From: PaR (par@nu-world.com)
Date: Sat Apr 11 1998 - 16:15:14 MDT
>The two examples are actually slightly different.
Yes.
>Compare this
>to moving to a different culture: you cannot avoid it, it is a
>persistent pressure forcing you to re-value your old maps. People who
>move to a new culture do change, and does not return to their old
>selves when they move back to the old land.
Yes. This is why I like to move a lot. It is one way of expanding your cognitive map.
>One could perhaps model this as elastic and plastic deformation: if
>you squeeze a rubber eraser it will quickly return to its original
>shape, but if you leave it clambed overnight it will be permanently
>deformed.
Exactly! Some people, after dramatic life experiences, change their cognitive
map *permanently* so that *they do not return to a state of homeostasis.* And that is
exactly what I was talking about as a goal in my first message.
Except I mean this change in a positive way. For example, I have read of
a Jewish surviver of the holocost, and he was exstatic about every day he was still
alive. That was such a horrible experience for him - which he used as a "relative
reference point" - that everything else he experienced afterwards was wonderful by
comparison. Although ideally you would not have to go through a terrible life
experience to acheive this.
"Once a man's [or woman's] mind has been stretched to a new dimension,
it never quite returns to the shape it was before." -- Oliver Wendall Holmes
>"Good" is ... it changes.
Agreed. That was partly my point.
>I think the concept of flow (a la Mihály
>Csíkszentmihályi ) is a good model for when we achieve true
>happiness.
I agree. I have read "Flow..." and I think it is a wonderful book. I
highly recomend it. Although I don't know how you remembered
his name correctly. :-)
>So
>it is the task of moving from one situation to the other that is
>important, the start and end states are less important (even if it is
>of course much easier to feel good while moving towards a better
>state).
Agreed. It is the journey, not the destination. (OK, so it is BOTH). :-)
>It is not the dynamic personality that is troublesome (we already
>switch our personalities slightly to fit the situation), it is having
>a highly dynamic set of core goals and values that is bad. If they are
>too fluid, they shift before any goals can be achieved and hence the
>individual becomes very inefficient.
Also agreed. I misunderstood what you meant. Dynamic personality
is not the problem. *Self-conflicting* dynamic personality is a problem.
Sin,
Jason
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