Our species, of course, is composed of individuals. Species maturity will be made up of mature persons. The following has to do with what maturity may look like at the individual level. In this sense we can ask the question: "How does a mature human being function and how will this maturity (or lack of same) impact - and be impacted by - the proposed 'coming attraction' of cultural collapse?"
This will be an extraordinarily demanding time for us. How can we best prepare to move through such a challenging initiation into individual and species adulthood? What sorts of emotional/mental structures can help us weather the storm?
The Human Experience
While I separate the following processes for the sake of clarity, it is important to recognize that the human psyche is extraordinarily complex and there is much overlap and interpenetration among the following categories.
While psychotherapy can help us negotiate these shoals, it is important to remember that it is only a tool. It is up to the individual to choose or reject the tool, and once chosen it is up to the individual to decide how much to use the tool - and for what purpose. It should also be said that many of us will avoid psychotherapy at all costs due to the vulnerability that this truth-telling/uncovering, process can entail.
Let's begin by being straight about what is obvious. Speaking about the human condition, Scott Peck states:
"Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
"What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration or grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair.
"These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical pain, sometimes equaling the very worst kind of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts engender in us that we call them problems. And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy."
An important point: psychology has discovered that if we do not transform our pain, we often transmit it, usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, to the most vulnerable - our children. Scapegoating - exporting our unresolved hurt - is the most common storyline of the dysfunctions in human history.
Peck suggests a number of tools that can help us experience the pain of problems constructively: 1) delaying gratification; 2) acceptance of responsibility; 3) dedication to truth; 4) balancing; and the willingness to ask questions about the nature of love - what it is and what it isn't.
In later sections we will see that while these ways of living can help build a healthy, functioning self, there is more to us that needs to be taken into account. Where do - as Maslow put it - "the farther reaches of human nature" come into play?
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