. I think it would be a very different place.
What I am going to show you in this post, however, is that you don’t need to necessarily sit on a cushion or take separate time out to become emotionally healthy. In fact, going to the gym and cooking a nice meal is a big part of emotional health. Stick around and see if you learn something new and, as always, leave a comment if I have forgotten anything.
Now for the main bulk of the post. Here I am going to present some ideas that you can use work with your emotions in order to become more emotionally healthy. Remember, this is a long term project that you will have to stick at for the rest of your life. You will, however, start to see results right away.
1. Understand you are in control of your emotions
The very first step you need to take on this journey is to realize that you are in control of your emotions. This fact is lost on the modern world; many of us become slaves to anger and depression and stress. But when you turn that around and start to understand that you are the boss of what goes on in your head, you are suddenly left with a very workable situation. Without this understanding, however, no progress can be made.
2. Become familiar with your mind through meditation
Once you have conviction that you are in control of your emotions, you need to become familiar with them through meditation. Now, meditation does not mean sitting on a cushion saying “OOMMM” over and over. Sure it can be that, but it is not only that. The way to meditate is to constantly bring your attention to your thoughts and just let your mind relax in that.
The Tibetan word for meditation is “gom” which means “to familiarize”. This gives us a great insight into what meditation is supposed to be. It is not about relaxing so much as it is about familiarizing ourselves with positive states of mind. Compassion, love, patience, silence. And the very interesting thing about meditation is that these states of mind arise naturally when you just start to look at your mind.
How does this work? Simple. According to Buddhism the nature of every being is compassionate. We are not inherently evil and we are not naturally sinners. Naturally we are compassionate but we have lost connection with that innate part of our being. But looking at the mind re-connects us with that state because we all of a sudden get in control of our minds. And when we get in control of our minds the first thing we feel is sadness for all those people out there who are still struggling. It is an intensely powerful moment in your life.
If you want to learn more about meditation you can check back on some of my other articles:
One of the best things you can do for yourself if you want to become happy and proficient in controlling your mind is learn from someone who has already done it. There are so many wonderful meditation teachers in our world, I encourage you to connect with one. And that leads us to our next point.
3. Connect with good people and avoid bad company
A few weeks ago I wrote an article about avoiding bad company which ruffled up some feathers. A got a few emails that day saying that I was a disloyal friend and that you should stick by your mates even if they are bad for you. Okay, fine. I agree. You should stick by your bad mates if you are able to do so without them being a negative influence on you. But when you see yourself in a downward spiral it is time to leave them alone.
Surrounding yourself with good company is one of the most important life lessons a person can learn. Once a dear friend of mine told me that you will become the average of your five closest friends so make sure you choose wisely. I did. I chose people who were happy, successful and who worked for the betterment of others. I very rarely spend time with people who are selfish, hateful and bigoted. The Buddha once said:
“Put a rose in a sack of fish and soon the rose starts to stink too.”
Now there is no problem visiting people with the motivation of helping them or cheering them up. That is a wonderful thing to do. But if you are best friends with a drug addict racist who starts to rub off on you then you are in for problems. If you want to be emotionally healthy you need to surround yourself with people who are living a life you wish to emulate. Let them rub off on you.
4. Practice ethical behavior to avoid depression, anxiety and fear
Once you have become familiar with your mind and have made a commitment to stay emotionally healthy it is important to live an ethical life. Without a solid basis of ethical behavior there is no chance for long term happiness. So why are ethics so important? Let’s take a look.
The first thing you will notice about an unethical or mean person is that they have very few true friends. They may have followers or people around them who latch on out of fear, but they have no trusted confidants. And that is a very lonely place to be. In fact, it is a situation that will eventually drive you crazy.
It is also important to realize that negative acts come back to you. If you spend your life stealing or cheating on your girlfriends the chances are your reputation will come back to haunt you. And I am not just talking about other people being mad at you. Soon you will begin to feel guilty. Imagine living your whole life hurting others and to be in the last stages of your life and feel intense regret. It would be an emotion so crippling that you would struggle to cope. Life your life without regrets.
5. Read the masters and scholars of the past
Will Smith is a Hollywood star that many people admire for his staunch opposition to gangster rap that denigrates women and encourages violence and his lifetime pursuit of being a “nice guy”. A few years ago I saw a video of Will Smith speaking to thousands of kids at a Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards ceremony. What he said really knocked my socks off.
The human race has an amazing history full of struggles and hardships. But out of those hardships have come some amazing thinkers. There have been men and women who, instead of picking up a sword or gun, have sat thinking. Their messages have been passed down the generations long after the wars were over. And now we are left with a gold mine of knowledge and wisdom. These people left a legacy that we should feel honored to be a part of and study. Like Will said, there are no new problems. If you want to be emotionally healthy you need to take a look at what the great adepts of the past have thought and said about being emotionally healthy.
