On this page, I summarize my worldview of living action by emphasizing my core, fundamental principles. In doing so, I discuss my outlook in the areas of Being, Living Action and their Relationship; Modes of Awareness; Value Judgment; Autonomy; Interdependence and Society.

Worldview Summary: Table of Contents

Introduction
I.	Being, Living Action and their Relationship
II.	Modes of Awareness
III.	Value Judgment
IV.	Autonomy
V.	Interdependence
VI.	Society
Closing Words
Acknowledgements

Introduction

I'm grateful that you're reading this. I feel excitement sharing and expressing the following. I feel profound optimism about it. Writing this has helped meet my needs for clarity, progress and meaning, and I hope it may help others meet such needs, as well.

All my life I've been developing my outlook and I continue to do so. I'm preparing various summaries of my worldview, including one of book length. All remain works in progress.

In the following summary, I present some aspects of my worldview in more detail than others. In particular, I aim to express something of the relevance, purpose, substance, structure and interconnections within my worldview. Throughout, I endeavor to clarify why I call mine a worldview of living action.

Even so, I feel struck by how much I've omitted, much of which I regard as important, and which I'm hoping both further dialogue and additional summaries will help bring to light.

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In part given this, I welcome comments and questions aimed at meeting both others' needs and mine. I especially welcome questions aimed at clarification and compassionate challenge. I will welcome comments posted here or sent to me privately. (My contact information appears here.) If you do send me comments or questions, I'll especially appreciate mention of what you would like in return.

I've written more about my process of developing my worldview here. In the following summary I've not included footnotes. At the end, though, in the Acknowledgements, I have included a list of some of the sources that I've found helpful in shaping my worldview. In addition, in my website's About Me area, here, I've written about my influences.

Regardless of what I've learned from others, however, the following remains a summary of my own worldview. I'm firmly convinced that no two individuals' worldviews ever remain exactly alike. In addition, I'm well aware that my opinions differ in numerous respects from those expressed even by those individuals from whom I've learned the most.

I hope you will find value in my outlook.

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I. Being, Living Action and their Relationship

	A.	Being
	B.	Living Action
	C.	Their Relationship

I've long striven to clarify for myself those principles that 1) capture for me the basic nature of being, of living action and of their relationship and 2) serve as the foundation for my worldview. Accordingly, my foundational principles follow.

A. Being

What endures, endures (being). What endures, endures as it endures (identity). Contradictions can't ever endure (non-contradiction). The nature of a cause causes the nature of its effect to endure as it does (causality).

With the word being, I mean to point to that of which I'm aware to any degree, but without specifying the particular nature of that of which I'm aware.

I can be aware of something while knowing little about it. Also, even with those things about which I've learned much, so much remains for me to learn. My model of reality always remains limited.

With the word being, then, I mean to introduce an open-ended foundation to my worldview. I'm aware that something endures, but I may know little about that particular something. Even with those things about which I know much more, I never gain a comprehensive perspective on them. In my effort to model the things of which I'm aware, I can always learn more. To incorporate such learning, I remain ever willing to modify my model of the things of which I'm aware.

With the word identity, I mean that with whatever particular thing I choose to consider, it endures as it endures. Put in other words, whatever particular thing I consider embodies a specific nature.

With the word non-contradiction, I mean that with whatever particular thing I choose to consider, it endures as it endures, and thus it can't both endure and not endure at the same moment and in the same respect. To make my model of the things of which I'm aware most fully satisfy my needs for clarity, efficiency, explanation and truth, with any contradictions that I might notice in my model, I commit to resolving them. As I resolve such contradictions, I modify my model and more thoroughly integrate it.

With the word causality, I mean that with whatever particular thing I consider, any action, motion, change or endurance that it embodies, it embodies. I consider any action, motion, change or endurance an indivisible aspect of that which acts, moves, changes or endures. I likewise consider any particular thing that acts, moves, changes or endures as an indivisible aspect of its action, motion, change or endurance.

At root, when I say "this causes that effect," I mean, for example, that "this person [the cause] runs [the effect]" – or even that "this person's running [the cause] made this person run [the effect]." In this example, the running and the person remain indivisible.

In modeling particular things, I often relate attributes. I might say, for example, that "this person can run because he has normally functioning legs," and thus relate the person’s legs to the ability to run. I might say, in other words, "this person's  normally functioning legs enable [cause] this person to run [effect]."

Only the present exists. The past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist. By my standards, in a strictly literal sense, the past never exists and the future never exists: the past never now endures and the future never now endures. Only and always the present endures.

For me, "being," "the actual," "the real," "the present," and "what endures" all ultimately refer to the same reality. Everything actual and real exists now, in the present (the now).

For me, saying, "I'm able to drink this coffee now because I made it earlier" really qualifies as shorthand rather than as a literal statement. Literally, I took a succession of actions now leading to my drinking this coffee now.

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B. Living Action

As I endure, I endure (self). I live and embody need-directed action (living action).

As part of remaining alive as the specific (animal and human) life form that I do, I also remain aware.

I'm aware of things (awareness). Things that I perceive and my senses cause me to experience perceptual awareness of those things (sensory perception, the body). Things that I perceive, my senses and my body generate sensory-perceptual, pleasure-pain experiences (pleasure and pain). With my feelings I experience varying degrees of satisfaction and dissatisfaction (feelings). With my mind I can consider my experiences with my thoughts (thinking attention). In my unified environment, with my mind, by means of my power to choose, I embody the capacity to choose between alternatives and to guide my actions (mental choice).

Just as I regard a person's running as indivisible from the person, so I regard a person's awareness as indivisible from that person (integrity of awareness and the body).

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C. Their Relationship

Every living being embodies needs and enacts strategies within its environment in an effort to meet those needs (needs, strategies, environment). By satisfying its needs a living being serves its life. Not always does the specific strategy that a living being enacts end up meeting its needs. Even so, any living being enacts any of its strategies with the aim of meeting its needs, which means: with the aim of serving its life (aim).

I'm vulnerable to need-frustration, which means that I embody the potential to fail, even profoundly, in my effort to satisfy my needs (vulnerability, mortality).

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As part of remaining alive as the specific (animal and human) life form that I do, my awareness depends for its nature on the aspects of my environment of which I'm aware (primacy).

Some things endure absolutely and so remain beyond my power to change, while other things endure that remain within my power to alter (the absolute and the alterable).

Given my awareness of the nature of being, living action, my nature and their interrelationship, I feel a degree of hope that I embody some power with which to strive to meet my needs (sense of life). Also, given my awareness of the nature of being, living action, my nature and their interrelationship, I feel a degree of confidence that in enacting strategies in my effort to satisfy my needs, I embody some power with which to actually satisfy them (sense of efficacy).

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II. Modes of Awareness

	A.	Forms of Awareness
	B.	The Continuum of Truth Satisfaction
	C.	Mental Integration
	D.	Feelings and Thoughts
	E.	Presence
	F.	Observation, Prediction, Experimentation and the Canon
	G.	Empathic Dialogue

A. Forms of Awareness

As with other aware animals including other human beings, as I aim to satisfy my needs, my power of awareness remains central in guiding my action. As a living, vulnerable, mortal being, I may satisfy my need for health, endure a dying process or linger somewhere in between. As an aware being, in a specific respect, I may satisfy my need for awareness sufficiently to serve my well being or miss something crucial. Likewise, as a human being who feels, I can experience pain, pleasure, happiness, hope, depression or devastation - or something in between.

Because I want to satisfy my needs for health and well being and maximize my happiness, as I guide my action in my effort to meet my needs, I want to maximize my awareness.

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I'm always aware by some means and in some form. At any given moment, how things seem to me remains the form by means of which I remain aware of those things. Without such form, I couldn't be aware at all.

By my standards, then, things always remain exactly as they seem. With further inspection I can change my perspective on things, develop awareness of them in new forms and learn more about them, and on this basis modify my action relative to them. Yet at every stage, how such things seem to me remains the form by means of which I remain aware of them.

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B. The Continuum of Truth Satisfaction

Given that by my standards things always remain exactly as they seem, I conceive of truth differently than those who refer to such divisions as "fact vs. error" and "truth vs. falsehood." Instead, I regard truth as a need that I aim to satisfy ever more fully.

In my ongoing learning process, I refine my strategies in order to more deeply satisfy my needs. In a fundamental sense, I conceive of all my forms of awareness as strategies for meeting my needs for awareness and truth - strategies that I want to modify any time that I discover a more aware, life-serving way of meeting those needs.

In this sense, by my standards, human strategies for meeting the need for truth endure on a continuum: some such strategies meet this need more fully, some less. I like some such strategies far more than others. I rank such strategies according to my judgment of how fully they maximize my awareness and thus serve my life.

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So, for example, I regard all worldviews (including all religions, philosophies and belief systems) as strategies for meeting human needs rather than as needs in themselves. Some such strategies meet my need for truth more fully, while others do less.

I seek neither to dismiss casually, nor to adopt thoughtlessly, any part of any worldview. Instead, with reflection, I seek to learn from all such sources, even when in some part they don't satisfy my need for truth.

When in some part a particular worldview doesn't satisfy my need for truth, I selectively adopt only those parts that I regard as life-serving and strive to learn even from those parts that I dislike. In my view, human beings developed even the parts that I dislike with the aim of meeting their needs. If I don't adopt an aspect that I dislike, I still want to understand how another person hoped with that aspect to satisfy what need.

I apply the same principles even when it seems to me that based on their worldviews, particular individuals enact strategies that I dislike. I find that I far more fully meet my needs for understanding and intelligibility when I remember that like all living beings, they do what they do with the aim of meeting their needs.

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I regard even my own worldview not as a need in itself but as a strategy for meeting human needs. By treating even my own worldview this way, I find that I more fully satisfy my need for open-mindedness. With this approach, with experience, and more deeply than I would by treating my worldview as if it were a need, I satisfy my need for truth.

In this process, I describe neither my worldview as an "-ism" nor myself as an "-ist." In terms of nuance and evolution neither form satisfies my needs for awareness or flexibility nearly as much as I prefer.

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I regard all concepts, words, thoughts and worldviews as forms by means of which, to some degree, a human being satisfies one's need for truth. By my standards, such a thought-form qualifies neither as "true" or "false." By means of such a thought-form, a person models the world.

By my standards, for each individual, even at the level of thought-forms, things always remain exactly as they seem. In a sense then, for me, no illusions, errors or falsehoods exist. Instead, with each concept, word, thought and worldview, each person satisfies one's need for truth to some degree.

In my judgment, individuals model the world differently from one another and vary in how fully they satisfy their needs for truth. Yet each individual remains a living, human being who always acts with the aim of meeting one's needs in the service of one's life. Given this aim, each moment, each person satisfies one's need for truth as fully as one then knows how.

So I don't attempt to avoid or eliminate "error." I regard such divisions as "truth vs. falsehood" and "fact vs. error" as dichotomous strategies that don't optimally meet my needs. For me, truth is not a target that one hits or misses, but a need that one satisfies more or less fully. Potentially, with time, one can meet this need more fully.

Given this, I aim to move along the continuum in a direction that will ever more deeply satisfy my need for truth.

C. Mental Integration

Using my capacity to think in combination with my power of subconscious integration, I mentally identify and integrate the material provided by my various forms of awareness. I gather such material via my sensory perception and my experiences of pleasure, pain and feelings (which get stimulated with the help of my sensory perception) and via my memory (which accumulates material with the help of my sensory perception). By means of such mental identification and integration I more fully articulate what I observe and experience.

Methodologically, I involve logical, dialectical and rhetorical integration in my effort to help meet my need for truth. I involve logic (primarily inductive and secondarily deductive) in my effort to integrate my principles without contradiction. I involve dialectics in my effort to preserve the relevant context and to interrelate my principles within a unified whole. I involve rhetoric in my effort to use language to meet my needs, including for clarity of thought and communication.

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By observing what stimulates me and by identifying in my underlying, authentic, human needs the ultimate sources of my pleasure, pain and feelings, I also deepen my awareness of what's alive in me and of what would make my life more wonderful.

With the help of such mental integration I can reflect upon and learn from my own and others' past actions; make predictions about the future and plan ahead, even long range; and more deeply serve my life by more fully meeting my needs.

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D. Feelings and Thoughts

In my effort to mentally identify and integrate the material provided by my various modes of awareness, inherent or irreconcilable conflicts never arise between my reason and emotion, thought and feeling, logic and passion or mind and body.

Likewise, in my effort to mentally identify and integrate my observations, inherent or irreconcilable conflicts never arise between the individual and social aspects of my human identity.

In learning, conceptualizing and expanding the range of my thoughts, and in further integrating and differentiating my concepts, I dismiss none and involve all these dimensions of my awareness.

I've heard some maintain that because feelings can arise from underlying and often subconscious thoughts and evaluations, such feelings can't serve as judges of truth nor can they reliably guide a person's actions. Some go so far as to claim that thinking clearly, logically and rationally involves setting one's feelings aside.

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Although I also maintain that feelings can arise from underlying and often subconscious thoughts and evaluations, I find that a different conception of my feelings' nature and role far more deeply satisfies my needs.

I suspect that one reason why some maintain that feelings can't serve as judges of truth or guides to action lies in the following. If I feel something, and I attempt to describe the feeling by saying, "I feel like hitting you," such a person might say that I shouldn't act on the feeling; that my feeling this way doesn't prove that I should act this way; that in this situation, in deciding how to act, I should set my feelings aside; and that all this illustrates that feelings can't serve as judges of truth or guides to action.

In my conception, however, the statement "I feel like hitting you" omits the authentic feeling and mixes in the thought of a specific strategy: that of hitting.

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I prefer to express what I feel in the following way. "I feel rage." By my standards, words such as rage, anger, fear, sadness, joy, excitement, exuberance, melancholy and depression (plus many more) authentically name feelings. They succeed in naming feelings in part by omitting thoughts, strategies, or judgments that imply wrongdoing or that suggest that any other person bears responsibility for causing them. (For example, when I say, "I feel offended," without ever naming an authentic feeling, I attribute both responsibility and wrongdoing to another person in the form of a thought-judgment.) Instead, without mixing in thoughts, such words as rage, sadness and joy help me to draw my attention to those bodily sensations that I experience in the form of feelings.

Contrary to many persons' opinion that in this example acting on the feeling of rage would involve danger, in my judgment, the real danger would involve acting on the thought - the only thought that had yet popped into mind. In other words, in my judgment, by themselves, feelings don't dictate a way to act.

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Returning to the realm of truth satisfaction, I wouldn't feel satisfied if someone said, for example, "Totalitarian dictatorship represents the ideal social system - and I know it's true because I feel it." In addition to not naming any evidence with which to support this claim, by my standards, such a speaker wouldn't even succeed in naming a feeling.

When I develop and formulate my conclusions I don't want to set aside - but in fact want to thoroughly involve - logic and reason. Yet in my effort to more deeply satisfy my need for truth, I also involve my feelings.

I would like to clarify how I involve my feelings.

In gauging how certain I am of a given assertion, I will say or think to myself something like the following. "When I follow this line of reasoning, and consider how much its conclusion satisfies my need for truth, I feel highly confident (or deeply doubtful, or somewhat uneasy, etc.)." So I involve such feeling in gauging how certain I am of that assertion. If I feel doubtful or uneasy, I take that as a sign that I will more deeply meet my need for truth by inquiring further. As I inquire further, naturally I will engage in more thinking and reasoning. If I happen to discover any apparent contradictions in my principles, I will make a conscious effort to resolve them. At each point in this process, however, I will continue to pay attention to what I'm feeling. If I still feel uncertain, I won't yet classify my conscious conclusion as "certain."

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I include such feeling in my assessment in part because I'm convinced that the human fulfillment of the need for truth involves not only conscious but also subconscious processes of integration. While I follow the pattern that I've outlined, by paying attention to my feelings, I can access the results of such subconscious processes of integration.

This leads me to another point. I can also view feelings, not only as arising from possibly subconscious thoughts and evaluations, but also as arising from underlying needs.

For example, if I shout at my daughter, and shortly afterward, I think, "I shouldn't have done that! Blast! How could I be such a terrible parent?" - I may feel guilt. And I feel quite confident that such a feeling will have arisen from my thoughts and self-evaluations.

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Yet at another level, I can help focus my attention on the biological role that my feelings play. I can also appreciate that when I feel some form of satisfaction (such as calm, happiness or confidence), then, to some degree, some underlying, authentic need of mine has been met. In addition, the degree of my satisfaction corresponds to the degree to which I sense with my body that this need has been satisfied. Likewise, when I feel some form of dissatisfaction (such as sadness, irritation, frustration or anger) then some underlying, authentic need of mine hasn't been met, and the degree of my dissatisfaction corresponds to the degree to which I sense with my body that my need hasn't been satisfied.

