Top 10 Signs You May be a Feverish Selfish Little Clod

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“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” – George Bernard Shaw

I came across the following post on another blog while Googling for the above quote.  I liked the post so much that I am reblogging it here.  Here is the blog post in its entirity. 

Enjoy!
John

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Top 10 Signs You May be a Feverish Selfish Little Clod

http://brendanmcphillips.com/2007/10/27/top-10-signs-you-may-be-a-feverish-selfish-little-clod/

Posted on October 27th

 

As a follow-up to my last article about the True Joy in Life, here are the top 10 signs that you may be a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world is not devoting itself to making you happy:

1. You mostly talk about yourself self. Somehow every conversation you’re in becomes focused on you and the events of your life. Now of course you can talk about yourself but you should also make a point to express a sincere interest in others.
2. You litter. The self-centered arrogance of a clod who litters, even those who throw a small cigarette butt out their car window, is saying that the world is their trash can and that someone else will take care of it.
3. You don’t consider the impact of your actions on others or, if you do, you don’t care. These people are so into their world that they have no idea of their rudeness. Examples include people who talk loud on their cellphone in public, who put bags on the seat next them on the train or bus, who drive too aggressively without following the rules of the road and who talk loud in their office cubicle.
4. You see the world through “you-colored” glasses. You only relate to how any local, nation or world event effects you personally. If your town wants to raise money for more public space, you only focus only on what it will cost you rather than how it will benefit the community. You insist that the government help the “little guy” only so that the “little guy” isn’t so impoverished that he has to mug you when you go downtown.
5. You have an entitlement mentality and expect to reap without sowing. Without getting too political, this is the general mentality of the how-can-the-government-fix-this crowd. If you are somehow inconvenienced, your first thought is how you can sue and win money. This story about a bride who is suing her florist epitomizes this and Elana Glatt (nee Elbogan), David Glatt and Tobi Glatt seem to be feverish selfish little clods.
6. You don’t fulfill the responsibilities or commitments that you’ve made either consciously or unconsciously. You agreed to take a job to help a company or organization fulfill it’s purpose and it has either stated or implied time and duties and you slack off. You agreed to marry and have children with all the responsibilities implied in both and you don’t live up to them.
7. You only see extremes in every idea, person or organization. For example you believe either that republicans are totalitarian dictators who will destroy the US with their arrogance or that democrats are wimpy losers who will destroy the US with their impotence.
8. Your understanding and perspective of life are limited. You think that anything that causes discomfort is bad and therefore you’re entitled to complain, worry and bitch. With a broader perspective you would realize that what you thought was “bad” turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.
9. You think that people who are different from you are the problem with the world. You have established a “bad guy”, either a race, religion, political persuasion, people in power or who are rich. This holds true from the black man who thinks that the white man is holding him down to the groups like Al Qaeda who think that the United States is the cause of all the world’s problems. Osama Bin Laden is the epitome of the feverish selfish little clod.
10. You give only when you expect to get. Your immediate reaction when you are asked to give for some reason is how it will impact you. You look for either a direct benefit or an implied benefit such as an increased social status everyone knows that you gave and how much.

The antidote to this is to maturity, compassion, tolerance and wisdom. Children are allowed be be somewhat self-centered but we’re meant to grow up and realize that we need to be sensitive to our actions on others. Also we need to remember that all our desires are not meant to be fulfilled. Most of our desires are base and we’re here to rise and shine!

Cheers,
Brendan

Unmasking & Facing Oneself

“I didn’t make you do anything that wasn’t in you already. People are such hypocrites. They walk through their whole lives playing innocent until the day they die; but they’re not innocent. I showed you that.” – from the motion picture “Bad Influence”

“I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.” – Nietzsche

How much do any of us really know about ourselves and what we’re really capable of unless we’ve been tried and tested at the extremes, or at least outside of our comfort zone?

We gain knowledge and glimpses of who we are and might become whenever we’re forced outside our comfort zones.

But most of us fight tooth and nail for our comfort zones and to not have to leave them. We fight for safety, comfort, routine, security. And thus in many ways, these fights are for our own survival—for the continuation of who we think we are—the idea or concept we have of ourselves, and fights against new and likely deeper self-knowledge. Instead we tend to fight to stay in our comfort zones and for the reinforcement of the limited information we already possess about ourselves.

Thus what we know of ourselves may really be knowledge of a very limited self—and thus it is a false- or a pseudo-self, a mask.

