Attain Equanimity: RsH"-G5

Using Your Individuality

An authentically developed character-R"G4 permits you to take a good approach to specific events, and any wider social turmoil. You are likely to strive to attain equanimity, because that is a comfortable state to be in.

The function of attaining equanimity is to maintain goodness as a stable personal state despite surrounding dysfunction and destructiveness. The challenge here is to be able to remain comfortable and balanced while involved with others, however damaged or damaging they may be &/or however dire the social conditions.

Handling social situations through genuine involvement occurs through empathy. Empathy is what makes it possible to appreciate the feelings and perspectives of other individuals and groups. It is not difficult to activate empathy: it is the consequences of empathizing that may be difficult—feeling the intense pain, emotional dysfunction and damage within others.

Your Egocentric Alternative: Just Switch Off!

There is another approach: you simply tune out what you don't like, and turn your attention to yourself and your own needs. When your empathy switch is in the off position, you are not destabilized by externalities because they have nothing to do with you. Even when disconnected in this way, you may find yourself feeling angry, irritated, blaming or critical of others, because empathy often acts at a preconscious level.

In general, lack of empathic awareness leads to poor handling of social situations and causes distress or disruption, even possibly emotional explosions. Shutting empathy down at deeper and deeper levels eventually leads to hardening, indifference, callousness and eventually brutalization.

The effective use of empathy specifically for producing goodness is made possible by the addition of a 5^th adjacent Vehicle of Goodness that is operated creatively. The result is three Pentads that serve as the carriers of empathy and determine how empathy should function. It is the creativity requirement which makes attaining equanimity rather difficult.

The three carriers of empathy are:

• Compassion R"G5³
• Wisdom R"G5²
• CooperativenessR"G5¹

Using Your Empathy

Be Compassionate: R"G5³

Being compassionate is a fundamental spiritual requirement for constant goodness, and is emphasized in all great religions. It appears with various names: love, caring, kindness, loving-kindness, devotion.

It is well understood that being compassionate requires empathy. What is less understood is that without creativity, it will not be meaningful. A better term for «compassion without creativity» is sympathy.

The internal structure provides insights here that are often missing from conventional exhortatory accounts.
Details in next Topic.

Be Wise: R"G5²

Being wise is the fundamental rational requirement for constant goodness. It refers to understanding dynamic social situations where action must be taken. So being wise applies to personal choices and also advice to another. Such wisdom is not about having vast knowledge or reasoning powers. It has to be learned through reflecting on experience, empathy with others, and awareness of values. So it often comes with age and maturity.

We are homo sapiens (L. sapientia = wisdom). In THEE, it is apparent that everyone can be wise because it is a matter of willingness and awareness, not cleverness or book-learning. It is not commonly realized that being wise requires creative submission, or that it is a consequence of empathy.

The internal structure provides additional insights that are often missing from philosophical accounts.
Details in next Topic.

Be Cooperative: R"G5¹

Being cooperative is a fundamental practical requirement for constant goodness. It must be obvious that you are always doing things with or for others, and that you have the option to participate properly or to remain half-hearted and poorly engaged.

Cooperation maintains equanimity in difficult situations where some active contribution is appropriate. Note that it demands a creative orientation to exertion, which is its highest internal level.

The internal structure provides a range of other insights here.
Details in next Topic.

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• Examine the internal structures of the three uses of empathy.

Originally posted: 24-May 2013