Self-Motivation is the Prime Value of Atheism

Motivation is what causes you to act.

 

Psychoanalysis, psychology or psychiatry disagree on how to judge mental disturbances.  One of three basic theories is an option. 

 

One - the Freudian notion that they are down in some way to sex.

 

Two - the Adlerian notion that they are down to feelings and perceptions of inferiority to others or some ideal

 

Three - problems with feeling and being safe and secure which is the Jungian view

 

Notice that none of these agrees with the Christian belief that all our problems are ultimately grounded in how each of us is a God and happiness rejecting Adam or Eve.

 

Notice that all of them can be handled by having and living out the right motivation in the first place.

Self-motivation is about having the esteem for yourself in order to better yourself and your life.

Others cannot really motivate you. Even God cannot.

Self-motivation is the most important thing we can work on and this is more important than any benefits that come from it.

Play at being an optimist and one day you will find that you are one. You will change through pretending. This is what matters not prayer.

It is easy to put God or Jesus or some guru on a pedestal so that we will feel inspired and motivated by them. But in fact if we actually meet them we will be disappointed and even de-motivated. Personal contact with them gets them off the pedestal and makes them real people to you.

If you feel good about yourself you will not need to look down on other people to feel good. You simply feel good about yourself and that is all there is to it. You will not want to be seen as better than others. That is why you will not be pleased when you make a mistake and somebody says, "Others have done worse." You will not use the predicament of others to make yourself feel superior.

Feel the fear but do not let the fear control you. It is good to face the fear. Running away form it solves nothing.

Do not fell that God or religion have to tell you what to do before you can do anything worthwhile.

When people feel they will get something if they pray for it that is their intuition at work. You can train your intuition to reach greater accuracy by taking guesses based on gut feelings. You will often be wrong at the start but in time your feelings will be trained by experience and become more accurate.

Kenneth Blanchard stated that being interested and being committed are two different things. If you are interested in something you will pick it up and drip it when it suits. If you are committed you expect results and you will tolerate no excuses.

Assertiveness is an important part of your self-motivational life. You must stand up for your rights but you also have the right not to. Assertiveness can lead to intolerance of the non-assertive and assertive people may bond together too well so that others are excluded.

 

Is atheism de-motivating if you want to change the world?

 

What about the idea that if a God of justice is running the universe you can leave him to work for fairness while you do not bother?

 

But not bothering is still doing something. So you may as well be fair. Doing nothing sometimes is a good deed. It is good to let the child make a disaster of building the Lego house. That is how the child learns. And the child may be happy to realise she or he has got a challenge.  The fact that you are taking action by not taking action shows that atheism or belief in God may be excuses for leaving others to suffer but they are not reasons for doing so.

 

Atheism or belief in God can be an excuse for attempted inaction but which one is the best excuse?  Not all excuses are equally good or clever.  God is the best excuse and atheism is the worst.  If there is no God or nothing to help Baby Jane then only you can do it.

 

It is possible to think that God means justice and what happens is not your problem and still work for fairness. In a sense most things are not your problem.  You can defy God to try and help.  This is another reason why atheism is the best excuse for its attitude should be that God should go to Hell if he is real and we will help others even if he does not want us to.

 

One reason people don't want to think that things just roll on is that this is saying there is no justice for good people and the good they get is just luck.

What if the good who die unrewarded were in fact bad in secret or in their hearts?  Christianity says that human beings are not truly good or basically good.  This doctrine should chip away at people's worry that the good do not get justice.  It is really a human instinct that this is terrible not a religious one.

Thinking God rights wrongs is a toxic idea for to want the good to get good things means you want the bad not to get them or to get bad things instead.  We need justice in our life on earth but if the good and bad are happy in the afterlife then who cares or should care?  It does not matter then as long as the bad cannot do any harm to anybody else. We should not dignify passive aggressive vindictive silly doctrines.

 

If the universe is not fair who cares as long as we are fair?  So we end up motivated to be fair.  It is said that the idea that the universe not being fair means each entity has to try and steal off the other so fairness will only prove destructive to you or to others.  That seems to show us we are trying to fool ourselves by trying to be fair.  Some say it shows we are pretending to be devoted to fairness and that is a strategy.  But the reality is that many people get good results from trying to be fair.  If it is a strategy then it is a fair one.  Fairness does not live in a bubble but has to be about choosing the lesser evil over the worse.  If that is what you are doing by being fair as a strategy then that is fair enough!

 

If there is no God could there be something that is not human or created by humans and which is in some way superior to us that lays down that we must be fair?  Even if we create something we can still subject ourselves to it.  You can get attached to eating healthy which means you suffer terrible guilt for even the occasional treat.  We never know if we sense something that really is bigger than us or something we are in some way addicted to.  If you have to assume it is there what use is that?  It's just another way of making YOURSELF the real higher power.  You need something stronger - you need to sense it.  The downside is that the sense may only be there for a couple of minutes a week!

 

The alleged advantage of such an idea as a higher source of moral value is that even if we do not know what it is we are better to assume it is there or (better still) sense it is there for it means we feel supported in being fair.  It means no person or group feels they are on their own and they are lining up to some power that needs their cooperation.  It makes your standards more convincing makes you more convincing and your group more convincing.  But that is fine if there is only one nation and one people.  There isn't.  It leads to conflict.  Even times of peace become times of truce not peace.

 

People want the higher power to be fair.  But how do you know the power is really just?  Sometimes justice and injustice have subtle differences so it is hard to tell them apart.  It comes back to you - it is about you taking chances with justice and maybe letting yourself be fooled.  The higher power stuff always comes back to you and is inseparable from your ego.

 

Hitler and Stalin thought their evil ideas were actually like a higher power.  Belief in a higher power other than your ideology does not mean you treat it as the higher power.  It is only actions show that the ideology is your God. Hitler and Stalin sought to enforce their ideas and plans and were convinced that good was guaranteed to follow and good would come out of any evil done.  The evil was seen as collateral damage.   Like all tyrants they expressed surprising humility - they seen themselves as servants of the plan.

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