On Apr 28, 12:26 am, kevirwin comcast.net> wrote:

yeah that was an in joke with Brian.

Well i like you too K e v.

I am typically cynical. Here's too longish articles. worth reading
imo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism

"Nearly 2000 years after certain Greek philosophers first embraced
classical cynicism, 17th and 18th century writers such as Shakespeare,
Swift, and Voltaire, following in the traditions of Geoffrey Chaucer
and François Rabelais, used irony, sarcasm, and satire (which had
never gone out of fashion) to ridicule human conduct and revive
cynicism. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary and cinema
figures such as Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, H.L. Mencken, and W.C.
Fields used cynicism as way of communicating their low opinions of
certain manifestations of human nature. By 1930, Bertrand Russell — in
the essay On Youthful Cynicism[5] — could describe the extent to which
(in his view) cynicism had penetrated parts of Western mass
consciousness, and could note particular areas partially deserving of
cynicism: religion, country (patriotism), progress, beauty, truth. The
first half of the 20th century, with its two World Wars, offered
little hope to people wishing to embrace an idealism diametrically
opposed to cynicism: seeing fellow-humans as trustworthy, well-
intentioned, caring, decent, and honourable.

The second half of the 20th century featured a general
rejection[citation needed] of virtue and self-restraint, and a
movement toward materialism — particularly in what Pope John Paul II
termed "the cynical society of consumerism" in his 1984 Christmas
remarks. The same communications media whose advertising bolstered
consumerism also occasionally promoted entertaining conspiracy
theories, thus adding the long-standing traditions of conspiracies to
a new "hidden agenda" dimension to the cynicism of some.

In recent decades, the study of human nature — one book's title
portrays a Battle for Human Nature[9] — focused new attention on
cynicism.[citation needed] In attempting to counter an alleged
widespread belief portraying "jungle ethics" and the associated
competition, self-interest, and survival of the fittest as innate to
the human animal, researchers[who?] with an opposing agenda looked for
a genetic basis for co-operation and altruistic behaviour, and for
signs that human societal participation ultimately built upon co-
operation and altruism. Alfie Kohn argued that a person's cynicism
stems from escaping responsibility, another belief sees cynicism as
following sophistication in human psychological development.

In 2005, researchers at Yale University found that children as young
as eight years old could discount the statements of others as
tarnished with "self-interest".

Brian takes about:
Self-actualization — a concept Maslow attributed to Kurt Goldstein,
one of his mentors — is the instinctual need of humans to make the
most of their abilities and to strive to be the best they can. Working
toward fulfilling our potential, toward becoming all that we are
capable of becoming.

In Maslow's scheme, the final stage of psychological development comes
when the individual feels assured that his physiological, security,
affiliation and affection, self-respect, and recognition needs have
been satisfied. As these become dormant, he becomes filled with a
desire to realize all of his potential for being an effective,
creative, mature human being. "What a man can be, he must be"[1], is
the way Maslow expresses it.

Maslow's need hierarchy is set forth as a general proposition and does
not imply that everyone's needs follow the same rigid pattern. For
some people, self-esteem seems to be a stronger motivation than love.
Mussolini, for example, alienated his closest friends by undertaking
reckless military adventures to achieve status as a conqueror. (This
example can also be used to illustrate the means-to-an-end dilemma of
human motivation. That is, Mussolini may have reached for status as a
means to gaining the affection of Adolf Hitler. More will be said
about this problem later.) For some people, the need to create is
often a stronger motivation than the need for food and safety. Thus,
the artist living in poverty is a classic example of reversing the
standard hierarchy of needs. Similarly, persons who have suffered
hunger or some other deprivation for protracted periods may live
happily for the rest of their lives if only they can get enough of
what they lacked. In this case, the level of aspiration may have
become permanently lowered and the higher-order, less prepotent needs
may never become active. There are also cases of people's martyring
themselves for causes and suffering all kinds of deprivations,
particularly in the physiological, safety, and sometimes social
categories, to achieve their goals.