In the example of my feeling guilt, if I consider a level deeper than that of my thoughts, I can appreciate that an authentic, human need of mine wasn't getting met: my need to communicate empathetically, which I especially want to meet with my daughter.

In the example of the person who said, "I feel like hitting you," by extracting and isolating the authentic feeling, I can show that by my standards, by itself the feeling threatens no one. Assuming that I isolate the authentic feeling of anger, it alone doesn't force me to act or even tell me what to do. Feelings by themselves don't articulate strategies. Thoughts do.

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Frequently, in addition to the feeling, thoughts may also run through my head, and in the heat of anger in a given moment my only thought may remain, "I want to hit you." Yet I can then pause, take a deep breath, and reflect. I can appreciate that the strategy of hitting remains only one among many that I may choose to enact in my effort to fulfill my underlying need.

As an example, I may choose to express to the person that I feel anger and that for a specific duration I want to take a break from our interaction. That way, before interacting again with that person, I can fully experience and process my anger.

Given the foregoing, I want to guide all my actions with the fullest possible awareness of my feelings. This involves attending to the roots of my feelings at a level deeper even than that of (possibly subconscious) thought. Specifically, I want to attend to the roots of my feelings in my needs. Always, I want to remember that no matter what I feel, I still retain the power to choose what strategy to enact for the sake of meeting the need that underlies my feeling.

In reflecting on my own responses and those of others, it helps me profoundly to keep in mind that given the foregoing perspective, their feelings, whatever form they happen to take, in and of themselves don't threaten me. Indeed, it helps me enormously to pay close attention to others' feelings, their underlying needs, and the degree of those underlying needs' fulfillment.

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In considering new and alternative points of view, I dismiss neither that in which I feel confident nor that about which I feel suspicious. I deepen my focus on my needs and thereby increase my strategic flexibility. I relinquish attachment to old strategies with which I'm no longer satisfied and revise my principles until I'm more satisfied with the degree to which I'm meeting my need for truth.

In this process, I cultivate neither what I'll now call "dogmatism" nor "deep skepticism."

By dogmatism I now mean a defensive attachment to strategies. Such attachment involves, in part, a lack of willingness to alter such strategies. Such attachment arises from a failure to distinguish clearly between strategies and needs.

By deep skepticism I now mean a defensive unwillingness to express conviction in any strategies. Such unwillingness arises from a lack of confidence 1) in the power of human awareness and/or 2) in the ability to remain strategically flexible even while remaining confident in one's principles.

To clarify my own approach in these respects, as I learn and more deeply meet my need for truth, rather than proceeding with either dogmatism or deep skepticism, I find that I far more fully meet my need for truth in another way.

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In considering my various principles, and in considering those of others, I experience a continuum of feelings, running from serious doubt to a high degree of confidence. I find it helps me to pay close attention to such feelings. The more deeply I feel doubt about a principle, the less certain I am of it. The higher the confidence I feel about a principle, the more certain I am of it.

Such certainty, however, remains a matter of degree. In no case do I reach a closed-minded, dogmatic state of certainty about any principle. Instead, I always regard my particular thoughts and principles as strategies for meeting my need for truth, rather than as needs or ends in themselves. Rather than with strategic attachment I treat even those principles of which I'm most certain with a sense of strategic flexibility, holding my authentic needs and the service of life as more important than any mental position.

Moreover, I'm always aware that at any point, my perspective and knowledge remain limited. Although whenever I'm aware, I remain aware by some means and in some form - and even though I think in terms of a continuum of truth rather than in terms of "truth vs. falsehood" - even with respect to those principles about which I remain most certain, I remain certain only to some degree. The world remains much vaster and deeper than any of my thought-forms can comprehensively identify. I can always learn more. In the course of my learning, even with principles about which I've felt quite certain, sometimes I've learned things so new and significant that I've ended up radically revising those principles.

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In this process, I've found it far more satisfying to keep foremost in my awareness that my thoughts and principles don't equal what endures in the world. Strictly speaking, my thoughts and principles don't even equal my experience. Instead, my thoughts and principles serve, metaphorically, as stepping stones. Rather than equaling my life or the world, my thoughts and principles serve as strategies for serving my needs and life in the world. With them, I model the world in the form of words, concepts, propositions and a worldview.

Understanding all this, I appreciate that feelings play a crucial role both in satisfying my need for truth and in guiding my action, including in my social interaction. Provided that I understand and clearly appreciate their differences, no inherent or irreconcilable conflicts arise between my thoughts and feelings.

Even so, partly since in my judgment, in many circumstances, acting impulsively on the basis of the first strategy I happen to think of can involve grave danger, next I want to consider a mode of awareness with which I find that I much more deeply meet my needs in this and many other respects.

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E. Presence

Although with my capacity to think I gain profound, potential power with which to assist my process of contributing to and enjoying my life, I can also attend to what endures in a different yet crucial way. I can do so by deeply immersing myself in the now via mentally quiet, meditative attention. I also call this form of awareness presence.

By presence I mean attention which, rather than identifying with and getting lost in thought-forms, focuses instead on the present moment.

I find that by meditating I can enjoy deeper presence now, which I value. Yet I also find that by meditating I can enhance my ability to more easily deepen my presence at other times - such as when I observe the world; when I observe what's alive in me now; and when I attend to what's alive in others now.

In this mode of awareness, even if thoughts happen to arise in my mind, I can observe rather than identify with those thoughts. I consider this crucial in part because I've found that it doesn't meet my needs for awareness, truth, inner peace or progress if I let runaway thoughts overtake my mind.

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I can let my thoughts overtake me if I identify with them and treat them as if they equaled my self. Yet such mental identification far from fully satisfies my needs for truth, awareness or clarity. Meditation helps me to more deeply appreciate that "I am not my thoughts" and that I want to treat my thoughts as strategies for meeting my needs rather than as ends in themselves.

When I deepen my presence and treat my thoughts as strategies for meeting my needs rather than as ends in themselves, I likewise more fully meet my need for authentic open-mindedness. I leave myself free to modify my thoughts and, as I discover them, to incorporate more deeply need-fulfilling, life-serving mental strategies.

When I mentally identify with my thoughts, let them overtake my mind and treat them as if they equaled my deepest self, I generate mental inflexibility, increase resistance to both the now and the new, treat "past" and "future" as if they actually existed, and increase my defensiveness. When sustaining such a mentally identified process I lose touch with what's in front of and alive in me right now.

By contrast, from a basis in deeper presence, when I deem it helpful to do so, I can choose to direct my thought and related action with more intentionality and efficiency in the service of my needs and life.

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If I mentally identify with my thoughts, let them overtake my mind and treat them as if they equaled my deepest self, then when I experience strong feelings, I tend to act impulsively, seizing upon the first associated strategy that arises in my thoughts without first considering any alternative strategies that might more fully meet my needs.

So rather than blindly obeying my thoughts, by dis-identifying with them I can treat them as strategies and increase their flexibility. In this way, by strengthening my ability to pause rather than to react impulsively out of unquestioned, mental habit, I more effectively meet various needs. I more effectively meet my need for inner peace; leverage my power of choice; generate thoughts more creatively; and both more consciously direct and take responsibility for my actions.

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In this sense, I've no need for belief. For me, believing in something qualifies as a profoundly suboptimal strategy for meeting my needs. To me, believing in something involves defensively identifying with a mental strategy and confusing a mental position with one's need for truth.

From a foundation of presence, with deep awareness of my need for truth, I seek to model the world in thought-forms that, as I learn more, remain flexibly capable of remodeling. By this means, I keep my thought-forms dynamic rather than frozen, open rather than closed, ever freer of belief and ever more supportive of authentic conviction.

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F. Observation, Prediction, Experimentation and the Canon

In satisfying my need for truth by developing and formulating my principles, to the fullest extent, I endeavor to involve observation, prediction and experimentation and apply what I call the canon.

With observation I endeavor to carefully consider what I want to learn about, and with my various forms of awareness notice as much as I can.

With prediction, based on observation, logic and dialectics, I endeavor to form principles and anticipate what will happen if those principles prove to efficiently model the phenomena which I observe.

With experimentation (or further observation) I test my predictions, and whenever my further observations support doing so, revise my principles in order to more efficiently model the phenomena which I observe.

Along the way, I apply "the canon" - "the heart of rationality, the essence of scientific method, and the meaning of intellectual integrity" according to Walter Kaufmann – which involves asking and answering seven questions with respect to one's own and others' propositions, views, beliefs, hypotheses or convictions.

The questions of the canon ask:

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1. What does this mean?
2. How would incorporation of this help me model what I observe?
3. How would incorporation of this not help me model what I observe?
4. What alternatives remain available?
5. How would incorporation of each alternative help me model what I observe?
6. How would incorporation of each alternative not help me model what I observe?
7. In light of such considerations, incorporation of which alternative(s) would most help me to model what I observe?

[adapted from Without Guilt and Justice by Walter Kaufmann, p. 178]

By involving observation, prediction, experimentation and by applying the canon, I find that I keep my thought-forms flexible; clarify and challenge my concepts, parinciples, propositions and worldview; consider others' alternative conceptions; and, with reflection, model the world in fresh ways that more deeply meet my need for truth and serve my life.

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G. Empathic Dialogue

As much as I value observation, prediction, experimentation and the canon, I find that I can't optimally apply these if I fail to remain present and empathize with those who maintain points of view that differ from my own.

By "empathize" I now mean the following. With deep presence, I attend to the feelings and needs of the person who expresses the point of view that I wish to understand.

If, for example, a person has written a book, and remains beyond my ability to contact, when I read the book, I still value empathically guessing what the author's feelings and needs in writing it might have been.

Sadly, much of my cultural conditioning teaches me to make up stories that not only declare the other person's different position "false," but that also label the other person "wrong." (I write about value judgment, including "right-wrong" value judgment, below.) Such conditioning further encourages me to judgmentally diagnose the reasons why the other person maintains the position that differs from mine. When I get caught up in such conditioning, I can easily develop a defensive, closed-minded attitude and dismiss different points of view.

Engaging in such dismissal robs me of the opportunity to enrich my own point of view in a way that will more fully satisfy my need for truth.

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I don't want to allow myself to be overtaken by the thought-forms of such mental conditioning. Instead I want to cultivate deep presence and pay close attention to the feelings and needs in relation to which a person develops and formulates a point of view.

By paying attention in this way, I can infuse my attention with my awareness that every living being acts with the aim of meeting its needs in the service of life. In a sense, even profoundly different points of view will make sense to me if I deeply understand the context of feelings and needs in which a person developed them.

If I declare the other person's position "false," label the person "wrong," or otherwise judgmentally diagnose the reasons why the other person maintains such a position, I lose sight of the authentic reasons why (on some level) that individual imagined that the position would meet human needs. By doing this, I prevent myself from more deeply understanding a point of view that I might even embrace if only I knew what another's authentic reasons were for embracing it.

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Although many refer to any logical reasoning process as an "argument," within my worldview, I don't. As I often tell my wife, Cherita, if I never engage in another argument, it will be too soon! Even arguments that allegedly remain purely logical and free of attack I'm convinced frequently involve an implicit intention to generate such conflict. I don't find that such an intention satisfies my need for truth.

Of course, as I attempt to engage another in empathic dialogue, interpersonal conflict may arise accidentally. I see no reason for attempting to generate such conflict, however.

So, for the sake of most fully satisfying my need for truth, I want to engage in empathic dialogue rather than argument.

If, with a person whose point of view differs from mine, I sustain deep presence and succeed in attending empathically to that person's feelings and needs, something wonderful happens. Even if I remain less than satisfied with the other person's model of the world, I stand to learn much more from it. I do so by striving to sense the needs that the other person sought to serve by developing that model.

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I also value empathically considering my own reasons for maintaining aspects of my worldview. I value this whether such aspects involve points of view that I no longer hold or ones that I now maintain. If I pay attention to the feelings and needs that I once experienced or now experience in relation to such aspects, I find that I deepen my self-understanding. Again, I do so by paying attention to the needs that I sought to serve by developing such a model.

If I don't listen empathically, I can ritualistically ask the questions of the canon without authentically understanding alternative points of view that I allegedly consider. This deprives the canon of its value. If I listen empathically, I can ask the questions of the canon with authenticity, and much more deeply understand such alternative points of view.

By my standards, no point of view comprehensively describes the world. By involving observation, prediction, experimentation and applying the canon and empathically engaging others in dialogue, I increase the odds that I will expand my worldview beyond its present limitations, more fully satisfy my need for truth and deepen my understanding.

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III. Value Judgment

	A.	The Aim of Living Action and Value Judgment
	B.	Feelings and Needs
	C.	The Continuum of Value Judgment
	D.	Distinguishing Moralistic, Morally Relativistic and Life-Serving Value Judgment
	E.	Feelings, Needs, Presence and Happiness
	F.	Sense of Life and Nine Specific Areas of its Engagement
	G.	Self-Esteem

A. The Aim of Living Action and Value Judgment

As a living being, my every action's aim remains to meet my needs. In my effort to serve my life I choose and enact strategies. Even so, the strategies I happen to choose don't always and inevitably satisfy all my needs as fully as I prefer.

Yet, as fully as possible, I want to enact strategies that will satisfy my needs.

Given this, I make value judgments about the degree to which my environment, my processes and my strategies - and those of others - will satisfy my needs.

By 1) deepening my awareness of the nature of human beings and the wider world in which I live, 2) reflecting on my choices and actions (and those of others), and 3) deepening the presence with which I attend to my authentic feelings, I can draw my attention to and deepen my awareness both of my authentic needs and the degree of their fulfillment.

With this deepening awareness I can develop more informed and creative value judgments. With such value judgments I can choose new strategies, more deeply fulfill my needs, and thereby not only aim to but also more fully serve my life.

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B. Feelings and Needs

Since feelings and needs play so central a role in my own living action, worldview and value judgments, for the sake of clarification I've chosen to include the following table in order to list a fraction of the words that I like to employ in my effort to name and identify each. I don't regard this list as definitive or exhaustive, however.

By my definition, a feeling endures as a psychosomatic form in which a person experiences a sense of the need-satisfying significance to oneself of something, and to what degree.

By my description, a need endures as that in a living being that it aims to satisfy in the service of its life, the fulfillment of which enriches its living action. I distinguish such needs from the strategies that a living being enacts in its effort to meet its needs.

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In judging whether a word names a specifically human need, I ask myself the following. Does what the word names qualify as fundamental (as distinguished from a strategy for meeting it)? Does it qualify as universal (in the sense that it endures in all members of the species by their nature, regardless of race, age, worldview, opinion or other such difference)? I also ask myself if my word for the need qualifies as abstract rather than particular, as this further helps me to ensure that I'm distinguishing the broad need from the specific strategy that I might choose in my effort to satisfy the underlying need.

FEELINGS (needs satisfied)	FEELINGS (needs unsatisfied)	NEEDS (universal)
admiration	agitation	air
amusement	anger	autonomy
anticipation	annoyance	awareness
arousal	anxiety	celebration
attraction	anguish	closeness
bliss	bafflement	empathy
buoyancy	befuddlement	food
calm	concern	growth
certainty	confusion	harmony
confidence	depression	health
curiosity	despair	honesty
delight	disappointment	integrity
eagerness	disbelief	intelligibility
ecstasy	discontent	learning
encouragement	discouragement	love
engagement	disgust	meaning
enthrallment	disillusionment	mutuality
enthusiasm	doubt	participation
excitement	frustration	peace
exuberance	guilt	play
giddiness	helplessness	precision
gladness	indecision	progress
gratefulness	irritation	purpose
happiness	melancholy	resolution
hope	overwhelm	responsibility
inspiration	rage	safety
joy	resentment	sexual expression
relief	revulsion	shelter
reverence	sadness	truth
satisfaction	shame	understanding
uplift	skepticism	water
wonder	worry	well being

I hope that these lists will help clarify for others what I mean by feelings and needs, and will contribute to readers' understanding of my approach to value judgment.

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C. The Continuum of Value Judgment

In a fundamental sense I regard divisions such as "right vs. wrong" and "good vs. bad" as dichotomies that artificially treat different strategies as opposites. Such divisions don't optimally meet my needs. Instead, I conceive of all possible human actions as strategies aimed at meeting human needs - some of which in my judgment serve life more fully than others.

In this sense, by my standards of value, I evaluate human strategies on a continuum: in my judgment, some such strategies meet human needs more fully, some less. I like some such strategies far more than others. I rank such strategies according to my judgment of the degree to which enacting them satisfies human needs.

