Ch 2. treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping

Why Won’t People Take Their Medication?

• Noncompliance with prescriptions is common:
  • One-third of patients never fill their prescriptions.
  • Half of those who do fail to take the medication correctly.
• Doctors tend to blame patients, while psychologists see noncompliance as a failure of the healthcare provider.
• Psychologists believe in patient-centered planning, ensuring treatment is followed through and adjusted as needed.

Organ Transplants and Medication Noncompliance

• Kidney transplant recipients must take anti-rejection drugs to prevent organ failure.
• Despite long wait times and the difficulty of dialysis, some still fail to take their medication.
• Possible reasons include:
  • Isolation or mental health struggles (depression, cognitive impairment).
  • Financial difficulties limiting access to medication.
  • Distrust in doctors or misunderstanding of the medication’s necessity.

People Take Better Care of Their Pets Than Themselves

• People are more likely to follow veterinary prescriptions for their pets than take their own medication correctly.
• Possible explanations:
  • A deeper emotional connection with pets than with themselves.
  • Feelings of shame or unworthiness leading to self-neglect.
  • Viewing pets as innocent and deserving of care, while being harsher on themselves.
• This suggests a fundamental issue with self-worth and self-compassion.

The Oldest Story and the Nature of the World

• Genesis contains two intertwined Creation accounts:
  • The Priestly account (Genesis 1): God creates the cosmos through speech, forming light, water, land, plants, animals, and humans in His image.
  • The Jawhist account (Genesis 2-11): Includes Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, and the Tower of Babel, with a different sequence of creation events.

Pre-Scientific Worldview

• Scientific thinking only emerged about 500 years ago with figures like Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton.
• Before science, reality was understood as a place of action, not just of things.
• People viewed the world through stories and lived experiences rather than objective analysis.

Reality as Drama, Not Just Matter

• Subjective experience was central to understanding the world.
• People interpreted reality in a way that prioritized survival and meaningful action over detached, factual truth.
• Pain is a fundamental truth of existence—something undeniable, deeply real, and central to many philosophical and religious traditions.

Human Experience as Narrative

• Life is more like a novel or movie than a scientific record:
  • The emotional reality of losing a loved one differs from the objective hospital record of their death.
  • Love, loss, hope, and joy are defining elements of human existence that cannot be reduced to materialist descriptions.

The Domain of What Matters: Order, Chaos, and Consciousness

• Scientific reality is reducible to physical elements (atoms, molecules, quarks).
• Lived experience also has fundamental elements:
  1. Chaos – the unknown, unpredictable, and frightening.
  2. Order – the known, structured, and stable.
  3. Consciousness – the process that mediates between them.

Chaos: The Unknown and Unpredictable

• Represents unexplored territory, uncertainty, and danger.
• Symbolized by:
  • The stranger or foreigner—unfamiliar and potentially threatening.
  • The monster under the bed, the rustling in the bushes at night.
  • Personal crises—betrayal, failure, loss.
• In mythology, chaos is the underworld, where the dragon hoards gold.
• In Genesis, it is formless potential—out of which God creates order through speech.

Order: The Known and Familiar

• Represents stability, tradition, and predictability.
• Symbolized by:
  • Societal structures—hierarchies, laws, religion, and institutions.
  • Personal stability—family, home, routines, and daily plans.
  • The Shire in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings—safe and secure, but naive.
• Too much order can become tyranny, demanding rigid certainty and suppressing change.

Transition Between Order and Chaos

• Life shifts between order and chaos unexpectedly:
  • Betrayal – a loyal friend turns against you.
  • Financial insecurity – a stable job suddenly becomes uncertain.
  • Health crises – a sudden illness disrupts normal life.
  • National tragedies – the collapse of the Twin Towers turned order into chaos.
• Chaos can emerge even in familiar places—nothing remains permanently safe.

The Brain’s Response to Chaos

• Immediate, instinctive reactions (like fear of snakes) evolved for survival.
• Emotional responses follow—shock, fear, grief.
• Rational thought comes last, enabling problem-solving and adaptation.
• This sequence ensures survival but also highlights the instinctive power of chaos in shaping human behavior.

