Syd:
I. I’ve been looking into what it means to be ‘happy and harmless’ when the rubber meets the road.
It obviously means both absence of sorrow and malice as feelings, both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings. Somehow it helps me to think of this in subtractive (rather than additive) terms. Knowing what is not there, makes evident what is there in its place (feeling good, a felicity and innocuity, all the way to an enjoyment & appreciation).
II. Based on my learnings from the WomanFromNov, I made a pact with myself to be as honest as to my desires as possible with any subsequent woman. No games, just being frank from the get go. The idea being that if there’s a mismatch in our desires, we can part ways amicably instead of wasting weeks/months playing layered narratives.
Onfray’s Solar Erotics (link) perfectly captures this. So, I thought, if there’s no ‘mutual attraction’ (which is what I’d want, normally) from the get go, we can just go our ways.
Hi Syd,
I cannot help but comment on your latest plan after “looking into what it means to be ‘happy and harmless’ when the rubber meets the road”, especially since at least one other person wholehearted approves of your choice of proceeding.
From the AI summary of the philosophy of this obscure French philosopher Michael Onfray –
“Michel Onfray mounts a vigorous defense of hedonism” -
“Drawing from Epicurus and Lucretius, Onfray suggests that we should treat sexual encounters as the meeting of “atoms” seeking equilibrium and joy.”
“… we must strip away the “priestly” guilt that teaches us to be ashamed of our skin and our senses”
“To love is to give what one has (pleasure) to someone who gives it back” (link)
“Onfray argues for a ‘Reasoned Hedonism’”. (link)
Michael Onfray, in his various suggestions, stays true to the “reasoned hedonism”, in particular the stripping away of guilt – the conscience put in place by society to curb the excesses of the animal instinctual passions.
Regarding stripping away of guilt –
Richard: Warning: It is an utterly fundamental proviso that pure intent [1] be dedicatorily in place – as an overriding/ overarching life-devotional goal which takes absolute precedence over all else – before any such whittling away of the otherwise essential societal/ cultural conditioning be undertaken.[2]
[Tool-tips]:
[1] Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the vast and utter stillness that is the essential character of the universe itself.
[2]• [Richard]: “(…) the social identity cannot safely be whittled away unless there be the pure intent to be happy and harmless, each moment again, born of the PCE, because this socialised conscience, the moral/ethical and principled entity with its inculcated societal knowledge of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (cultural values), has been implanted for a very good reason.
It is there to control the wayward self which lurks within the human breast … which is why dedication to peace-on-earth is paramount.” (Richard, AF List, No. 25b, 24 Jun 2003).
(Actual Freedom Library, Social Identity)
Here is what Richard has to say to someone equating the actualism method (feeling good) with hedonism. (The respondent’s elder brother was by disposition an unapologetic narcissist, hence his own strong objection to feeling good) –
Respondent: ‘(…) In my personal experience: having ‘feeling good’ as an aim – and then trying to feel good – sucks. But having an aim that does feel good, and then using ‘feeling good’ as a guide to whether or not one is on track with that aim, doesn’t suck, and makes sense’. (…)
Richard: […] It is pertinent to note, at this point, that the root cause of sorrow – and, hence, malice (e.g., the ‘basic resentment’ above) – is being forever locked-out of paradise. (…)
Not surprisingly, the word innocent (as in, ‘harmless’, ‘innoxious’; ‘sinless’, ‘guiltless’; ‘artless’, ‘naive’; ‘simple’, &c.) stems from the same root as the word nocent (as in, ‘harmful’, ‘hurtful’, ‘injurious’; ‘guilty’, ‘criminal’, &c.) does … namely: the Latin nocēns, nocent-, pres. part. of nocēre, ‘to harm’, ‘hurt’, ‘injure’, with the privative ‘in-‘ affixed as a prefix (i.e., in- + nocent). Viz.:
• innocent (in′ȱ-sënt), a. and n. [‹ ME. innocent, innosent, ‹ OF. (also F.) innocent = It. innocente, ‹ L. innocen(t-)s, harmless, blameless, upright, disinterested, ‹ in- priv. + nocen(t-)s, ppr. of nocere, harm, hurt: see nocent]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).
• nocent (nō′sënt), a. and n. [‹ L. nocen(t-)s, ppr. of nocere, harm, hurt, injure]. I. a. 1. hurtful; mischievous; injurious; doing hurt: as, ‘nocent qualities’. 2. guilty; criminal; nocently (adv.): in a nocent manner; hurtfully; injuriously [rare]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).
(Richard, List D, No. 4b, 4 Jul 2015)
Syd: III. But Onfray’s Solar Erotics overlooks the ‘happy and harmless’ part. By playing the Solar Erotics game, I’m still be operating under the paradigm of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings, and in particular the ‘good’ feeling of (unilateral) attraction, which doesn’t feel good at all.
Indeed, Michael Onfray does not only overlook “the ‘happy and harmless’ part”, he rejects it altogether by suggesting “stripping away of guilt” which disregards the other person as a fellow human being – they are to be merely business partners in a negotiated contract of exchanging goods.
Syd: This attraction (an instant hedonic pleasure) is one final aspect of the socialized desire I had been holding on to, and now – with the sincere intent to be happy and harmless (because duh) – I’m ready and willing to decline it once and for all.
Do I understand you correctly that you are saying that you now disregard the hedonistic contracts à la Onfray? So is the ‘French Cuisine’ not all it’s made out to be?
However, your theoretical summary and ‘plan’ makes no sense because you are not merely “operating under the paradigm of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings” – you are your feelings, both ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and remain so unless/ until you are actually free. Hence you cannot merely rationally decide to stop doing it. How do you ‘plan’, “once and for all” to decline attraction, i.e. your sexual desire, without repressing it – it is an instinctual feeling after all?
Syd: And open myself to intimacy aka ‘closeness’ akin to the immediacy of my PCEs (link).
How will you open yourself “to intimacy aka ‘closeness’ akin to the immediacy of my PCEs” when you haven’t experienced any ‘closeness’ with another person in your PCEs. You were on your own in your room when they happened. I distinctly remember that you reported about the first ‘Microsoft PCE’ that you left the house for a short period and the PCE stopped, and then started again when you returned home. Hence you have no experiential information regarding “intimacy aka ‘closeness’” so far, only an “immediacy experience” with the objects in the room (syds-pce-logs).
Syd: I quite like all of this. Contrary to what I had thought, it is radical … and I like being radical. (link).
What would be radical – radically different from how you operated most of your life – is to leave/ quit ‘the philosophy and planning department’ and naïvely experimentally and experientially explore the world of people and events, with the sincere intent firmly in mind to be harmless and happy as much as humanly possible.
I put ‘harmless’ first, because for many it is the more difficult aspect of an actualist’s sincere intent. (Btw, sincere, as used on the website, does not mean ‘true to your feelings’ but true to facts and actuality – and feelings are not facts).
Cheers Vineeto