God, Euclidian Geometry, and the Church of Ayn Rand

[Paul Mawdsley]

God, Euclidian Geometry, and the Church of Ayn Rand

by Paul Mawdsley

(Administrator's note: This article was actually written in May and lay buried, title and all, posted into a thread called, "I believe there is no God." A current discussion reminded me of the older thread so I pulled it up and found this hidden treasure. - Kat)

Perhaps God is as real as Euclidian geometry but not as real as the paper it is sketched on. For those who "believe," God is a way of understanding the world. God is a way of tapping into the power of our own being to release strengths within. It is a way of modeling the world, of measuring the world, of interpreting the world, and of releasing the hidden strengths of one's psyche into the world. What is wrong with that?

As an atheist, I just have different ways of modeling the world, of measuring the world, of interpreting the world, and of releasing the hidden strengths of my own psyche into the world. It's just a matter of perspective. Reality is the only absolute. Our perspectives of reality are relative; they are from one physical, philosophical, psychological position in existence. We each have the right and responsibility to create/seek our own perspective of the absolute. That most have concluded that God is, or is included, in the absolute is not a threat to my concluding otherwise. Nor should my concluding that God is a creation of man's mind threaten a theist, if there is a mutual respect for the value of one another and an appreciation of the relativity of perspectives.

The question still remains: what is the nature of the absolute, of reality? It is not my purpose here to express my relative perspective of the absolute, but I do want to make a suggestion. Any relative perspective that is intended to approach the absolute must be able to appreciate and integrate other relative perspectives. After all, other relative perspectives are part of absolute reality. As such, as an atheist, I need to make better sense of theism than simply the ignorant conclusion that they are wrong. Seeking the absolutes of existence requires more than finding excuses to devalue another's perspective when they disagree with me. It requires more than assuming my own perspective is the absolute. It requires understanding.

We get closer to the absolutes of existence when we are able to integrate all the information at our disposal. Evading, disowning, repressing, devaluing information, whether about the world or about another's perspective of the world, that does not fit our views is no substitute for integration. I think it is this attitude that, for so long, stopped me from calling myself an Objectivist. It is so easy to associate Objectivism with Rand's absolutism and disrespect for other perspectives. I call myself an Objectivist today because I realized Rand presented a "package deal" that can be undone. The basic principles of Objectivism require that reality is absolute, not that our perspective of reality be absolute. The basic principles of Objectivism require that we respect our own perspective, not that we disrespect the perspective of others.

Rand's packaging Objectivism with the view that her own perspective equals the absolute, and that alternative perspectives equal subjectivism or anti-life or evil, is not necessary. It was her tragic flaw. How many friends did she turn into enemies with this package deal? How many admirers did she help turn into vicious hate mongers with this package deal? How many people did she push away from Objectivism with this package deal?

If Objectivism is going to grow into what many of us thought at one time it should, it has to go back to basic principles. Call me and Objectivist fundamentalist. The basic principles are good. It's the rites and rituals of the Objectivist church that must be undone. With the basic principles of Objectivism, Rand identified important absolutes. But she made herself High Priestess of the church she built. As High Priestess, her psychology set the standard for social interaction. In this, her relative perspective was treated as absolute by her and many of those who admired (and admire) her. If Objectivism is to reach its potential, this has to be undone! Objectivism should not be a church but it should provide spiritual guidance. It should be a guide to modeling the world, to measuring the world, to interpreting the world, and to releasing the hidden strengths of one's psyche into the world. What's wrong with that?

Paul

[Rich Engle]

Any relative perspective that is intended to approach the absolute must be able to appreciate and integrate other relative perspectives. After all, other relative perspectives are part of absolute reality. As such, as an atheist, I need to make better sense of theism than simply the ignorant conclusion that they are wrong. Seeking the absolutes of existence requires more than finding excuses to devalue another's perspective when they disagree with me. It requires more than assuming my own perspective is the absolute. It requires understanding.

Maybe my favorite part of this truly un-buried treasure. Paul never ceases to amaze me.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

One thing that is making me real proud of OL. We are gathering a group of people here who are devoted to understanding before judging.

They know that, conceptually, you must have the cognitive before the normative.

If you don't know what something is, how can you evaluate it conceptually?

About Objectivism, Paul wrote:

The basic principles are good. It's the rites and rituals of the Objectivist church that must be undone.

