The two sides of Codependency

"The codependent feels the need to solve another’s problems. The codependent believes that help is needed and that the person in need cannot manage to make the right decisions or take the right actions to solve his or her own problems. Without the codependent’s input, disaster for the other person is assured."

https://www.recoveryconnection.com/top-ten-indicators-suffer-codependency/

This is the feeling that 'I have the solution to your expressed problem in my pocket'. and you do not want the solution, you only want to whine.

So is the solution, when I see someone struggling with something simple, should I try to teach a simple solution, or just shrug my shoulders and walk away? That is what the definition and recovery connection seems to suggest. Is that how the ideal person should act? So I am free to not explain the details, I am free, I am free!!!

But the other definition: excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner, typically a partner who requires support due to an illness or addiction. --- All I was trying to do was help an inept person through a tough problem and I am the bad guy. Screw it, you are on your own.

But what about all those who depend on the kindness of strangers? those who are truly dependent? And those who have been blinded with religion, or the lack of education, or resistance to education? Too bad, to "help" would feed my co-dependence.

Also not that there are those people who can never be happy regardless of there situation. What do we do if we find ourselves working and/or living with them? 

 Religions are a dependency on a god concept. It is a belief in the concept is going to "save" you. Well good for you. But that is not reality, there is no god, no salvation, and nothing to be saved from. Death comes to all of us, delaying is the best we can do. Look into the abyss of reality and accept our fate.

Partial Solutions

Back when I was a pup, I took several (understatement) courses in partial differential equations as part of an engineering program. For those who do not recall, differentials are the slope of the line, section, or plane orthogonal to one axis. Partials differential have three or more axis, hence have two or more slopes parallel to axis. This can be visualized in 3D space, but beyond that, we just do the maths, or in with thermodynamic surfaces, all other parameters are just held fixed, and the relationship is studied. We do similar with soils, but some of the changes are variable to just unknown. What fun. Oh will, I am retired now. 

We humans have similar with emotions, beliefs, values, knowledge, desires, moods, temperament, motivations, behaviors, all of which varies over time.

Our emotions are neither good nor bad, as long as we identify them, accept them, evaluate them rationally before acting or not. Much of the time there is no rational response, so we can accept our emotions, do something or not. Often there is no escape of the situation when we are children, and often as adults, the most rational response is to stay the course, even when it is far less than ideal. Most situations are just beyond our control, even beyond human control. Many are the result of masses of humans, each independently making their own decisions, and we need to survive in the resulting chaos. It is beyond our control, rushed, pressured, and the result of human driven chaos. Many of us cannot deal with the speed and volume of modern life. Oh well, in the end we just die anyway.

Beliefs and values create a man made hell for some us. We are in control of our own beliefs, and one deadly flaw of the human mind is attachment to our beliefs. This becomes apparent when we realize that our previous beliefs were wrong. We need to treat our beliefs as we do science, and ratchet to better and better. Yet there is a great resistance to this, even institutions (religions) who's purpose is to resist and promote wrong concepts. Until we realize this, we are just being manipulated by the dead. Fear of the unknown is being used against us, and effort is made to keep us in ignorance of these fairly simple but likely true concepts.

There is no supernatural, just luck and forces of nature. We can modify some through time and effort, but our effort may be wasted, or may yield prophets and/or profits. Who can know?

Emotions, moods, and temperament overlie our genetic predisposition, and are a matter of time scale and consistence. These can be modified by our beliefs and/or chemicals. Even spices can cause sleeping hallucination. Knowledge is just learned from those who went before, and each new generation needs to test them out to be sure if they apply to them, and for truth.

Desires set our direction in life, and motivations drive us. Behavior is what happens of the possible range that can occur in our environment. We can only do what is available within the range of possible activities, given all the external and internal constraints and motivations, within the skills, knowledge, motivations and drives of the individual. The outcomes are left largely at the individual's chance. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway.

So we put together a life, moving a bit or a lot one way and then a bit or a lot the other direction. Sometime we over correct, sometimes a bit short. We move through life, events occur, and if we take enough time to examine, we find it is all just adjustment, sometime the system adjusts to us, sometimes we adjust to the system, and some times we just break apart or fail. Life will go on until it does not.               

Science vs. Religion

Some things science get wrong. Does observing the effects of "a particle" prove the existence of "a particle"? The answer may be know at first, but with what degree of certainty, or perhaps it just suggests existence. That too may depend on how we define existence.

Religion, on the other hand, says seeing the effect of the belief of god proves the existence of god, while what it proves is the effect of believing, not existence and that cannot be disputed.

So is food addicting, or do people just act like sugar is addicting to some? The best test for this one is to take the sugar away and watch the discomfort for the first while. If that is not withdrawal, I do not know what is.

