In a world where it is so easy to not fit in, how can we create common healing ground with our brothers and sisters? To grow together?
I'm interested in how people feel one with others, through for example having the same identity, which orients their actions, motives, and thoughts to something they have in common – a common essence leading to kindness, compassion, feelings of belonging, shared responsibility, and need-based sharing of resources.
There's one experience I feel is particularly healing: Kama muta is the Sanskrit term for moved by love. It is evoked by a sudden intensification of a communal sharing relation. It is an emotional route to viewing 'out-groups' as more human [1]. How can we cultivate that in our lives more?
It leads to an increase perceived humanness of others because it signals a propitious opportunity for a new or renewed communal sharing relationship with a trustworthy, cooperative, sensitive, loving, and caring human being. Kama muta reduces blatant out-group dehumanisation through warmth and motivation to develop a communal sharing relationship
Otherwise, if that commonality is not created, internalised stigma is associated with a large number of negative outcomes - people with mental illness often apply negative stereotypes, biases, and discrimination to themselves, which impedes their recovery process by eroding their morale and causing increased depression, reduced self-esteem, reduced recovery orientation, reduced empowerment, and increased perceived devaluation and discrimination
It's interesting switching focus from deficits to needs.
How are you meeting your human needs this week?
Human behaviours can be really difficult to understand unless you understand the unmet needs
We all have a need for
- healthy food
- clean water
- shelter
- safety and security
- inclusion
- to feel useful and needed
- love and feel loved
- be acknowledged
- to belong
If these needs are not met, one becomes fearful, selfish, reactionary, irrational, to take more than I need, angry, engages in violence, hoarding, becomes individually focused, engages in risky behaviours,
When needs are met, one is able to be generous, giving, loving, helpful, inspired, insightful, able to empathise
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