Amen.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Paul,

I missed this post when you first put it up. I'm pleased to make its belated acquaintance now.

You may have explained why worshipers in the Church of Ayn Rand distrust psychology so.

Psychology is obliged to explain how people arrive at incorrect ideas as well as how we arrive at correct ones.

For those who put the True, the Good, and the Real on one side of a gulf, and the False, the Evil, and the Zero on the other side, what psychologists are trying to do is either pointless or threatening.

Pointless, because the True, the Good, and the Real are supposed to be known already, without any contributions from psychology or any other science.

Threatening, because psychology might end up explaining why human beings sometimes accept false ideas or do bad things via mechanisms other than sheer willful arbitrariness, spiteful irrationality, or open embrace of the Zero.

Robert Campbell

[Charles R. Anderson]

At times, Ayn Rand said that she worshipped the heroic and the best in man.

What she missed was that a great many people who believe in god have tried to attribute the best characteristics of man to their god. No, actually, I think she sometimes did understand this, but perhaps her dramatic flair ran away from this realization more often than not. She was trying to replace religion with a better philosophy of life and wanted to emphasize the differences between religion and Objectivism as a part of marketing the philosophy.

There were times when she did acknowledge that men were sometimes trying to elevate the best of man in their religious actions and thoughts.

Children are taught that God is Good. I have often seen this equation offered with both God and Good capitalized. I think that many Hindus, Jews, Christians, and Muslims really do not have any actual knowledge of a god. In reality, for many of them it is not really all that important whether god exists or not as a being. I think that many of them are really just saying that they believe in what is good. They are saying that it is important to try to be good and to live a good life. This is not very sophisticated, but it is something good in people that they have such an aspiration.

When I was 13 to 16, I was quite serious about the Christian religion. To be sure, the Chrisian religion of my parents and of the Rev. Gordon Stenning that I knew was a less irrational Christianity than many of its forms. What was important to me was that I had a concept of God that He was the embodiment of good. What I thought was good was pretty much what was good for man in this world. Aspiring to be good and to live well was important to me and I felt good when I was around other people who shared this belief. In fact, when I moved from Rhode Island to Oklahoma and left the Rev. Stenning's Christianity and exchanged it for that of a more normally doctrinal minister in Tulsa, who was also a martinet, I quickly began seeing that Christianity was not a rational elevation of the best of man. It was not long before I was thinking about whether god existed and at that time I read The Fountainhead and then Atlas Shrugged.

What is important here is that I was not evil when I was 13 and 16. I had not figured many things out about Christianity yet, but I was not evil. I mostly did believe in the right principles for living. Now other people who believe in the major religions as adults have had more time to figure things out and maybe they should have done so. Nonetheless, many of them are mostly attributing good human characteristics to their god or trying to do so. They do run up against the religious hierarchies of each religion. Church leadership often develops doctrine to support their needs, rather than those of the worshippers who come to their churches. Many of the more irrational rules of life that the religions espouse are due to this. The membership itself really is largely looking to find out what the best in man is and to enjoy the fellowship of others with the same mindset. Church leaders commonly betray them. But, many church worshippers are not really more evil than I was when I was 13 or 16. They mostly have not figured out that there is something better to turn to than religion as a means to understand how to live a good life.

Unfortunately, while Objectivism has great principles to offer, it has had too many leaders who are interpreting those principles badly, in order to serve their needs much as church leaders have done the same with many religious ideas. I believe there is reason to hope for more converts to Objectivism because The Atlas Society and Objectivist Living are offering people a more rational Objectivism without the religious hierarchy.

[Paul Mawdsley]

I finally have a moment when nothing is pressing on my mind other than a desire to play on OL, so I would like to take time to consider this thread. I wrote this piece a few months ago and tacked it on to the end of the thread that inspired it. It was a thread killer. There were no posts to follow. Thanks Kat, for digging it up. I like what I wrote.

Rich,

I truly appreciate what you said. Despite the fact that you and I have participated on two different web sites together, we very rarely interact. I have occasionally wondered why we don't discuss things more. I think it might be a matter of styles that don't easily mesh. I see the meaning of phrases in your writing as being very culturally embedded. I am a cultural ignoramus. While I know there is intelligence in your comments, they are often over my head. I'll just sit back, keep paying attention, and wait to get a better understanding of your point of view. I get the feeling there is considerable overlap in our views of the human spirit.

