Injunctions in Practice: Effect of Milieu

The polarity applicable to obeying a Primal Injunction is broadly identified as personal v social, the two different milieus within which they operate. The initial task is to determine how this polarity applies at each of the Levels. This will define Centres for Obedience that should be active in everyday communal living.

The result is shown in the diagram, and explained below, starting from the topmost Centre.

RH"L7: See Unity

• There is a single Balanced Centre named: See Unity, formula RH"L7_B.
  Details

Seeing unity requires you to consider your own particular egocentric tendencies. You must overcome your prejudices, your tendencies to sustain unbridgeable differences and to inappropriately polarize situations. That will help you readjust constructively and manage diversity positively. These inner pressures are all personal influences on seeing unity. However, the prejudice that you have, the other who has become so different, the polarization that enmeshes you—these are all dependent on phenomena in your social environment. So exactly where and how you must see unity is simultaneously externally influenced.

RH"L6: Heed What's Right

There are two distinct and potentially opposing Centres within this Level:

• Personal Centre named: Use Personal Principles, formula RH"L6_P.
• Social Centre named: Understand Social Obligations, formula RH"L6_S.
  Details & Dominance

Heeding what is right requires you to determine what existential ethics-type principles you regard as sacrosanct. Because you are the only arbiter of such principles, they are personal in nature. The principles that you choose (or perhaps discover that you have chosen) will emerge from your upbringing, your education, your work experiences, your life choices, your reflections. They are commonly features of a religion or philosophy. Obedience is fuzzy if your principles are vague. You must know what your principles are so you can apply them whenever necessary: especially in urgent, difficult or complicated situations.

However, you do have unavoidable ethical obligations as a member of certain groups, society and your culture. Group rituals, customs, laws, conventions &c. are wholly social. If you move from one culture to another, your personal principles will remain largely unchanged, but your social obligations will alter, perhaps markedly. You are unlikely to approve of everything in the moral framework of your own society or any other. But its ethical standards are still relevant, especially if your sense of what is right leads you to violate them. You must therefore understand your obligations to relate and function effectively and civilly within society.

Dominance. However unsatisfactory or horrific a group's customs may be, they cannot be dismissed if you are part of that group. So understanding social obligations is essential. It will ensure that you can handle yourself in a civil and acceptable fashion within the relevant community or tribe. However, it is evident that the use of personal principles is the only resource that humanity has to mitigate group immaturity and dysfunction. So, for each person, it is essential that principles dominate when it comes to heeding what is right. Use personal principles is therefore the dominant Centre and placed on the right in diagrams.

RH"L5: Do Your Best

There are two distinct and potentially opposing Centres within this Level

• Personal Centre named: Imagine the New, formula RH"L5_P.
• Social Centre named: Be Productive, formula RH"L5_S.
  Details & Dominance

All tasks and all work necessarily occur within endeavours, and all endeavours exist in a social matrix. Unless the endeavour makes progress sufficiently or is commercially successful or gets voluntarily supported because of its value, it cannot survive. So doing your best, as a distinct social demand, entails being productive in an appropriate way.

Doing your best also has an obvious personal aspect in the form of the tasks you choose to engage with, the challenges you identify, and how you approach being productive. The critical factor here relates to how you immerse yourself and apply your imagination because that is what «best» means in personal terms. Without imagination and immersion there can be no inspiration, and no focused willingness or goal leading to anything «new».

Dominance. It is evidently possible and sometimes essential to operate these Centres independently. However, if you are to make a difference, imagining the new should take precedence over being productive. So the personal Centre is placed on the right in diagrams.

RH"L4: Care about Others

• There is a single Balanced Centre named: Care about Others, formula RH"L4_B.
  Details

Caring about others is personally determined by those you interact with and think about, and also by things like your abilities, activities and your particular preferences and priorities at the time. Simultaneously, any caring is dependent on the situation that you find yourself in. You usually need to take into account the immediate context, and possibly the other person's character and preferences, or something that has befallen them. All of these matters are externally determined and social in nature. So the personal and social cannot be teased apart.

RH"L3: Become Aware

There are two distinct and potentially opposing Centres within this Level:

• Personal Centre named: Become Self-aware, formula RH"L3_P.
• Social Centre named: Grasp the Situation, formula RH"L3_S.
  Details & Dominance

Becoming aware has a personal dimension in the need that exists to become self-aware. Issues to consider here include: personal thoughts, personal attitudes, personal biases, personal failures, personal memories, personal wishes &c. Without an active focus on such things, you are at the mercy of external events and your own weaknesses.

There is also a quite separate social dimension in becoming aware leading to a different sort of awareness. Situational awareness is about appreciating things like the mood in a room, the history of an organization, relevant cultural values, intentions of strangers, possibilities in a work group, attitudes of a bureaucrat, feelings of a friend, hot political issues and similar things. You must grasp situations to perceive dangers, work out the likely evolution, and handle tricky issues well—whatever your current degree of self-awareness may be.

Dominance: Needs for both self-awareness and situational awareness may be episodic and urgent or evolve over longer periods. The imbalance is obvious: you cannot focus on your self-development while an important or dangerous situation is actively unfolding. Also, situations commonly provoke reflection when bias or blind-spots lead to misfortune. So grasping the situation is dominant and placed on the right in diagrams.

RH"L2: Hold Ideals

• There is a single Balanced Centre called Hold Ideals, formula RH"L2_B.
  Details

Holding ideals requires a personal position, because you must seek out and recognize values that mean something to you and fit your notion of «good». At the same time, however, all ideals are intrinsically social. The Injunction demands that your ideals have relevance for wider society and be recognized by the circles within which you move. Even if you can make your own adjustments, you have no option but to select from amongst what is currently acceptable in society.

RH"L1: Get Enjoyment

• There is a single Balanced Centre called Get Enjoyment, formula RH"L1_B.
  Details

Getting enjoyment requires personal determinants otherwise there could not be any genuine gratification. At the same time, social determinants—like wealth, type of society, cultural development, availability of a facility, wishes of intimates—play a large part in determining the choice of pleasure at any moment.

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• The next step is to lay the foundation of a good community by playing your part to ensure its unity.

Originally posted: 31-Jan-2013