Maslow writes the following of self-actualizing people:

They embrace the facts and realities of the world (including
themselves) rather than denying or avoiding them.
They are spontaneous in their ideas and actions.
They are creative.
They are interested in solving problems; this often includes the
problems of others. Solving these problems is often a key focus in
their lives.
They feel a closeness to other people, and generally appreciate life.
They have a system of morality that is fully internalized and
independent of external authority.
They have discernment and are able to view all things in an objective
manner.
To further confound the problem of understanding motivation, Maslow
points out that motives are not always conscious.[1] In the average
person, he believes, they are more often unconscious than conscious —
showing the influence on his thinking of Freudian psychologists who
have long been concerned with the hidden causes of human behavior.

In Maslow's theory, then, human needs are arranged in a hierarchy of
importance. Needs emerge only when higher-priority needs have been
satisfied. By the same token, satisfied needs no longer influence
behavior. This point seems worth stressing to managers and
administrators, who often mistakenly assume that money and other
tangible incentives are the only cures for morale and productivity
problems. It may be, however, that the need to participate, to be
recognized, to be creative, and to experience a sense of worth are
better motivators in an affluent society, where many have already
achieved an acceptable measure of freedom from hunger and threats to
security and personal safety, and are now driven by higher-order
psychological needs.

In short, self-actualization is reaching one's fullest potential.
However, to further clarify “There are certain conditions which are
immediate prerequisites for the basic need satisfactions.” “Such
conditions as freedom to speak, freedom to do what one wishes so long
as no harm is done to others, freedom to express one's self, freedom
to investigate and seek for information, freedom to defend one's self,
justice, fairness, honesty, orderliness in the group are examples of
such preconditions for basic need satisfactions.” [1]

According to Maslow, the tendencies of self-actualizing people are as
follows:

1. Awareness

efficient perception of reality
freshness of appreciation
peak experiences
ethical awareness
2. Honesty

philosophical sense of humour
social interest
deep interpersonal relationships
democratic character structure
3. Freedom

need for solitude
autonomous, independent
creativity, originality
spontaneous
4. Trust

problem centered
acceptance of self, others, nature
resistance to enculturation - identity with humanity
Maslow discovered that healthy individuals are motivated toward what
he termed self-actualization, and noted that Self-actualizing people
had strikingly similar characteristics. He described self-
actualization as:

“an episode or spurt in which the powers of the person come together
in a particularly and intensely enjoyable way, and in which he is more
integrated and less split, more open for experience, more
idiosyncratic, more perfectly expressive or spontaneous, or fully
functioning, more creative, more humorous more ego-transcending, more
independent of his lower needs, etc. He becomes in these episodes more
truly himself, more perfectly actualising his potentialities, closer
to the core of his being, more fully human. Not only are these his
happiest and most thrilling moments, but they are also moments of
greatest maturity, individuation, fulfilment - in a word, his
healthiest moments.

Self-actualising people, those who have come to a high level of
maturation, health and self-fulfilment, have so much to teach us that
sometimes they seem almost like a different breed of human beings.”

The following descriptions have been compiled from the writings of
Maslow and others.

1. Clearer perception of reality. Self-actualizing people perceive
reality more effectively than others and are more comfortable with it.
They have an accurate perception of what exists rather than a
distortion of perception by one's needs, and possess an ability to be
objective about their own strengths, possibilities and limitations.
They judge experiences, people and things correctly and efficiently,
and have an unusual ability to detect the spurious, the fake, and the
dishonest. They are not afraid of the unknown and can tolerate the
doubt, uncertainty, and tentativeness accompanying the perception of
the new and unfamiliar.

2. Acceptance of self, others, and nature. Self-actualizing persons
are not ashamed or guilty about their human nature, with its
shortcoming, imperfections, frailties, and weaknesses. They can accept
their own human shortcomings, without condemnation. Nor are they
critical of these aspects of other people. They respect and esteem
themselves and others. Moreover, they are honest, open, genuine,
without pose or facade. They are not, however, self-satisfied but are
concerned about discrepancies between what is and what might be or
should be in themselves, others, and society.

3. Spontaneity. Self-actualizing people are relatively spontaneous in
their behaviour, and far more spontaneous than that in their inner
life, thoughts and impulses. Self-actualising persons are not hampered
by convention, but they do not flout it. They are not conformists, but
neither are they anti-conformist for the sake of being so. They might
act conventionally, but they seldom allow convention to keep them from
doing anything they consider important or basic. They are not
externally motivated or even goal-directed; rather their motivation is
the internal one of growth and development, the actualization of
themselves and their potentialities.

