“We all do the best we can at the time given the current limits of our awareness.”
And, so goes the basis for the truism that L.S. Barksdale bases the foundation of his great Building Self Esteem approach, which is more of a "straight thinking about life" approach. Learn it, use it, memorize it, benefit from it.
___________________________________________________
Learning "no fault" is an essential piece without which you cannot be happy nor have a great life. Period. You MUST learn it fully - and thus eliminate all the useless unnececessary harm and emotional pain that can be created from it!!
THE LOGIC/VALIDITY OF "NO FAULT"
YES, YOU'RE ONLY "MACHINERY" (PLUS)
In the beginning...and eventually... this bioelectricmechanical being form evolved. It was by a huge, huge degree, the most advanced ever known.
It was a machine that operated as machines do, in a mechanical manner due to some starting stimulus or catalyst. This, including the computers, is your "machinery."
It developed from just having a primitive brain into adding a part that is unique in the history of the known universe - it could think and reason and figure things out far, far beyond that of any of its predecessors from millions of years before.
It is the most advanced machine ever.
But, still, it is only a machine. (Some people can't stand that idea, as they think there is actually an "I", an "ego", a "personality", though they don't understand that the machine is so smart that it can create meaning, even for a machine!) (It would be best for you to totally understand Who I Really Am - Don't Get Confused With What You Have Or What You Believe, as it will serve you toward having a better life - without that understanding one will not be able to have a great life...)
Now, that statement likely will seem offensive, because we have, with our advanced brain, made it up that we are more than a machine.
Yes, we are a far advanced machine, but still a machine. Our cells are machines, our neurons, and all of our body parts are machines, including our physical brain (your brain is only physical, with electricity and chemicals and cells). And there is no "spirit" "out there", separate from your machine.
OFFENDED
The reason we are offended is that we have the capacity to "make up" meaning, to add it to what is going on and to what actually exists in the real world.
We even made up something called "good/bad" and "right/wrong" because it seemed to work for survival, but then we "forgot" or failed to see that we made it up in the first place. Nothing like it exists outside of us, in reality - the world just does what it does, in a totally neutral manner.
That's it, folks.
THE GREAT MECHANICS AND VIRTUAL PERFECTION
But there are some implications we might derive from all of this. A means evolved to cause us to move, in order to better our survival.
Some things caused "discomfort" to get us to move. And if something was more threatening our little alarm system gave an even bigger stimulus. (This is why we know that a greater reaction must mean a bigger stimulus existed, even if only in our minds. See Fear.)
The adrenaline, etc., can feel great in certain quantities and not so good in bigger quantities. Emotion is what we call the process, implemented via the chemicals, such as adrenaline. E-motion. "E" means "out" and "motion" means move. Emotion then is simply a word for something that has us act ("act", that's what we call it when humans move for a particular purpose).
To go on, our brain made up lots of things about what goes on with humans. We made up "pain", to connote uncomfortable happenings in the body that are intense. We also made up "pain" that really doesn't exist, per se, associating it with not getting what we wanted - so the e-motion would then happen so we'd get into gear to get what we wanted.
WE ADDED MEANING, WHICH CREATED AN EXTRA STIMULUS
When all of this was simple, our actions were pretty simply determined. Then our brain created more and more complexity and made up sequences of things that would mean certain other things, which they never meant before, at least in the caveman days.
To net this conversation out, we created something called satisfaction, feeling good, and happiness. We created something we call "value". We value some things intangibly, just as we value goods and services with dollars.
Our machinery in our "factory" produces, if it is running well, products with high value, the most valuable summing up into produced satisfaction, well being, and happiness.
THE "INSTRUCTIONS"
We mechanically acquire information from other people and we mechanically deduce some causal sequences from what we see. We apply some reasoning some of the time, but when we're little we have little reasoning power and little knowledge to base things on. Of course, we need to upgrade that knowledge into something workable, which we call wisdom. But people often don't do the upgrades, which makes no sense.
Again, there's just this machine, which acquires knowledge and has marvelous capabilities.
But we've been taught that if we do a process and it results in something "not good" or unintended (called a mistake), we (the machines) are "bad". But we (the machines) are simply inaccurately programmed (with poor knowledge or at least insufficient knowledge to perform correctly). (Read and understand Sufficient Knowing.)
In other words, we simply don't know enough to know better than we know at the time. (Duh!)
Some machines somehow got the programming that if the right result doesn't happen, we simply need to learn what works and then to apply it. Pretty simple idea, but alot of people don't apply it often enough.
It is simply: Something doesn't work = not yet know enough to make it work, which means learn enough to know. Barksdale puts this reality into his Realities Of Human Behavior and then recommends that we affirm over and over this truth: "We all do the best we can (the best we know how!) at the time, given the current limits of our awareness (our knowledge)." In other words, we simply don't know enough.
