This discussion brings to mind fables, stories and aphorisms embedded in cultures across the world. Wilde’s “in this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst; the last is a real tragedy!” Aphorisms like: “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!” echo similar sentiment. The story of the Monkey’s Paw where the wishes are granted to the possessor of the magic charm, but at tragically steep and unforeseen costs. Stephen King’s Pet Semetary seemed to take that short story and push it through to its gory conclusion. Yes, wanting your dead child to come back to life is very understandable, but sometimes dead is better!
So, yes, in a certain (narrow) sense I can grasp the notion of a “fallout” of unintended consequences as a result of successfully achieving a desired objective. That said, I always considered Richard’s choice for happiness to be very clever and bullet proof. That is, if any trickster genie, who liked to grant wishes and then heap loads of unforeseen and undesirable consequences upon the wisher, were to enter into contract with its master, then the simple and straightforward wish for perpetual happiness cannot be “messed up” (so to speak), so long as happiness was genuinely granted. Happiness but kids are killed? Doesn’t matter, I’m happy. Happiness but stricken with illness or permanently disabled? Doesn’t matter, I’m happy. I can’t see how anything can go wrong if you wish for and are granted happiness.
But to want or wish for anything besides happiness, well, you may indeed get what you ask for. The problem of course is that there’s no guarantee that you will be happy with the result! Better to just cut to chase and wish for happiness.
There is another angle @claudiu about procrastination at that last 10%, or even starting; intelligence knows that this project isn’t what you really want.
I saw a video the other day about “gifted children” actually being “special needs children”.
I have been interacting with actualists for over a decade now, and would describe the majority as very intelligent. Far beyond average IQs.
My point is, it takes a certain lack of intelligence to believe that achievement of normal aspirations will result in the thing we really want.
So called “gifted children” see this straight away. Like a game of chess, they are already 3 moves ahead. Indeed, it’s been noted for thousands of years that intelligent individuals are often the saddest. They often don’t reach their “potential”. Exactly because they see the result of this highly esteemed potential being not significantly different from not doing anything at all; there is a problem that isn’t being solved.
It’s just another trick. That there is something wrong with us because we have not achieved that last 10%, despite working 40-50 hours, and having a side hustle, and being an upstanding citizen and partner etc…
So while it sounds plausible that we don’t achieve because we are afraid of success and losing an identity, it’s also plausible that we are tired of pushing into the futility of yet another promised “potential” we know is pissing into the wind.
However, both perspectives are useful. One could, like me, get stuck in the “eternal rebel” identity and not achieve the ultimate anyway.
However, back to my alternative explanation;
My oldest son often shakes his head that I am not currently achieving much as far as “normal” aspirations go.
I pointed out to him that I have already achieved them all. Built a house with my own hands? Check. 3 healthy, succeeding children? Check. Relationships? Sex? Check. Art/Music? Check. Sustainable career? Check. Good health? Check. Holidays, travel, toys? Check.
If one were to listen to the mandates of the 'normal ', then the meaning of life is to keep grinding out more of the same. Build another house. Have more children. Make more art, music, have more travel. Until one snuffs out.
In a twist of irony; both these perspectives actually answer something Richard advised I look into a decade ago; feelings of rebellion.
I should add that as the 8th thing that has occurred this month; being able to channel that rebellion back into the desire for actual freedom.
It works also with resentment of ‘others’; I can end them - at least as far as it’s up to me to end ‘humanity’. I don’t have to rebel or resent, because I actually have the information on the ultimate "get out of jail free card ". Ultimately, in ending ‘myself’ I get to end ‘them’. That is a really freeing way of channeling these feelings back into desiring perfection like nothing else.
Although there are many such fables stories and aphorisms , I’m talking about simple lived human experiences not stories. On a basic instinctual human level we just have a massive aversion to change (as a generalization). This aversion is even towards change that is obviously for the good — for example having more money. It’s not a sensible aversion - change for the better is indeed just better , or at least can’t be worse - but there it is nonetheless.
