What do you think of loyalty?

[Aetherous]

What if you loyally provide shelter to your criminal friend and you come home from work the next day to find a meth lab in your bathroom? Or an eleven-year-old tied-up in your bedroom? Your loyalty still literally always good or do you call the police?

 

Loyalty is the reverse side of the respect coin. Both should be earned and both should be continually reassessed.

 

Allegiance is a tricky thing.

 

Your loyalty to your friend should always be good (for a spiritual practitioner, disloyalty is not ever a virtue)...you don't want to hurt your friend in any way...but that does not mean you allow an eleven year old to be tied up by your friend. That would be betraying your loyalty to the innocence of that child, of course. I would absolutely call the cops on them.

 

Justice is represented by a scale...in one sense, this means that you have to weigh the options, and make the better decision, because there isn't a clear best decision. Things are not black and white. You don't want your friend in prison...but he needs to be there if he's tying up eleven year olds. Preferably a comfy prison...because justice is not about malice, but about ensuring that peace is upheld for all people.

 

My sense of "loyalty" is absolutely toward everyone/mankind, and I wasn't referring to being overly partial toward only some people. For instance, I don't have loyalty to police and "the law" when it comes to things like someone smoking pot or running a red light. I have loyalty to the people involved...and like to think that I always try to weigh the options clearly and make the better decision.

Edited October 22, 2014 by Aetherous

[manitou]

I am so taken by your statement about justice not being about malice, Aetherous. So few seem to understand that. It's merely to protect society, not set up to punish. But so often it becomes about revenge, it seems. A delicate balance between the needs of the victim and the incarceration of the perp. We should be doing so much more for people in prison, and this is coming from a retired cop. The years spent in prison just about ensure that folks will come out worse than when they went in.

 

Loyalty as to the above situations don't take into consideration karma. I think the best thing we can do is just to be a friend, to be there - even if someone has screwed up badly. But that isn't to say that we should interfere with the karma the person has generated on their own. There is a much stronger 'judicial system' that is in play, The Logos, the Tao, whatever we wish to call it. It will always have the final word.

 

I think the loyalty thing has built within it the 'interference' question. Are we so loyal as to run interference for the person in question? If we are, then we're doing them no favor. Their karma is there for a reason.

Edited October 23, 2014 by manitou

[Marblehead]

 

I think the loyalty thing has built within it the 'interference' question. Are we so loyal as to run interference for the person in question? If we are, then we're doing them no favor. Their karma is there for a reason.

I couldn't "Like" the entire post but this is good.

[Unlearner]

I couldn't "Like" the entire post but this is good.

 

Uh oh, MH partially agreed with you, you must be going the wrong direction ;D

[manitou]

I would never run a red light.

[Marblehead]

I would never run a red light.

But you can turn right on red.

[Marblehead]

Very good points.

[manitou]

Actually, Marbles, my comment about running the red light had to do with someone earlier saying they weren't 'loyal to the law' when someone wanted to smoke pot or run a red light. My darn Quote button doesn't work, lol.

[Marblehead]

Actually, Marbles, my comment about running the red light had to do with someone earlier saying they weren't 'loyal to the law' when someone wanted to smoke pot or run a red light. My darn Quote button doesn't work, lol.

That's okay. I enjoy talking with you anyhow.

[Stosh]

Does anyone appreciate disloyalty? and say to themselves, wow , I'm so grateful for having been abandoned!

And who would trust or align with the disloyal?

Yes a person may choose to stand alone, or they might be unburdened at the prospect of no need for loyalty..

I don't really need my cat to be loyal , she is, after all ,just a cat.. and one can certainly live with a situation like that just fine.

But as far as SOCIAL graces go -disloyalty betrayal aloofness disregard aren't considered meritorious.

If there's one thing we look to see in another ,apart from material gain , its probably compassion. Sensing compassion from and for someone else , there is little that cant be excused forgiven or given.

I see the issue of loyalty and compassion revolving around whether one wants to stand with -or apart from- others.

 

To give a crap , or to not give a crap,

THAT is the question...

[manitou]

As luck would have it, I'm reading The Flower Ornament Scripture now (Avatamsaka Sutra), and on page 551 of this 1600 page opus is written the following:

 

 

"The supremely refined pleasure of enlightening beings

They dedicate to all sentient beings:

Though they are dedicated to the benefit of the living,

Yet they have no attachment to dedication".

 

 

This seems to smack of the quality of loyalty to me. If one specifically develops the quality of loyalty within himself because he thinks that loyalty in and of itself is a good thing, he is 'acting with an attachment to dedication', as the Sutra says above. Loyalty in and of itself cannot be evaluated without discernment, I think.

[Taomeow]

In my mind, loyalty is remaining true to commitments we have made. It does not include commitments that were forced upon us by others.

 

In other words, keep your promises.

 

Excellent.

 

Yes, commitments we've made, either explicitly or implicitly.

