“ There is an inherent propensity within the human condition that one can call on to counter the human propensity for cynicism and that is naiveté. Naiveté is the closest thing to an actual innocence within the human condition and it is absolutely essential to muster in order to counter any fear and its subsequent defence mechanisms that arise. With pure intent garnered from the perfection and purity of the PCE acting as a golden thread and with naiveté as a constant companion, one pulls oneself up by one’s bootstraps and discovers, step by step, that becoming free of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow is indeed possible.
Since writing this a later post has arrived in which you appear to have demonstrated by your experience how it is that naiveté can circumvent fear as you invite the benevolence of the actual universe to become apparent. You will notice – and I can confirm it by my own experience – that the longer you dare to weather the storm of such intense emotions as fear, the more their grip will weaken.
So I was listening to an audiobook detailing some cases of PTSD in veterans who came back from Vietnam and who were seeking psychiatric help.
The writer makes an interesting point about this odd and perverse way in which they were attached to their suffering. One of the veterans said that if he was to let go of the sorrow he would be abandoning his fallen comrades. The writer also mentioned that in group therapy he noticed that the group would only ‘perk up’ when they would get to exchange various war time stories.
What I get from this is that feeling more than anything else is the bedrock of identity (feeling = being after all). The veterans would not abandon those horrific feelings because they have become the very bedrock of who they are.
This gets interesting with regards to Actualism, because I notice that the most fundamental change that ‘I’ have to make is to feel felicitous and innocuous even though ‘I’ am addicted to feeling sorrowful and malicious (as well as the antidotal good feelings). This seems a little thing but it is actually huge… I notice that the parts of ‘myself’ which have been the most recalcitrant with regards to change are the ones that simply refuse to feel different in a certain scenario. ‘I’ am addicted to feeling a particular way and this seeps all the way through ‘my’ persona, it is ‘my’ bedrock. It is really no little thing to allow ‘myself’ to feel good where ‘I’ am addicted to feeling sorrowful and malicious, this is working away at ‘my’ very foundations.
This might be an easy task with things like someone cutting you off in traffic let’s say, things which are not as salient. But then there are these things which cut right through to the depths of ‘my’ being, to transform these from being sorrow and malice to being felicity and innocuity, that is BIG.
Also adding to this it is clear why only chipping away intellectually does little to change one’s being in a fundamental way. Why it is so hard to uncover a belief by just ‘thinking about stuff’.
The change actually happens from the other side, one begins by feeling good, and this felicity and innocuity is transforming one’s very being. The foundations of one’s identity are being re-shuffled, now the beliefs can start to crumble as there is something better available.
The other thing which this points out to me is why ‘I’ block pure intent. Why often I often find it weird that I don’t want to have a PCE or that I don’t even want to allow feeling felicitous and innocuous. I was always kind of circling around this understanding because I could see that to proceed towards pure intent is to allow ‘my’ very foundations to shift.
‘I’ do have an agenda in remaining sorrowful and malicious because it keeps ‘me’ exactly as ‘I’ am, including the entire worldview which sprouted from this sorrowful and malicious core.
Recently what has helped me to proceed is researching the extent of the human condition, usually I am kind of existing in a little bubble of my own concerns, I do my training, I chill at home, I watch a movie etc.
But opening my eyes to the extent of human suffering is making me set completely different standards. Seeing how humans through the ages have battled with the human condition makes it unacceptable to perpetuate it in any degree, no matter how small or apparently insignificant.
Another thing I find fascinating is how those who have experienced trauma would progressively make more general and further reaching associations with regards to what would trigger the emotional memory of the traumatic event.
Like the boy who was taught to fear white rabbits, who would eventually fear white things, then Santa etc. That is the blind and crude instinctual mechanism, it readily forms associations which will fire at anything remotely resembling that original event.
This is something that I can observe well in myself, sometimes the trigger is something more ’
sophisticated, like ‘I’ have this whole story for why ‘I’ got triggered. But the more I chip away the more crude it all becomes, eventually the mechanism is like a cornered animal, lashing out at anything.
The reason I wanted to write about this is slightly different though, relating to what we discussed in the equity thread - Equity.
I have a cleaner in the house at the moment doing her thing, a few minutes ago I had to pop into the kitchen to do some stuff so I apologised for getting in her way etc. What I noticed though was that on some level I was being extra nice, I was overcompensating for the whole master/servant structure which I do not want to play into. Yet underneath this well meant niceness there was an air of awkwardness, and it clicked what it is all about.
Just like in seeing the Santa’s white beard the boy triggers an entire mechanism of associated fear, in the same way my ‘good’ behaviour is triggering the entire mechanism of feeling and belief that it is trying to fight against, the hierarchy lives another day! It is just not good enough to be ‘good’, this is why the whole thing has to go, because it is all a big interconnected system, once any aspect is activated then all of the other ones automatically begin firing.
So it really doesn’t look good for ‘me’ in any capacity What can ‘I’ do that doesn’t automatically reverberate through that entire mechanism.
‘I’ do ‘my’ best to be a moral person - nice try, the entire chasm of the bad has just been kept alive. ‘I’ offer solace to another - great, their suffering has just been reinforced. ‘I’ slip up for one second and find myself anxious - well done, the other has just experienced that very same anxiety, and on it goes…
These are some pretty high standards! To realise that every time ‘I’ am doing anything but ‘being’ felicity and innocuity ‘I’ am actively contributing to global sorrow and malice (and maybe even then). Every time ‘I’ give any kind of credence to a real world value ‘I’ am perpetuating the mess.
