Stage-3: Salvation — Consider Others

Rationale

SALVATION is a socio-centric quest like MEANING, but the emphasis is on the needs of the other rather than those of the self.

The nature of human existence is that people are inter-dependent. So active engagement is requisite, preferably with a release of empathy and compassion to help generate friendliness and sympathy.

To thrive as a person, good relationships and participation in the wider community is required. Extending your coping mechanisms to caring about others is the first and most basic step in enabling this. If you do not care about others, why should anyone care about you?

Note: Caring about others is a the RH”L4-Primal Injunction and the centrepiece of the Tree of Communal Betterment.

Refusal to Care is a Failure in Coping

Caring and being cared for exposes vulnerability. Those who are driven to dominate others are likely to distance themselves and deny both the need to care and their own dependency. A sense of superiority can lead to excessive criticism of the failings of others. Those who dismiss or denigrate others deemed to be different block care and contribute to social conflict.

All such social stress can weaken personal coping. The more that our inter-dependence is acknowledged and mutual respect develops between sub-groups, the stronger the community, and the stronger the community, the stronger each member.

Values & Assumptions

Promoting Survival

Essence: Care about others

Activation of a caring disposition is the basis for friendships (PH’4Q3). It enables helpfulness and promotes understanding. For those on the SALVATION Quest the focus is on those most in need. For others, there is a gradient in caring with maximum attention given to family and close friends; somewhat less attention is given to neighbours and acquaintances; and much less to those who are unknown but with common qualities and ethnicity. For those perceived as alien and utterly different, caring promotes tolerance and peaceful coexistence. So the essence of thriving here is to release as much care as possible.

Benefit: Win social support

The natural urge for reciprocity is powerful. Caring not only leads to a warm family and good friends, but also to creation of a wide circle of people likely to be well-disposed towards you. This network will stand ready and willing to contribute support when stressful events occur, or times get tough for you. So both your confidence in coping and your capacity to cope will become significantly enhanced.

Means: Be empathic

Empathy, feeling with and for others, impels concern. This calls for developing and maintaining certain capabilities. Above all, you need to perceive the emotional components of situations and recognize emotions in yourself and others. A readiness to see situations from alternative perspectives will help you avoid egotistically giving your own feelings and views pre-eminence.

Empathy & Goodness

Empathy was the basis for attaining equanimity (RH”G5) , a component in producing goodness via being cooperative, wise and compassionate. Coping does not seek to produce goodness, but the Taxonomy appears to suggest that those who are disruptive, foolish and indifferent to others and view that as «coping» are dysfunctional. Any such coping is likely to be temporary because others and possibly organs of the social system will lead to a reckoning.

Handling the Socio-physical Environment:

Participation: Offer help

Caring needs to reveal itself in action. That means being helpful and considerate. Helpfulness is an ultimate value that operates as a vehicle of goodness (RH"G1⁴). Help should be offered rather than imposed or forced—and that applies to family members as well as outsiders.

Interaction: Share experiences

An element of trust in personal relationships is an intrinsic feature of caring, while the loss of trust and consequent isolation weakens coping. Sharing often focuses on emotions, however that is too limited. Sharing ideas, plans, opinions, wishes and fears all help to bring people closer even when there are differences of view.

Individualization: Know limitations

There have to be limits. Limits to the help offered. Limits to the experiences shared. Limits to the network that can be supported. A person needs to know their limitations in order to preserve strength and the ability to care.

Channeling Your Functioning

Endurance: based on Respecting

Respect is the ethical disposition that maintains the social structure. It powers etiquette by creating certainty about doing what is right. It ensures civility in everyday social dealings. If every person you deal with receives respect, the basis for friendly and supportive relationships is maintained. The potential for caring is protected.

Limitations

With incorporation of values from the SALVATION Quest, coping has been significantly enhanced and thriving made much more likely.

But life is never easy. Many things will exist in the environment that are profoundly unsatisfactory and frustrating. Even having handled economic challenges by working-μ1, ensuring personal meaning-μ2, and managing relations-μ3, events large and small may start to overwhelm us.
Examples:

None of the Modes provided so far suffices under such unfavourable circumstances. Even while their ethos remains relevant, something extra is required: something geared to helplessness and the unfairness of hard reality; something that confronts unavoidable frustration and removes soul-destroying futility. This can be provided by values of the ENLIGHTENMENT Quest.

Ruling out Alternative Moves

Moving to the PLEASURE mode would be to pretend nothing is going wrong. Guidance from OBEDIENCE assumes all is more or less satisfactory, while SPIRITUALITY is too abstract.

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Moving on…..

• Continue to Stage 4: Enlightenment Mode.

Originally posted: 9-Dec-2022. Last updated: 28-Mar-2023.