 

Of course if you made a commitment to one person and he or she proves to be someone very different from who you promised your loyalty to, i.e. he or she obtained your commitment by lying to you or misleading you, I consider such commitment cancelled.

 

This holds true not just for interpersonal but person-community, person-institution, person-society relationships IMO. If you pledge allegiance to a democracy because that's what you believe a political arrangement you're committing to is, only to find that it's really a kleptocracy, a corporatocracy, a fascist totalitarian regime in sheep's skin, an idiocracy, and so on -- do you remain loyal? To WHAT? To what you were supposed to be loyal to when you committed. If the thing you made a commitment to proves to be something else, loyalty means still being true to what you committed to, right? The opposite is called conformism, loyalty that shifts with the shifts of the power structure, always committed to whoever and whatever has the power at the moment.

 

Most people are, socially, conformists. They remain loyal to the thing that is not what they started out being loyal to, but since this new thing has the power, they pretend it's the same thing they pledged allegiance to to begin with. With absolutely disastrous consequences I should add -- for "others" at first, the ones trampled upon, but sooner or later, for the conformists themselves too.

[thelerner]

 

 

Most people are, socially, conformists. They remain loyal to the thing that is not what they started out being loyal to, but since this new thing has the power, they pretend it's the same thing they pledged allegiance to to begin with. With absolutely disastrous consequences I should add -- for "others" at first, the ones trampled upon, but sooner or later, for the conformists themselves too.

That's the danger and the dark side, yet (imo) it'd be a tragedy to live with no sense of loyalty. Never experiencing total surrender to something or someone else.

 

 

I'm reminded of a story about the great inventor Buckminster Fuller; a student listening to him, said 'So we shouldn't get obsessed?'. He replied back, 'No, you have to get obsessed; that is the path to breakthrough. But you have to know when to leave the obsession behind'

*I remember reading that a long time ago. Its not exact and I couldn't find the quote on the internet.

[Taomeow]

That's the danger and the dark side, yet (imo) it'd be a tragedy to live with no sense of loyalty. Never experiencing total surrender to something or someone else.

 

 

I'm reminded of a story about the great inventor Buckminster Fuller; a student listening to him, said 'So we shouldn't get obsessed?'. He replied back, 'No, you have to get obsessed; that is the path to breakthrough. But you have to know when to leave the obsession behind'

*I remember reading that a long time ago. Its not exact and I couldn't find the quote on the internet.

 

Of course people who don't have a sense of loyalty as a simple human instinct (which should be activated by healthy rather than neurotic or psychotic parenting early on, and is often turned off precisely by the latter) are also known as traitors. Under normal natural conditions we are loyal by design, because no other creature on earth is born as helpless as the human baby and remains as dependent on the parents for as long. We survive only if someone is loyal to us, and from there we proceed as social creatures who could never survive if this loyalty didn't extend to the larger group (but no larger than 7 to love simultaneously and no larger than 120 to know personally in a lifetime -- beyond that we start malfunctioning, a fact of human psychology.)

 

A natural born (or should I say made, at a very early developmental stage) traitor will later rationalize the uselessness of loyalty every which way, but ultimately it boils down to some gaping holes in the soul. I notice that the vacuum in that hole is what sucks in the suckers who would trust the traitors. Traitors are often charismatic. You can't betray if you don't attract first. But thank god our interactions in the world are not limited to those with people who act out their being damaged by damaging other people. Traitors are not whole, loyal people are -- under normal human conditions. Of course when the conditions lose their normal human nature and quality, one has to engage the mind to sort out who or what to be loyal to. But under natural conditions it was the heart's decision, a no-brainer.

Edited October 27, 2014 by Taomeow

[Marblehead]

 

Of course if you made a commitment to one person and he or she proves to be someone very different from who you promised your loyalty to, i.e. he or she obtained your commitment by lying to you or misleading you, I consider such commitment cancelled.

 

Excellent response. I will speak to only this.

 

 

And this recalls the second half of my understandings regarding loyalty and making promises:

 

We should make as few promises as possible and be sure that we are at least 99 percent sure that we can follow through on the promises we do make.

 

When I was active in the Army I promised loyalty to the concepts upon which my country was established. I never promised loyalty to any of its politicians.

[Brian]

That's the danger and the dark side, yet (imo) it'd be a tragedy to live with no sense of loyalty. Never experiencing total surrender to something or someone else.

 

 

I'm reminded of a story about the great inventor Buckminster Fuller; a student listening to him, said 'So we shouldn't get obsessed?'. He replied back, 'No, you have to get obsessed; that is the path to breakthrough. But you have to know when to leave the obsession behind'

*I remember reading that a long time ago. Its not exact and I couldn't find the quote on the internet.

<short_sidetrack>

Bucky did much of his work here in my little home town. The photos of his students at Black Mountain College trying to build a dome out of Venetian blind slats are great.

