Masculine, Feminine

JUGGLING careers, family and social lives, women feel stretched in all directions but are unable to say no, a Sunday Life magazine survey reveals.

---- on the pursuit of happiness

Psychology Today blog article by Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D. (JUne 2009)

"When asked, people think that novel, uncertain events will be less pleasurable than feeling absolutely certain and possessing every bit of information possible in a situation. However, scientists are finding that when events are new and uncertain our pleasure is more likely to be intense; it will linger longer and be more meaningful. What this means is that most of us are doing the exact opposite of what will bring us fulfillment."

This blog echoes others I have read, Hugh Mackay,1 Charles Handy, William Butler Yeats2, Jane Roberts3 et al, in that handling surprise, challenge and difficulty is the stuff of life. It's why we're here. To learn, stretch and grow.

It's a common theme for success. As Lolly Daskal explains "By listening to your inner self and following your compass within,  you will find a life that is aligned with your talents, truth and values."

As Todd explains:

"How can you thrive in an uncertain, unpredictable, rapidly evolving world?

Explore your deepest, most central values by devoting time for introspection. Schedule this time as you would your workout sessions and doctor appointments."

I wrote in Be and Become that to handle uncertainty effectively, it behoves one to remain centred; to enable our internal gyroscope (values, beliefs) to steady our stance as the ship of life rocks and rolls in turbulent seas. Most hang on to the ships structure (ego, material things), losing a sense of direction, purpose and stability, and ultimately left feeling at the mercy of the elements. Steve Chandler explains that we hang on to our personalities at the expense of relationships, commitments and results.

Fiona Smith reports that "Happiness isn't enough - if you want to really flourish, you have to be prepared to be negative too."4

In an interview with Prof. Barbar Fredrickson (author, Positivity), Fiona reports that "experiencing negative emotions is crucial for mental social health." Fredrickson explains "'Research suggests that negative emotions are a very critical ingredient in flourishing. The honest expression of negative emotions is vital,' she says via phone from the US."

I believe it's also important to trust that which extends beyond ourselves ... the wider community, and our wider-than-thought (at-once, nonlocal) intuition.

Todd concludes:

"Forget about the pursuit of happiness. Create a life that matters and you might catch happiness along the way.

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoidance of danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."
~Helen Keller~"

Additional good stuff

This from Hugh Mackay:

“I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that - I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/478028-i-actually-attack-the-concept-of-happiness-the-idea-that

• 1. "I just want my kids to be happy," I hear people say, as if happy kids are part of their perfect picture of themselves. But what a dreadful fate to befall anyone, just being happy. What about anguish, despair, panic and pain? Shouldn't our offspring experience the lot? "We grow through pain," we say, mining the wisdom of the ages and mouthing it like a slogan. But then we expect our every pain to be eased instantaneously: "Quick, a pill! I need perfect happiness!"

  {C}

At a dinner party recently I explained that "genuine creativity leads God", in that everyone else (including God1) is genuinely, gob-smackingly surprised by our raw originality.

One woman was deeply shocked and horrified by the idea. She said she completely "shut down" with regards to anything else I had to say. Golly.

A while back I posted some ideas concerning the habit of categorising people into various groups — tribes, astrological signs, enneagram and other groupings.

Update (August, 2016) - see latest regarding the dynamics of gender

When writing Be and Become during the latter half of the 90's, the various revisions of the manuscript1 included chapter (Nine) titled as "Men are particles, women are waves".

However, prior to publication I had the thought (contrary to my better instincts) that the chapter would best be titled differently, to what is now "Material men, wonderful women". It was, I thought, less likely to be dismissed as 'stereotyping' people, even though I felt at ease with the "Men are particles ..." title.  "Men are particles, women are waves" quite adroitly and succinctly expresses the inherent dynamics of life towards individualism, and collectivism -- men and male animals do (as a general rule!) bias themselves towards the hard, physical, individualistic side to life (characteristic of particles). Women do bias themselves towards the soft, interconnective, cooperative, relationship side to life (characteristic of waves and fields).

Stereotyping?

Hardly -- walk down any street asking everyone encountered their occupation.  Then note the gender percentages of those in the 'hard-sciences', engineering and Information Technologies, compared with those in care services, humanities and communications.

The bias is not because men or women are 'pushed' into the various professions, or due to restrictions such as 'glass ceilings'. There's been plenty of attempts to get more women into IT, but they simply just aren't as interested ... as a GENERAL rule!. Yes, there's always exceptions, but we're talking 'bias' in numbers, of percentages, not of exceptions.

By coincidence I've only recently (namely, this morning) come across a 1991 paper by Prof. Robert Jahn of Princeton's famous1 PEAR laboratory.

Jahn's paper is quite extraordinary, at least for me, for it covers many of the basic concepts that I wrote about in my book Be and Become.2

One of the central points of Jahn's paper is that not understanding the complementarity of 'masculine' and 'feminine' fuels "immensely destructive" behaviours and results, both personally and socially. From Jahn's paper:

When posed in polar opposition, whether within a single personality, or in the context of the ubiquitous interactions between the male and the female sexes, the failures of this interface are legion, legendary, and immensely destructive, both personally and socially. Yet, when deployed in constructive complementarity, the masculine/feminine integration within the individual can enable the highest creativity and personal satisfaction, and in the male/female partnership can generate some of the highest accomplishments, profoundest insights, and most beautiful resonances of human existence. In this form, it is probably the species' most powerful resource for spiritual as well as physical survival and evolution.

Why I concur with Jahn is that the deeper nature of what 'feminine' and 'masculine' actually mean is not widely understood or appreciated.

• 1. or infamous, according to skeptics and assorted naysayers. See my article on sceptics and their brethren
• 2. I used to think that I had intuited new, highly original insights into the deep frameworks of life, but Jahn has demonstrated he largely got there first! I suppose my contribution is the comprehensiveness of my work, going well beyond that of Jahn's paper. Still, I freely give recognition when it is appropriate and deserved.