Paul

[Paul Mawdsley]

Michael,

You should be proud of OL. You and Kat have set the principles by which it operates. As long as it operates within those principles, you leave it to its own causal dynamics. It is not about control. It is about freedom within limits.

This is where many organizations get things wrong. The principles you have applied are the same as those of Objectivist political principles. Individuals should be free from forces that represent a disrespect for their intrinsic value as an experiential, responsive, rational, volitional beings. Objectively, this means limits are placed on social behaviour to protect individuals against the use of force and fraud because these are intended to manipulate by bypassing one's self-interested judgement of the facts. When government protects the rights of individuals, they are freed from the need to maintain a defensive posture, which unleashes the creative potential within, leading to self-actualization and productivity. Subjectively, in a forum such as this which wishes to encourage free, innovative and lively discourse, limits are placed on social behaviour to protect individuals against the use of a type of subjective force or fraud. Verbal abuse and misrepresentation of the facts is not tolerated because it represents a disrespect for the intrinsic value of individuals, it is intended to manipulate by bypassing one's self-interested judgement of the facts, and it creates a defensive posture that crushes self-actualization and productivity.

Unfortunately, the Objectivist movement has not only been about Objectivist principles supported by evidence. It has also been about Objectivist dogma and Objectivist social manipulation that has come from the Objectivist church. We have all heard of Rand's capacity for personal verbal rants. And, like it or not, she had an unsurpassed ability to spin the facts to her social advantage. These are sides of Rand's personality that are embedded in, and should be exposed and removed from, Objectivism. I think this site is an example of what can happen when these things are rejected. You and Kat are building a place that honours the best Ayn Rand produced by embracing the rational principles of her philosophy and rejecting the irrational social dynamics produced by her psychology.

Paul

[Paul Mawdsley]

Robert,

Although many might disagree, psychology is a science. As a science, it must use reason to build models of reality that integrate all the available evidence and it must test such models using reason and evidence. It is not about spinning the facts to make a philosophical point that justifies the absoluteness of one's perspective.

One basic reason I was attracted to Objectivism is that it was a philosophy that was grounded in reason and evidence. It seemed to me to be a philosophy that operated by the same principles, if not the same methods, as science. When one selectively emphasizes or ignores certain facts in producing one's worldview, one is no longer operating on the same principles as the ideals of science. Now we have a spin of the facts for the purpose of supporting dogma. And we have a devaluing of the worldview produced by the philosophy.

I think if the evidence uncovered by science is threatening, then there is something wrong with the epistemology, and maybe the psychology, of those who are threatened.

I don't think Rand came close to understanding the complexity of the human psyche. She did identify important elements but there is much she did not identify.

Paul

[Paul Mawdsley]

Unfortunately, while Objectivism has great principles to offer, it has had too many leaders who are interpreting those principles badly, in order to serve their needs much as church leaders have done the same with many religious ideas. I believe there is reason to hope for more converts to Objectivism because The Atlas Society and Objectivist Living are offering people a more rational Objectivism without the religious hierarchy.

Charles,

I fully agree. I think there is much we still need to understand about psychology and social dynamics before we can fully understand why cultures evolve as they do even when they are based in objectivity and reason. Actually, I think the devaluing of the subjective/social realm has played an instrumental role in facilitating the growth of "the church" in Objectivism. If facts about the subjective/social realm are devalued, they can be ignored. If these facts are ignored, they and their effects on our psyche do not disappear. They are submerged beneath conscious processing. We cannot bring our conscious judgement to bare on such ignored information and we react subconsciously to it. Objectivism has relegated much information about the subjective/social realm and our responses to it to subconscious processes. This puts their effects outside of our control and understanding.

I mentioned briefly on another thread a concept I am developing called the "social matrix." It is the name I have given the inter-subjective social realm that has a deep influence on our lives everyday. It exists. It is real. It effects our behaviour in complex ways in social contexts. It acts according to the same causal principles as quantum particle in quantum fields. We can all be conceived of as nodes in the social web that make up the social matrix (this is a very post-modern view of causation). As such, what we don't understand controls us. As with Neo on the film, The Matrix, we need to learn how to see the code so we can remove its power to influence us. Social bullets have no power when we can see them for what they are. I want to think and write about this some more. I believe it is in the realm of the social matrix that the church of Ayn Rand has grown precisely because we have ignored and don't understand it.