Even those strategies that I evaluate as profoundly less than satisfying I'm convinced arise from the same, ultimate aim that every living being shares: to meet its needs in the service of its life. So, by my standards, even strategies that I profoundly dislike belong on the same continuum as those that I prefer.

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One might wonder whether the ''pleasure-pain" distinction provides a basis for treating different strategies as "opposites" such as "right vs. wrong" and "good vs. bad." I suspect that the ''pleasure-pain" distinction has contributed to many individuals' impression that it's "natural" to treat different strategies as "opposites." Even so, I've found that when I treat different strategies as "opposites" I satisfy my needs far less fully than I do when I treat them as belonging on the same continuum.

I'm convinced that biologically, pleasure endures to draw us toward those parts of the continuum most likely to satisfy our needs, and pain endures to draw us away from those parts of the continuum most likely to frustrate our needs. In a similar way, conceptually, as a mental shortcut by means of which to reduce the sheer number of units that at a given moment I endeavor to process contemplatively, I do find the following strategy sometimes helpful. As a kind of shorthand, I will mentally split the continuum of human strategies in two as I contrast what I regard as life-serving and life-alienating strategies.

When I do that, though, I still regard all such strategies as remaining on a single continuum. I still understand that anyone who chooses any strategy - even one that I profoundly dislike - chooses it with the aim of meeting authentic needs (though not always with full awareness). Strictly speaking, even those strategies that I call "life-alienating" don't qualify by my standards as "opposite" to those that I call "life-serving." Even what I call "life-alienating" strategies ultimately arise from the (not always optimally conscious) aim of meeting needs. Put another way, such "life-alienating" strategies remain "life-serving" at least in that narrow sense. Such "life-alienating" strategies don't meet needs nearly as fully as I prefer (such as when such strategies don't equally honor other human beings' needs).

By contrast, when I employ such divisions as "right vs. wrong" and "good vs. bad," I find that I cloud my awareness of the value continuum by treating as "opposite" that which I find it far more fulfilling to regard instead as varying by degree and as arising from any living being's ultimate aim.

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For these key reasons (plus others, aspects of which I will address below), I find that when I evaluate human strategies I much more fully satisfy my needs by relinquishing such divisions as "right vs. wrong" and "good vs. bad."

At times, out of mental habit, such divisions do still arise in my thoughts, however. I've absorbed an overwhelming amount of teaching that inclines me to think in terms of such divisions. When such divisions do arise in my thoughts, I prefer to pause, breathe deeply, and deepen my sense of presence. Then I can seek to discover my underlying feelings and authentic needs; with this awareness relinquish such dichotomies; and refocus my attention on the continuum along which I find it most helpful to evaluate human strategies.

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D. Distinguishing Moralistic, Morally Relativistic and Life-Serving Value Judgment

I classify and evaluate as moralistic, morally relativistic or life-serving various strategies for making value judgments. I do so according to how much I like or dislike such strategies and why. I find that I much more fully meet my needs when I regard these strategies as enduring on a continuum instead of classifying any of them as "true vs. false," "right vs. wrong," "moral vs. immoral." I judge that some such strategies serve my needs (and those of others) more or less fully and in a more or less costly manner.

In my conception, at least implicitly, moralistic value judgment involves the authoritarian labeling of actions, individuals and groups in a dichotomous manner (for example, as "right vs. wrong" or "moral vs. immoral"). Such labeling artificially creates a sense of opposition. Frequently, a person who makes such a judgment neglects to take responsibility for making it (for example, by stating, "What that person did was wrong," rather than stating, "That action fell far short of meeting my needs"). I feel confident that by implication, historically and even today, such moralistic judgment treats human beings as if they were innately evil; regards right action as involving the painful resistance of such inner evil; and, when it's claimed that such evil has arisen (whether within oneself or others) regards good action as involving the punishment of such evil, which according to this view deserves it.

By my definition, morally relativistic value judgment tries to counter such moralistic judgment by insisting that no value judgments can legitimately claim any superiority over any others. In this view, one may like and label a given action as "good" and dislike and label another as "evil," yet such labeling remains a matter of arbitrary preference and ultimately lacks any substantive justification. Some take this approach to imply that maturity involves relinquishing value judgment altogether.

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By my standards, by vivid contrast with both moralistic value judgment and morally relativistic value judgment, life-serving value judgment relinquishes both by instead maintaining that 1) the aim of every living being remains to meet its needs; 2) as a living being, every human being also always aims to meet one's own needs; 3) some enacted strategies fulfill needs and thus serve life more or less fully than others; 4) to a large degree, every human being satisfies one's own needs by making and acting on value judgments; and 5) with learning, reflection and deepening presence, by observing the world and by attending to our feelings and needs, each of us can, over time, make our value judgments serve our lives more fully.

Such life-serving value judgment likewise relinquishes the labeling of actions, individuals and groups in a dichotomous manner (for example, as "right vs. wrong," "good vs. bad" or "moral vs. immoral"). Instead, in order to focus on the degree to which specific strategies satisfy human needs, life-serving value judgment categorizes such actions as enduring on a continuum. When making such a life-serving value judgment, a person takes full responsibility for it (for example, by stating, "When you raise your voice like that, I feel upset because I need peace, quiet and consideration").

Life-serving value-judgments draw attention to what specifically one likes or dislikes (observation); how one feels about it and to what degree one likes or dislikes it (feeling); what need gives rise to the feeling (need); and what one presently imagines would make one's life more wonderful if done (request). As an example, "When you raise your voice like that, I feel upset because I need peace, quiet and consideration. So when you ask me that, would you be willing to lower your voice?"

I find that by making life-serving value judgments I much more fully serve my needs than I do with either moralistic or morally relativistic value judgment.

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E. Feelings, Needs, Presence and Happiness

In my experience, in essence, by means of one, essential pattern, I can cultivate and experience happiness: by valuing, honoring and fulfilling my authentic needs. By attending to my feelings I can gauge what underlying needs of mine are getting met and to what degree, and then I can conceive of strategies by means of which to fulfill them.

I also find that by deepening my presence I more fully experience the sense of inner peace which I regard as fundamental to honoring my needs and to experiencing authentic bliss. So I also deeply value such presence and consider it central to my experience of happiness.

In addition, in terms of my mental action, I find that it often helps me to categorize my needs, actions and values in four, admittedly overlapping areas: growth, love, creativity and play. In this context, I use these terms very broadly.

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Growth involves such things as reflection, learning and self-improvement. Love involves the full spectrum of my interpersonal activities. Creativity involves what others may sometimes call creative and productive work. And play involves all forms of recreation.

I find it helps meet my need for balance to ensure that I'm not neglecting any of these areas.

I've written more about how I conceive of these categories elsewhere on my website. I will also explore nine more particular areas in the next section of this summary.

For now I want to add that even though I find it helpful to conceive of play, in one sense, as one among four overlapping areas that I strive to balance, in yet another sense, I want to make everything that I do as playful as possible. I find that by deeply connecting to my feelings and needs and by focusing on the authentic reasons why I choose to act as I do, I re-orient my attention in a way that can make even the most challenging effort more enriching and enjoyable.

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When I do something less out of a sense of play than I prefer, with reflection, frequently I find that one of two, moralistically judgmental principles has become involved in my motivation: duty and/or obligation. In my judgment, these principles focus my attention not on my feelings and needs and not on the service of my life and happiness, but instead on the idea that my action "should" flow without consideration of my feelings and needs. Even when I'm doing something that in other circumstances I would naturally value or enjoy, I find that introducing a sense of duty or obligation will quickly transform my action into drudgery, and I'll soon find myself thinking, "I hate doing this!"

(For those who might imagine that without a sense of obligation some individuals will thoughtlessly and without warning neglect to honor their agreements, I offer that in my experience, focusing instead on one's need for integrity helps a person honor one's agreements with far deeper enjoyment and reliability.)

In my effort to increase the degree to which I remain consciously connected to the needs that I'm striving to fulfill by means of my strategies, I find that if I'm saying to myself, "I hate doing this!" it helps me to treat this as an alarm. In such moments, I like to pause, take a deep breath, deepen my presence, and then ask myself for what reason I'm taking such action. By checking in with my feelings and needs I find that I can either 1) discover that I don't like my reason for doing what I'm doing, and so cease doing it or 2) discover that I like my underlying reason but not the way that I've been thinking about my action in that moment. In the second case, by deepening my presence and my empathetic awareness of my feelings and needs, I find that I can re-orient my thinking in more life-serving ways that make my action more enjoyable.

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I also find it helpful to treat four types of feelings as alarms: anger, guilt, depression and shame. Any time that I experience anger, guilt, depression or shame I find that by my standards, less than optimally life-serving thinking underlies my feelings and, out of habit, overtakes my mind. Beneath such thinking, I find that authentic needs underlie these feelings, too. Yet to unravel my thoughts, I look for moralistic judgments in them.

When I feel anger and reflect on what thoughts underlie it, I find that I'm moralistically judging usually another person (for example, with the thought, "She shouldn't have done that!"). When I feel guilt and reflect on what thoughts underlie it, I find that I'm moralistically judging myself (for example, with the thought, "I shouldn't have done that!"). When I feel depression and reflect on what thoughts underlie it, I find that I'm moralistically judging myself (for example, with the thought, "I'm a worthless excuse for a human being! I've no hope of changing my life or experiencing happiness and I definitely don't deserve to!"). When I feel shame and reflect on what thoughts underlie it, again I find that I'm moralistically judging myself (for example, with the thought, "How could I do something so unworthy? That wasn't right! I've been horrible in relation to those others!").

After having identified such thoughts, by attending to the unmet needs that underlie my thoughts and feelings, I find that not only can I free myself from such life-alienating moralistic judgments, but that I can transform my thoughts into a more life-serving form. As I do I find that my feelings shift.

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For example, instead of saying to myself, "She shouldn't have done that!" I might instead think, "When I now recall her raising her voice, I feel irritation, because I need peace." Soon my feeling may shift again to disappointment or even sadness. With sufficient self-empathy I may even reach a point at which I can empathize with the other whose strategy I didn't like, now appreciating that although it didn't meet my needs, at least it arose from the other's aim to meet her needs.

I bring up my strategy for dealing with anger, guilt, depression and shame in the context of my discussion of happiness in order to shed light on how 1) even these feelings signal to me something crucial about the status of my needs; 2) even though thoughts trigger these four feelings, authentic needs also underlie them; 3) moralistic judgment doesn't optimally satisfy my needs and 4) in the moment, I can with self-empathy and without self-criticism reflect on my state of mind and reorient my thoughts (and eventually, even my feelings) in more life-enriching ways. I find such reorientation invaluable in deepening my experience of authentic happiness.

Later, when discussing my understanding of authentic self-esteem, I will revisit the foregoing pattern in the context of learning and growing - including from actions that I later regret - in ways that remain compatible with authentic self-esteem.

Next, though, I imagine it will even more fully clarify my approach if I turn to nine specific areas, all of which also remain involved in my experience of happiness and which especially involve my sense of life.

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F. Sense of Life and Nine Specific Areas of its Engagement

Earlier, I mentioned that given my awareness of the nature of being, living action, my nature and their interrelationship, I feel a degree of hope that I embody some power with which to strive to meet my needs. I call this awareness and feeling a sense of life. I call a sense of life the felt form in which a person experiences one's most fundamental convictions about being and about one's relationship to being.

Although all aspects of human life seem to me to involve sense of life, in my experience, nine realms especially involve mine: my needs for beauty, art, games and sex; friendship, familial love, intimate love; experiencing the outdoors; and creativity.

That quality in an object that stimulates an intensely personal, affirmative and integrated sense of life experience in me satisfies my need for beauty.

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An artifact in which a person creatively embodies a selectively stylized world in an effort to evoke in an audience an experience of that artist's intended, sense-of-life vantage point qualifies by my definition as art. I profoundly value and deeply enjoy it when my strategy of contemplating such art satisfies my need for beauty.

Because I consider meeting my need for play so crucial in my life and in experiencing authentic happiness, I find that playing games especially satisfies my need for sense of life engagement and personal satisfaction.

In the realm of sex, which often lives as a major component of intimate love, I find that I meet many needs, including for closeness, openness, play, fun, stimulation, sexual expression and appreciation.

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In the realm of friendship, I find that the sharing of similar and compatible senses of life provides the foundation for friends to fulfill their needs for closeness, companionship, mutuality and empathy.

In the realm of familial love, I profoundly value and deeply enjoy it when my strategies of interacting with others whom I call "family" meet my need for such love.

I'm convinced that the sharing of similar and compatible senses of life provides a crucial foundation for a couple's fulfilling their needs for intimate love, which I also profoundly appreciate.

I profoundly enjoy experiencing the outdoors, whether while walking, sitting, exercising or quietly contemplating my surroundings.

In the realm of creativity, which word I use to capture what others may call creative and productive work, I find that I meet many needs, including to exercise my capacities and to contribute.

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G. Self-Esteem

I regard as closely related to one's sense of life one's sense of - and need for - authentic self-esteem.

Earlier, I mentioned that I feel a degree of confidence that in enacting strategies in my effort to satisfy my needs, I embody some power with which to actually satisfy them (sense of efficacy). By my standards, such a sense of efficacy constitutes one component of self-esteem.

In my experience, a second component of self-esteem involves passionately valuing one's own needs.

This involves not moralistic, dichotomous judgment ("Am I good or bad? Moral or immoral? Right or wrong? Worthy or unworthy of living?") - which moralistic judgment I regard as far less than optimal in meeting one's needs in general, including for the development of authentic self-esteem.

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Nor by my standards does development of authentic self-esteem involve others' judgments ("Do others consider me good or bad? Moral or immoral? Right or wrong? Worthy or unworthy of living?")

Instead, in my experience and judgment, authentic self-esteem fundamentally involves deep presence, increasing awareness, unconditional self-acceptance and self-celebration. It involves the deep understanding that in one's living action, one's ultimate aim always remains to meet one's needs in the service of life. It involves integrity: living in harmony with one's values and taking responsibility for one's actions. It means empathizing deeply with one's own feelings and needs; learning from one's choices and actions; purposefully valuing and pursuing one's dreams and goals; asserting oneself openly and honestly; and valuing and satisfying one's need for autonomy.

Some may now wonder whether, in the name of preserving what I've called unconditional self-acceptance, I end up doing the following. Do I then turn a blind eye to my own limitations, refuse to acknowledge when I fall short of my aspirations and values, and thus defensively deny myself opportunities for self-improvement - thereby undercutting my capacity to authentically live more efficaciously? Wouldn't all that also undercut my authentic self-esteem? Isn't some moralistic self-judgment crucial, after all?

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In my effort to answer this and to clarify my conception of self-esteem, I'd like you to consider the following.

Earlier, I mentioned that when I feel guilt and reflect on what thoughts underlie my feeling, I find that I'm moralistically judging myself (for example, with the thought, "I shouldn't have done that!").

I also mentioned that after having identified such thoughts, by attending to the unmet needs that underlie such thoughts and feelings, I find that not only can I free myself from such life-alienating, moralistic judgments, but that I can transform my thoughts into a more deeply life-serving form. As I do so, my feelings shift.

For example, instead of persisting in saying to myself, "I shouldn't have done that!" I might progress to the point of being able to think instead, "When I now recall raising my voice with my daughter much more loudly than I wish I had, I feel sadness, because I need compassion, and I deeply want to meet this need when I communicate with her." Now I've discovered what need I didn't meet as much as I would now prefer (to communicate with compassion). Yet as I identify and relinquish my moralistically self-judgmental thoughts, my feeling shifts from guilt to sadness.

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With sufficient self-empathy I can next reach a point at which I can empathize with what need I was aiming to meet with the strategy that I later didn't like. Now, though, I can learn to appreciate that although that strategy didn't meet my needs, it still arose from my aim to meet my needs. In this example, I wanted peace, but in retrospect I disliked how I tried to meet that need (by raising my voice much louder than I now wish I had).

Having identified both needs (peace and to communicate with compassion) now I can creatively conceive of strategies by means of which to meet both needs in the future more fully and at less cost.

Following the foregoing process I find that I much more fully satisfy my needs for awareness, learning, truth, progress and compassion for self.

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Even so, I've absorbed an overwhelming amount of teaching that inclines me to use a different strategy. Such a strategy involves moralistically judging and "beating oneself up" psychologically. This involves - regardless of how painful it feels - "setting one's feelings aside" (as if that were possible!) and instead "doing what one should," "doing one's duty," "fulfilling one's obligation" - in other words, blaming and punishing oneself psychologically. In this model, one expects that at least at first, repeating the "wrong" action will seem tempting, while actually doing the "right" action will feel laboriously painful.