Chaos and Order: Personality, Female and Male

• Chaos and order are fundamental aspects of lived experience, not just abstract concepts.
• They are not perceived as objects but as personalities, influencing human perception and behavior.
• Humans perceive intent and purpose first, before objective reality, due to deep social adaptation.

Order: The Masculine Principle

• Symbolically associated with masculinity (yang in Taoism).
• Rooted in the hierarchical structure of human and animal societies.
• Represented by:
  • God the Father—the eternal Judge and lawgiver.
  • Social structures—governments, institutions, traditions, and civilization.
  • Rules and routines—traffic laws, business culture, daily schedules.
• When order is excessive, it becomes tyranny—forced migration, oppression, totalitarianism.

Chaos: The Feminine Principle

• Symbolically associated with femininity (yin in Taoism).
• Represented by:
  • The unknown, creativity, and potential—from which new ideas and beings emerge.
  • Mater (mother), matter, and what matters—the source of life and transformation.
  • The forces of nature—unpredictable and sometimes destructive (e.g., a mother grizzly protecting her cubs).
• Women as the force of sexual selection:
  • Historically, women’s mate choice shaped human evolution.
  • Only a small percentage of men have successfully passed on their genes.
  • Women rate 85% of men as below average in attractiveness on dating platforms.

Symbolism in Religion and Mythology

• Many religious and cultural symbols represent this duality:
  • The Star of David—interlocked male and female triangles.
  • Yoni and Lingam in Hinduism—often depicted with serpents.
  • Egyptian cobras, Chinese dragons, and Christian imagery of the Virgin Mary and Christ.
• Even the brain reflects this structure:
  • The right hemisphere processes novelty (chaos).
  • The left hemisphere organizes routine (order).

The Balance Between Chaos and Order

• Humans thrive when balancing order and chaos:
  • Too much order leads to stagnation and oppression.
  • Too much chaos overwhelms and destabilizes.
• The “Way” (Taoism, Christianity, and other traditions) is the path between chaos and order.
• Living meaningfully requires placing one foot in the known and one in the unknown:
  • Stability provides security.
  • Uncertainty fosters growth and learning.
  • This balance creates engagement, purpose, and fulfillment.

The Garden of Eden: The Awakening of Self-Consciousness

• Genesis 2–3 recounts the older “Jahwist” creation story, woven together with the newer “Priestly” account by a biblical editor known as the “Redactor.”
• Eden means “well-watered place” in Aramaic and “Paradise” (pairidaeza) means “walled garden” in Persian—a protected but bounded space.

The Serpent: Chaos and the Unavoidable Threat

• The serpent represents chaos—the unknown and disruptive force that inevitably enters even the safest of places.
• No paradise can ever be completely sealed off from disorder, just as no life is free from danger.
• Snakes were literal threats in ancient human environments, but also symbolized betrayal, deceit, and internal moral corruption.
• Milton and Christian tradition equate the serpent with Satan, embodying the human capacity for evil.

The Awakening of Adam and Eve

• Before eating the fruit, Adam and Eve are unconscious, innocent, and unaware of their own vulnerability.
• The serpent tempts Eve, telling her that eating the fruit will make her “like God,” knowing good and evil.
• Eve eats first, then gives the fruit to Adam—paralleling the way women throughout history have awakened men to their self-consciousness.
• With awareness comes shame—they realize their nakedness, vulnerability, and capacity for judgment.

The Meaning of Nakedness

• To be naked means to be exposed, judged, and unprotected.
• Unlike other animals, humans stand upright, exposing their most vulnerable areas.
• Realizing their nakedness, Adam and Eve feel shame and cover themselves.
• The desire to hide from judgment extends to avoiding responsibilities and truth (Adam hides from God).

The Blame Game: Avoiding Responsibility

• When God confronts them, Adam blames Eve (“The woman you gave me…”).
• Eve blames the serpent (“The serpent deceived me…”).
• This pattern of avoiding responsibility and shifting blame is deeply embedded in human nature.