“The being of man is situated behind a curtain. . . . What he can know of himself is only what is lent him by circumstance. My ‘I’ is hidden from me (and from others).” – Simone Weil, “Gravity and Grace,” pg. 85

“Our shortcomings are concealed from us as long as luck helps us.” – Hadrat Ali, “Living and Dying with Grace,” pg. 8.

“Through changes in circumstances the essence of individuals is known.” – Hadrat Ali, “Living and Dying with Grace,” pg. 41.

What we are know of ourselves is likely a “cloistered” or “hot house” version of ourselves. It’s not a very full or large version of ourselves—not a self based on a wide breadth of exposure to different difficulties and circumstances, but rather a self likely based on a rather limited exposure to life and circumstances.

Who we truly are, deep down, likely requires us to be exposed to a wide variety of circumstances and experiences, so that we can better become aware of our potentials and tendencies and traits.

To discern our essence, to unmask ourselves, likely requires that we live and think and read somewhat more broadly than we are now—that we consider this phrase of Terrence’s a bit more closely : “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto“—”I am a man, I consider nothing that is human alien to me.

Which doesn’t mean that we just start throwing ourselves around willy-nilly into every life situation and difficulty that we can, irrespective of consequences and dangers, but perhaps that we start to understand better the possible consequences of honoring our comfort zone and saying no to difficulty and new things too much.

[E]ach human being has a set repertoire of roles which he plays in ordinary circumstances. He has a role for every kind of circumstance in which he ordinarily finds himself in life.

But put him into even only slightly different circumstances and he is unable to find a suitable role—if only for a short time—and for that short time he becomes completely himself.

Each person’s repertoire is very limited. And each person is not one “I” or role; each person has at least five or six I’s or roles—one or two for his family, one or two at the office (one for his subordinates, one for his superiors), one for his friends when he’s out on the town with them, and perhaps one who is interested in high-minded ideas and likes intellectual conversations.

And at different times the person is fully identified with one of these I’s and is unable to separate himself from it.

To see the roles, to know one’s repertoire—particularly to know its limitedness—is to know a great deal.

But more important than that is that, outside his repertoire, a person feels very uncomfortable should something push him, if only temporarily, out of his usual routine or accustomed ways, and he tries his hardest to return to any one of his usual roles.

Eventually, and usually sooner rather than later, he falls back into the rut, and everything at once goes smoothly again, and the feeling of awkwardness and tension disappears.

This is how it is in life.

But in order to grow, one must become reconciled to this awkwardness and tension and to the feeling of discomfort and helplessness. Only by allowing oneself to experience this discomfort can a person begin to really observe himself.

And it is clear why this is so. When a person is not playing any of his usual roles, when he cannot find a suitable role in his repertoire, he feels that he is naked, undressed. He is cold and ashamed, vulnerable and exposed, and he wants to run away from everybody.

The question then arises: what does he want? A quiet life? Or to work on himself?

If he wants a quiet, comfortable life, it’s clear what he must do: he must certainly first of all never move out of his repertoire. Because in his usual roles he feels comfortable and at peace.

But if he wants to work on himself, he must forsake his own comfort and destroy his own peace. Because to have them both together—a quiet life and to work comfortably on oneself—is in no way possible.

A person must make a choice.

(G. I. Gurdjieff, quoted in P. D. Ouspensky “In Search of the Miraculous,” pp. 239-40.)

“Sigmund Freud once asserted, ‘Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge.’ Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, [in Auschwitz,] the ‘individual differences’ did not ‘blur’ but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints.” (Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” p. 178)

Related articles

• We Must Choose (courageandchoice.wordpress.com)
• Why Do We Think the Way We Think? (fullcatastropheliving.wordpress.com)

Marianne Williamson on “Facing Oneself”—Real Warriorship 101

As anyone who has ever been in serious psychotherapy is well aware, the process of personal growth isn’t always easy. We must face our own ugliness. . . . You end up seeing things about yourself that maybe you’d rather not see.  We have a lot of armor that has accumulated in front of our hearts—a lot of fear self-righteously masquerading as something else. . . . [And usually] [w]e . . . must become painfully aware of the unworkability of a pattern before we’re willing to give it up. It often seems, in fact, that our lives get worse rather than better when we begin to work deeply on ourselves. [But] life doesn’t actually get worse; it’s just that we feel our own transgressions more because we’re no longer anesthetized by unconsciousness. We’re no longer distanced through denial or dissociation from our own experience. We’re starting to see the truth about the games we play.

This process can be so painful that we are tempted to go backwards. It takes courage. This is often called the path of the spiritual warrior—to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.

– Marianne Williamson, “A Return to Love,” pp. 132-133