When I implement such a strategy I find that I fail to empathize with, and therefore fail to authentically identify, the feelings and needs involved in my doing that which I later regretted. When I implement such a strategy I find that not only does it make learning and growth more painful. When I implement such a strategy I actually undercut my learning and growth by preventing myself from identifying both 1) the need that I tried to meet with the action that I later regretted and 2) the self-fulfilling reason why I want to discover a different strategy by means of which to meet my needs.

For me, such a strategy of moralistic self-judgment makes my efforts at self-improvement both less pleasant and less effective.

Relating the foregoing back to self-esteem, I maintain the following.

By contrast with moralistic self-judgment, by involving an authentically self-valuing process, I'm convinced that the unconditionally self-accepting, self-empathizing approach to learning both reflects and fosters an orientation of authentic self-esteem.

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In my judgment, the self-empathizing approach far more fully fosters authentic learning and growth by

1) focusing attention on what needs weren't met by the regretted action

2) focusing attention on what needs one had tried to satisfy by means of that action and

3) conceiving of new strategies by means of which to more fully and at less cost meet both needs in the future.

In short, by my standards, authentic self-esteem involves two, major components. It involves a sense of efficacy and also an active process of sustained self-valuing. Such self-valuing crucially involves learning with self-empathy. By learning with self-empathy, I find that I most effectively enrich my sense of efficacy, and thus enable both components to mutually reinforce each other.

Next I want to turn to a human need the care and nurture of which I also consider crucial to the cultivation of authentic self-esteem: autonomy.

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IV. Autonomy

	A.	Meeting One's Own Need for Autonomy
	B.	Distinguishing Personally Relative and Authoritarian Value Judgment
	C.	Self-Responsibility

A. Meeting One's Own Need for Autonomy

I feel convinced that as a human being, one of my deepest needs endures as my need for autonomy. In my experience and judgment, when I frustrate this need, I diminish my ability to meet any of my other needs.

By my need for autonomy I mean in part that I most fully meet my needs when I acknowledge that only I can choose and remain responsible for my actions.

By my need for autonomy I also mean in part that I most fully meet my needs when I acknowledge that only I remain responsible for my own intentions, feelings, thoughts, expressions - and for fulfilling my own needs.

By my standards, by nature, none of us lives as "a means to the end" of fulfilling any other person's needs. Even if we happen sometimes not to consciously recognize or honor this need, by nature, each one of us remains autonomous. I live as an autonomous end in myself.

I remain responsible also for meeting my need for autonomy.

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B. Distinguishing Personally Relative and Authoritarian Value Judgment

By my understanding, every human being makes value judgments individually and with the aim of satisfying one's own, authentic, life-serving needs. Not everyone remains equally, consciously and focally aware at all times of this underlying aim, however, and some may never consciously and clearly identify it. Yet given that we live, I feel certain that this aim remains at the core of every person's motivation, even when only implicitly.

Given this, in my view, every value judgment involves personal relativity. Any value judgment presupposes the person who makes that judgment; reflects that individual's likes, dislikes and standards; and even if not consciously, obviously or explicitly, still at least implicitly involves that person's estimate of what strategies will most fully satisfy that person's authentic needs.

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I'm convinced that each of us remains the only person with direct awareness of our own, individual experiences, feelings and needs. In my judgment, then, no authoritarian source can dictate for others the value judgments by which those others can reliably guide their actions in a manner that will most fully serve their needs.

In my judgment, therefore, rather than obeying any authoritarian dictates or pronouncements, most reliably making life-serving value judgments involves each person's autonomously making one's own observations; attending to one's own feelings and needs; making one's own value judgments; and on this basis directing one's own course of action.

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In my judgment, moralistic value judgment in such forms as "right vs. wrong" and "good vs. bad" qualifies as at least implicitly authoritarian and therefore life-alienating. Indeed, I feel confident that on the basis of the implicit standard that "right" action consists of obedience to authority, such moralistic judgment incorporates its sense that value judgments inherently involve opposites. In this approach, conformity is claimed to matter, not the person's feelings and needs. In my judgment, attention to one's own, authentic feelings and needs qualifies as one of the gravest threats to authoritarianism.

By contrast, what I call life-serving value judgment relinquishes such implicit authoritarianism, recognizes the personal relativity of all value judgment and instead focuses attention on the person's feelings and needs.

Next I would like to consider another area that strikes me as essential in meeting one's need for autonomy: taking responsibility.

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C. Self-Responsibility

By my standards, each person remains responsible for one's own feelings and needs. No one remains responsible for anyone else's feelings and needs. Others' feelings and needs remain their responsibility; my feelings and needs remain my responsibility.

For example, at one moment, if my daughter raises her voice, and I feel agitation because I need peace, I remain responsible for my agitation and for my need for peace. In another situation, upon hearing my daughter raise her voice, I may feel delight because I'm then needing play.

How I feel in each situation depends on my needs and on how fully they are then met. Depending on the status of my needs, another person's same action in different circumstances may stimulate quite different reactions in me.

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If I'm not getting my needs met in one interaction, in my effort to meet my needs, I can make a new request of the other or even of myself. If I find that the other is unwilling to fulfill my request, I can make a different request or go elsewhere - thus respecting the other's need for autonomy as well.

In this connection, strategies that I find don't optimally meet my needs include my attempts to blame, criticize, to induce guilt or shame, to "make another wrong" or to "make myself right," to threaten punishment or even to offer a reward. All these, by my standards, involve moralistic judgment; employ attempts at manipulation rather than appeals to another's authentically self-fulfilling motivation; and fail to understand that each one of us remains responsible for one's own feelings and needs. In my experience and judgment, all such approaches both cloud my awareness of authentic needs and typically (sometimes in the long run) stimulate defensiveness and counter-attack.

I find that I don't meet my needs for respect or autonomy when I appeal to others in these ways.

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Given my social nature (and that of all other human beings), I feel certain that my own and others' authentic and optimal self-fulfillment crucially involves interacting with others, including by satisfying my own need to contribute to others. Yet I'm equally convinced that each of us most effectively fulfills this need to contribute to others when one does so out of a willingness to self-responsibly meet one's own, individual needs - including for autonomy.

This leads me to another need which by my standards complements rather than contradicts my profound need for autonomy: my need for interdependence.

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V. Interdependence

	A.	The Harmony of Authentic Human Needs
	B.	Alteregoistic "Self-fullness"
	C.	The Roots of Compassion
	D.	Communicating Compassionately

A. The Harmony of Authentic Human Needs

By my understanding, authentic, fundamental, universal needs of all human beings endure in natural harmony, not conflict. All human beings embody the same needs. In a fundamental sense, then, when conflict arises between human beings, I'm convinced that it arises artificially, at the level of strategies, not at the level of needs.

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B. Alteregoistic "Self-fullness"

I don't imagine that altruistic or egoistic strategies can most fully satisfy anyone's authentic needs.

By altruistic strategies here I mean self-sacrificial ones allegedly pursued for the sake of meeting others' needs.

By egoistic strategies here I mean 1) "selfish" sacrifice of others allegedly enacted for the sake of meeting one's own needs or 2) allegedly "enlightened" concern with one's own interests enacted without cultivating deep compassion for both oneself and others. In my judgment, for reasons that I will soon elaborate, such lack of compassion doesn't optimally meet one's own needs for awareness, self-fulfillment or contribution.

In my experience, whether it's altruistic or egoistic, sacrifice cannot optimally serve human needs because it always does violence to some such needs. Sacrifice to others stimulates at least resentment in the self; sacrifice of others does violence to one's own capacity to enjoy those others. In addition, sacrifice of others typically stimulates resentment in those others and often also stimulates violent counter-attack.

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By contrast, only with alteregoistic strategies can I help discover and put into practice the most deeply need-fulfilling and life-serving strategies. By "alteregoistic" strategies I mean "self-full" approaches. Such approaches seek to meet one's own needs while honoring and cultivating deep compassion. Such compassion includes both oneself and every other person and recognizes each person's equal aim and need to meet one's own needs.

In my experience, the most deeply and authentically life-serving strategies neither sacrifice others to self nor self to others. I most fully satisfy my own needs when I equally honor and value the fundamentally identical needs of all human beings - including my own.

Thus, by my standards, without sacrifice, authentic compassion self-fully creates the quality of connection most favorable for meeting the authentic needs both of self and other.

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C. The Roots of Compassion

By my standards, alteregoistic strategies involve the cultivation of deep compassion. The following qualify as key roots of why, by cultivating and acting with deep compassion, I much more deeply satisfy my needs, serve my life and enjoy deeper happiness.

1) Every living being enacts any of its strategies with the aim of meeting its needs, which means: with the aim of serving its life.

2) Even when enacting strategies that fall tragically short of optimally meeting their needs and serving their lives, human beings ultimately still take any actions that they do with the ultimate, underlying aim of meeting their authentic needs and serving their lives.

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3) Authentic, fundamental, universal human needs exist in harmony, not conflict. Different persons' authentic human needs remain the same. Fundamentally, conflict arises artificially at the level of strategies and human beings can resolve such conflict by focusing on their authentic needs and altering their strategies.

4) As a living, aware, human being, anyone who deeply appreciates that one can meet all one's involved needs more fully and at less cost by replacing an old strategy with a specific, different and new strategy will choose to do so. Most efficiently facilitating this process of change, learning and growth involves a) contemplating the old strategy; b) empathizing both with the needs that one met with that old strategy less fully than one would have liked and with the needs that one tried to meet with it; c) conceiving of a specific, different and new strategy or set of strategies with which to meet all the involved needs more fully and at less cost.

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5) As a social being, in interacting with others, by empathetically attending both to one's own and to others' feelings and needs, one can deepen one's connection both within oneself and with others and facilitate the imagining of new strategies that are more likely to meet everyone's needs. Such empathetic connection alteregoistically serves both the life of the self and the life of one's relationships with others.

I find that moralistically judging either my own or others' actions or characters by using such dichotomous divisions as "right vs. wrong," "good vs. bad" or "moral vs. immoral" - or by making up the story that someone "should have known better" - clouds my awareness of the foregoing roots. In particular, it obscures my awareness of the authentic reasons why any person chooses to act as he or she does. With such moralizing I don't meet my needs, serve my life or deepen my happiness anywhere near as much as I prefer - nor nearly as much as I know I can with deep compassion.

By cultivating and acting with deep compassion for self and others, with alteregoistic self-fullness I find that I much more fully meet my needs, including my needs for inner peace, self-responsibility, harmony, connection, relationship and communication.

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D. Communicating Compassionately

As one, central component of living in harmony with my values I want to communicate in a way that meets my need for compassion.

In doing so, I want to express myself honestly, listen with empathy and pay attention to 1) what's alive in me and in others and 2) what would make life more wonderful.

In expressing myself to others, I want to deepen my presence; observe in relation to what stimulus I feel as I do; deeply tune into what I'm feeling and needing; and express requests that clarify what I imagine would make life more wonderful. For example, "When you threw that pie in my face, I felt amusement because I needed play. I liked it so much that I'm now wondering: would you be willing now to throw another pie in my face?"

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In listening to others, I want to maximize my presence and deeply tune into what they express, focusing my attention on their feelings and needs. Sometimes I support this process with guesses and words. For example, "Are you feeling dismay because you're needing stability, and that need isn't getting met for you now?"

Such examples provide only a glimmer of this process, which in my judgment involves a rich spectrum of possible forms of expression, both verbal and nonverbal, and in which one pays attention to one's own and others' observations, feelings, needs and requests.

I've provided some additional examples of those forms of expression that do and don't meet my need for compassion in a segment I've added to my Current Activities page. I've called that segment, Before and After: Authoritarian vs. Life Honoring Expressions, and I've posted it here.

I've also posted related material in Communicating Across Differences: An Introductory Presentation for a General Audience.

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VI. Society

	A.	Distinguishing Domination and Partnership
	B.	Distinguishing Punitive and Protective Uses of Force
	C.	Sources of Domination
	D.	Social Change

A. Distinguishing Domination and Partnership

By my standards, the more a society serves life, the more it honors all authentic, human needs including those for autonomy, interdependence and harmony. Such a life-serving society organizes itself to maximize the authentic, mutual consent of its participants (autonomously interdependent consent). Such authentic consent involves its participants' seeking to value, inform and benefit each other.

In my judgment, violent domination of some by others - including by using such strategies as patriarchal domination by men of women; treatment of women and children as property and/or as morally inferior; and/or treatment of individual members of specific races, ethnic groups, religious affiliations or sexual orientations as morally inferior - undercuts authentic social order (domination).

Only to the extent that regardless of such differences a society's intentions, culture and structures pluralistically and equally honor each person's autonomy and individuality do I remain confident that such a social order can thrive (partnership).

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In living in harmony with my values I seek to manifest partnership in my dealings with others by seeking not power over but power with them.

Social structures such as institutions manifest orientations that I evaluate according to how fully they value, embody and exhibit characteristics of domination or partnership. In the following table, I've outlined how I distinguish them, isolating distant points from along the continuum of strategic possibilities.

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DOMINATION	PARTNERSHIP
assumption of innate, human evil	assumption that innately, human beings aim to meet their needs in the service of life
assumption of fundamental, natural conflict between human needs (irreconcilable discord)	assumption of fundamental, natural harmony of human needs (potential for conflict engagement, resolution and reconciliation)
assumption that some are superior to other inferiors (hierarchy)	assumption that all remain equal in their basic humanity (fundamental equality)
typically, subordination of female to male and of children to adults	in their basic humanity, female, male, child and adult persons regarded as equal
power over	power with
expectation that those labeled inferior must sacrifice to those labeled superior (whether in the form of self to other; other to self; individual to group; or group to individual)	expectation that participants can act self-fully without sacrifice, valuing the needs of each person both for autonomy and contribution while equally honoring all others' human needs
assumption of scarcity	assumption of abundance
authoritarianism	autonomy
authority dictates labels of right and wrong and discourages the expression of personal feelings and needs	participants value and encourage the expression of personal feelings and needs
moralistic value judgment in the dichotomous form of right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, normal vs. abnormal, appropriate vs. inappropriate, reasonable vs. unreasonable, rational vs. irrational, should vs. shouldn't, too much vs. too little	life-serving value judgment in terms of each person's feelings and needs; recognition of a continuum of value judgment rather than artificially introducing a sense of opposites; recognition that needs are satisfied and life is served to various degrees
authority demands obedience	participants interact voluntarily and with the awareness of meeting their own needs; authority remains equal rather than superior; others respect rather than obey authority
denial of choice and responsibility aimed at fostering unquestioned obedience (in terms of have to, can't, must, should, ought to, need to, got to, duty, obligation)	embrace of choice and responsibility; focus on the beauty of the authentic needs of oneself and others; actions willingly chosen with awareness of the life-serving reasons for taking them ("I choose to because I want to satisfy my need for...")
justice as punishing what authority dictates is bad (crushing of evil forces; retribution) and as rewarding what authority dictates is good (distribution); "just deserts" of punishment and reward based on the standard of obedient conformity	respect, safety and resolution rather than punishment and reward; focus on self-full, self-responsible action to meet needs rather than out of less conscious, obedient impulses; authentic needs rather than obedient conformity as the focus; expression of pain rather than punishment when needs aren't met; expression of joy and authentic gratitude rather than reward when needs are met
blame (psychological punishment) and praise (psychological reward)	appeal to others in terms of fulfilling their own needs only self-fully and willingly
manipulation and coercion	honesty, openness and willing cooperation
punitive use of force	protective use of force

I hope this table helps clarify what I regard as the differences between domination and partnership.

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B. Distinguishing Punitive and Protective Uses of Force

In my judgment, no individual - and no group - can most deeply satisfy its authentic needs by using punitive force against other human beings (punitive force). Crucially and tragically, such violent action lacks appreciation for more than just the harmony of human needs. It also lacks appreciation for the human needs for autonomy and interdependence.

In some emergencies - when 1) pursued with the aim of securing safety 2) arising from a compassionate rather than a violent intention and 3) sustained only so long as that compassionate intention remains - I feel confident that the protective rather than the punitive use of force can authentically serve human needs and life (protective force).

As an example, a parent may compassionately use protective force to remove one's child from a busy street, engaging in a loving dialogue afterward with the child about safety.

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C. Sources of Domination

Even though I consider strategies of domination profoundly tragic and far removed from what can optimally meet human needs, I also remain convinced that even such strategies arise because those who enact them aim to meet their needs. Notwithstanding that I deeply dislike the strategies that they enact in that effort, I feel confident that in terms of their ultimate, underlying aims, such individuals act from the same, root aim that I do.