It’s not a thought-out “well I have to consider all the consequences and there may be some bad ones (such as a trickster genie might come up with)” , it’s just a stress or anxiety or fearfulness that comes up when the possibility of change comes up, or when change itself does happen. For example I read that a big change in financial situation is a very common cause of stress worry and anxiety — both change for the worse but for the better as well! And when I got a large bonus at work I experienced this for myself.
Of course it worked out alright but in the transistory period of changing from someone without the bonus to someone with the bonus, I was very anxious and fearful of what the future might bring — even though on a factual level I was simply better off.
As to trickster genie … if I wished for happiness and had all my limbs chopped off I might feel like I had been tricked Also the notion of being happy even though all my friends and family were murdered and a pustulence spread upon my body … sounds more like a Buddhist thing than an Actualist thing! lol
Yes, you may be aware that you’d been tricked. But it wouldn’t matter because you’d be happy.
Interesting - being happy (and harmless) despite your friends and family being murdered and your body pustulating everywhere (as an example) is what I’ve always thought actualism was about. In other words: the happiness in actualism I always understood it to be unconditional. An unwavering felicity regardless of circumstance or situation.
And yes, some changes, depending on what they are, may well make one feel anxious.
Speaking of which, that unconditional happiness of actualism would be real handy right now. Wouldn’t mind making a deal with a genie right about now, trickster or otherwise. Broken furnace has me up in the wee hours on this frosty morning attempting repairs.
Tell you what. I swear on all that’s good, I’d welcome a change from broken furnace to working furnace. No fears here about successfully fixing this thing.
That’s interesting I also experience both sides. What I found with actualism is that it is the only goal which I ever found where it is 100% worth going for.
I’ve always been the one to get involved in something, become obsessed, become pretty successful in that endeavour and then realise that it is not going to provide that which I desire deep down - freedom. So then every time some sort of depression/lack of meaning would eventually develop where I see that more success at this thing ultimately changes nothing, I would reach the end of the road with this thing and then somewhat be reluctant to even try to further it in any kind of way.
With actualism the PCE reminds me every time that it is the ultimate endeavour and the ultimate reward.
I read this and something very weird happened just now! Like a bolt of lightning in my brain and then all of a sudden experiencing a stillness that is virtually palpable, it’s still here right now. It really is like that, with the end of ‘me’, ‘others’ disappear also - that’s the end of the human condition, it never would have existed in the first place.
This is just another one of them thought experiments which from the point of view of the feeling being seems to demonstrate some sort of zombie like quality. A happy and harmless zombie, looking around with a smile as their family are being chopped up, because they are happy and harmless after all lol.
But it is very easy to see from the experience of the PCE that it is nothing like this, because the felicity and innocuity is sourced in the perfection and benevolence of the universe that I find myself in. Therefore it comes with an in built care and consideration for others, actual care and consideration.
It is being happy and harmless whilst existing in this world, very involved in it as opposed to removed in some bubble of personal pleasure. It seems to me that time again these thought experiments are deep down trying to do nothing else but prove that life on earth is a sick joke and that it can never be another way, they are designed to maintain the status quo, makes sense as after all they are conjured up by ‘me’ and ‘I’ am forever separated from the benevolence of the actual.
Not at all. Maybe you are out there trying to give CPR to your dying family. All the while glad, happy, content, and delighted. Or maybe you won’t lift a finger. As always, conditions and context dictate. Either way, you’re golden.
Right. And existing in this world means death, disease, sunsets … and broken furnaces. (Damn, got it working for a second there before it crapped out again.)
In the context of this convo it sounds like you’re saying that if an actualist were to wish to a trickster genie that he were happy forever, and that genie then murdered his family and friends and cut his limbs off but somehow made it so the actualist was happy despite this, that this would be a successful actualist result. After all the actualist got what he wanted - happiness - didn’t he?
But there’s only two ways this could really happen:
1- the actualist remains a feeling being but is somehow still happy. This is basically impossible … you can’t just not react to those close to you dying and literally being plagued. And the way a feeling-being reacts is emotionally. Actualism isn’t about stopping to feel things.
So the only way the genie can succeed is by somehow hypnotizing or enthralling said actualist so that things don’t affect them anymore, ie causing them to be so detached that these things don’t affect their personal bubble of happiness.
