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Replying to
I used to be a bit of a bleeding heart liberal kid before that incident, but I think that turned me very cautious about trying to help people. That sense that you can only help someone when they are "there" to be helped... you see it in weaker forms in less extreme situations.
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A bit of shorthand/heuristic for this is via Maslow's pyramid. In order for one person to help another at level n, the latter must *exist* at level n+1.
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You can't help with physiological needs if they're not "there" at safety. You can't help with safety if they're not there at "belonging". You can't help at "belonging" if they're not "there" at esteem. You cannot help with esteem if they're not "there" at self-actualization.
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And you cannot help anyone with self-actualization at all, except by accident, because there isn't a higher locus to "stand" at to pull them up. Integrity of the self is a bootstrapped thing. You can only help up to the level the person has already bootstrapped enough to exist.
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I should qualify this with -- *I* am limited in my ability to help others in this progressively constrained way. Others with more natural talent at helping may be able to help others who seem too far gone to me. I don't know.
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To bring this around to those of us living in the conceit of imagining we're "all there" ... to somebody who's bootstrapped to a level beyond what you have, you will appear "homeless" and "nobody at home" and beyond help.
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Incidentally, this isn't limited to humans. You can see animals on this spectrum too, from integrated self that is present at the maximum level that bodily design allows (insects, lizards, cats all have different scopes of self) to various stages of unravelled being.
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An animal that has fallen apart within its envelope of self is a piteous sight in exactly the same way. Even if it's only a bug that will instinctively eat its own severed leg.
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I sometimes wonder... to advanced hyperdimensional aliens, looking down at me, would I appear to be homeless-and-not-at-home, sitting around in a pile of trash-and-not-trash on an 11-dimensional sidewalk? 🤔
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Replying to
4E people talk about this in terms of 'embeddedness', but there's a whole descriptive language going back to von Uexkull's 'umwelt'. What's generally not appreciated is the extent to which different people need to build their environmental niche to be functional people.
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