I don't believe that such strategies arise from any innate, human evil. I also don't believe that those who enact them "should've known better." By my standards, proceeding as if anyone "should've known better" endures as a moralistic judgment which far from optimally meets human needs. Proceeding as if anyone "should've known better" "makes up a story" as an explanation rather than deeply appreciating why human beings choose to act as they do.

Indeed, the very sort of thinking that generates the "should've known better" judgment also, I feel confident, leads to domination more generally.

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Given that by my standards, innate, human evil doesn't explain the prevalence even today of so much domination and violence in our world, what do I think does?

As I mentioned earlier, I'm convinced that 1) every living being enacts any of its strategies with the aim of meeting its needs, which means: with the aim of serving its life; 2) even when enacting strategies that fall tragically short of optimally meeting their needs and serving their own and others' lives, human beings ultimately still take any actions that they do with the ultimate, underlying aim of meeting their authentic needs and serving their lives; 3) authentic, fundamental, universal human needs exist in harmony, not conflict; 4) as a living being, any human being who clearly and deeply appreciates that one can meet all one's involved needs more fully and at less cost by replacing an old strategy with a new one will choose to do so.

I'm convinced that tragically, it's not that those who use domination strategies "should've known better." Given my understanding now both of the aim of living action generally and of the underlying aim of any human being, I'm quite confident of the following. Those who use domination strategies do so because in their context, they've not yet discovered how to meet their needs more fully and at less cost with more fulfilling strategies.

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For those who wonder what I think about doctrines of "free will," "determinism" and "compatibilism," to the extent that I understand some such doctrines' varieties, I remain less than satisfied. Indeed, I feel deeply suspicious that doctrines of "free will" and "determinism" arose as part of an effort to sustain various, authoritarian structures.

Regardless of such doctrines' origins and possible interpretations, however, within the vocabulary of my worldview, I speak instead of "responsible choice." I maintain that moment by moment, we each choose strategies that in that moment seem equally or more fulfilling of our needs than others we imagine in that moment. In this we face authentic options, remain fully responsible for our choices - and yet neither blame nor excuse-making will ever optimally serve our needs.

Returning to my earlier discussion of self-esteem, learning and growth, tragically, most of us learned only the self-blaming strategy for learning from actions that we later regretted. Only during the course of the last two years did I first learn the self-empathizing strategy that I outlined earlier.

Some never learn a self-empathizing strategy, though. Rather than endure the pain of psychologically beating themselves up, and encouraged by domination teachings that urge us to ignore our feelings, they learn instead to ignore or repress the feelings of guilt or remorse to which they otherwise could have paid close attention.

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In addition, few in today's world consistently maintain that the authentic needs of human beings endure in harmony. Combined with other, prevalent messages which urge that "the superior good" crush "the inferior evil," many who use domination strategies genuinely regard their approaches as natural, necessary or even inevitable.

Again, though, from what source does that domination mindset originate?

In responding to this question, the following, in profoundly abbreviated overview, most deeply satisfies my needs for explanation and intelligibility.

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Today's culture teaches us in innumerable ways to play the game of "who's right," a game in which it's assumed that "somebody's got to win and somebody's got to lose." In this game, though, tragically, everybody ends up losing in the long run, whether by experiencing resentment, anger or even violence.

This game involves moralistic judgment and domination, blame and criticism, and the assumption that some deserve punishment and reward.

I'm convinced that the origins of the "who's right" game lie in our complex history and even prehistory, about which I plan to write more in the near future.

For now, in my view, once prevalent social structures such as monarchies, from which our own forms of government descended, relied upon moralistic judgment and the whole matrix of domination principles as they strove to convince their "subjects" that they owed obedience to the ruler. Likewise, such regimes sought to convince their "subjects" that paying attention to one's own feelings and needs was of no value - insisting that "right" behavior consisted instead in conforming to the ruler's dictates.

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Even though I don't live in a monarchy, I'm convinced that this form of domination-style thinking still influences our minds and actions. I remained quite unaware of much of this influence until the last couple of years.

In this connection, though, I've found my everyday experience profoundly persuasive. I've noticed how frequently I observe others - or even myself - resort, out of habit, to playing the game of "who's right" instead of playing the game of "what would make life more wonderful." I've likewise observed how consistently the game of "who's right" ensures that everybody loses. For me, nearly everywhere I look, the presence of such strategies overwhelmingly supports the view that innumerable, cultural influences still teach us this tragic way of interacting.

What amazes me, however, isn't how much evidence the prevalence of such "who's right" games provides to support the view that humans are innately evil. What amazes me instead is how much evidence I see that in spite of so much moralistic teaching and conditioning, throughout our culture and world, there remains as little domination and violence - and as much authentic compassion - as there does!

Given this, I'm bolstered in my conviction that human beings at their core remain naturally compassionate.

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D. Social Change

Given all that I've expressed up to this point, I want to approach my social change efforts in a spirit of compassion and partnership rather than with a spirit of moralistic judgment and domination. Rather than fighting against that which I dislike in social practices and structures - even those that I'm convinced use moralistic judgment - whenever possible, I want to appeal to others in terms of what I imagine those practices and structures instead could be.

In this I want to focus on finding ways to honor and meet everyone's authentic human needs - including those of the individuals who now happen to support the social practices and structures that I dislike. To the degree that my vision of a more life-serving society authentically identifies strategies that will more fully serve life, implementing such strategies will more fully meet the needs of those who now happen to support what I dislike.

Accordingly, rather than engaging in protests that resort to the moralistic denunciation of contemporary social practices, structures and those who support them, I want to communicate compassionately, both empathizing with the needs of those who support the practices and structures that I dislike while also honestly expressing my own, passionate vision of what I favor instead.

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No less importantly, given the limited perspective that anyone ever has, I care passionately about the following. In my social change efforts, I want to remain flexible in my thinking, meeting my need for open-mindedness by authentically empathizing even with those whose worldviews overwhelmingly differ from mine. I want to remain willing to alter my thinking and principles. When I learn of strategies that could meet every involved person's needs more fully and at less cost than others that I've previously favored, I want to adopt the strategies that I've newly learned. As in all areas, I want to remain strategically flexible rather than attached and to clearly distinguish between 1) my underlying needs and 2) my strategies for meeting them.

Also given the limited perspective that anyone ever has, I remain profoundly confident that no one has already discovered every aspect of every strategy that will create optimally life-serving social practices and structures. I'm betting that nearly every human being could learn from almost any other at least something relevant to such issues.

This last provides a key reason why, when I consider the opinions of those who engage in moralistic judgment, I feel dissatisfaction. I feel such dissatisfaction because with moralistic expressions of opinion my needs for truth, trust and reassurance haven't been met. By my standards, in such contexts, moralistic judgment qualifies as a form of ad hominem. Anything that I classify as ad hominem far from fully satisfies my need for truth. In my judgment, those who engage in moralistic judgment fail to fully empathize with, and thus fail to fully understand, the different points of view with which they've not yet empathized. In such situations I feel especially dissatisfied with the moralizing person's characterization of his or her "opponent's" position.

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Even in such cases, however, I don't want to casually dismiss the opinion of the one who uttered it moralistically. I still want to consider that opinion empathetically and to learn whatever I can from it. I may learn much and discover that despite our parting company on the issue of moralistic judgment, I still find value in or even agree with much that such a person offers.

In part for these reasons, I want to pursue and encourage honest and empathetic dialogue with others, including those others who maintain vastly different viewpoints. I want to do so in my effort to develop and refine my understanding of the social practices and structures that I want to see put into action - and to help refine and revitalize every aspect of my worldview.

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Closing Words

On the basis of my worldview and the spirit that underlies it, I feel profoundly hopeful that we human beings, both individually and in our interactions with each other, can make spectacular progress.

I'm grateful that you've read what I've shared here. I sincerely hope that you have found in my worldview some value for your own life. Regardless, I wish you well in your efforts to satisfy your authentic needs in the service of your life and happiness.

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Acknowledgements

In developing my worldview, I've drawn upon the whole of my life experience. Right now, I want to name only those influences that strike me as most obviously impacting what I've written in the foregoing sections of this summary. In addition, in my About Me area, here, I've also written about my influences. Notwithstanding my gratitude for these influences, of course, those from whom I've learned haven't always maintained the same opinions that I do.

I'm grateful for my childhood exposure to the Unitarian Universalist approach to religion, in response to which I've felt encouragement to engage in my own, personal search for truth and meaning unencumbered by conformity to any specific dogma. I'm also grateful for my adult participation within a Unitarian Universalist church, which continues to help meet many of my needs including not only for intellectual stimulation but also for acceptance, honest and empathetic communication, pluralism and community.

I'm grateful to J Milton McGinnis, who taught World History and History of (Western) Philosophy courses that I took while I attended high school. With these courses, J not only conveyed content but did so in a way that I found both captivating and relevant. These courses profoundly deepened my appreciation for the study of different times, cultures and worldviews. I'm also deeply grateful to J for our communication during the years since.

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I'm grateful to the rock band, Rush, for expressing what struck me as challenging, philosophical themes in their music in a form that appealed to me when it made quite a difference (starting even before I entered high school). In my interpretation, Rush also emphasized the importance - regardless of prevailing dogma - of engaging in one's own, personal search for truth and meaning and inspired me to investigate the work of Ayn Rand.

I'm grateful to Ayn Rand for expressing her unique philosophy of life, which she called Objectivism, and for writing novels that not only dramatized that philosophy but that gave me much inspiration starting during my early high school years. Notwithstanding my many differences with her (especially with what I regard as her dichotomies of truth and falsehood and moralistic judgment) I expect to always remain grateful for her having stimulated such excitement in me about developing a specifically philosophical, integrated and principled approach to thinking and living. Her fiction, including We the Living, Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and her nonfiction, including The Virtue of Selfishness, influenced me, including with her projection of human possibilities and her consideration of the foundations of philosophy, ethics, value and art.

I'm grateful to Nathaniel Branden, once Ayn Rand's closest associate and student, not only for his efforts to clarify the meaning of her philosophy (as in his Basic Principles of Objectivism lecture series) but also for his own philosophical and psychological thinking. What he has described as his "biocentric" (life-centered) approach to psychology has deeply influenced the way that I think about living action, human nature and worldviews. Among many other of his works, I've found his books The Psychology of Self-Esteem and The Six Pillars of Self Esteem especially helpful. I've also appreciated his willingness to question various aspects of Objectivism, as in his article, The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand: A Personal Statement. Although my views about Objectivism, philosophy, psychology and self-esteem differ from his in various ways, I'm grateful for the leads his ideas gave me in these areas.

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Again despite many differences, I'm grateful to Leonard Peikoff, who remained associated with Ayn Rand until her death, for his efforts to clarify the meaning of her philosophy systematically, especially in his lecture series, The Philosophy of Objectivism, upon which he later based his book, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

I'm grateful to David Kelley for showing a willingness to question what some call the orthodoxy of Objectivism and to forge an alternative path both by writing the first edition of The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism and by founding what's now known as The Atlas Society. Again, notwithstanding significant differences, I've learned much from the offerings and seminars of The Atlas Society.

During my teens and twenties, my friend Marsha Enright engaged in innumerable hours of dialogue with me about countless issues including philosophical ones and encouraged my participation in her New Intellectual Forum salon in Chicago. Others in that salon, including especially her husband, John Enright and also Stephen Lloyd, also provided much friendly support, active listening and stimulating dialogue. I'm grateful to them and to everyone else who then contributed to the New Intellectual Forum. I'm also grateful to Marsha for the following of her articles: If "Emotions Are Not Tools of Cognition," What Are They?: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Reason and Emotion;" The Habit of Hope; and Why Man Needs Approval.

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I'm grateful to Chris Matthew Sciabarra for his emphasis on dialectical method and human freedom, for his books Marx, Hayek and Utopia, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical and Total Freedom, and for his dialogue and friendship. During the course of my post-Randian, post-Objectivist evolution, Chris's work has profoundly assisted me in teasing out that in Ayn Rand's work with which I still resonate; has helped me to deepen my appreciation for dialectical method; and has helped me to move in new directions.

I'm grateful to D. Moskovitz for his talk, "Moralism in Objectivism." To a degree that I had never before experienced, D.'s talk helped me to appreciate the topics of moralism, acceptance and compassion. In addition, D. helped to stimulate my interest in Buddhism, mindfulness meditation (including the single most helpful introductory article on the subject that I've yet discovered, written by Joshua Zader), and the work of Eckhart Tolle, author of the books, The Power of Now and A New Earth.

I'm grateful to Eckhart Tolle for his books, The Power of Now and A New Earth, which have helped me to understand presence as a form of awareness; to deepen my own presence; and to enrich my appreciation for the perspective that only the present moment exists.

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I'm especially grateful to Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D. for his teaching and work, including in such books as Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life and Life-Enriching Education. Not only in his teaching about Nonviolent Communication (NVC) but also in his specific conceptions of observations, feelings, needs, strategies, empathy, compassion and human nature, as well as in his understanding of domination, partnership and social change, plus much more, I've found his work invaluable. I consider no other teaching more significant in its impact on my life and worldview.

Even so, even though Marshall Rosenberg's influence figures prominently in my teaching of the process of Communicating Compassionately, I'm not a certified trainer of NVC and I'm not affiliated with Marshall Rosenberg or his nonprofit organization, the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC). So I wouldn't recommend assuming that Marshall Rosenberg would agree with any of what I've posted on this page.

While watching an intermediate-level training DVD in the series, Making Life Wonderful, I understood that Marshall Rosenberg recommended reading a book as an aid to learning why Nonviolent Communication asks that we learn to relinquish the concept of "deserving" either reward or punishment. Specifically, Rosenberg recommended the 1973 book Without Guilt and Justice: From Decidophobia to Autonomy by then-Princeton professor of philosophy Walter Kaufmann.

I'm grateful to Walter Kaufmann for that book. In addition to its consideration of historical and philosophical conceptions of justice, reward and punishment, I've benefited from its discussion of "decidophobia" (the fear of making fateful decisions); the lingering - and in my opinion malignant - residue in our culture (and even in Objectivism) of one, decidophobic strategy in particular (Manichaeism); and the book's advocacy of what Kaufmann refers to as "the canon," which he urges us to apply in the process of making decisions.

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I'm grateful to Walter Wink for his book The Powers That Be (excerpted here) and to Riane Eisler for her book, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future which, notwithstanding our differences, have stimulated me to consider fresh interpretations of prehistory, history, the influence of myth on culture, the nature of domination and partnership and the projection of possible futures.

I'm grateful to my life partner and wife, Cherita, for our dialogues and for her empathy when we've talked at length about my worldview.

I'm grateful to our daughter, Aliana, for contributing one of my top sources of inspiration and for teaching me in ways that nobody else could.

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I'm grateful to Julie Hilsher and to my friends Pam Missimer and Fran Hill for their dialogues with me about my worldview at various stages of its evolution.

Finally, I'm grateful to my parents: first, to my late mother, Barb Larson, for listening to and discussing with me my worldview for countless hours; and to my father, Len Larson, for providing much intellectual stimulation and encouragement when I was a child.

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On this page, I share my reasons for having created this site, which include wanting to express myself both succinctly and in detail.

If you haven't yet, I also invite you to read my brief self-introduction.

Table of Contents

I.	Expressing Myself
II.	Succinctly and in Detail

I. Expressing Myself

As I've indicated on my home page, with this Living Action website, I embark on a mission to

•	communicate with energy, imagination and compassion;
•	honor the human potential;
•	celebrate the joy of life;
•	and enrich both my own and others' well being.

For most of my life, as an aid both to living more joyfully and to envisioning how I might encourage others to do the same, I've striven to develop, articulate and live with the assistance of a system of personal principles that would help satisfy my needs for soundness, integration, inspiration and practical guidance.

In addition, ever since I learned how, I've loved to read and write both fiction and nonfiction.

During the course of the year 2005, though, I experienced profound frustration. After repeatedly listening to others discuss their views, I realized that in more situations than I would prefer, I had remained silent. With reflection, I appreciated that I'd rather contribute more actively to such dialogues.

Yet when I tried to express my views on a given subject in the form of a "sound bite," often I felt uncomfortable.

Especially since I endeavor to systematically integrate and organize all my core principles, I felt concern. Sometimes, when I've wanted to express how my opinions on specific issues interrelate with my more abstract convictions and worldview, I feared that I would fail to express myself as clearly as I'd like.

Never has this seemed more important to me than in my relationships of life partnership (with my wife Cherita) parenthood (relative to my daughter, Aliana) caregiving (of both Aliana and church; locally; and in the wider world).

Even so, I recognized that those wanting to learn more about my views might sometimes need efficiency more than detail. So, when I've deemed it likely to serve both their needs for communication and mine, I've also sought to discover ways in which to express my views more succinctly.

