Sometime ago, Psychology--as a field--moved in the direction of including spirituality as an important dimension of peoples' lives, and away from the longstanding position that God [and religion] was an unimportant concept...Now there are trainings, books, college courses on addressing the spiritual concerns of clients in therapy. As I was attending one lecture on this subject It got me to reflecting on the Essentials concept...it would be foolish to reject out of hand "any good thing," such as the concept of energy meridians or recent scientific discoveries about how the body [and brain] process pain signals, or the nuances of someone's culture and how it affects their viewpoint--that having been said, I propose that holding to a set of Essential beliefs and behaviors, while helping to define a spiritual position, should not be allowed to create an unassailable, Monolithic viewpoint...there is always diversity in religion [even within denominations]...this is probab...
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There are both plays and films that in various ways advocate "menages a trois" or even more "open" relationships. My own reaction to all I've seen is that they gloss over an essential selfishness that motivates the "openness." And they also fail to treat their subject realistically. Certainly some would accuse me of approaching the issue with my own biases, and of course we all do that. Nevertheless, I still think I may be seeing something people who'd suggest monogamy may be too rigid are missing.
Getting back to the larger point, however, I agree that the "freedom" rhetoric is permissive rather than liberating, and that the erosion of social absolutes has the negative effect of "everything is okay" - when we can see that, in effect, it is not, or open relationships would have swept the world by now.