Let me give you a little introduction to a few great minds that have affected my life. A starting point for you.
The Buddha was a revolutionary, possibly the first of his kind. He sat under a tree and developed theories that have served as the basis for most philosophical thinking. Start with the Buddha’s teachings and work your way forward through history. Study the European philosophers and the masters of meditation from India, China and Japan. Do this and you will be well on your way to emotional health.
6. Avoid man made food, eat naturally
For most of my youth I failed to recognize the link between food and depression. I, like most teenagers, ate a lot of fast food and drank a lot of sugary sodas. And I felt crap, all the time. If you want long term emotional health you need to be very careful about what you put in your body.
To prove this point to yourself I want you to go out and buy the most unhealthy lunch you can. McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC or some other deep fried animal should do the trick. Now watch your mind for the next two hours. Are you more irritable? Are you more depressed and tired? Are you quicker to anger? I bet you are. Now for dinner I want you to have a meal that contains nothing man made. That means no pasta, baked goods or anything produced in a factory. Make something full of colorful vegetables and natural products. Avoid meat if you can. Now watch your mind for the next two hours. How much more energetic, happy and alive do you feel?
The thing about food is that it can change your life. If you eat poorly you are more likely to get cancer, heart disease and diabetes. If you eat well you can live longer, avoid illness and look super sexy. So why do we always opt for the bad choice? Laziness? I’m not sure. Eating well is a big part of being emotionally healthy.
7. Enjoy the middle
Quite often the reason we get unhealthy emotionally is because we do things in excess. Instead of partying once a week we do it four times a week. Instead of eating junk food on the weekends we eat it on the weekdays. Instead of having one coffee per day we have seven. A key to being emotionally healthy is doing things in moderation. Quite often it isn’t that something is inherently bad for us, it is just that we do it too often.
8. Develop strength in your own personal set of values
Emotional health is not just avoid depression and learning to cope with stress. That is just a tiny fraction of what we are talking about. Emotional health is also become a less angry person, considering other human beings in a different way and improving yourself on a variety of levels. One of the ways you can improve your emotional health is to develop a set of values and stick to them.
When I was in high school I remember hearing that “the measure of a man is by how quickly he gets angry“. I found this statement to be extremely inspiring and decided then and there that I was going to avoid anger at all costs. The more I looked into the statement the more I realized how much other people respected calm, strong and un-angry people. This was something I was going to follow through.
Over time life has thrown me many more of these lessons. Compassion, love, patience. All of these ideas I have tried to adopt into my own persona and stick to them no matter what. And it has been an amazing source of strength. Whenever I feel my emotional state slipping I remind myself of who I want to be and whip myself back on track.
Conclusion
Emotional health is all about working with your mind and your body to achieve some sort of personal mastery. It is a long process and along the way you will inevitably stagger, fault and make mistakes. But these mistakes all serve to make you stronger. If you want to stay emotionally healthy for your entire life you need to explore your mind, read philosophy, take care of your body and avoid extremes. If you can do even a few of these you will be far better equipped than the majority of the population.
So how emotionally healthy are you? Do you do most of these things already or do you have work to do? Most important, what have I missed?
Edward Cullen. The name causes hearts all over the world to skip a beat. Chivalrous, dangerous, protective. His love for Bella, 90-odd years his junior, has captivated the hearts and minds of girls and women everywhere. They leave cinemas green with envy; wishing that that had a love like that.
In this post I want to look at this vampire love and explore some of the thoughts I had about Edward and Bella as I sat there in the New Moon screening. Is this love realistic? Is it harmful to the girls who long for it? Why is it so attractive?
BE INTERACTIVE: Leave a comment after the post and share your views. We have some extremely smart comment leavers here.
Why is Twilight so attractive to girls and women?
Let’s start this post by looking at why Twilight is so incredibly captivating to girls and women around the world. This will serve as a base for discovering whether or not it is a positive thing.
1. Edward is dangerous
Anyone who went to high school will know that some girls love the bad boy. They are attracted to the danger and the thrill of being associated with someone so loose. Edward takes this danger to a whole new level because he wants to eat Bella! Her smell intoxicates him. Add to the mix that a tiny cut on Bella’s finger can turn Edward’s relatives into a pack of blood-thirsty killers and you have yourself a dangerous man.
2. Chivalry is alive
Edward Cullen is extremely old fashioned. Having been turned into a vampire sometime in the early 1900’s he has a set of values that many women today long for. He is romantic and extremely chivalrous. Mix that in with the element of danger and you have a very attractive male figure.
Later in this post I will touch on why I am extremely happy to see this back in popular culture.
3. A mind reading protector
Some women love a protector. The love of being protected is something that, I have read, occurs naturally in many women due to the relationship with the father and the history of having a male go out and hunt for food and fend off dangers in ancient times. Nowadays women are completely independent of course and no longer need the protections of a male. But many of my female friends remarked that the way Edward fights for Bella is one of the most attractive things of all.
