Individual Excellence: Outline, Beginning of Part I

13 January 2024

OUTLINE

I write for at least two reasons.  Firstly, I write to understand.  Having to put ideas on paper requires analysis and re-creation of a legible rendition of propositions or facts, as then understood.  Secondly, I write to improve lives.  With life experiences, personal and professional, comes insight into the nature of promoting healthy life or eudaimonia*.

I didn’t know this was what was driving me until I was about 35-years-old.  I still don’t know if I was yearning for social or metaphysical* connection.  Regardless, I ended up at the Kolel Institute in uptown Toronto where I was deeply impacted by concepts like shomer* and tikkun olam*.  The latter is the briefest possible articulation of my own purpose which, to define it here, means the sewing together of a torn world.  Its similarity to trauma work is uncanny—something I am seeing here for the first time (see paragraph above, why I write!).

With the identification of purpose comes a need of structure.  There are two structures underlying the ideas in this book.  The first is a four-part invention which can be recalled as the 4Ps: (pronounced, four peas) people, purpose, process, and product.  I believe this to be the DNA of a eudaimonic (well-spirited) human life.  The second, and intersecting structure, is really the five-part articulation of philosophy consisting of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics.  The 4Ps are the more apparent structure, as this book is organized under those headings.  The philosophical work is discussed and interwoven within each of the 4Ps. 

At the heart of this book are two motivations.  The first, is to accelerate the move toward a better time in which some traditional i.e., classical liberal, enlightenment values serve as beacons toward which eudaimonic lives are directed.  The second, is to show, with examples, how these seemingly massive ideas play out in the lives of individual people like the person writing this sentence and the person reading it.  If we are going to get it together as a planetary species and, more microcosmically, as families, things have to change.  The intent of this book is to identify both the things requiring change and healthy targets toward which that change is best directed. 

PART I: People

In how many guises do people appear?  They appear as creatures of the universe, earthlings, citizens of nations, citizens of provinces and states, citizens of regions or cantons, citizens of towns and cities, members of voluntary communities, alumni of schools, employees, family members, and individuals.  That’s eleven identities without much mental effort or drillings down.  All but one show people as members of groups.  That preponderance of group life raises some issues, many of which are addressed in a mode of psychotherapy known as Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT).

EFT begins with a single premise: the relationship we have with our most influential caregiver will imprint our social relations for the remainder of our lives, barring a radical intervention.  This relating style phenomenon is known as attachment*.  Again, to oversimplify, we can attach securely, anxiously, or avoidantly or, more typically, in combinations of these three variants (Johnson, 2019, pp. 18-19) 

I wasn’t aware of this until sometime in my master’s degree in counselling psychology.  That lack of awareness tells me that the general dissemination of attachment theory is low.  And even in that degree, attachment theory was not a primary focus but one of dozens of modes of therapy discussed.  These are not criticisms of my education as much as the presentation of what I now see as an absence of focus on a fundamental human condition.  Phillip Larkin probably illustrated this most memorably:

Despite the bleakness of Larkin’s conclusion, there is wisdom in the general idea that we are affected by the biases of our parents and grandparents, or other influential people in our lives.  This Be The Verse is a ratification of the basic premise unearthed by Bowlby, Ainsworth et al., underlying attachment theory.

To be continued next week.

Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying).  He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes.  He writes to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas.  Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.  Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.

Definitions:

Attachment “n. the emotional bond between a human infant or a young nonhuman animal and its parent figure or caregiver; it is developed as a step in establishing a feeling of security and demonstrated by calmness while in the parent’s or caregiver’s presence. Attachment also denotes the tendency to form such bonds with certain other individuals in infancy as well as the tendency in adulthood to seek emotionally supportive social relationships” (APA, 2024).

Eudaimonia From the Greek, eu, well, and daimon, spirit.  Happiness is often used as the nearest English language equivalent of this word.  Well-spirited seems much fuller, deeper, and more satisfying so that phrase or this word will be used throughout. 

Metaphysics From Aristotle, meta, the things after, phusika, the physics.  Metaphysics includes the sub-studies of ontology (ontos, being; and derivatively, logos, accounting for or the study of); teleology (telos, end or sought destination together with logos, as above), and cosmology.  It may be useful to see metaphysics structurally as the most fundamental aspects of reality.

Shomer In Judaism, one who stays with a deceased person from death until burial.

Tikkun Olam “Hebrew for ‘repairing the world’” (Diament & Cooper, 1991, p. 322).

References

APA (American Psychological Association).  (2024 13 Januay).  APA Dictionary of Psychology. 

https://dictionary.apa.org/attachment

Diament, A. & Cooper, H. (1991).  Living a Jewish Life: Jewish Traditions, Customs, and Values for Today’s Families.  Quill, HarperCollins Publishers.

Johnson, S. M. (2019). Attachment Theory in Practice: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with Individuals, Couples, and Families.  The Guilford Press.

Larkin, P., (1971). This Be The Verse, Poetry Foundation, (2024, 8 January). https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse