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LIVING WISELY, DEEPLY, AND COMPASSIONATELY MEANS – living well through wisdom, reason, awareness, compassion, contact, acceptance, and wise use of one’s capacities and opportunities.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS WEBSITE IS–
Investigating the Identification and Application of Adaptive Values to Human Interactions and Societies
    and
Exploring the Skills Needed To Be Wise, Mature, and Compassionate (and Therefore Emotionally Healthy)
The personal and collective problems of human beings are distressingly obvious.  Despite our clearly successful adaptation as a species to life on this planet, we continue to suffer significant and often unnecessary psychological pain, and we continue to bicker, deceive, and harm each other in our collective life.  The purpose of this website is the alleviation of some of this suffering and fighting, through clarifying discussion of the  identification and application of adaptive values to human interactions and societies and through elucidation of the skills necessary in order for us individually to be wise, mature, and compassionate.  I hope to demonstrate that we can recognize values that promote good emotional health as well as peaceful and cooperative relationships and that we can recognize that it is only our individual reluctance to live by those values that prevents us from achieving more cooperative and peaceful societal functioning.  The concepts and values important for gaining wisdom and maturity and being compassionate can be stated clearly and in a way that make them seem desirable to cultivate in our individual lives.  Adopting these concepts and values will move us toward being emotionally healthy and living lives with the greatest possible satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, 
On this blog, then, you will find—
  • statements about a philosophy of life that will maximize cooperation, love, and peace in our lives (and explanations of why some other philosophies will not lead to these ends)
  • illustrations of unnecessary individual psychological suffering unnecessary societal problems, and unnecessary fighting and violence between us
  • explanation of the qualities needed for a person to be wise, mature, and compassionate (and therefore to be emotionally healthy) and discussion of how to pursue those qualities
  • adaptive attitudes and solutions to age-old human problems, such as painful self-esteem, frustration, disappointment, rejection, anger, and death!

Every philosophical or therapeutic system has goals in terms of the kind of people or the kind of life it wishes to produce. The choice of principles here is aimed at producing loving, cooperative, self-aware, self-confident, empathic,  wise, and compassionate people. This describes a way of being and an existence that has the greatest chance of maximizing fulfillment, contentment, and satisfaction, and of minimizing conflict, hatred, and violence.

The measure of a life well lived lies in both the subjective experience and the behavior of the person.

“Psychological health” is having all of one’s capacities available for use in seeking achievement of one’s goals (and having few, if any, internal conflicts or “symptoms” that would interfere with use of one’s capacities), and having an adequately satisfying subjective state (including feeling some amounts of happiness and hope, and ultimately some amounts of satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment).

As a very brief summary, this relatively happy and productive life can be achieved by cultivation of these key skills for living–                                                          honesty                                                                                                                                            responsibility                                                                                                                               acceptance                                                                                                                                    love                                                                                                                                                    empathy                                                                                                                                        equality                                                                                                                                           cooperation                                                                                                                                   fairness                                                                                                                                             self-control                                                                                                                                   autonomy                                                                                                                                       skills for dealing with one’s emotions

The psychological problems of human beings can be usefully conceptualize in the categories of                                                                                                    (1) dealing with reality (including assessing reality
accurately),
(2) managing eotions
(3) relations with oneself (self-concept, self-esteem, self-
love, etc.)
(4) relations with others.

A summary of the system ideas may be gained from reading
“What I Believe:  An Idealist Deals With Reality”   (click here to read)

PERMISSIONS:  Dr. Ebbe’s writings may be printed out for personal and family use, and they may be reproduced for teaching purposes, with appropriate credit.  They may not be used, adapted, or copied for any money-making purpose.  The writings of others posted on this website may not be copied for any purpose.