Before I get into the reasons why Twilight could be harmful to some relationships, I want to start with the positive and talk about why I am extremely happy that many young girls and boys are seeing these movies.
And it goes back to one word – chivalry.
A generation of teenagers valuing respect for women
I’m a male. And I have male friends. And when you go out with males you inevitable get onto the subject of women. Sex. And the conversations that take place are often enough to make your stomach crawl (my stomach anyway). Call me old fashioned, but I really struggle to participate in conversations where women are just games, sexual objects and described in vocabulary that you would never call your mother.
And for all intensive purposes one could say that this view of women is getting worse. Pornography is now more wide spread than ever. I recently read a statistic that the number of women appearing in pornographic material online doubles each year. Doubles. So when you mix the two facts that men are watching more pornography and more women are appearing in pornography you start to create a culture that has little respect for women other than as sexual beings.
But Twilight paints the relationship between boy and girl in a different light. Sure there is sexual tension and sure there is romance, but it is of a very respectful nature. Edward values Bella more than anything else on Earth and because of that value he behaves in very a chivalrous way. And this is a very important thing for young men to see women enjoying.
Now I would like to get into my usual critical self and talk about why I think the love portrayed in Twilight is potentially harmful.
They cannot live without each other
The most amazing thing about Twilight is also the most concerning. We all love to see how desperate Bella and Edward are for each other. When Edward leaves Bella in New Moon she sits by her window for months on end. She is depressed. She begins to seek out dangerous hobbies in order to feel close to him again. She cannot live without him.
Now let’s be honest, teenagers do not really need any encouragement in this area! We all remember what it was like with our first love. It had to go on forever because we simply could not live without them. The pain and the angst was crippling. And we all got hurt. And while the great love of Edward and Bella has created an incredible love story, it also paints relationships in an unrealistic light.
You can live without your partner. If they leave you it is not the end of the world. Your identity is completely separate from them and you will move on. If you know this then you can sit back and enjoy the eternal romance without any issues. But if you base your idea of a relationship on that of Edward and Bella’s then you are bound to have some problems.
Love does not last forever
Here is the part of the post where I say something that gets me into trouble. Especially if my gorgeous lady reads it. But I do not think it is true to think that love is eternal. I think it is a view that causes more problems than solutions and I think it is based on fear. Here’s why.
I love Mrs. Daily Minder with all my heart. I have loved her since high school and there has never been a day where I have stopped loving her. Captivated by her intelligence, her compassion and her companionship I imagine I will go on loving her til the day I die. But at death there is a separation. And it is a separation I want to be aware of. I do not want to ignore it.
As brutal as it may sound, I think the idea that love goes on forever and that you will meet in the afterlife is something people say to hide the painful truth that one day you need to part. We are not vampires that can live forever in some timeless romance. We are humans with bodies that get sick and die. And at that moment of death the attachment to your loved one will cause you immense suffering – you will struggle to let go.
Why the impermanence of love is a good thing
Understanding that you are going to have to leave your love is a good understanding to have. It is a very positive and workable situation. It is not a cause for depression.
Why?
Because all of a sudden you are pushed into a realistic world where you know that your time with this person is finite. Much like a person who has survived a serious illness, you now look at life and love in a new light and you do everything you can to make the most of the opportunity.
Imagine a marriage where you spend 50 years together knowing that you have to part and making the most of each day together.
What do you think?
Here is the interesting part. What do you think about Twilight? Do you think the ideas about love and chivalry portrayed in the movies are helpful or harmful? Why do you think it has captivated so many young women? Do you think I am wrong about love not lasting forever.
The last four ethical dilemmas have been really popular and some amazing discussions and insights have resulted. I really like asking these questions because I learn a lot about my readers as well as the topic we are discussing.
Today’s ethical dilemma stems from some thoughts I have thinking about the absolute nature of ethics. Many people who practice and study ethics seem to think that there is no room for movement when it comes to practicing morality. But I’m not so sure. Read this dilemma, have a think and leave a comment with your thoughts. I will be really interested to hear your ideas.
You are out for a walk one night and you see a man running towards you. He looks terrified, stressed and panicked. He comes up to you with tears in his eyes and says, “I am going to hide right here. I can’t run anymore. I didn’t do anything wrong. Please, promise me you won’t tell them where I am!” So you promise the man, he hides behind a bush and you keep walking.
Ten seconds later four men turn the corner where the panicked man had come from and head towards you. As they get closer you see that they are, indeed, police officers. They walk up to you and ask if you have seen the man they were chasing. What do you do? Do you lie? Why?
I have been thinking about this one a little bit today and I will share my thoughts once all of the regular readers have weighed in. I will be really interested to see what people come up with to justify their actions. Go for it!
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