Kilt Wearing Can Promote Mental Health

[Nile]

Closed, rigid and intolerant individuals or communities are usually also fearful, un-accepting and unhealthy ones.

A community’s health is a function of the people who live in it. Confident, non-threatened and non-threatening individuals help improve a community’s health not only by being members but also by setting an example for others.

Paul, I really appreciated your treatise. I believe that many of us XMTS'ers are setting an example, even if we don't realize it (should I wonder?), when we step out in our kilts.

Nile

[Riverkilt]

Wishing I would have had this at hand when I was a therapist at a mental health agency who decided I couldn't wear kilts...distracting...grieved and won, but still would have been nice to have such a paper to pass on.

[cryptoman]

Closed, rigid and intolerant individuals or communities are usually also fearful, un-accepting and unhealthy ones. Variety is not only the spice of life; it is also its substance.

That's their problem not anybody else's. Discrimination is the spice of live. If you are forced to keep up with someone you dislike doesn't solve conflicts rather than enhance them. It is IMHO a bit stupid to hate someone just because of its style of clothing.

I'd like to see the "guy in the skirt" more often than the scot in baggy pants after the highland games, hiding in the shadows.

Who are those guys who like to wear a kilt for reasons of comfort, style and health rather than conformity?

[James Hood]

Doctor, thank you so much for the concise, excellently-worded piece which opened this thread.

As with our other distinguished colleagues, the text has been read several times, printed and highlighted for quick looks at particularly pertinent sentence-gems.

Other contributors, thanks to you as well, for sharing your observations and knowledge. Coming from business, the sciences and history, philosophy is a rather rare, tasty treat when presented so well.

[gilmore]

Thanks, I like the original post quite a bit.

However, I might take issue with the simple way that guilt and shame are explained. While the explanation is specific ot Westerners and helpful to many, there are 2 points about it.

One is that I don't know that guilt and shame are 2 distinct and separate things, but rather 2 ends of a spectrum with many degrees of negatively thinking of oneself on it. that one can move through.

The other point comes from being Buddhist and living in south Asia. In Buddhism, shame, as the emotion is translated into English, is not a bad thing, but a good one. Perhaps a more accurate translation would be embarrassment, but nonetheless it serves to motivate us not to perform acts that are unacceptable and could---and often do in Indian, Tibetan and Nepali society---lead to ostracism, things such as sharp dealing in business, gratuitous unkindness, and so on. Of course this works more efficaciously in cultures that are closer knit than in the US and much of the rest of the West, but there you have it.