Can you tolerate your own weaknesses, friends? Your own failings? If not, why not?

An example in my case lead to a great deal of self-doubt and emotional distress. In my teens, I was attacked for an imagined homosexuality. My genetic condition and the resultant seizures lead to what was called in a clinical sense “hypo sexuality”. Then put that hyposexual teen in a group of peers who are crazed with hormonal drives and he or she will most certainly be attacked. Very much the black sheep. It doesn’t change much even among adults. Having been hyposexual or “non-sexual”, but identified with a sexual preference that was not my own, lead me to reflect on the issue of sexuality. I would go on to observe peoples behaviours toward each other in both orthodox relationships and those considered unorthodox, and I would come to realize that human nature is really rather homogenous in many ways. In ways that the people themselves were not, and do not really realize.

So, for a variety of reasons, I came to see that even for my own well being, I had to accept people for how they present themselves. In my teens and young adulthood, I would befriend some of the least popular individuals, those considered weird, even psychotic.

The more universalistic you are, the more tolerant, until you reach loyalty to being as a kind of limiting case. When you feed the spiders in your bath, rather than smash them, you’re at that level. And that’s why I would embrace such strange friends, loyalty. They had a capacity for it that was not present in the mainstream social set.

When you are different it makes it very easy, for you are tolerant and accepting of other different people. My condition was diagnosed as Aspergers syndrome, and my recent efforts to figure out for myself what my challenges were would lead to Gershwin syndrome. What that means, among other things, is that I have a very low tolerance level for anything at all. Everything sets my nervous system on alert. So since everything seems weird to me, nothing does. I couldn’t embrace those behaviours people use to shelter themselves from the strange and thus resist change themselves. The threat of the other person is not that they are strange, they would seem a threat because they reveal that you yourself are not stable.

People try to protect themselves from the strange through intolerance. Exactly. This is the motivation for intolerance. The idea you can remove parts of reality from existence even leads to murder from time to time.

Loyalty to being would be empathy toward everything. Empathy = loyalty to being. In my case, I have what could be considered no empathy. My perceptions are so strange that I have almost zero ability to relate to others, but that empathy can be a straight jacket and lead to a compulsive need to identify with a group. My own situation has lead me to see intellectually what others experience instinctively and emotionally, to observe from a detached state.

That’s why it is loyalty to “being”. No small group identification, but to all life forms. And at my core, despite my difference, I recognize that loyalty to being, and have seen that it forms the basis for all other behaviours as aberrant as they may have become. In the end, everyone just wants to exist, and existence requires being able to exist as their nature dictates. What moral code can encompass this? What law can allow for this? Our understanding has to go beyond the “common sense”.

No law. The moral code? We already have it. The golden rule, universalizability, consistency, reciprocity, empathy. Well, I do find I can agree with Confucius’ view of the golden rule. This is why those who object to the tyranny of the “politically correct” have such a valid point. It has become a tyranny and is not moral. Confucius advocated for treating people as they treat you, good for good, evil for evil, but this raises the question. If I express a contrary point of view to your own, have I done you any evil? Have I done you any harm? My friend feels my view is lacking, has she done me any harm? I would say not at all.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~