blog traffic analysis
This is http://www.essayz.com/a9006172.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %IDEAL VALUE BELIEF MEANS GOOD EVIL CONTROL ADDICT 900617 Evil uses can be made even of ideals, values and beliefs which are themselves worthy of respect because of the ways in which they point the way to personal and communal integrity and truth. The manipulative addict seeks to make use of all available means to try to control others. The ideals, values and beliefs of a person can be used as "handles" by which to manipulate the person. Appeals can be made to the person to be faithful to their ideals, values and beliefs---to motivate the person to behave in one way rather than another. The skillful addict can use such appeals to mislead a person by making such appeals in carefully selected contexts with carefully chosen misleading suggestions. Not all appeals to respectable ideals, values and beliefs are appeals which are worthy of respect. Some such appeals are manipulative appeals designed to control people who take the ideals, values and beliefs seriously without regard to context. It is important to look at ideals, values and beliefs within the total context of the present; keeping in mind who is present, and what may be motivating their presentations of appeals. Will being led by present appeals to ideals, values and ideals actually lead to the enhancement of personal and communal integrity? Or to disintegration? We are particularly vulnerable to misleading appeals which remind us of our primary ideals, values and beliefs. If we believe we should be generous, the addict can appeal to our belief in generosity to get us to lift the addict's ordinary burdens in ways which burden us in extraordinary ways. If we believe we should work hard to do well, the addict can encourage us to seek an impossible level of perfection in ways which serve the addict's purposes. If we believe that with God all things are possible, the addict can mislead us to attempt to achieve levels of control which are impossible to us; leading us to think that we can make achievements be possible to us, by trying to associate ourselves with God for whom all things are possible. There are endless possibilities for addicts to create misleading appeals to our ideals, values and belief. If we idolize any system of ideals, values and beliefs we thereby become particularly vulnerable to the manipulations of addicts and codependents; for addictive words of manipulation may appear to us to be the voice of God calling us to be His faithful servants, when in reality the addicts are manipulating us into being their faithful servants. Any system which prescribes how we must behave in certain situations gives addicts the means for manipulating us by manipulating our situation. Any system which we agree to let control us, can become the means by which addicts can systematically control us. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================