4. Problem-centering. Self-actualizing people have a problem-solving
orientation towards life instead of an orientation centered on self.
They are interested in solving problems; this often includes the
problems of others. Solving these problems is often a key focus in
their lives. They commonly have a mission in life, some problem
outside themselves that enlists much of their energies. In general
this mission is unselfish and is involved with the philosophical and
the ethical.

5. Detachment and the need for solitude. Self-actualizing people enjoy
solitude and privacy. It is often possible for them to remain above
the battle, unruffled and undisturbed by that which upsets others.
They may even appear to be asocial. It is perhaps, related to an
abiding sense of security and self-sufficiency.

6. Autonomy, independent of culture and environment. Self-actualizing
persons are not dependent for their main satisfactions on other people
or culture or means-to-ends, or in general, on extrinsic
satisfactions. Rather they are dependent for their own development and
continued growth upon their own potentialities and latent resources.
The meaning of their life is self-decision, self-governing and being
an active, responsible, self-disciplined deciding person rather than a
pawn or a person helplessly ruled by others.

7. Continued freshness of appreciation. Self-actualizing people have a
wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again the basic pleasures
of life. They experience awe, pleasure, and wonder in their everyday
world, such as nature, children, music and sexual experience. They
approach these basic experiences with awe, pleasure, wonder and even
ecstasy.

8. The mystic experience, the oceanic feeling. Self-actualizing people
commonly have mystic or `peak' experiences or times of intense
emotions in which they transcend self. During a peak experience, they
experience feelings of ecstasy, awe, and wonder with feelings of
limitless horizons opening up, feelings of unlimited power and at the
same time feelings of being more helpless than ever before. The
experience ends with the conviction that something extremely important
and valuable has happened so that the person is to some extent
transformed and strengthened by the experience that has a carry-over
into everyday life.

9. Oneness with humanity. Self-actualizing people have deep feelings
of identification, sympathy and affection for other people, and a deep
feeling of empathy and compassion for human beings in general. This
feeling is, in a sense, unconditional in that it exists along with the
recognition of the existence in others of negative qualities that may
provoke occasional anger, impatience, and disgust.

10. Deep interpersonal relations. Self-actualizing people have deeper
and more profound inter-personal relationships than most adults, but
not necessarily deeper than children. They are capable of more
closeness, greater love, more perfect identification, more erasing of
ego boundaries than other people would consider possible. One
consequence is that self-actualised people have especially deep ties
with rather few individuals and their circle of friends is small. They
tend to be kind or at least patient to almost everyone, yet they do
speak realistically and harshly of those whom they feel deserve it —
especially the hypocritical, pretentious, pompous, or the self-
inflated individual.

11. Democratic character structure. Self-actualizing people are
democratic in the deepest possible sense. They are friendly towards
everyone regardless of class, education, political beliefs, race, or
colour. They believe it is possible to learn something from everyone.
They are humble in the sense of being aware of how little they know in
comparison with what could be known and what is known by others. They
are ready and willing to learn from anyone. They respect everyone as a
potential contributor to their knowledge, merely because everyone is a
human being.

12. Ethical means towards moral ends. Self-actualizing persons are
highly ethical. They clearly distinguish between means and ends and
subordinate means to ends. Their notions of right and wrong and of
good and evil are often not conventional ones.

13. Philosophical, unhostile sense of humor. Self-actualizing people
have a keen, unhostile sense of humour. They don't laugh at jokes that
hurt other people or are aimed at others' inferiority — unless it is a
convention that for some reason they happen to decide to follow in
that situation. They can make fun of others in general — or of
themselves — especially when they are foolish or try to be big when
they are small. They are inclined towards thoughtful humour that
elicits a smile, is intrinsic to the situation, and spontaneous.

14. Creativity. Self-actualizing people are highly imaginative and
creative. The creativity involved here is not special-talent
creativity. It is a creativity potentially inherent in everyone but
usually suffocated by acculturation. It is a fresh, naive, direct way
of looking at things, rather similar to the naive and universal
creativity of unspoiled children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization#Self-actualization