But humans tend to make up something about it being bad. But Barksdale's reasoning continues: The fault lies not in us (the machines that function just fine) but in the lack of awareness (knowledge). Therefore, the solution lies in increasing that awareness (Duh!, Of course! But we make it wrong that we don't know, for various unknowledgeable, illogical reasons, dealt with individually elsewhere on this site.)
This just means we need to "learn better", that we are simply unknowledgeable in that particular process - it doesn't mean we are defective, just that we have defective knowledge. Defective in this case simply means "not effective", that's it; there is nothing "bad" in that.
Something either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't, we try to find out how it does and then do that. When we do this and we don't make up some false meaning, it can be said we are operating in the "world of workability", which is the "real world." When we do otherwise, we are operating in the world of what we make up - and most often that is a false "world of good/bad and right/wrong", which in the real world have a value of zero, as they don't even exist in reality!!!
You see, there is no fault in you for not knowing how to do something, you simply just don't know it yet.
That's it. No fault, no meaning. Your machine just didn't produce what you wanted because it didn't have sufficient instructions (programming, knowledge). (That's just a "mathematical" reality.)
When you produce under bad instructions things that actually do not have in them satisfaction, well being, and happiness, you are making the wrong product that is of little value in the real world, even though you may (incorrectly) have the idea that it is of value.
ARE YOU BAD FOR NOT DOING AS INTENDED?
When you choose to eat a lot of ice cream when you said you were not going to, (because you are committed to the goal of losing weight), your machine's instructions are incorrect for that goal to be met.
However, the "need" to feel a certain way is successfully achieved, most often, by the brain and its automatic reactions based on its current programming. It is, simply, that it is not fully knowledgeable on how to deliver the right long term product, so it coughs up what it knows so far will produce a good feeling (or at least less of a bad feeling). And that's perfect for the machinery because it did its mechanical job. It succeeded, in its primitive "known" goal.
Of course, if we want a better result, we've simply got to learn more and correct the instructions - but by no means is our machine "bad", as it does what it is instructed, at a remarkably high mechanically correct rate! We should, indeed, be very impressed.
But instead we are "de-pressed", in a sense, because it "seems" (is made up) that we are defective and "bad" and then, in addition, we further make up that we will not survive as well or be happy because of that.
But that is an incorrect "therefore". Our "if this, then this will happen and it will mean such and such" is simply wrong.
We call that "if this" rule a belief, about the way things will happen and what they mean. If we get a bad result, we simply need to change the instructions, the programming, which is in this case in the form of a belief.
Now we could keep on getting poor results if we don't correct the programming (the belief), but hopefully we've learned that it makes more sense to change the belief and to not keep experiencing the bad results over and over and over and over again.
And when we correct more and more beliefs (defective programs), our "production" goes way up because we are producing things of great long term value. Of course, we have to sit down in the first place and decide what is of value (and upgrade our belief about what is of value as we learn more, so it is not a static one-time process).
AGAIN, IT'S JUST A "NO-FAULT" MACHINE
It's just a machine doing its job near perfectly, the best job in the universe. There is no blame, fault, defect - just a need for learning more so we can correct the programming.
The point here is that we need to note when we "feel bad" (= the undesired result) and don't get the lasting valuable result we want - and we need to be absolutely certain that it means that we had bad programming and we need to correct it.
What could be simpler?. Just correct it!
Don't sit there and feel bad about yourself and project nonsense into the future in your mind and make yourself feel worse - for that, too, is a defective program in operation, which, of course, you need to correct.
You are, very fortunately, blessed with a hell of a machine that can do a hell of a lot things - and you could just choose to enjoy it, with great wonder and marveling at how great it truly is and how great the privilege is to be alive, to experience the "product", to be satisfied, feeling great well-being and happiness.
Please know this profound truth:
"Right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness."
The Dalai Lama in The Art Of Happiness
You are fully capable of creating a happy life! You are not defective. You are not bad! You have marvelous capabilities!
_________________________________________________________
A note to those who doubt the truth of "no fault": The reason for doubting it is because you continue to believe somehow that all you've been told, and repeated so often by you, must be true. But the problem is that if you go back to find the original reasoning and facts it was based on, you'll find that there are none that are valid!!!!!
It is time to see that reality - and give up something that has simply been repeated until one thinks it is true. It is true of all beliefs: we "think" they are true, but when we "rethink" them, using reason, and facts, we often come up with a new belief that lines up with reality and, naturally, will serve us to create the results we want in the reality of our lives.
No more relying on "made ups" that are unproven and unreasoned!