Paul

[caroljane]

I just came across this old thread and was knocked out.

Not only Euclid hath looked on beauty bare, if Millay and Keats were right, and poets always are.

Paul, I hope we hear from you again sometime.

[anthony]

Yes, excellent find, Carol. Paul is one of the most original, independent thinkers whom I have

seen around the forums. It is a rare accomplishment he has, his harmonious blend of imagination with reason.

(Restless, he pitches his tent awhile, then slips away...)

[Paul Mawdsley]

Carol and Tony,

Thanks for your enthusiastic responses. A little explanation is in order.

I have a passion for writing, for putting my way of being and seeing and thinking and doing into the world through words. OL has been my venue for exploring and developing this. (Thanks to Michael and Kat for this.) Unfortunately, I have built a life that consumes my time and my energy to the point where I have found little left for expressing this passion of mine.

I came back to OL after a number of years, having gone through some self-transforming life experiences, because I have such a hunger to write, to intellectually connect and to be part of a community that shares similar passions. Because of the drain other parts of my life have on my time and energy, I found myself being taxed so much as I would sit down to write that I was left exchanging my need to sleep with my need to write. My health was suffering so I had to let go of participating here for awhile.

I have decided to try an experiment. I am looking to completely change my business and my business model to create more time for pursuing my passion for writing, intellectually connecting and exchanging ideas. I also am looking to use the insights I have developed from my passion for understanding people and the skills and knowledge I accumulated, at one time, while pursuing my interests in psychotherapy.

I am looking to start a blog and to create an information based business. My thinking is this: if I make psychology and writing an integral part of my biz, pursuing my passions will no longer be competing with pursuing my business objectives and I will no longer be tempted to give up my sleep for writing. That's my theory anyway.

There are certain advantages with an information based biz over my current physical product and services biz. My current market is half a million people. This expands to hundreds of millions with an information based biz. Information products are created once, they can be processed and shipped automatically and can be digitally duplicated and mass produced. The sales and purchasing process can be automated. Geography is not relevant to creating and distributing information products so I can work from any place I like to play. Producing valuable content and marketing are the key skills to producing wealth. These are the places I'm looking to play with my next biz.

Bottom line: I hope to be more active on OL as things start moving forward and intend to invite everyone to my site when ready for launch.

Looking forward to creating and exploring the possibilities as this new adventure unfolds.

Cheers to all,

PaulM

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Paul,

What niche are you thinking about selling information in?

Michael

[Paul Mawdsley]

Trust you to press the right button, Michael. My forward momentum has stalled the last couple of days. The need to define my niche is precisely the block in the flow.

Here's where I'm at. I'm focusing on the self-help niche, specifically the romantic-relationship-in-crisis niche. This can be broken into three broad market categories: those in crisis because they are not in a relationship and doubt their worthiness; those in crisis because they are in an unhealthy relationship and lack confidence in finding the path to healthy; and those in crisis because they are breaking out of an unhealthy relationship and need to heal their damaged soul.

All three categories are highly motivated for change and growth. I tend to be drawn to the first of these, 30 to 65 year olds in the dating market, because this market is the easiest to target and is most open to personal growth. Haven't decided yet whether or not to narrow target to a specific gender.

While this is the niche I'm looking at targeting my products for, my focus is set in a larger context.

I know this comes as a surprise but I have a pretty unique spin on life and existence. I have written here on OL about how we can have different orientations of consciousness which create different ways of being in existence and we can have different lenses which create different ways of seeing the universe. To this I would add the concept of "frameworks," which give us different ways of flowing through time, through space, through life. In fact, I am not only changing my business model, I am changing my life model by changing the frameworks through which I flow in my life.

Understanding these meta-perspective concepts brings our lives and our very identities within our control more than ever. They allow us to see our unconscious-selves and our conscious-selves as working together in dialectic balance rather than being contradictory and in conflict.

This vision of a life in radical dialectic balance, a life that balances our separate-self and our connected-self, a life that balances our objective-self and our existential-self, is the foundation of the context in which I exist. It is the foundation of the context from which I write. It is the foundation of the context from which I am setting out to build this new business.

In the larger context I have come to realize I have a way of being and seeing that I want to explore, develop and share with people. I see my online businesses as particular expressions of my inner self. They are avatars in The Matrix, there for me to experiment and play with, and hopefully make money with. At the centre of it all will be a site for me to write, and video blog, from all the different sides and voices in me. I just hope I can find a market that is interested in my spin of the universe. No guarantees but I trust my sense of my fit with the market.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Paul,

There's so much to write about this that I almost didn't get started.