Which is not what actualism is about. But it is what Buddhism is about! “Equanimity towards all phenomena” and some such.
2- The genie makes the actualist actually free.
If the genie offered the option to be actually free in exchange for murdering one’s friends and family and cutting off one’s limbs, why on earth would anyone accept this when you can become actually free without someone doing such horrible things? It would be highly inconsiderate lol. I would even say that anyone who would accept this would care so little and be so self-centered that they’d have no shot to be actually free and saying yes would disqualify them (it’s a hypothetical so I can make up the rules :)).
So the only way would be if the genie tricks the actualist — murders their family without telling them. Yet even if actually free it’s not like the murder of your family wouldn’t affect you. Irena leaving Richard affected him. He tried to convey what it’s like in one of the DVDs but seemed to not have a good way to do it. It’s just that the effect isn’t one of emotional sorrow. But it wasn’t his preference. Even so his experience of himself remained perfect throughout. It’s like the toast with butter analogy — on a scale of 1 to 10 there are 1s and there are 10s. But the experience is of perfection regardless.
———
It’s all a silly hypothetical anyway but in a careful analysis it doesn’t have anything to do with actualism.
You know I really wasn’t intending to analyze that little genie hypothetical to any length. It was just a passing thought that I figured would capture, in its own weird way, how radical and revolutionary it was for Richard to identify and then, more incredibly, choose to have what it was that he truly wanted, namely, everlasting and unconditional happiness. All as a feeling being. (That point is important.)
That said, it has been very interesting to see the responses to that and to my clarifications. One more technical point I’m inclined to address, just because the responses were so curious:
This response was so interesting. How can you say it is “impossible” as a feeling being to be happy while those close to you are dying and literally being plagued? That you can’t just not react. Firstly, as if reacting with happiness is not a legitimate reaction! Secondly, it’s as if one can only feel either happy or unhappy depending on the situation. Thirdly, it sounds like you don’t want to feel unconditionally happy. @Kub933 had the same response. Which is fascinating to me. You all really want to feel unhappy when “bad” things are happening (like people dying or being plagued).
I almost didn’t believe you all were serious whenever you all would say, in previous posts and topics, that you all wanted to feel bad. But its really sinking in now that you guys truly, truly want to feel bad. Damn.
And the way a feeling-being reacts is emotionally. Actualism isn’t about stopping to feel things.
Correct. But in actualism, those reactions and feelings to every single event without exception (even someone’s death) are supposed to be felicitous. Maybe you preferred they not be dead. But if they are, then your happiness is not affected one iota. As a feeling being. Else you have strayed off the wide and wondrous path. That was the experience of the virtually free feeling being Richard.
This is actualism 101, guys. I expect these kind of responses and objections from those unfamiliar with actualism. Frankly, it’s bizarre having to explain things like this to the long-ago-initiated. I feel like I’m losing my mind here.
Hmm… I’m speaking from a pragmatic place not a theoretical one. I would suggest you try it yourself and see how it goes, except that it would mean one of those close to you is getting murdered and I wouldn’t wish that on you or them.
If you’re aiming to be in such a way as to react with happiness when someone close to you is getting murdered … that certainly isn’t actualism! Lol.
Again I’m speaking pragmatically. If your wife gets murdered , you ain’t gonna be happy about it. Now there’s no reason per se not to continue to enjoy and appreciate being alive regardless… as being upset wouldn’t bring her back… but practically speaking it’s gonna take you some time to process that and get back to that point.
We aren’t describing anything other than how you yourself are. It’s a universal human thing. You are just not seeing it at the level we’re talking about.
Well there’s no “supposed to be” in actualism…
You’re several steps behind us . We aren’t saying anything so strange. You just don’t see it yet. You aren’t at the point where it makes sense what we’re saying , or even where there’s a hint of something that might make sense. So there’s a vast disconnect.
Stephen King’s Pet Semetary seemed to take that short story and push it through to its gory conclusion. Yes, wanting your dead child to come back to life is very understandable, but sometimes dead is better!
Does not actual freedom demand the ultimate 
.