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II. Succinctly and in Detail

With these considerations in mind, I decided that by creating a web site that includes a blog plus much more, I could express myself both succinctly and in detail.

Now that my life partner Cherita has helped me to create, launch, update and upgrade this site, sometimes I express myself here briefly in specific entries, and sometimes in more detail in other comments to which I provide links.

Over time, as I add material, I enlarge the context of my meaning. As briefly or extensively as you wish, you remain free to explore the views that I express here. In addition, others' comments help me to learn more, form new principles, and hone those that I've already developed.

I anticipate that this web site will continue to help me to:

•	grow as a person
•	express my love for human beings and for our potential to enrich both our own and each others' lives
•	share my enthusiasm for play
•	imaginatively create
•	report on the details of my life's journey
•	develop my personal convictions
•	embody those convictions in the living of my life and
•	integrate and direct all of that in an increasingly life-enriching way.

To the extent that my ideas strike others as sound, as those others also embrace life's challenges, I hope that they will find my ideas helpful in meeting their needs.

I hope that you will enjoy participating in this process.

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You can read more on the following subjects.

•	why I call this my Living Action website
•	in some detail, my personal background and influences
•	my encapsulated history of my background and influences in my March 26, 2006 Affirmation
•	my Credo, in which I articulate my worldview meditatively and briefly
•	my more detailed Worldview Summary
•	my site's policy
•	my Current Activities
•	my Categories of Balance
•	my latest blog entries

Table of Contents in Brief

I.	The Big Four
II.	Interrelating the Big Four
III.	Describing Categories, Sub- and Sub-subcategories

Table of Contents in Detail

I. The Big Four

A.	The Four Categories plus Subcategories
B.	Growth
C.	Love
D.	Play
E.	Creativity

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II. Interrelating the Big Four

A.	Interrelating Growth and Love
B.	Interrelating Play and Creativity
C.	Increasing the Involvement of All Four
D.	Making Everything Play!
E.	Celebrating the Overlap

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III. Describing and Interrelating Categories, Sub- and Sub-subcategories

A.	Sub- and Sub-subcategories
B.	Categories, Sub- and Sub-subcategories Described

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I. The Big Four

A. The Four Categories plus Subcategories

In recent years, I've identified four, broad areas of human life that I imagine will, when balanced, help me (and any person) to live in a joyfully fulfilling way. And I crave meeting my need for balance!

I'm hoping that you will bear in mind that I don't intend these to serve as mutually exclusive or jointly exhaustive categories. In countless ways, each of these four areas of life overlaps with each of the others. Even so, I find it helps me to classify things this way.

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B. Growth

Using my classification system, I use the word Growth to name everything that's involved in directly benefiting oneself or in improving one's life. So this category includes any sort of health, wellness or self-improvement activity. Examples that fit in this category could include continuing education, exercise, sound nutritional practices, and so on. Psychologically, Growth activities often seem "self-focused."

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C. Love

With the word Love I refer to the whole spectrum of interpersonal relationships.

In my worldview, it's helpful and satisfying to cultivate a fundamental, universal love and compassion for human beings. On this foundation I endeavor to build all my interpersonal relationships, including those that I pursue with those whom I hardly know, such as a clerk in a store's check out lane.

In the Love category I also include my relationships with people whom I know intimately, and about whom I care in a deeply personal way - such as my wife, Cherita, and our daughter, Aliana. Psychologically, Love activities often seem "other-focused."

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D. Play

With the word Play I refer to a broad category that includes the whole spectrum of recreational activities - including all things that human beings engage in primarily for "fun." For example, playing a board game with family members would qualify as a form of Play. I also include all artistic appreciation - for example, reading a novel, watching a movie, listening to music - as falling within the Play category. Psychologically, Play activities often seem as if they are done "for their own sake" - as "ends in themselves."

In a sense that I explore in later sections, I also want to make all my actions as playful as I can.

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E. Creativity

The word Creativity for me captures the whole range of activities that people pursue for the sake of achieving something else.

This includes such activities as a "day job" in connection with which a person receives a salary, a career that a person pursues, and homemaking.

This category also includes the wider range of creative activity in which individuals engage. If a person created poetry, for example, the process of creating it would qualify as Creativity - even if the process of enjoying the result would qualify as Play.

Psychologically, Creativity activities often seem as if they are done "for the sake of something else" - as "means to ends."

Even so, in the moment, I like to make such means-directed action thoroughly playful, enjoyable in itself, and free of any association with a sense of "duty" or "obligation."

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II. Interrelating the Big Four

A. Interrelating Growth and Love

These categories relate to one another in ways in which I'm interested. For example, Growth activities often involve a focus on oneself, whereas Love activities often involve a focus on other people. In my experience and judgment, striking a balance between these two types of activity contributes to both personal and interpersonal fulfillment.

Even so, I passionately wish to emphasize another respect in which these categories overlap. Although on this site and in the context of these categories I use Love to focus on interpersonal relationships, I want it clear that I treasure each individual's need to also cultivate passionate love for the self. As I've indicated in my Affirmation,

actions that benefit self and actions that benefit others exist in harmony. And only by caring passionately for the needs of the self can we ever hope to create the robust foundation from which we can effectively care compassionately for the needs of others.

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B. Interrelating Play and Creativity

Similarly, Play and Creativity complement one another. Not only do I imagine that human beings will satisfy their needs by engaging in plenty of Creativity that's aimed at creating and achieving values. I'm also convinced that human beings will satisfy their needs most fully by enjoying and celebrating the values that they've discovered or invented through Play.

Again, I don't claim that any specific human activity will easily fit into only one of these four categories. For example, a person's Creativity may also (hopefully!) involve satisfying relationships with one's co-inventors and clients, even if only in the form of fondness (broadly speaking, Love). Also optimally, Creativity may also (and hopefully will) involve a lighthearted delight in what one does while one does it (Play) and opportunities for learning and mastering new skills (Growth).

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C. Increasing the Involvement of All Four

I even think that it can help to find ways to take an activity that I classify as fitting into one of these four categories, and to endeavor to increase the presence in that activity of the other three aspects. For example, a person might benefit from making his or her Creativity involve more Growth, Love and Play.

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D. Making Everything Play!

More broadly, though, I resonate with Marshall Rosenberg's recommendation (which he attributes to Joseph Campbell): "don't do anything that isn't play." Or, to put into my own, positive terms: even if we are Growing, Inventing or Loving, let's only play!

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E. Celebrating the Overlap

So I recognize and even take pleasure in the presence of so much overlap between these categories. Even given their overlapping nature, I've found that thinking in terms of them helps me to balance life's various activities with one another. I often find it helpful to ask myself: "Into which category does activity x most essentially seem to fit?"

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III. Describing Categories, Sub- and Sub-subcategories

A. Sub- and Sub-subcategories

In addition to the four major categories, I've also added subcategories and even some sub-subcategories. Some of these are specific to my own life. I've organized these with respect to the major categories as follows.

GROWTH

CC (Communicating Compassionately)

 

Fitness

 

What's New

LOVE

Church
Family
Friends

CREATIVITY

Homemaking
Homeschool
Website
Writing

Fiction

 

Nonfiction

PLAY

Art

Literature
Movies
Music

Games

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B. Categories, Sub- and Sub-subcategories Described

In the following section, I provide descriptions of each category, subcategory and sub-subcategory. As with my four, major categories, these often overlap.

GROWTH: With this category, I focus on what I do to directly benefit myself.

CC (Communicating Compassionately): With this subcategory I focus on my growing understanding and practice of the process of Communicating Compassionately (a.k.a. Communicating with Compassion a.k.a. Communicating Across Differences), which draws inspiration and understanding especially from Marshall Rosenberg's process of Nonviolent Communication.

Fitness: With this subcategory, I focus on the nutritional and exercise activity in which I engage to promote my physical health.

Reading: With this subcategory, I focus on the reading I do to promote my learning.

What's New: With this subcategory I focus on "journalistic" consideration of current events in my life.

LOVE: With this category, I focus on the whole spectrum of my interpersonal relationships. Psychologically, Love activities often seem "other-focused." Even so, it's crucial to me that my Love activities remain fulfilling for me, as well.

Church: With this subcategory I focus on my participation in Countryside Church Unitarian Universalist (CCUU).

Family: With this subcategory I focus on my interactions with the Axel family.

Friends: With this subcategory I focus on my interactions with my friends.

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CREATIVITY: With this category, I focus on the whole range of what I do to achieve something else. I classify these activities as "means to ends" but want to ensure that they also are "ends in themselves."

Homemaking:

With this subcategory I focus on the homemaking (much of which others often also call "house work") that I do to satisfy my need to contribute - in this case, by contributing to my family.

Homeschool: With this subcategory I focus on my homeschooling efforts with Aliana.

Website: With this subcategory I focus on new developments on my Living Action web site.

Writing: With this subcategory I focus on the writing that I do.

Fiction: With this sub-subcategory I focus on the fiction writing that I do.

Nonfiction: With this sub-subcategory I focus on the nonfiction writing that I do.

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PLAY: With this category, I focus on my spectrum of recreational activities - including all things that I do primarily for "fun" which I do "for their own sake" as "ends in themselves." These can also end up being "means to additional ends," as well.

Art: With this subcategory I focus on any form of what I classify as "art" to which I turn for play and rejuvenation.

Literature: With this sub-subcategory I focus on the stories that I enjoy reading.

Movies: With this sub-subcategory I focus on movies that I enjoy experiencing.

Music: With this sub-subcategory I focus on the music to which I enjoy listening.

Games: With this subcategory I focus on the games I play for fun.

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You can visit my blog page

here

.

Table of Contents in Brief

Background for the Table of Contents

I.	Personal Background
II.	Influences
Postscript

Table of Contents

Background for the Table of Contents
i.	Notes about Structure and Connections
ii.	Notes about Humor

I. Personal Background

A.	My Origins and Locations
B.	The Woman with whom I Partner in Life
C.	Our Daughter
D.	My Mother
E.	My Father
F.	My Brothers

	1.	Mark
	2.	Steve

G.	Our Move Back to my Childhood Home
H.	My Writing

	1.	Lifelong Interest
	2.	Novel Collaboration
	3.	Systematic Exposition of my Worldview
	4.	Critters Workshop
	5.	Writers' Group
	6.	National Novel Writing Month and No Plot? No Problem!
	7.	Living Action Website
	8.	Public Speaking

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II. Influences

A.	Liberating Religion and Unitarian Universalism
B.	Childhood Stories and their Sense of Adventure
C.	Lutheran Christianity, Official Doctrine, and Non-Creedal
	Religion
D.	The Rock Band, Rush
E.	World History in High School
F.	Ayn Rand and Objectivism
G.	History of Philosophy in High School
H.	Beyond Ayn Rand
I.	Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Dialectics
J.	D. Moskovitz, "Moralism in Objectivism," Eckhart Tolle and Buddhism
K.	Marshall Rosenberg, NVC and Communicating Compassionately
L.	Walter Kaufmann and Without Guilt and Justice
M.	The Evolution of my Personal Worldview - and my Living Action Website

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Postscript

Background, Influences and Worldview In Brief: Affirmation, March 26, 2006

 

 

 

 

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{mospagebreak}

Background for the Table of Contents

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i. Notes about Structure and Connections

In this About Me area, you can learn about my personal background, influences and read my March 2006 Affirmation. By doing so you can learn more about my personal and intellectual context, including where I originated, how I've evolved, in what I've felt interest and how I focus my energies. I hope that in doing so you will help meet such needs of yours as for clarity, understanding, authenticity, integration, intelligibility and meaning.

If you wish, you can explore all the material that appears in this About Me area by reading it from start to finish.

Alternatively, you can click any part of the following Table of Contents in order to skip to only those subsections that interest you. I've endeavored to include hyperlinks within each subsection that, when clicked, cross-reference related material both within this website (including in other subsections of this About Me area) and on other websites.

If you wish to look more briefly at my history and outlook, I've included my March 26, 2006 Affirmation as a Postscript in this About Me area. At the end of that Postscript I've included a link to my Credo, to which my Affirmation refers.

I've also included hyperlinks within that Affirmation. If you click such a hyperlink your web browser will display various subsections of Parts I and II of this About Me area. Such subsections explore, in more detail, the topics that the Affirmation hyperlinks name. When you feel satisfied after having done your more detailed reading, you can return to the Affirmation, possibly by clicking the Back button on your web browser.

Given such structure and connections, some visiting guests may wish to start with the Postscript and, when they want more detailed elaboration, to jump to various subsections.

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ii. Notes about Humor

When I revised and expanded this About Me area in June 2006, for some time I'd wanted to add some humor to my site. So I've added some comments that I hope you will find humorous.

When I include such comments, though, I don't mean to undercut the seriousness of what I elsewhere express. As much as I enjoy a hearty laugh, I also take my life seriously - and by my standards, lighthearted humor in no way needs to contradict such fundamental seriousness.

Regarding how humorous you may find such comments, though, your mileage may vary!

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{mospagebreak}

I. Personal Background

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A. My Origins and Locations

I was born in the city of Chicago in the late 1960's. I grew up northwest of the city in the suburbs. During my young adulthood, I lived in various parts of Illinois, after which I lived for several years in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Now, once again, I live in Chicago's northwest suburbs.

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B. The Woman with whom I Partner in Life

For fun, sometimes I like to affectionately call the woman with whom I partner in life "Wonder Woman" (or "Wunda" - as a short form)!

In April of the year 1999, I married Cherita, who originated in Buffalo, New York.

Among other things, Cherita designs websites, designs graphics for display on the Internet and does print design. Until April 2007 she coordinated research and development within the firm with which, by day, she creatively contributed and economically supported our family. Now she has switched to full-time web, graphic and print design. She also enjoys creatively writing poetry and fiction.

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Numerous times during the course of our marriage, when I've felt confused, troubled or worried, often simply by listening and offering me her silent presence,Cherita has managed to maintain what I've sometimes described as "a calm and level-headed disposition." And often when she has, given that my need for empathy has been met, I've felt both reassured and inspired.

With Cherita, I find that I easily feel affection, exhilaration, gratitude, hope, joy, peace and renewal - although typically not all in the same moment. As time goes on, I discover ever more how thoroughly Cherita helps satisfy such needs of mine as those for: closeness; freedom; intimacy; love; mutuality; touch; security; space; support; trust; visibility; flexibility; and warmth... among many others! With Cherita, I find that I also deeply satisfy my needs to see and be seen, to know and be known, and to understand and be understood.

And I feel delight when I consider how much Cherita helps fulfill my needs for romantic-sexual interaction.

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I hope that I help fulfill her needs in similar ways.

I find that with time, our relationship evolves, grows and develops such that we're always discovering more about ourselves, about each other and about our relationship. I've never once felt regret about Cherita's participation in my life.

Cherita's own personal website can be viewed here, and her professional website can be viewed here.

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C. Our Daughter

Our daughter, Aliana, who was born in March of the year 2002, sings, dances, discusses, plays, learns and - through these and other expressions and actions - helps satisfy our needs for closeness, companionship and love, and stimulates joy in us.

Since our daughter's birth, while Cherita has created web and print designs full-time to generate the income that supports our family, I've contributed full-time by providing care at home for our daughter.

Now, in addition, I also provide Aliana with homeschooling.

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D. My Mother

My mother, who was trained and certified in Montessori education, for years taught three-to-six year old children. Many have told me about their experiences observing her. Especially as they watched her interact with and help children to learn, such observers felt impressed by what they described as her patience and kindness.

In July of the year 2002, a few months after having been diagnosed with inoperable, ovarian cancer, on the night following the day when she first held our daughter (her only grandchild) in her arms - and during which day I felt astonished by how frequently my mother smiled and seemed to stimulate feelings of uplift in everyone around her - she died in her sleep.

Countless friends, family members and former co-workers deeply miss her. I especially miss what I experienced as her optimistic sense of life.

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E. My Father

If I experience any issues in connection with my father's idiosyncrasies, for now, I'll keep them to myself.

My father, now retired, for years analyzed investments for his employers. For most of his life, he's shown what he describes as a strong interest in economics, politics and current events.

For over thirty years, he had lived in the house where he and my mother had cared for my two younger brothers and me while we grew to adulthood.

Years later, following my mother's death, for more than two years, he continued living in that same house, all alone.

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F. My Brothers

I have two younger brothers.

1. Mark

One of my brothers, Mark, who is two years my junior, recently finished serving overseas on a military mission in Afghanistan. At other times he has served militarily in Kuwait and done police, detective and pharmaceutical sales work. His next step is to train at a helicopter flight school here in the U.S.

Mark's wife Jen lives in Wisconsin and in my judgment has contributed monumentally to everyone's ability to stay in touch with him.