Congratulations on breaking free. Go for it. I'm cheerleading.

Also, you chose one of the big markets for online business. I don't much in depth about it, but I do know it is constantly referenced in my Internet marketing studies.

Here's a statistic for you. There's an Internet marketer, Eben Pagan, who is one of the top IM gurus. He literally makes millions and millions of dollars on information products about how to market, how to make an online buseinss, how to be productive, etc. He even did one on self-esteem where he featured Nathaniel Branden (and charged about 600 smackaroonies for it, too, if I remember the ads correctly).

But he didn't start that way. He started in dating advice--using the pseudonym David D'Angelo. I saw a lecture where he did a breakdown of his profits. A whopping 80% of them (for last year, or the year before, I don't remember) came from David D'Angelo products and 20% came from the more serious products where he spends most of his time.

So you're on to a good thing.

Here's a question. Do you know your competition?

And here's a secret. Before you make your product, you can look at the sales materials of your competitors and they will give you all the hot topics you need to include. They have most likely done a lot of research and split-testing for best results. These will be the questions your target wants to deal with. There will also be topics you believe they need to understand.

The best advice I have encountered for this came from a top Interenet marketer called Mike Koenigs. He was discussing how to put together a video campaign. He said half your FAQ-type videos should be what your market desperately wants answers to, and the other half should be what you believe they need answers to but are not so interested in. I think this is a great proportion for doing a product, too.

Another point. Have you studied copywriting? Doing a good sales letter will kick your ass if you don't know how to do it. (Sales video, too.) And, being from a philosophical orientation, you probably have what I fight against in myself--a prejudice against hype so strong that it gets in the way of even being interested in doing it right.

It's late, so I have to stop. If you need any help or have any questions, I am more than happy to share what I have learned, point to some pitfalls to avoid, or just plain cheerlead. And if anytthing gets too sensetive, shoot me an email.

Michael

[Paul Mawdsley]

Hey Michael,

Thanks for the cheerleading. The process of breaking down existing frameworks inside me, many of which have been absorbed from the frameworks embedded in our culture over a lifetime (or have been built as a resistance to them), to open to the possibility of new ones is not easy. Cheers are welcome...especially with glass in hand.

There were parts of my life that were not working the way I wanted so it was time to make some changes. Earning a living within the framework of trading time and energy for money is one of those things. Instead I'm going to try packaging my perspective and my tool kit in marketable products to see what the market is willing to pay.

To answer your questions:

- I am studying my market and studying a great deal about creating an online marketing platform. I have learned from some truly gifted people in marketing along the way. It doesn't hurt that I am entering this arena with the help of the woman I share my life with now. She is a marketing exec who has been interested in this area for some time and has been receiving constant training on Internet marketing from her employer. We met on a dating site. Both of us were having a ball studying the profiles and learning. We both could see huge biz potential. A dating site is like a a 24/7 banquet for anyone interested in studying the human psyche.

-I like Koenig's idea of half and half that you mentioned. A little bit of sugar with the medicine.

- I am studying copy writing. I find I can create a head space where I enjoy playing with marketing copy. A lot of it has to do with being able to take an empathic perspective and feeling what you want to convey as much from outside yourself as from inside yourself. I've learned a lot from the marketing women in my life. I also have connections, through my girlfriend, to a lot of contacts in copy writing, PR, graphic design, social media, video tech, etc. I need to earn a few dollars to be able to afford some of these though.

I have been marketing and selling my other biz for 6 years, and spent 12 years in sales before that. Funny, I went into sales specifically because it felt uncomfortable to me and I knew it would open new avenues for me. I've always gone against what they taught me though. I don't believe in hype and pressure. I approach it from the learning I did when I wanted to be a therapist: job one is to earn trust through listening, validating and understanding your client's feelings, vision and thoughts. Job two is to help them see the realities they exist within. Job three is to help them frame what they see so they reach their best possible conclusions on their own... which, of course is to by your product. This only works if you believe in what you are selling. Job four is to create a space where they have to own it and make a move.

