Benefit for Yourself 2: Protection

Well-Being Set

■ Self-protection is valued above Autonomy

• Kinship-centredness provides self-protection—material and emotional—through trust and dependence on family members.

  At the extreme, kin should be prepared to sacrifice themselves for each other. The family seeks to be self-sufficient and shares its resources amongst members to the exclusion of outsiders.

Personal autonomy must be suppressed …

… to keep the family together, to conform to family traditions and to ensure continuing devotion to kin, irrespective of whether they deserve it.

• Power-centredness provides self-protection through selfishly controlling others and as much of the social environment as possible. The individual is sensitive to possible threats, asserts status and is ready to threaten, intimidate or fight.

Personal autonomy is constrained …

… to ensure survival in a hierarchy and to preserve face. Autonomy is weakened by appeasing those seen to be more powerful and by impulsive tendencies.

• Community-centredness provides self-protection through social support and reciprocity for help given. Intuitive awareness and respect for feelings and expectations are also protective.

Personal autonomy is self-limited …

… by self-restraint, willingness to work cooperatively, and acceptance of majority views.

• Reality-centredness provides self-protection through transcending the self and applying self-mastery to dispense with egoism and reduce enslavement by personal wishes, interests or doctrines.

Personal autonomy is paradoxically limited …

… by exercising autonomy to transcend egoism, and to deliberately flow with events, submit to creative inspirations and realize identity.

Moving up the well-being diagonal, protection becomes ever more personally demanding, so seeing reality, however painful, is paradoxically most protective.
More: 

Kinship-centredness is least protective for the self because it deliberately uses the individual to serve family purposes and values.

Power-centred individuals are always at risk from three directions: from themselves, from those they antagonize, and from their associates.

Community-centredness is somewhat safer but more demanding because it calls for a degree of altruism and reciprocity of support.

Reality-centred individuals are liberated by putting hopes and fears into cosmic perspective. Think Epictetus.

Productivity Set

■ Autonomy is valued above Self-Protection

On the productivitydiagonal, exposure to risk is inevitable and security is hard to ensure.

• Market-centred individuals are exposed to stress from business deals and investments on a daily basis and there is no place to hide.
• Cause-centred individuals are vulnerable, from speaking their mind and making attacks on conventionally accepted activities.
• Perspective-centred individuals are discredited or disliked for refusing to join in public condemnations of certain values or groups.

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• More on valuing production.

Originally posted: July 2009