Human beings lie on the continuum from the lesser self to the goodself. None of us are divine nor totally evil. What we are could be the product of nature and nurture in our journey of life. We may inherit some good and bad genes from our family tree of our ancestor and that forms part of our personality. The other parts could be shaped by our pleasurable and painful experiences in the environment.
Our past experiences shape both the good part of us (goodself) and the lesser part of us (lesser self). Generally, when we experience pleasure, it brings out the good part of us. Likewise the lesser part of us is shaped through painful and bad experiences. Therefore, we are imperfect beings in line with Carl Jung’s maxim that “we have the God and the devil in us”. Being imperfect we have both good and bad qualities. It is not difficult to identify the goodself and the lesser self. What we need to do is to look at the language regardless of any tribes, which describes our attributes. For example:
Goodself
- Love
- Honest
- Hardworking
- Punctuality
- Develop
- Fair
- Forgive
Lesser self
- Hate
- Cheat
- Lazy
- Tardy
- Destroy
- Bias
- Revenge
The dualism in us is explained in our religions regardless of our religious beliefs. Goodself originates from the forces of light while the lesser self originates from the forces of darkness. In our temporal, mundane existence, we are given the power of choice to cultivate the goodself or the lesser self. We can cultivate the goodself and move towards the divine being. Alternatively, we can cultivate the lesser self and move towards the lesser being.
It is natural to have both the goodself and the lesser self in us. We can’t blame ourselves for having both the goodself and lesser self. They are products of our genes and past experiences.
In our journey of life, we will be continually facing good and bad experiences. Good experiences give us pleasure while bad experiences give us pain. Based on the stimulus-response theory, pain brings out the lesser self of a person while pleasure brings out the goodself of a person. A situation, person or an event produces a stimulus. The stimulus could be pleasurable or painful. Stimulus-response behavior operates at the sub-conscious level of our minds. It can bring about either a destructive relationship or a constructive relationship.
Destructive cycle
For example, P opens his lesser self (blaming Q for his mistakes) – a painful stimulus that gives Q pain (hurt and depressed). The pain that Q experienced brings out Q’s lesser self (response – yelling and calling P nasty names or derogatory words). Q’s lesser self gives P pain (P’s feelings get hurt). P in turn responds with his lesser self (such as punching Q on the nose) and the destructive cycle perpetuates.
Constructive cycle
P’s goodself (shows care and concern for Q’s well-being) gives a pleasurable stimulus to Q. Q responds with his goodself (such as helping P to repair his house) which in turn gives a pleasurable stimulus to P and the constructive cycle perpetuates.
Turning a destructive cycle into a constructive cycle
P’s lesser self (blames Q for his mistakes) – a painful experience to Q. Q’s goodself responds with a smile and implore P to investigate. P’s goodself (apologize to Q) after finding out that he is wrong in blaming Q.
From here, we can summarize that:
- People are different. Behavior comes from the world of experiences. People come from different backgrounds and see things differently.
- People are imperfect. People have been molded by so many experiences by others who are themselves imperfect or by the environment which is not in perfect harmony. Because people are imperfect and because of the differing backgrounds, people are also different in the way they respond or react to what they see, hear, touch, taste or smell.
- Systems created by human beings are imperfect. All political, social and economic systems can be manipulated by human beings for survival and to satisfy and perpetuate dominant needs.
- Most of our behavior are controlled by our feelings. Behavior operates at the sub-conscious level of our mind are spontaneous and reactive.
- Our behavior can operate at the conscious level. Such behavior are pro-active where we can use our intellect to make a choice to manifest our good or lesser self in a favourable or unfavourable environment.
- Generally, a favorable and healthy environment energizes our goodself and brings out our good qualities while an unfavorable or toxic environment energizes our lesser self and brings our bad qualities.