I've enjoyed and benefited from my recent communications with both Mark and Jen. These communications have helped me to 1) appreciate their vitality and unique perspectives and 2) stay in touch with others about whom I personally care.

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2. Steve

My other brother, Steve, who is seven years my junior, sculpts, lives with his wife, Alex, who paints, and works in Connecticut.

Outside Cherita and Aliana, Steve satisfies my needs for dear and close connection with more endurance and depth than does any other person in the world. Notwithstanding our age difference, while we grew up, we always remained close. I was Best Man at his wedding and he was at mine (both ceremonies were officiated by Unitarian Universalist ministers) and I've always regarded him as my "best friend." (I've offered more about Unitarian Universalism in this About Me area of my website here.) I've never known anyone whom I could more fundamentally trust.

If I've succeeded at cultivating an optimistic and hopeful orientation toward life, I'm convinced it's largely thanks to my innumerable, positive and precious experiences with him. Over the years I've heard various individuals express that if either of us happened to feel blue, just putting us together would immediately light up our spirits.

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G. Our Move Back to my Childhood Home

Some might say that the house in which I grew up has exerted something like a "boomerang affect" on me.

More seriously... during the months of December 2004 and January 2005, my father fell ill and was hospitalized for more than a month. In spite of having suffered seriously, in my judgment, with time, his condition dramatically improved.

Even with such progress, however, in his judgment, Cherita's and mine, we agreed that he couldn't safely or effectively live by himself any longer. As this became evident to us, Cherita and I also considered our impression that my father felt frightened in relation to the prospect of moving into an assisted living facility.

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One day, Cherita suggested an idea. Some time after we discussed it with my father, Cherita, Aliana and I moved from Raleigh, North Carolina to the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois into my father's house - the same house in which my brothers and I had grown up - so that I could help take care of him.

Now, in addition to providing care and homeschooling for my daughter, I also provide care and assistance for my father.

Fortunately, Cherita and I have felt encouraged in relation to various aspects of how my father's rehabilitation and recovery have progressed. Also, Cherita and I feel delight now that Aliana and her grandpa enjoy spending so much time with each other.

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H. My Writing

1. Lifelong Interest

For as long as I've been able to, I've loved to write both fiction and nonfiction. In addition, in relation to religious and philosophical ideas, I've felt intrigued because I need meaning, understanding (including understanding of others) and learning as I develop my own strategies for finding meaning. For the sake of meeting such needs I've also always felt passionate about developing my personal convictions and worldview.

As a child, virtually from the moment that I could write at all, I loved writing short story fiction. During grade school, junior high, and in high school, I enjoyed writing fiction that often I would share with my friends so that they could enjoy it, too.

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2. Novel Collaboration

Several years ago, with the cooperation of a friend who years before had written an earlier draft of a full length novel which I had loved reading, I collaborated on the coauthorship of a newer version. Originally, my intention had been to add more vivid description. As time went on, though, I added numerous scenes, characters and subplots. In time, I added to the manuscript more than the number of words that had existed in the original version, thus more than doubling its length.

Even though I definitely didn't consider the novel "finished" after I had completed my initial, rewritten expansion, I thoroughly enjoyed and learned from this experimental process.

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In the years since, though, I've evolved personally in many ways. Given this evolution, if I were to write more now, my effort would significantly impact the novel's theme, plot, characterization, style and even its underlying philosophy.

So I doubt that if I resumed my effort I would finish that particular project in a way that would simultaneously remain true to a) the original intentions of the work b) my current values and c) my coauthor's values such that my coauthor would remain satisfied.

Even so, I'm tempted to say, "Never say never."

Although I remain grateful both for the opportunity that my coauthor gave me and for my having chosen to invest in that writing effort, I experience some doubt about whether that particular project will ever materialize in a form that he and I would feel equally enthused about publishing. Yet I feel no regret about having done that writing. I remain grateful to my coauthor for providing me with a kind of mentoring with my fiction writing that really helped meet my needs for learning, growth and progress.

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3. Systematic Exposition of my Worldview

Following the tragedy of September 11, 2001 and in anticipation of my daughter's birth, I felt profoundly concerned, saddened and moved. In an effort to help meet such needs of mine as for meaning, intelligibility, self-expression and progress, I chose to write a systematic, nonfictional exposition of my worldview.

Originally intended as an essay, my writing eventually ballooned into a book-length presentation.

Although my worldview has evolved substantially since I wrote that, ever since, I've felt grateful for my investment in that effort. Working on that project clarified immensely for me not only where I stand on a variety of issues related to religion, philosophy, the development of my personal worldview and their relationship to the practical living of my life. It also helped draw my attention to areas with which I had felt dissatisfied and helped me to establish a new foundation for my future evolution.

In a way that I expect will stimulate excitement and deep satisfaction in me, recently I've begun inventively working again on such systematic exposition.

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4. Critters Workshop

For some time after writing the first version of that book-length, systematic presentation of my worldview, I participated in Critters Workshop.

Critters is an on-line workshop/critique group for serious writers of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. You get your work critiqued in exchange for critiquing the work of others, both of which are invaluable ways to improve your writing.

As the website of Critters Workshop further explains,

The ultimate goal of Critters is to help writers improve, not only by having their work dissected by other members, but also by learning to dissect their own work (by, of course, dissecting others). The value of the latter is often overlooked by beginning writers.

During my participation in Critters Workshop, I wrote and submitted a short, science-fiction story for critique. In my story, I endeavored to "answer," in terms of my own outlook, what I had taken to be the outlook of another story that I had previously critiqued. In relation to what I had interpreted to be that other story's outlook I had felt profound dissatisfaction and irritation. My reading of that story hadn't met my needs for respect, consideration or compassion.

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I enjoyed writing my own story "in answer" and sharing it for critique by others. Writing and sharing my story this way helped meet my needs for self-expression, self-assertion, learning and progress.

Although readers who critiqued my story responded positively overall to it, they also offered a number of suggestions with which I resonated. In particular, with time and reflection, I concluded that I had portrayed my story's leading antagonist in a manner that didn't satisfy my needs for nuance, intelligibility or empathy. In many ways, I had written my story out of anger that I hadn't explored or understood as well as I would like. Reaching this understanding, I chose to reconsider some of my views about human nature and literary method. Ever since, I've continued to evolve my views in these realms.

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5. Writers' Group

During the years 2003-2004, Cherita and I thoroughly enjoyed participating in a Writers' Group in Raleigh, North Carolina whose members were mostly current, former and/or future, active participants in Unitarian Universalist congregations. (In a later section of this About Me area of my website, I've written more about Unitarian Universalism, here.) In this private and independent Writers' Group, we and other writers shared, read and critiqued one another's fiction and nonfiction. In Cherita's opinion and mine, we both learned much from this process. I shared and learned from others' reactions both to excerpts from a) my fiction and b) such sources as my systematic exposition of my personal worldview.

Since having moved, we've felt real sadness having missed our participation with such a group, and Cherita has begun exploring ways of starting a new one where we now live.

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6. National Novel Writing Month and No Plot? No Problem!

After having moved, however, Cherita and I ended up discovering something new in relation to which we felt engagement, excitement and interest: National Novel Writing Month. Many also refer to National Novel Writing Month (now an international event) as NaNoWriMo, which they pronounce "nanno rhyme oh." (Fulfilling what I'm guessing are her needs for self-direction and self-expression, Cherita often likes to pronounce it "nay no rhyme oh.") During NaNoWriMo, participants ask one another to attempt in thirty days' time to write a 50,000 word rough draft of a novel.

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This website describes this event. NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty also describes this event in his book, No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days.

In 2005, Cherita and I thoroughly enjoyed reading No Plot? No Problem! In addition to teaching us all about NaNoWriMo, the book deeply satisfied our needs for humor, stimulation and hope.

In November 2005, we both participated in NaNoWriMo, and I did manage to exceed 50,000 words in less than 30 days. Although Cherita did not reach that target, she felt delight given that she, too, participated and managed to create the beginnings of a story that she wanted to bring to life. Doing so, we both met our needs for invention and progress, and I met my need for integrity.

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I still feel interest when I consider working more (in some form) with the rough draft that I generated in November 2005. In addition, Cherita expressed interest in collaborating with me on the work that she began during her participation in NaNoWriMo 2005.

In November 2006, again I took up the challenge and wrote another rough draft of a novel, and that time I also exceeded 50,000 words in less than 30 days.

Both years, my novels involved themes based in principles of Communicating Compassionately, for which approach I take inspiration from what I've learned from Marshall Rosenberg's process of Nonviolent Communication, about which I write more here in a later section of my About Me area of this website.

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7. Living Action Website

Also in 2005 - in ways that I welcome, deeply appreciate, and that help fill my needs for encouragement, technical support and aesthetic savvy - Cherita helped me to launch this Living Action website. When I consider many of the ways in which this site has helped meet my needs for self-expression, communication and invention, including in writing and in my blog, I feel especially grateful. Although it's conceivable that I could have launched some sort of website without Cherita's assistance, I don't imagine that without her help it would have featured nearly as much content or that with any aspect of it I would have felt remotely as satisfied as I do.

I'm deeply grateful to Cherita for all the enduring help she's given me in launching, maintaining, and upgrading this site. In relation to such help I've felt really encouraged because it's so thoroughly met such needs of mine as for support, cooperation and collaboration.

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8. Public Speaking

As an adjunct to and application of my love for writing, I've exhibited a lifelong passion for public speaking. I've energetically engaged live audiences ranging in size from small numbers to approximately two thousand.

Such public speaking moments have included the following plus innumerable others.

• speeches in grade school
• reading my fiction aloud for my classes in junior high
• presentations in English classes, speech and debate team, as well as serving as emcee for a homecoming coronation assembly, all in high school
• more than twenty years ago, also while I was still in high school, a debate with the settled minister (who is now retired and Minister also Emeritus) at a Unitarian Universalist church
• presentations before a student organization that I started at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• numerous appearances before the New Intellectual Forum in Chicago and The Triangle Objectivists in North Carolina
• several Participant Sponsored Sessions and three, consecutive appearances as emcee of the In Performance variety show (for which I received an IOS award for outstanding work) at The Institute for Objectivist Studies (IOS) Summer Seminars, including when the IOS was later renamed The Objectivist Center (TOC), and which was still later renamed The Atlas Society (TAS)
• my March 2006 Affirmation during a worship service at church
• as co-chair of the church Membership Committee, my facilitation of our meetings
• my facilitation of two, Communicating Compassionately Covenant Groups and one, Communicating Compassionately Support Group, also at church
• my January 2007 participation as Pulpit Guest and Worship Leader during a worship service at the Unitarian Universalist church in which I participate in which I also presented an original sermon on the topic of Communicating Compassionately
• my six-part, February-March 2007 Communicating Compassionately Course, also at church
• my friend and colleague, Fran Hill, and I presented together our 3-part Assertive Communication workshop series (plus two, optional and complementary Participant Sponsored Sessions) at the 2007 TAS Summer Seminar in July

(I've written more in this About Me area about Unitarian Universalism and my church participation in a later section, here.)

I'm grateful for my many opportunities to meet my needs for self-expression, challenge and communication by means of both the written and spoken word.

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II. Influences

Many sources have influenced the development of my convictions.

I will name some now that I think have triggered major turning points in the evolution of my worldview.

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A. Liberating Religion and Unitarian Universalism

As a tradition, Unitarian Universalism derives from a history that - when it culminates in the present, Unitarian Universalist form which I experience at the church in which I participate - richly helps to satisfy my needs for understanding, personal growth and evolution, acceptance, connectedness and inspiration.

When my parents married, my father described himself as a freethinking non-churchgoer, while my mother described herself as a devout, Roman Catholic. Some years after they married, however, and as my mother later explained to me repeatedly, her thinking changed, and she drifted from the Catholic Church.

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In time, my parents felt attracted to a local, Unitarian Universalist church. Such congregations often have provided religious homes both for those who have departed from other, religious commitments and for interfaith couples.

Starting as a young boy, I attended services and religious education classes at a Unitarian Universalist church. After high school and as a young adult, I didn't attend services too often.

During recent years, though, my interest in Unitarian Universalism rekindled. In April of 1999, a Unitarian Universalist minister officiated the ceremony in which Cherita and I married. In May of 2005, Cherita and I joined the membership of the same church in which I'd "grown up."

So perhaps, like my childhood home, my childhood house of worship has exerted a "boomerang effect" on me.

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Turning now to its serious consideration, by my understanding and in my experience, as a liberating religion (often called a liberal religion), Unitarian Universalism emphasizes the need of each individual to use one's own reason and conscience in the process of formulating, adopting and acting on personal principles of a religious and/or philosophical nature.

(I'm grateful to Don Beaudreault, minister at Countryside Church Unitarian Universalist, for introducing me in one of his sermons to his "liberating religion" word choice as an alternative to "liberal religion." For him and for me, "liberating religion" more fully and accurately captures the dynamic rather than static nature of the religion.)

Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal religion. This means that it does not require participants to affirm a specific doctrine or creed in order to join its congregations. It respects the right of its participants not to believe. Indeed, it celebrates a heritage of schisms and heresy. At the same time, Unitarian Universalism encourages a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning."

In its effort to build compassionate community and to promote life-enriching change in the world, Unitarian Universalism aspires to develop both a radically inclusive and pluralistic culture. By this I mean that it explicitly welcomes the participation of individuals of all sorts of religious and philosophical backgrounds and views, including (but not limited to) Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, pagans, atheists and much more.

The Religious Education classes in which I participated as a young boy in the UU church that I attended with my family often discussed the world's religions comparatively. This helped me to appreciate that many different religious ideas exist in different people and cultures.

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B. Childhood Stories and their Sense of Adventure

Starting as a young boy, I enjoyed watching Speed Racer television reruns and reading comic books that featured super heroes such as Batman and Spider-Man. My mother also told me years later that she noticed that as a young boy I clearly felt enamored about Lynda Carter in her role as Wonder Woman (which later became my nickname for Cherita). In the theater, when it was new, I experienced the first-ever-released Star Wars movie. I also read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and for a time followed the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.

Emotionally, I felt gripped in relation to each such experience. Even though I resonated with such art works primarily in how I took them both emotionally and on a "sense of life" level, I also felt eager to take their inspiration and to use it to reflect on real life.

I loved what I took to be these art works' conviction in a) the grand, adventurous possibilities of human life and b) the power of the individual to make choices that can create a positive difference in the world.

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C. Lutheran Christianity, Official Doctrine, and Non-Creedal Religion

During junior high, for three years, for educational rather than religious reasons, I attended a Lutheran school. Although I didn't convert to Lutheran Christianity, while attending daily Religion classes and while attending weekly, school-wide Chapel services in the Lutheran church, I learned much about this particular institution's Christian teachings and practices.

Given that I then participated in Lutheran Christianity on weekdays while I immersed myself in Unitarian Universalism on many Sundays, my experiences gave me the opportunity to compare and contrast the two.

(I've written more in this About Me area about Unitarian Universalism and my church participation in an earlier section, here.)

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On the one hand, I understood the Lutheran approach as creedal. Given that it expected its members to affirm a specific and declared doctrine, with time and reflection, it seemed to me to exclude rather than include. By contrast, I understood the UU approach as non-creedal. I understood it to welcome variety inclusively.

Ultimately, I chose the Unitarian Universalist path. Even so, educationally, developmentally and socially, I remember my time at the Lutheran school fondly.

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D. The Rock Band, Rush

A rock band? How on earth could a rock band exert a significant influence on my intellectual, spiritual and personal development?

It did, though.

In junior high, the music and lyrics of a rock group called Rush first captured my attention. Gradually over the years my interest developed and - as I elaborate in a subsequent section of this About Me area - eventually affected me in far-reaching ways.

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E. World History in High School

"History is boring!"

It wasn't for me.

As a freshman in high school, I took a course in world history that a man named J Milton McGinnis taught. I enjoyed his presence and teaching more than that of any other teacher during the whole of my prior, school experience.

With him, history struck me not as dry, but as colorful and dramatic, involving passionate, human struggles taking place over the course of thousands of years. Moreover, understanding history seemed relevant to living a fulfilling life now.

When I discovered that a recurring theme in history seemed to be the willingness of different people and cultures - in the name of different conceptions of God and religion - to wage war against and kill one another, I also felt deeply concerned.

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F. Ayn Rand and Objectivism

"Ayn Rand's novels certainly aren't literature. She's nothing more than a pop 'philosopher.' No one serious takes her seriously!"

And yet an influence that some consider laughable I took seriously.

