Just feel good, bro

[syd]

Hi Vineeto,

@Vineeto

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.

Are you sure Onfray is advocating for stripping away of guilt per se? He is rather talking about stripping away the Christian anti-sex morality (including guilt about sex), which people have successfully done away with it. Indeed, the sexual revolution of the 60s, which you lived through, largely involved shedding those anti-sex religion-inspired attitudes (even though it has taken different forms today), but you surely don’t consider sexual freedom to be harmful?

@Vineeto

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.

In regards to “disregard the other person as a fellow human being”, what I find interesting is that my modus operandi with the WomanFromNov largely operated as that (disregard her as a fellow human being) the moment those love feelings usurped, as I was solely focused on my own feelings.

It would have been better, both for me and her, for me to have been honest about my desires as Onfray advocates (and even more so if I had being happy and harmless as overarching priority), though I can’t say if I would have wanted to go as far as to establish a ‘contract’.

@Vineeto

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?

Back when I used to eat normal food, I’ve always preferred the likes of Subway sandwiches to the visually-pleasant-but-unpalatable French cuisine.

And no, that is not a theoretical plan, as I’ve already been putting it into practice, rather successfully in fact, simply as a result of making being happy and harmless an overriding or overarching priority in life. Why you found it fitting to equate what I said with ‘sexual desire’ despite my use of the ‘socialized desire’ qualifier is beyond me. Perhaps the word ‘attraction’ doesn’t connote the same thing for both of us? The whole attraction-complex dovetails into various feelings, attitudes, etc. … touching upon even self-perception (which is more foundational than self-evaluation of REBT). I’ve written about it before:

SYD (3 weeks ago): What I’m discovering so far is that sexual arousal per se (in response to visual stimulus) doesn’t disrupt feeling good. That bodily arousal (the electrifying feelings generally between diaphragm and sexual center) in conjunction with the corresponding hedonic pleasure, in fact, is rather a brief pleasure to be enjoyed (sometimes cheekily) for that brief period. It is everything else that happens after that affectively, that’s the problem. I’m still exploring all the components of that ‘everything else’ (including covert forms of hope) but it is easy to pay attention to and decline (as necessary).

‘Attraction’ is then a foundational layer of that “everything else” upon which those other “components” rest. Note also how I describe raw ‘sexual desire’ (arising in response to, say, a curvaceous silhouette as distinct from a corpulent one of prodigious girth) as something that can simply be enjoyed as a brief pleasure (there’s nothing to ‘decline’ at all here).

So, by ‘decline’ I mean - understand (in real-time), tease out, decline going down this familiar route, and choose to stay on the course of being happy and harmless - which, I should add, is now increasingly being seen as a very tangibly pleasant way of being (which understanding then reinforces that sincere intent to keep doing it). As for “once and for all”, I should have used “finally” instead … as in: “I’m, finally, ready and willing to decline it.”.

@Vineeto

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).

I’ve indeed experienced a version of ‘closeness’ as indicated at the bottom of that linked post: “I am already starting to have an inkling of how this [immediacy] takes the form of ‘intimacy’ with fellow human beings, and it indeed seems quite delicious, but I’ll refraim from writing about it until I have sufficient experience.”.

I’ll figure it out as I go along.

@Vineeto

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).

If you were to be privy to every text exchanged, words uttered, actions performed between myself and the WomanFromNov, you would have surely put ‘happy’ before ‘harmless’ in this particular context.

I do understand what you are saying: happy & harmless are two sides of the same coin. Inseparable. The “when the rubber meets the road” and “’ll focus on the above” above experientially involved discovering the sensibility and felicity of being both – happy and harmless – in tandem. As in, I truly see this. “Yes, this is how I want to be.” kinda of sincerity. The ‘radicality’ for me lies in both (finally) minimizing of what I had so far been putting off (during “how [I] operated most of [my] life”) with gusto … and the inevitably concomitant prioritizing of happiness and harmlessess (contrary to what everyone else has been doing) with zest. What originally prompted me to fully consider all this was your saying that “[I] can only experience this “genuinely occurring stream of benevolence and benignity” when in [my] daily life [I am] as benevolent and benign as a feeling being can be – because that “genuinely occurring stream” is always outside of ‘me’” (link); that’s what made the reliable ‘connection’ in intent, so to speak, between my own PCEs and how I genuinely want to experience each and every moment.

In regards to “[sincerity] does not mean ‘true to your feelings’ but true to facts and actuality – and feelings are not facts”, what does that mean in detail? Are you referring to rememorating one’s PCEs (else why use ‘facts and actuality’)?