Good post. Knowledge of and love of self is an important building block in everything. It's a complex and difficult process, but in many ways you can boil it down to 'pride', an often maligned value. That is to say, pride as a concept of self-belief, not the kind of pride that you adopt as a surface level set of behaviours to cover deep insecurity. The trust that's lacking in society is a reflection of how many people have no real pride in themselves, since how can you expect anyone to trust you if you don't trust yourself? And what value can there be in obtaining other people's trust at that stage, except as a means of manipulating them?

Think of the word 'demoralisation' as Bezmenov used it. The most frequent usage of it in everyday society tends to refer to people's morale, their spirit, their courage. Someone with no courage has no trust in himself or other people to withstand negative outcomes. No pride, no trust. But such a person becomes 'demoralised' in an extra sense: they get divorced from any concept of moral values - because they lose all firm foundation of self, upon which to ground any of their ideals.

Being bereft of self-belief in this way, it really does seem like we've cultivated a generation or several generations of people who perform the surface level functions of real human behaviour but only in a spiritless, scared, shortsighted and treacherous way. From a deeper moral analysis, they seem hollow and they make for a brittle and seemingly soulless society.

Good post. Knowledge and love of self is an important building block in everything. It's a complex and difficult process, but in many ways you can boil it down to 'pride', an often maligned value. That is to say, pride as a concept of self-belief, not the kind of pride that you adopt as a surface level set of behaviours to cover deep insecurity. The trust that's lacking in society is a reflection of how many people have no real pride in themselves, since how can you expect anyone to trust you if you don't trust yourself? And what value can there be in obtaining other people's trust at that stage, except as a means of manipulating them?

Think of the word 'demoralisation' as Bezmenov used it. The most frequent usage of it in everyday society tends to refer to people's morale, their spirit, their courage. Someone with no courage has no trust in himself or other people to withstand negative outcomes. No pride, no trust. But such a person becomes 'demoralised' in an extra sense: they get divorced from any concept of moral values - because they lose all firm foundation of self, upon which to ground any of their ideals.

Being bereft of self-belief in this way, it really does seem like we've cultivated a generation or several generations of people who perform the surface level functions of real human behaviour but only in a spiritless, scared, shortsighted and treacherous way. From a deeper moral analysis, they seem hollow and they make for a brittle and seemingly soulless society.

Good post. Knowledge and love of self is an important building block in everything. It's a complex and difficult process, but in many ways you can boil it down to 'pride', an often maligned value. That is to say, pride as a concept of self-belief, not the kind of pride that you adopt as a surface level set of behaviours to cover deep insecurity. The trust that's lacking in society is a reflection of how many people have no real pride in themselves, since how can you expect anyone to trust you if you don't trust yourself? And what value can there be in obtaining other people's trust at that stage, except as a means of manipulating them?

Think of the word 'demoralisation' as Bezmenov used it. The most frequent usage of it in everyday society tends to refer to people's morale, their spirit, their courage. Someone with no courage has no trust in himself or other people to withstand negative outcomes. No pride, no trust. But such a person becomes demoralised in an extra sense: they get divorced from any concept of moral values - because they lose all firm foundation of self, upon which to ground any of their ideals.

Being bereft of self-belief in this way, it really does seem like we've cultivated a generation or several generations of people who perform the surface level functions of real human behaviour but only in a spiritless, scared, shortsighted and treacherous way. From a deeper moral analysis, they seem hollow and they make for a brittle and seemingly soulless society.