These traits grow with time. I absolutely agree, from experience, of both myself and my sons, that the raw ingredients are there at birth.
The innate distress of being born, of gestation in a more or less sorrowful and malicious womb, forms the potential of more of the “same old, same old” it’s not however a fait accompli.
Fair accompli; " an action which is completed before those affected by it are in a position to query or reverse it ."
The salient, immutable, and indisputable fact is that they are formed and shaped into this list which Richard has written. Yet, in at least a single human, Richard, the action of becoming completely malicious and sorrowfull was not complete before “those affected by it are in a position to query or reverse it”.
Anyone interested in actualism, is by default, an incomplete formation of the “malicious and sorrowful” human adult.
No one can even consider a freedom from the human condition if the process of being completely malicious and sorrowful is complete.
I don’t want to smash my computer against the wall I am however astounded by the denial of things which are so prolifically and intelligently written about on the AFT, things which can also be explored and confirmed experientially for anyone interested to do so.
But it does seem that it is just more spiritual beliefs in disguise which are muddying the waters.
What is important to grok is that these are not really all that different, at all. This is the salient point. The intent to hurt ‘the other identity’ is straightforwardly derived from, and consists entirely of, the base instinctual aggression that is the same in humans and other animals (as humans are animals too).
Whether the harm is intended for a ‘good reason’ or not is a smokescreen, a diversionary tactic. Many a human over many a millennia has justified their aggression as being for a ‘good reason’ (and therefore not attaining to malice* as you use it [malice* with a * will mean “malice” as you use the word]). But it just doesn’t matter. The point is to be free from aggression entirely, not just malice*.
I know, but by looking at only a tiny part of the picture - malice* - and not the entirety of the picture - the mountain of aggression immediately under it - you are missing the whole point.
It’s not a tangent, it gets right to the heart of the matter. The instinctual passions are not only the ‘ultimate reason’ for an identity forming, they are the ongoing, moment-to-moment reason. Each time you feel a social-identity-level desire to hurt someone or be snippy or sarcastic, that is a direct manifestation of instinctual aggression. It is not something ‘on top of it’ that is somehow unrelated to it. It doesn’t acquire a different character just because it may be socialized or learned and you don’t come out of the womb being sarcastic. It is just a shape that instinctual aggression takes – one of the many possible shapes.
The reason to repeatedly invoke it is because of how this thread started:
That is, you think harmlessness is not a doorway to happiness, because in your experience you can be happy while you are not being harmless (i.e. you can be happy while being aggressive and maybe even mailcious*). (Note that in actualism terms “harmless” refers to being without aggression at all of any form, and not just to being without malice*.)
The point is that aggression is so thoroughly what we are, as feeling-beings, that an overriding and overarching desire for harmlessness (and not just happiness) is required, in order to be able to have any shot of dismantling ‘me’ in order to eventuate a consistent feeling-good come-what-may.
So you have to grasp that whatever fine-level distinctions you can make between the basic aggression on the one hand, and malice* and any other specific subsets of aggression that you can think of on the other, it just doesn’t matter in the grand scheme. The problem is not malice*, the problem is aggression. The only way to counter it is by actually wanting to and intending to be harmless, in addition to wanting and intending to be happy.
If you try just to be happy without being harmless then you won’t be able to answer obvious questions such as:
The answer obviously is… establish a desire and intention to be harmless! Then when you find yourself with a sharp verbal barb ready to unleash, you can see via feeling it out that you are feeling aggressive, and perhaps malicious*, you can see that this will obviously be a harmful thing to express, and then you can choose not to express it in order to fulfil your intention of being harmless!
Then later maybe you can see that even the feeling of being aggressive or malicious*, in and of itself, already is intrinsically harmful, due to the vibes and psychic currents unwittingly emanated, not to mention any unconscious or subconscious reactions that you can’t control, and you can use this as motivation to see how ‘you’ tick so that you don’t even have that initial feeling of aggression arise in similar situations.
I would certainly recommend just trying it. One really obvious example in my experience was, approaching social interactions with an intention of having a smooth or ‘good’ or sensible or straightforward interaction, vs. approaching them with the explicit intent of enjoying it and being harmless in the interaction. The former led to cases where I would get annoyed or peeved when there were misunderstandings or awkward interruptions etc. The latter led to these not mattering whatsoever, being more intimate, more understanding, and having a much better time with people.
