Sunday, April 28, 2013

Daniel Yankelovich, "Stepping Off Maslow's Escalator" (1984)


1.       When do we find self-realization?

2.       Is the “self” only defined by caring for others?

3.       Why are we so obsessed with find our-selves?

I don’t think that there is a certain point in everyone’s lives where we find our-selves.  Yankelovich says at one point that someone describes when someone close to them was near death and it was then that they reached self-realization. He also gave the complete opposite example of another person that was near death and how he didn’t seem like himself and that he would reminisce about when he was a child. Personally, I think that not everyone will leave this world having a confident outlook on whether or not they reached self-realization.  It is something you may reach by just living your life and realizing the things, people, places, etc. that you like and that you can relate to. You may think that you have reached self-realization at one point and later on in life realize that you hadn’t.

 I do not know why psychologists and the everyday person obsesses with “finding themselves.” I don’t understand why it is so important to reach self-realization…I think It’s better to go on living your life day to day and not spending so much time on over analyzing whether or not we are the best self we can be. Also, maybe if people didn’t spend so much time analyzing this thought than they might actually reach their “perfect self,” just through living and making mistakes and learning from them.

However, I do think that once you are confident with you and what you have become in your life than comes the caring for others (not that you can’t care for someone/something without reaching self-realization). I just think that once you have reached this point in your life than you can allow yourself to be vulnerable and tell people about the mistakes you’ve gone through in your life, in order to help them with something they might be going through. It’s almost as if you don’t need to be fixing anything in yourself so than you are able to help others with themselves.

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