| How are we taught not to dance in
relationship? How are we taught not to know when we are
experientally dancing? And why are we taught so? Clearly,
the historical answer is the primacy humans have placed
on the need to assure social stability. The self
is sacrificed to the system. Socialization revolves
around getting the child to accept fixed time and space
rules that translate into simple linear notions of cause
and effect. But with this "knowledge", sadly,
comes judgmentalism, the loss of freedom of self,
the giving away of the gift of individual choice. We
teach these constructs to our children so they will be
"secure," as we are, so they will fit into the
system. We do this socializing through creating
metafeelings. These "feelings about our
feelings" (shame, embarrassment, self-consciousness,
shyness, guilt, modesty, politeness, consideration,
hostility, and all the other socially "useful"
constrollers) are unnatural, however common to civilized
human beings. How can we say that feelings so common and ominipresent are not natural? Because we can see how they are learned by children; and because too often they express the neurotic imbalance of our persons, our culture, and our society that results when self is denied in the service of systemic closeness. The displacement of feelings by metafeelings reflects our abysmal neglect of the self/intimate experience. In saying so, we are not advocating anarchy; socialization is not "bad," and metafeelings have useful purpose. As we have pointed out, healthy closeness is as important as intimacy. But unhealthy closeness, the being captured by the system, is destructive to both self and system, to intimacy and closeness. The French philosopher Jacques Maritain described unhealthy closeness in Three Reformers when he said, "In the modern social order, the person is sacrifices to the individual." The "individual" is part of the system; the "person" is the self.
from "The Art of Intimacy", Personal Construction |