The Curse: Work, Pain, and Suffering

• Eve’s punishment:
  • Pain in childbirth—a consequence of human brain expansion and upright posture.
  • Dependence on men—due to the long period of infant dependency.
• Adam’s punishment:
  • Endless toil and struggle—the burden of foreseeing and preparing for the future.
  • Sacrificing the present for security.
• Both are cast out of Eden, into history, responsibility, and suffering.
• The flaming sword at the gate prevents their return—perhaps because paradise must be earned, not granted.

The Nature of Evil and the Knowledge of Good and Evil

• Self-consciousness grants humans a unique awareness of suffering.
• Unlike animals, humans understand how to inflict pain deliberately—this is what distinguishes us from predators.
• The capacity for cruelty is tied to self-awareness: knowing how we suffer means knowing how to make others suffer.
• This deep capacity for malevolence is the basis of the idea of Original Sin—humans can choose to do harm.

The Burden of Moral Knowledge

• The realization of good and evil transforms existence into a moral struggle.
• Ancient myths reflect this idea:
  • The Babylonians believed humans were made from the blood of Kingu, the most terrible monster.
  • This suggests that human nature itself is tainted, leading to self-doubt and self-punishment.

Why Won’t People Take Their Own Medicine?

• People treat their pets better than themselves because they see themselves as unworthy of care.
• We are deeply aware of our own flaws, making us less likely to value ourselves.
• Self-contempt leads to self-neglect—people punish themselves for their perceived inadequacies.
• The struggle between good and evil is not just external, but internal—within each person.
• The Ultimate Question: What is to be Done?

A Spark of the Divine: Order, Chaos, and Human Responsibility

• Genesis 1 describes God creating order from chaos using truthful speech.
• Human beings are created in God’s image, meaning they have the same capacity to bring order from chaos.
• Genesis 2–3 presents the Fall, which introduces suffering, moral struggle, and self-doubt.
• Despite the Fall, humanity retains an innate longing for paradise, reflected in nostalgia for childhood, nature, and innocence.

The Fall and the Responsibility of Choice

• Adam and Eve’s pre-Fall innocence was given, not earned.
• Post-Fall humanity is more than before—self-conscious, aware of good and evil, and capable of free choice.
• Moral responsibility emerges from self-awareness, making it necessary to consciously choose good over evil.
• The Bible’s narrative serves as a guide for humanity to set itself right, culminating in the figure of Christ.
• The key lesson of Genesis 1 remains: to create good from chaos consciously, through free will.

Respecting Oneself Despite Human Flaws

• Many people struggle with self-worth, feeling unworthy of care due to self-disgust, shame, and self-consciousness.
• Self-sacrifice is often misinterpreted as passivity, but Christ’s example is about accepting suffering while resisting tyranny, not victimizing oneself.
• True self-respect means standing up for oneself, as well as for others.

Jung’s Perspective on Self-Respect and Relationships

• “Love your neighbor as yourself” is an equation, not just an injunction.
• Failing to stand up for oneself results in becoming a slave, while the other becomes a tyrant.
• Loving yourself means recognizing your worth and setting proper boundaries.

The Divine Spark Within Each Person

• Genesis states that humans are made in God’s image, meaning they have consciousness and creative power.
• Humans can create order or chaos through their words and actions.
• Everyday heroism—the perseverance of ordinary people despite suffering—is a testament to human strength.
• Rather than focusing solely on human flaws, one must also recognize the resilience and achievements of individuals.

The Moral Obligation to Take Care of Oneself

• You are responsible for yourself because your well-being affects others.
• You deserve the same care and respect you would give to someone you love.
• Despite human imperfection, neglecting oneself only worsens suffering.
• Self-discipline and self-respect are necessary to prevent resentment, cruelty, and self-destruction.

The Power of Vision and Direction

• Having a clear goal transforms obstacles into opportunities.
• Strengthening the individual is key to improving the world.
• Nietzsche: “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”
• Understanding Hell (both personal and collective) helps one choose not to create or perpetuate it.
• By treating yourself as someone you are responsible for helping, you take the first step toward meaning, redemption, and walking with God once again.