At the end of the process people have made their own choice with their eyes wide open. They don't feel pushed or pulled or pressured into anything. They own it. Most importantly, a bond of trust is created which translates into further business from them and their enthusiastic referrals. This is the most powerful and least expensive marketing. Video testimonials from clients who feel this bond of trust, satisfaction and enthusiasm is what I am seeing all the top earners using.

There are 3 major markets where my perspective and tool kit has a good fit and where I see a void in the existing content. These all happen to be relationship markets.

The first is the self-help market, which is all about our relationship with ourself, or to use N. Branden's terms: it's the relationship between the "I" and the "me."

The second is man/woman relationships, of which the dating market is one aspect.

The third is parent/child relationships. Our parenting culture is messed up.

A forth category of relationships keep banging at my door: business relationships. I've been amazed at how many problems other business owners I know have with their client relationships when I don't. I've come to realize that there are things that I do to establish the rules of engagement during the formation of the bond of trust with my clients that sets a framework where they treat me very well and are enthusiastic about paying me. By listening to, validating and understanding my clients, while being very sure of how I see things, they like to see themselves through my eyes. They are highly motivated to maintain my positive regard. This personal connection stops a lot of the negative shit that happens in business.

I have spent a lot of time studying the nature and dynamics of the psyche and the causal dynamics of relationships. I have studied the nature and importance of our relationship to our empathic-self in shaping who we are and how we relate to others. I have studied the nature of what everyone calls "the unconscious" and believe I have come to understand how it works. Surprise, surprise! Understanding the flow of the unconscious requires a new causal framework. I have found that letting the flow of the unconscious-self (or id) free within healthy frameworks created by the ego-self, while dismantling the unhealthy, energy sucking and spirit destroying controls, manipulations and structures that come from the superego, is the path to whole and healthy.

I also spent a lot of time witnessing, sometimes from within and sometimes from the outside, unhealthy relationships. While I have always had a sense of what healthy relationships look like, taken from the moments in my life where I stumbled into healthy, I have not really witnessed a lot of what I believe to be healthy. I have seen a fair bit of codependently balanced. But not healthy.

I have also spent a lot of time witnessing how healthy and unhealthy play out inside me. Healthy is when we flow from a place that is connected and whole. We live in a culture that frames the development of our psyche as a conflict between competing parts. In Freud's terms: the unbridled energy of the id needs to be controlled by the superego and conflicts between the two are to be resolved by the ego. This framework is what Freud saw as existing in his day and it is even more deeply embedded in our culture today.

We also experience conflict between our core-self and that of our empathic-self. Ultimately, our conflict resolution comes down to one thing: we need to decide which part of us is right and which is wrong. Over time we take sides and own one while disowning the other. You end up with a very large disowned self that has a life of its own. Dialectics takes us down a different path.

Have you ever taken the True Colors test? Strong in gold means you strongly own your superego processes. Strong in orange means you strongly own your id processes. Strong in green means you strongly own your core-self (ego in separate space) processes. Strong in blue means you are strong in your empathic-self (ego in connected space) process. This test is designed in a framework that assumes we can be categorized by the parts we more or less own and disown. What if we don't accept this framework?

I score equally high on green, blue and orange with an almost nonexistent gold. My parts are not in conflict, I'm not filled with the controlling "shoulds" that most people seem to have, nor am I out of control as our culture's framework would predict. (Gold, or superego, is not really part of the self. It is an implant. It is formed as a result of manipulation and control from our caregivers whereby we must choose to accept their programming if we do not want them to hurt us. Withdrawal, intimidation, shame, guilt and stories that twist the truth are the weapons of choice.)

Framing the psyche as a space of conflict between forces, where the unconscious-self is something to be feared and controlled, is a mechanism for breaking us open and filling us with controlling shoulds. It is an amazing tool for anyone seeking dominance in a power game. Our whole society is built on this, our characters are shaped by this and our relationships are defined within this space. And it is wrong. (This shows up on the judging/perceiving scale on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.)

It is equally wrong to frame the psyche as a space of conflict between our core-self and our empathic-self. This splits us in two. It forces us to either own our connection with self or our connection with others. Either way, it's devastating to our relationships: both the relationships between the parts of the self and the relationships of which we are apart. (One of the ways this shows itself is in our tendency to introversion or extroversion in Jung's terms.)

Healthy begins with breaking down the existing frameworks and opening to new possibilities for frameworks that nurture connection and flow. This is the framework I am taking into my new biz venture.

Paul