Centricities: Centers of Irrational Influence

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Centricities: Centers of Irrational Influence

A child clinging to her mother’s skirt is not an uncommon site. A child with wide eyes and a look of apprehension seeking security and assurance by remaining very close to his mother (his center of balance) is similar to the centricities we all carry forward and often remain with us until we die.

Our centricities, our centers of irrational influence, are often the ego and the group. I suspect that as we get older we focus less on the ego for guidance and more upon the social group. Our nation centric, our ethnic centric, our political centric forces provide us with illusions of security without any independent thinking on our own.

I think that it is worthwhile to focus our attention on the metaphors ‘egocentricity is a disease’ and ‘sociocentricity is a disease’. The cure for both diseases is self-consciousness. Being self-conscious permits us to combat the fever of irrationality caused by both tendencies.

Of the two I suspect sociocentricity causes us and our community the greatest harm. When our ego leads us to do stupid things the harm done is limited because we generally affect only our self and maybe a few others. Sociocentricity, however, can easily be identified as the cause of the destruction and death of millions.

Ethno centric is one form of socio centric attitudes and behavior. Ethno centric is placing ones own race as the privileged group. This form of socio centric behavior is perhaps the most predominate and lethal form of social bias. Regardless of which group we belong to I suspect that one of the most important things one might do to make the world a better place in which to live is for all of us to become self-conscious of these innate human tendencies.

Basic concepts become weapons of warfare within social groups. Basic words such as capitalism, socialism, communism, democracy, freedom, oligarchy, plutocracy, evil, patriotism, terrorism, etc. are twisted and maneuvered to confuse, distort, and to excite members of a group one way or another.

I think that people often have difficulty distinguishing ideological uses of such words from their non ideological uses. What do you think?

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I’ll use one of my favorite examples, a people that I adore, but are nonetheless human in their flaws:

The Chinese.

sociocentric/ethnocentric to an extreme fault. I dated a few Chinese ladies when I was living there, and was met with constant, but polite disgust.

Even here in America, the Chinese immigrants are very ethnocentric, they commune with their, but remain politely tolerant of having to deal with other social entities. They are not likely to change, at least in the near future.

Part of the issue is the depth and length of culture from many of these nations. China and India and many African nations have had thousands of years to build aculturation, and as someone like the fine Tabula Rasa would say, it’s a program instruction now.

If we last another five hundred years, it may change. Until then, it is going to continue to cause wars and bloodshed.

We all like to think our “kind” is the apex, no matter how ludicrous that may appear to a logical mind, such as yours.

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Mast…

It, sociocentricity, is pervasive in all communities and only when we, each as individuals, recognize this can we begin to modify our irrational tendencies.

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I completely understand you coberst, but believe you are liking to oversimplify the situation sir.

These behaviors are ingrained, generation after generation. Certainly awareness is a must needs. But even so, rectifying a behavioral aberration isn’t a simple process. Most often because even though some may say they are “aware” of the behavior, it takes a powerful influence to make an individual aware that they are part of behavior.

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These behaviors are ingrained, generation after generation. Certainly awareness is a must needs. But even so, rectifying a behavioral aberration isn’t a simple process. Most often because even though some may say they are “aware” of the behavior, it takes a powerful influence to make an individual aware that they are part of behavior.

You are correct—these ideologies are layered upon us as we grow from childhood on. We must become critically self-conscious in order to become conscious (focused) of them and then with that consciousness as a base we can begin a slow process of habit change to come to knowledge and understanding and thereby modify these forces. Of course all the while the present plutocratic forces are constantly ingraining other ideologies. We are faced with a constant effort and that is why we need a firm foundation in CT (Critical Thinking).