As a sophomore in high school - inspired by the words "lyrics by Neil Peart with acknowledgement to the genius of Ayn Rand," which appeared in the liner notes of the 1976 Rush recording, 2112 - I discovered the work of Ayn Rand. This Russian-born, American novelist and nonacademic philosopher wrote novels that included The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

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In her fiction and nonfiction, Rand introduced to me her vision, sense of life and the philosophy that she called Objectivism. With her fiction writing especially, she triggered in me: fascination; hope that human life (mine included) offered grand, adventurous possibilities; and encouragement that each individual enjoys the power to make choices that can create a positive difference in the world. With her nonfiction especially, she stimulated confidence in me that philosophy overwhelmingly influences both the world and me personally.

Rand and Objectivism so captured my imagination that for many years I described myself as "an Objectivist."

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G. History of Philosophy in High School

Now surely, even if in high school the history of the world proved somehow not to stimulate boredom in me, didn't the history of philosophy induce sleep?

Again, my experience differed.

As a senior in high school, driven by my Rand-inspired passion for philosophy, I took another course that the same teacher whose presentation I had so enjoyed during my freshman, world history class (J Milton McGinnis) also taught. Now, though, I took a course devoted to studying the history of philosophy.

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This second course emphasized the development of western philosophy from the ancient Greeks forward. It also highlighted the manner in which, across the centuries, in the western tradition, philosophical debates have developed.

In my opinion, this course helped me to deepen not only my appreciation for philosophical thinking, but also for the interrelationship between philosophical ideas and the unfolding of history.

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H. Beyond Ayn Rand

"So, Vid, you've entitled this section 'Beyond Ayn Rand?' Does this mean that you finally outgrew your adolescent attachment to Rand?"

I wouldn't put it that way. In important ways, though, I did end up moving beyond Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism.

On my own, I continued reading and enjoying Rand's books, as well as the work of others whom she had influenced (including, for example, self-esteem writer Nathaniel Branden). My enthusiasm for Rand's Objectivism and for calling myself "an Objectivist" persisted for many years.

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In recent years, however, I've evolved such that I now disagree with many aspects of Rand's philosophy. I especially wish to avoid emulating what I now regard as her moralistic judgment and I no longer call myself "an Objectivist." In my consciousness and action I wish to centrally emphasize such practices as acceptance and non-sacrificial, mutually invigorating compassion which Rand (and, in my experience, most other, self-described Objectivists) don't emphasize remotely as much as I prefer to do. In addition, I've developed many key ideas in my own system of ideas that in my judgment differ significantly from Rand's.

Notwithstanding my differences with her, Rand has impacted me in numerous ways that I still regard as major and positive, and I'm both happy and grateful to acknowledge such influences.

With the help of my various influences I've continued to evolve my own worldview. That worldview differs in many ways from Objectivism, even while I feel confident that numerous aspects of what I've learned from that philosophy continue to help me in various ways.

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I. Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Dialectics

A few years ago, at a time when I was rethinking my worldview and grappling with aspects of Ayn Rand's philosophy with which I didn't any longer agree, I finally explored a book the existence of which I'd known about for years but which I'd not yet managed to read. It was a book with which I didn't expect to fall in love. Yet I did. I ended up reading the whole thing (the first time through, that is) in something like two days' time.

That book was Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical by Chris Matthew Sciabarra. During the course of my post-Randian, post-Objectivist evolution, Chris's work has profoundly assisted me in teasing out that in Ayn Rand's work with which I still resonate.

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I also deeply resonate with Chris's emphasis on "dialectics," which he most simply defines as "the art of context keeping." What I've learned from dialectical method continues to factor significantly as I further develop my worldview.

In time, in addition to reading and benefiting from the rest of Chris's books, I also wrote to him. For years now, I've profoundly enjoyed and felt grateful both for our correspondence and our friendship.

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J. D. Moskovitz, "Moralism in Objectivism," Eckhart Tolle and Buddhism

The next, major stage in the development of my worldview involved my discovery of the viewpoint of D. Moskovitz.

I had met and chatted with D. at two different Summer Seminars sponsored by The Objectivist Center (now The Atlas Society). I had noticed that at one of these, during a Participant Sponsored Session, D. had given a talk on the subject, "Moralism in Objectivism."

When he had given it at the seminar I had missed D. 's talk. Even so, I had seen the flier that had announced it. Given my long-standing interest in the subject matter, I felt regretful that I had missed it. I felt sufficiently curious that I chose to contact D. later to express my interest in reading a transcript of his talk if he happened to possess one.

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Based on our continued communications, not only did I discover that D. did have a transcript that he was willing to let me read, but also that he had audio recorded a live presentation that he had made of the same talk when he had presented it to a group in California.

After I had reviewed D. 's talk, I felt so engaged and inspired that I asked him if he would be willing also to give me permission to post it to the website of a group for which I then coordinated activities. (That group was the Triangle Objectivists, headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, and which still meets in that area.) Since my wife, daughter and I moved away from Raleigh, that website disappeared; my website came to life; and D. 's talk moved to (and ever since, has remained on) my website. (D. 's talk now remains here).

To a degree that I had never before experienced, D. 's talk helped me to deepen my appreciation for and understanding of the topics of moralism, acceptance and compassion. In addition, D. helped to stimulate my interest in Buddhism, mindfulness meditation, and the work of Eckhart Tolle, author of the book, The Power of Now. In my estimation, ever since discovering D. 's talk, as I've developed my worldview, I've embraced crucial influences from each such source. I'm confident that I will continue to learn more from and to be deeply affected by these and related influences.

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D. also drew my attention to an email discussion list founded by Joshua Zader called the Mudita Forum.

Mudita Forum is a moderated discussion group for individuals with an interest both in Ayn Rand's ideas (such as her philosophy of Objectivism) and in the consciousness-raising practices associated with Eastern thinking...

The purpose of Mudita Forum is to provide a stimulating, thoughtful environment for discussing Eastern consciousness-raising practices - such as meditation, mindfulness, and the cultivation of presence - while using Objectivism as a basic philosophical frame-of-reference.

I have felt gratitude and appreciation (and I expect to continue to) in relation to my participation in the Mudita Forum which has helped satisfy my need for learning - which learning, when I've applied it, has deepened my understanding and inner peace.

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K. Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication and Communicating Compassionately

In September 2005, through a series of workshops that I learned about and in which I then participated at a Unitarian Universalist church, I discovered something which still stimulates more excitement in me about the evolution of my worldview and practical action than probably anything that I've read since I first discovered the work of Ayn Rand.

(I've written more, earlier in this About Me area, about Ayn Rand, Objectivism and my estimate of their influence on me here and here. I've also written more, also earlier in this About Me area, about Unitarian Universalism, my church participation and my estimate of their influence on me here. In addition, I've written about my church participation in my March 26, 2006 Affirmation, which I've included as a Postscript in this About Me area.)

The something that I discovered with such excitement in September 2005 (and many things about which I've learned in connection with it) has provided me with the equivalent of a road map for the next stage of my personal, philosophical and spiritual evolution. And that something has done so including by further clarifying for me 1) in relation to what in Rand's approach I now feel unsatisfied and why 2) in relation to what, within that approach, I still resonate and why and 3) in relation to what in Unitarian Universalism and in my now, deeply engaging church participation I feel profoundly satisfied and why.

That something is the process that Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D. presents in his book, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life from PuddleDancer Press. If there were one nonfictional book that I would like to persuade nearly anyone to read immediately, this would be it.

I've fallen in love with the language, principles and underlying spirit of Nonviolent Communication (NVC). (NVC and Nonviolent Communication are also sometimes referred to by other names, such as "Compassionate Communication," "Speaking Peace" or even "Tongue Fu." ) Rosenberg's process deeply satisfies my needs for clarity, accessibility, specificity and practicality... and yet, when I examine that process closely, it also helps me to more deeply satisfy my needs for philosophical and personal challenge - and growth.

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In the sense that I classify them as fundamental and dialectical, NVC and related principles even strike me as (dare I say it?) wonderfully radical.

Nothing has clarified for me more fully than NVC why I want to let go of moralistic judgement. In my present interpretation, such moralistic judgement qualifies as a much deeper than merely stylistic impulse in Rand and Objectivism. To my even deeper satisfaction than I experienced when I first enjoyed D. Moskovitz's talk, "Moralism in Objectivism" (in relation to which I felt profoundly moved and which I still especially recommend to self-described "Objectivists," and about which I've written more in this About Me area in the previous section, here), Rosenberg has helped me to understand such moralistic judgement.

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Thanks to Marshall Rosenberg's influence, in essence, in principle and in practice, I remain deeply committed to the perspective that we most fully satisfy our needs only if we communicate with one another in a manner that eliminates any moralistic judgement, manipulation or coercion and instead replaces such tragic strategies with compassionate ones. In addition, Rosenberg has called my attention to subtleties, nuances and subtexts in our language that I'm now convinced contribute overwhelmingly to such tragedies as oppression and violence.

More importantly, though, in my judgment, the principles of this process speak volumes regarding what even one person can do (now quoting from the book's cover) to "Create Your Life, Your Relationships and Your World in Harmony with Your Values." In connection with my exposure to the work of Marshall Rosenberg, in my communication I've experienced passionate engagement and rejuvenated energy.

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I feel delight that I've started three groups myself which meet at church and which focus on the spirit and practice of assertive, authentic, compassionate communication grounded in our understanding of the principles that Marshall Rosenberg has articulated. Although I'm not a certified trainer, I love talking with others about this process.

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a registered service mark of the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC), an organization founded by Marshall Rosenberg, the website for which is located at cnvc.org. The CNVC makes available certified NVC training. To help clarify both 1) that the training and support that I offer is not so certified and 2) that it involves my own interpretation, at church I refer to my own offerings related to this process as Communicating Compassionately (or "Communicating with Compassion" or "CC").

Although Marshall Rosenberg doesn't label himself (nor would I label him) as an Objectivist, to my amazement and in my opinion, he upholds many principles that resemble or overlap with key principles of Objectivist philosophy in ways with which I still resonate.

Per my understanding and interpretation, such common areas between Marshall Rosenberg’s approach and Objectivism include the following.

• making reference to a foundation of specifically observable, objective facts
• championing of individual autonomy and choice, the authentic needs of the self, and integrity
• keen awareness of the crucial need to take personal responsibility for one's every choice, action and even feeling
• rejection of the notion that human beings are "born evil"
• rejection of self-sacrifice and related compromise - including all forms of "giving up" or "giving in"
• championing of consensual, mutually informed relationships that lack any element of coercion or manipulation
• conviction in the harmony of authentic, fundamental human needs (or "interests")
• advocacy of "win-win" interactions grounded in the understanding that given this fundamental harmony, conflicts arise only at the level of chosen strategies, and that individuals can modify such strategies in ways that can more fully meet their needs
• rejection of domination (or "power over") relationships both in personal and political spheres, in favor of mutually beneficial (or "power with") relationships that genuinely serve human life
• championing the need to maintain one’s integrity regardless of the institutional structure in which one finds oneself

I'm grateful that the organizer of The Atlas Society (TAS) Summer Seminar 2007 in July, as part of the official program, approved our proposal, and invited my dear friend and colleague, Fran Hill, and me, so that we led there a three-session workshop on Assertive Communication. We based this series on Marshall Rosenberg's work yet customized it for an Ayn Rand-inspired and largely Objectivist audience.

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L. Walter Kaufmann and Without Guilt and Justice

While still immersed in what I've been learning from Marshall Rosenberg, one of his recommendations led me to a discovery that I've welcomed with both gratitude and excitement. While watching an intermediate level training DVD in the series, Making Life Wonderful, I understood that Marshall Rosenberg recommended reading a book as an aid to learning why Nonviolent Communication asks that we learn to relinquish the concept of "deserving" either reward or punishment. Specifically, Rosenberg recommended the 1973 book Without Guilt and Justice: From Decidophobia to Autonomy by then Princeton professor of philosophy Walter Kaufmann.

I've read the book once completely and I've begun slowly reading it again.

When I now read this book I feel deeply impressed and moved. I've embraced its influence both with what Marshall Rosenberg recommended in it and with additional aspects of its content.

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Such additional aspects include its discussion of "decidophobia" (the fear of making fateful decisions); the lingering - and in my opinion malignant - residue in our culture (and even in Objectivism) of one, decidophobic strategy in particular (Manichaeism); and the book's advocacy of what Kaufmann refers to as "the canon," which he urges us to apply in the process of making decisions.

"The canon" - "the heart of rationality, the essence of scientific method, and the meaning of intellectual integrity" according to Kaufmann - involves asking and answering seven questions with respect to our own and others' propositions, views, beliefs, hypotheses or convictions.

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The questions of the canon are [page 178]:

1. What does this mean?
2. What speaks for it?
3. What speaks against it?
4. What alternatives are available?
5. What speaks for each?
6. What speaks against each?
7. What alternatives are most plausible in light of such considerations?

With his discussion of what he calls "the New Integrity," Kaufmann likewise satisfies my need for stimulation and understanding.

Although I don't agree with everything in the book, I resonate with so much that's in it. I'm deeply grateful to have the opportunity to challenge my principles and practices with its insights and from these to draw inspiration for my personal growth.

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M. The Evolution of my Personal Worldview - and my Living Action Website

With the help of such influences, and many others, I've felt joy in developing my own, systematic worldview and spiritual practice, ever more fully meeting such needs of mine as for meaning, understanding, intelligibility, self-expression, clarity and progress. Even though that worldview draws substantially from the various sources that I've mentioned, by my standards, it also differs significantly from any other orientation with which I'm familiar.

With this website, my mission is

to communicate with compassion and imagination in a manner that honors the human potential, celebrates the joy of life and helps satisfy my need to contribute both to my own and others' well being.

In line with this mission, among other purposes, I have a triple purpose: 1) to gradually articulate my vision and system of ideas more fully; 2) to apply that vision and system to new topics and practices each day; and 3) to ever more fully meet both my own and others' needs. These include needs for meaning, understanding, intelligibility, self-expression, clarity, progress and to contribute.

By engaging in the adventure of meeting such needs I believe we stimulate joy, happiness and fulfillment in both ourselves and others.

So I invite you to participate with me in my journey.

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Postscript

Background, Influences and Worldview In Brief: Affirmation, March 26, 2006

I delivered this Affirmation at Countryside Church Unitarian Universalist on March 26, 2006.

I would like to dedicate this Affirmation to my mother's memory.

Although my wife, Cherita, and I joined this church less than a year ago [in May 2005], my own involvement dates back thirty years. That's when my parents... first brought me to this church [and] where, as a child, I attended religious education classes.

The years since have involved rich exploration.

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In high school, courses in World History and the History of Philosophy especially captured my imagination. I also grew fascinated with the novels and Objectivist philosophy of Russian-born writer Ayn Rand. During recent years, I found inspiration in such sources as Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and peace in such practices as mindfulness meditation.

The development that I've summarized took place largely outside church, however. As a young adult, I attended only occasionally. Eventually drawn by a need to experience a community that would welcome my uniqueness, I wanted to participate again in a Unitarian Universalist congregation.

Just last year, Cherita and I started attending services here with my father, while our daughter, Aliana, attended religious education classes. I quickly found myself delighting in the services and in my interactions with [others], several of whom I remember from when I participated in the church decades ago.

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So you might be tempted to call me a "born-again Unitarian Universalist."

During the last few months, after discovering, here at church, the existence of... Nonviolent Communication [NVC], the work of Marshall Rosenberg has passionately engaged me while revolutionizing my communication and spiritual growth... I'm delighted to be involved now in [three groups which I've started]... which meet here in the church and which have [compassionate, authentic communication as] a topical focus...

[In the space of this Affirmation], I can offer only a whirlwind tour of the positions I take on the religious and philosophical questions that have intrigued human beings since our dawn.

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My outlook is natural rather than supernatural. I remain unconvinced that such things as heaven, hell, ghosts or gods exist.

Even so, I learn much from those who believe in the supernatural. Even if what I gain is metaphorical, I still gain.

I conceive of our human nature as living, conscious, delicately fragile on the one hand and yet amazingly hardy on the other. I also conceive of human nature as composed of three, integrated elements: body, spirit and mind. [In my judgment,] seeming conflicts between these three arise only through obstructed awareness.

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I'm convinced that we are born embodying a life-enriching nature. So to my mind, those human actions that lead to suffering and violence arise not from any "innate evil," but from errors in our education that we [can beneficially] unlearn.

I've even developed my own system of ethics, which I call "alteregoism." In this view, actions that benefit self and actions that benefit others exist in harmony. And only by caring passionately for the needs of the self can we ever hope to create the robust foundation from which we can effectively care compassionately for the needs of others.

[Yet] perhaps I can encapsulate my worldview most helpfully by closing this Affirmation with a reading of my Credo.

My Credo appears on this website, here.

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