Once you start doing so you may even see how you are noticeably and palpably happier, now that you are more harmless, and then you can see for yourself how the more harmless you are the happier you are, and you can combine that with what you already saw (that the happier you are the more harmless you are), completing the positive feedback loop, and let that take you away to more and more stratospheric levels of enjoyment and appreciation.
Ooooor you can keep insisting, despite many people who have more experience than you in the matter saying otherwise, that harmlessness doesn’t really matter . The choice is yours.
Generally, I far prefer to hear someone’s voice. Perhaps though, the fact words on a screen have far less “social” information, the idea itself has to stand on it’s own merits.
This is the first time I have contemplated this. The value of text over voice.
There are a few great things that can be tested out of this discussion.
Does feeling harmless, and actively seeking to avoid harming others lead to happiness?
I E. Can one, as Peter put it
That’s a worthy piece of homework.
Is it impossible?
Is it rather than the wrong type of happiness arises without harmlessness?
When I think back over the last decade, the ratio of discussions about harmlessness vs feeling good/happy would be 1:1000.
Could it actually be as important as Peter says? Seeing as he was the first to become free after Richard, one has to wonder if it wasn’t another of those “in plain sight” descriptions that has been given far less attention than it deserved.
Yeah I was thinking something similar, it is interesting that the general information on happiness is understood and agreed by all but harmlessness seems a can of worms.
I know personally I have mostly focused on happiness primarily and I can see the pitfalls of this approach.
I can relate to this , and to the different outcome generated by combining happiness and harmlessness in those interactions.
I think, @Kiman, it’s worth trying if experiences like this that put into practice reflections like Peter’s on harmlessness, allow you to test if they are conducive to greater happiness. I’ve certainly experienced it that way.
The weakening of my sarcasm occurred in “phases”, which can be roughly demarcated as follows:
First it led me to diminish its expression -that is, to repress the sarcasm-
Then it led me to diminish its expression and repression -to observe the generation of the emotion and the resulting sarcastic thoughts, but without emitting or repressing them
Finally to diminish the generation itself.
Of course I am talking about a tendency, not an absence that can only exist in PCEs. I still experience all three “phases” at various levels and even emit sarcasms!
But certainly its weakening due to the intent to be innocuous/harmless has led me to be happier.
Even Richard mentioned its importance…he speaks about being virtually free after ending anger in 3 weeks…although what he means by “virtual freedom” here is not clear. Most likely he means still-in-control VF :
RICHARD : Speaking personally, the first thing I did in 1981 was to put an end to anger once and for all … then I was freed enough to live in virtual freedom.
Btw it isn’t that giving up harmfulness as a necessary step towards happiness isn’t recognized by other schools of thought…Buddhism is full of all this. For example, this quote from Dhammapada’s chapter on Anger :
Those sages who are harmless
And in body ever controlled
Go to the Everlasting State
Where gone they grieve no more.
So we can see the connection between harmless > grieve no more
So what is it that Peter is saying that is different here ? Methinks, that one way or the other, all other schools of thought try to deal with anger via its antidotes like love, kindness, compassion etc…while Actualism doesn’t
I was following @henryyyyyyyyyy 's lead today and decided to lay down and really feel into the aggression I have towards myself. (Realising that I am this aggression isn’t my experience yet).
I was pondering “depth psychology” and a book by Peter Michaelson called “Why we suffer”, also a Facebook post which quoted Thomas Sowell saying how most truths are very simple, it’s complex because we don’t want to face truth.
Anyhoo, in depth psychology, the pre-conscious self , in it’s god-like solipsism, believes that any feelings it experiences are exactly what it wants to experience. Actualism would say it is those very feelings. Whether it’s “rejection” or any number of other distressing states.
It dawned on me that this is malicious.
The very action of self believing and being (whichever is the case) , such horrible things as “rejection” in what is otherwise a blameless baby, is the height of malice.
So, while I had to take a long route to get there, it is very clear to me now that it is not simply distress or even just aggression , but malice present in the newly formed addition to ‘humanity’.
I can work with this, as it’s clear then that finding and acting on those feelings which are also there , the feelings which somewhat ironically were naive enough to believe and be the very cause and effect of suffering, must move towards being naive enough to become harmless and happy. Both of which are miraculously also part of the self.
. The choice is yours.
, and to the different outcome generated by combining happiness and harmlessness in those interactions.