Part I General: As Seligman points out, a sense of being happy that is related to pleasure seeking has a predictable tendency to fade once the goal has been met, whereas a more eudaimonic approach, focusing on well-being as a function of fulfilling one’s potential and realizing one’s true self, has much more valid meaning and value even though it may or may not be associated with the maximization of happiness.

Resilience has been found to be associated with realizing one’s true self in a very major way. Please click on Content > Week 4> Learning Resources and watch the video “The power of Resilience” (As in many videos you will probably want to click on “Skip the advertisement” and go directly to the topic).

You are asked to do a library search and explore full text articles related to a topic of your choice from each of the two groups below. Summarize briefly for us your relevant findings and thoughts after exploring the article sites related to resilience and two of the specific subtopics below. Share with us some relevant facts that your exploration leads you to understand how the concept of your choice is related to resilience (one topic from each of the two groups, a & b below). Share with us any thoughts you may have about this.

Go to Nav-Bar > Academic Support > Library and enter “Resilience and _.”

a) Group 1) Resilience and Threat/Hope/Meaning/Transcendence (Choose one)

b) Group 2) Resilience and Wisdom/Internal Locus of Control/ Curiosity/Humor (Choose one)
Note: A and B must be done, not either or.

In this part of our discussion, we will finish our exploration of individual differences in terms of psychological type by a continuation of the topic we addressed in Week 1. The special aspect of it that we will explore this week is related to the transcendence concept of the positive psychology. Thus, we will explore the last four functions (5 through 8) that must be addressed by a person in order to experience individuation. Please access an understanding, of your 5-8 functions at:

Below is the Eight-Function Chart of Sixteen Types:

Consider that a dominant sensor may, often unconsciously, respond to an intuitive person by thinking of him/her to be “a space cadet.” A dominant intuitive might consider a sensing person to be “conventional, quite rigid, and limited.” Similarly, a dominant feeling person may consider a dominant thinking person to be “cold” and “non-caring.” A dominant thinking person might consider a dominant feeling person to be “immature.”

Similarly, the 5 – 8 less conscious shadow functions, which are the same as one’s more conscious first four except that they that they have an opposite introverted/extraverted attitude, may respond in a prejudiced way to what the person consciously understands as him/her self. For growth and fulfillment (Individuation: a goal of positive psychology), individuals have to learn to empathize with themselves and recognize their deeper feelings, a process that transforms a person’s shadow functions into positive energy that contributes to wholeness, personal development, and fulfillment. Obviously, one’s ability to do this requires some resilience.

Part II Assignment:
Although it obviously may not be an easy thing to do, please try to share with us what you think about:

1) how your reaction to others may be influenced by one or more of your four conscious functions

2) Mindfully choose one of the 5 – 8 functions of your Jungian personality type and search briefly online for a description of the function itself. Then try to share with us how you think it might change and become more conscious, different, meaningful, and positive for you if you eventually worked to become able to be conscious and understanding of it.

Of course, this may not be easy, given your personal current life situation, so please do not worry about it. Just share with us briefly whatever you experienced when you attempted to do that. It will no doubt give you at least a bit of an understanding of the one of your subconscious 5-8 functions that you decided to choose.

Sample Solution

Sample solution

Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell. 

In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.

God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.

Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.

To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.

 

References

Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.

Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies4(8), 487.

Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.

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