</short_sidetrack>

[manitou]

(response to short sidetrack)

 

How the hell did he do that? Venetian blind slats? Did he use a mold and re-melt them? Will they actually follow a curve? I'm guessing he had to attach them all at a terminal end and tie together with a ring of some sort. I can't imagine those things following a true arc. Bucky had one fertile mind, didn't he?

 

(response to short sidetrack)

Edited October 27, 2014 by manitou

[thelerner]

Of course people who don't have a sense of loyalty as a simple human instinct (which should be activated by healthy rather than neurotic or psychotic parenting early on, and is often turned off precisely by the latter) are also known as traitors. Under normal natural conditions we are loyal by design, because no other creature on earth is born as helpless as the human baby and remains as dependent on the parents for as long. We survive only if someone is loyal to us,

Almost a side track I was reading a week or two about a branch of advanced humanoids, not neanderthals or cromagnon but another less known group that probably had a good shot at being the dominant race today. The anthropologist wrote what might have hurt them is that they seemed to mature much faster then we do. They left home early. He theorized this seeming advantage led to weaker group cohesion and contributed to there demise.

 

Who knows. Maybe love (& loyalty its less emotional cousin) is a much stronger survival mechanism then we usually recognize. Ofcourse our species does pretty well with the darker emotions too, perhaps another reason we're here and they are not.

[RiverSnake]

 

Excellent.

 

Yes, commitments we've made, either explicitly or implicitly.

 

Of course if you made a commitment to one person and he or she proves to be someone very different from who you promised your loyalty to, i.e. he or she obtained your commitment by lying to you or misleading you, I consider such commitment cancelled.

 

This holds true not just for interpersonal but person-community, person-institution, person-society relationships IMO. If you pledge allegiance to a democracy because that's what you believe a political arrangement you're committing to is, only to find that it's really a kleptocracy, a corporatocracy, a fascist totalitarian regime in sheep's skin, an idiocracy, and so on -- do you remain loyal? To WHAT? To what you were supposed to be loyal to when you committed. If the thing you made a commitment to proves to be something else, loyalty means still being true to what you committed to, right? The opposite is called conformism, loyalty that shifts with the shifts of the power structure, always committed to whoever and whatever has the power at the moment.

 

Most people are, socially, conformists. They remain loyal to the thing that is not what they started out being loyal to, but since this new thing has the power, they pretend it's the same thing they pledged allegiance to to begin with. With absolutely disastrous consequences I should add -- for "others" at first, the ones trampled upon, but sooner or later, for the conformists themselves too.

"Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau

Edited October 27, 2014 by OldChi

[Brian]

(response to short sidetrack)

 

How the hell did he do that? Venetian blind slats? Did he use a mold and re-melt them? Will they actually follow a curve? I'm guessing he had to attach them all at a terminal end and tie together with a ring of some sort. I can't imagine those things following a true arc. Bucky had one fertile mind, didn't he?

 

(response to short sidetrack)

 

 

They tried next with some lightweight piping and were successful.

[manitou]

Thank you for that!

 

Okay, I can see by the design they weren't going for exactitude.

[Brian]

Keep in mind, you are looking at the first attempt at a working geodesic dome, built by college students under the direct supervision of Fuller himself. That's his work you are looking at. I think it is pretty awesome.

 

Actually, Black Mountain College was pretty awesome -- it's history is startling for moat who have never heard of it. It's campus is now a summer camp and the home for the biannual Lake Eden Arts Festival.

[manitou]

Wow. Was Fuller the designer of the geodesic dome altogether?

[Brian]

Wow. Was Fuller the designer of the geodesic dome altogether?

Not strictly speaking but in a practical sense. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on geodesic domes:

The first dome that could be called "geodesic" in every respect was designed after World War I by Walther Bauersfeld, chief engineer of the Carl Zeiss optical company, for a planetarium to house his planetarium projector. The dome was patented, constructed by the firm of Dykerhoff and Wydmann on the roof of the Zeiss plant in Jena, Germany, and opened to the public in July 1926. Some 20 years later, R. Buckminster Fuller named the dome "geodesic" from field experiments with artist Kenneth Snelson at Black Mountain College in 1948 and 1949. Snelson and Fuller worked developing what they termed "tensegrity," an engineering principle of continuous tension and discontinuous compression that allowed domes to deploy a lightweight lattice of interlocking icosahedrons that could be skinned with a protective cover. Although Fuller was not the original inventor, he developed the intrinsic mathematics of the dome, thereby allowing popularization of the idea — for which he received U.S. patent 2,682,235 29 June 1954.

 

The geodesic dome appealed to Fuller because it was extremely strong for its weight, its "omnitriangulated" surface provided an inherently stable structure, and because a sphere encloses the greatest volume for the least surface area.

[manitou]

Interesting. I note that 'tensegrity' is also the word for the magical passes of the Castaneda tradition! Similar to qigong but a little more aerobic.