So does existence apply to all, or the real, or just the physical world?  So to get back to the ultimate question, if god is just a concept, residing beyond space and time, but the belief has an effect on those that believe, does god exist or does he only exist in the mind of the believer?  For sure there is no physical existence, so it all depends on the definition of existence.   So god does not exist in the real world, nor does mathematics!  That does not seem right.  So gods do not exist in the physical world, yet he or they exist in the conceptual world. What could be simpler or clearer? God does not exist in the physical world, and only in the conceptual world.

I am an easy to fatten person, a little bit of food is all I need, that is to say that my personal Attwater factors are high.  We have high efficiency livestock so why not humans in the human genetic mix? Consumption of any sugar is over-consumption for me. Sugar addiction is real. Emotional eating is real. Obsessive compulsive behavior in eating occurs in me. What other food/overeating/ drivers are there?

SO if there is no god, how does OA help some people? It gives them something to obsess over, and that take them directly to Schwartz step three, which is one solution to the obsession without understanding the problem.

  

The Rise of Intelegence

In the last post, I talked about the the "fruit of intelegence". So when did all this happen?

How long do stories in the oral history persist?

Is it only ten or fifteen thousand years since we sapiens became self aware?

So the Jew/Christian were aware of the rise of intelligence. So is it the fifty thousand that anthropology suggests, so the typical less than ten thousand that oral histories suggest?

There are native North American native stories that tell of the great wall of ice in the Niagara region, which we geological types think 18000 thousand years might be the number, but then some of the archeologists suggest that the native have not been here that long. Others objects suggest that some skipped along the ice edge from Europe perhaps 25000 years ago, starting out from perhaps Spain. Later immigration along the west coast, and from Siberia also likely occurred. But these stories do not appear, or were these just normal events in the nomadic life style. Only the survivors tell the stories.  

Intelligence was not a rapid change but a gradual change, yet if a pair of intelligent got together, and produced two strong children every generation of 25 years, then in 40 generations, the number is greater than the worlds population. Our growth can be tremendous in a thousand years.  And our intelligence appears to growing slightly, or more correctly the amount of highly intelligence people seem to be growing within our population. But the medical industry is also keeping alive the less gifted and ungifted as well. Oh well, money talks, and when it is government money, no one ever makes an unpopular decision willingly since King Ralph of Alberta. 

Evolution

Have we evolved since we "ate the fruit of knowledge and were "ejected" from the Garden of Eden", or was that just the last big step in evolution? We likely had many small ones since.

The garden of Eden story suggest that life was good and food plentiful before we had knowledge, self awareness, and likely good memory. It is likely the Garden of Eden only existed in the fertile imagination of a story teller. It espouses that life was easier before we had knowledge. To know this would require accurate data to be passed down across generations without writing, which is unlikely.

I perceive that my life was easier the first forty years, for I was without pains of arthritis, the time to think and consider in the detail of today. For the first 14 years others were concerned about making a living. It was desperate when I look back. All this suggests that even in the bible the writer though that we had evolved from a human like form without knowledge. Oh well, it makes a good story. That is what the first art form was all about.

Now have we, as a species, just gone (or are going) through another big step in evolution as we discovered fossil fuels, steam, electricity, electronics, mass communications, and the like? Is the technology actually in the process of changing we humans? I expect that it has or will. We see the health situation changing extremely fast. We are coming up to a mass die-off, with major environment changes. It is unlikely we can turn this around. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway.

 

New Year therefore Make Changes, but why?

New Year therefore Make Changes, but why? Tradition. Is tradition a valid reason to do anything?

Just because it is new years, is it time to make changes, and if so what changes? There are likely some things we can change in our behavior to make life simpler for ourselves or not. The cause that originally started us down those behaviors must also be looked at. If the cause is still there and our behavior is a coping method, then until we either remove the cause or develop a new coping method, lasting change will not occur.

Are we addicted to a negative feeling that we keep trying to recreate, or keep recreating? We have a coping method for that negative feeling, and it is familiar. But is that negative feeling a defense method for some insane situation we live in? If we grew up under authoritarian parents, or permissive parents, we cannot be well balanced. We will have developed coping techniques, defense methods, survival methods, that later in life are not suitable, or provide the foundation for personality or philosophical issues.

Below our emotions that we recognize are likely feelings that we cannot identify as clearly, and our surface emotion may be a coping, defense, or survival method. Parents do not know everything, some know little useful information, and especially if they will not listen to the problem completely. Also, they have the residual of there own misconceptions to deal with as well as cultural change. Most people have "personality or belief issues" left over from earlier times. Some are actively teaching wrong concepts. Religion. It is these "cultural collective" wrong concepts that cause much of the problems we see in society today.

There are always conflicts between concepts, beliefs, desires, and people. When one, as a child is continually forced to submit, to do what the parent wants conflicts will arise. I was forced child labor on the farm I grew up on. That certinally does not go along with respect for parents, support your parents, etc. It is all about perceptions and cultural standards.

It is impossible to teach correct science concepts without offending the religious, that is those that hold traditional beliefs, and use these beliefs as defense against rational and scientific concepts. Oh well, I am right on this matter. Religion is the cause of most of the conflicts in the world. The remainder are from cultures and overpopulation.