I guess it remains to be seen the extent to which virtual freedom offers at least a partial solution here. But then again what hurt am ‘I’ causing merely by remaining in existence as a ‘being’, even a happy and harmless one!
Ah and here we go, it only took 2.5 years to realise the answer to the question Srinath posed to @Kiman
Post:
Question :
What are the relative merits of for e.g. a real world ‘hero’ helping to lift millions out of poverty whilst still mired in their own feelings and personal dramas vs. that of an actually free person simply doing his gardening quietly and not doing that kind of service?
It never made any sense… I was thinking “so the actually free guy is just sitting around in his garden being innocent and all that and doing what exactly?”
So what’s your answer? Mine would be that the question doesn’t have any merit. Heroically taking on challenges to lift entire communities out of poverty and becoming actually free aren’t mutually exclusive. That said, I suppose we can make it a game and academically take a look at it. We can ask: What’s better? But can we really? I don’t think so. Neither answer is falsifiable. What you can say about one, you can reasonably say about the other. You can say that becoming free has some potential of ending human suffering as we define it. But you can say that same thing about lifting a single community out poverty: Maybe that accomplishment starts a chain that leads to the end of corruption and war. Otoh, maybe the next actually free person is that straw that breaks the psychic camel’s back. So what was your answer?
Yeah and if you can see that every time you heroically remove one survivor from the pit you are at the same putting them straight onto a conveyor belt heading for the same tar pit
Then it makes sense why ending ‘humanity’ is the only practical solution that actually does something.
I wouldn’t go that far. I think that line of reasoning leads into looking down on people who are doing some really good work. Those tar pit survivors aren’t going right back into the tar pit. There going to be much better off for the rest of their lives because someone took the time and energy to help them. But what we are doing, intermittently as it is, is something very useful too. And if we’re successful then it’s even more helpful than those who are saving people. But if not successful then we’re not doing anything at all, while thinking we are.
The problem with your approach though is that in looking for a solid line of reasoning you are just running yourself into what is ultimately a moral/philosophical argument. This has been tried for thousands of years already and we already know it leads nowhere.
And it leads nowhere because it’s divorced from both a full experiential understanding of the human condition as well as an alternative that works.
I guess the moral/philosophical argument I’m making is that those “heroes”, “do-gooders”, ‘what-have-you’ are people making the most out of their lives. And it’s beneficial to all of us that them living their best life leads to desperate people being helped. That can only lead to better circumstances for everyone.
As far as actualism goes, I don’t see any distinction between the gardener and the, say, woman’s shelter volunteer. A connection with pure intent can be maintained doing either.
OK but at this point you are no longer sticking to the question at hand which was :
What are the relative merits of for e.g. a real world ‘hero’ helping to lift millions out of poverty whilst still mired in their own feelings and personal dramas vs. that of an actually free person simply doing his gardening quietly and not doing that kind of service?
It is about seeing the harm that one causes and perpetuates merely by ‘being’.
Maybe you take the question to imply that an actually free person can’t be philanthropic? that it has to be an either or situation, which would be a different question altogether. Which is interesting in it’s own right, I guess there is no reason why you couldn’t have an actually free individual who happens to be a police officer for example, still mopping up the excesses of violence caused by the human condition, which in the current state of affairs is absolutely necessary. But then it’s seeing that this is all it’s ever going to be - mopping up.
Maybe let’s put it this way, in the current state of affairs there is absolutely and undeniably a need for people/systems that keep the human condition in check. It is a fact that human kind has this enormous system built up which creates some semblance of peace and prosperity.
But just like compassion keeps sorrow alive, ‘humanity’ does nothing to eradicate the problem it manages. So this needs to be seen for what it is, no matter how heroic, it is a means of forever mopping up the excesses whilst at the same time keeping the human condition (the problem) alive.
Taking all this into consideration, what is the 1 thing which actually does something to end the problem and therefore end any need for corrective action?
So then bringing this back to the very beginning, what is contributing more to actual peace on earth, the actually free gardener or the ‘hero’ still firmly situated within ‘humanity’?
Well said @Kub933 , my takeaway from this discussion between you and @JonnyPitt is that ending the human condition in myself is more important than trying to help the masses. That has already been tried and failed.
I think the gardner is doing more for his fellow man than the hero. The hero is out there butting heads and causing incalculable friction. It’s good for all of us and especially those he helps that at the end of the day the world is better with him in it. But the gardner makes no waves and offers a place of purity for anyone who wants to partake. Surely purity is better than anything else.
I remember reading Richards report of ‘seeing the other face of love’ to be the devil, and viscerally experiencing this in myself.
The whole of the human condition seems to work on the same dynamic, the hero is as much part of the drama as is the villain, they are both guilty.
The human condition is this interconnected web with all of it’s parts comprising the same rotten entity and therefore each part having the same rotten essence.
This is quite fascinating to contemplate and explore and I think once seen it makes it clear why nothing else delivers the goods.
And I would go further and say that it has to be seen clearly enough, so much so that ‘I’ am willing to sacrifice ‘myself’ instead of hoping that ‘I’ can be some hero.
What can ‘I’ do that doesn’t automatically reverberate through that entire mechanism.