Sunday, February 5, 2017

Check out what Simon says and then I add some Girardian insights

Simon Sinek touches on a number of issues and whether you are a millennial or not we should all contemplate/pray on. These issues are concerns for everyone, at all levels of culture, work, school, and family.


Getting our stethoscopes out, let us explore what is deeper, under the skin if you will, drawing on our Girardian insights, on one of the issues Simon touches on: the makeup of a person (re: happiness - the love of life).
 
We understand ourselves as humans and as humans we are creatures who are affect/influenced/formed by others - parents, peers, educators, environment, etc. Now this means that it is not just our common assumptions that our conscious actions or thoughts are influenced, but even our desires - our very being is formed by the other/s. In fact, looking at this from a religious/spiritual perspective; a "person" is actually a gift of the other/s and should be received as a gift. In Girardian terms, "I" am, through this body over time, being imitatively drawn into the life of the social others (culture/environment), by way of gestures, language and memory that is forming this "I." In fact this "I" (that we all are) is one of the symptoms of the social other/culture. This "I," that we claim as our own, is an interdividual, not like our culture mythologizes as an individual that is autonomous or self-determining. 

Shortly after Simon's initial video he came out with a follow up, check it out.



Anthropologically/religiously/spiritually, being constituted as an interdividual, happiness, love of life comes through freedom which is actualized by the practice of embracing the other.  So Simon is spot-on when he advocates: Let's create the Help-Others industry, not the Self-Help industry.

1 comment:

  1. Indeed helping other adds spiritual values to an individual. Along with this I second your thought that we perceives a lot from our peers and people that surrounds us

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