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Humans have loss aversion, where instead of considering wins and losses as equivalent, a loss feels more devastating than a corresponding gain.
It is not strictly rational. However, if you extend your body to apply to your psychology, losing a limb can be the end of you, while not getting an extra meal (gain) will merely be a little bit painful.
Daniel Kahneman has pointed this out: typically, our mammalian survival behaviors underlie our materialism and economic decisions.
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There is an ouroboros of history: we create the very errors we attempt to solve with our knowledge of history.
Not only is history “written by the victors,” but in attempting to learn and apply our lessons we misdiagnose (fall prey to confirmation bias) allowing us to recreate the idiocy we attempt to avoid.
In an ultimate irony, we recreate the circular cliche “history repeats itself” by applying the incorrect past lessons to current problems.
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To understand something you must be in it, and of it. It is bodily, emotive, and flowing.
When we judge we shift from the Right brain (open and holistic) to the Left brain (rational and linear).
To judge is to articulate and file, to create a snapshot so you can categorize.
It is not that judgement is not useful, it is that it leaves us incomplete.
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Recognizing kindness would mean understanding why the person behaves the way they are.
For instance, if I pause to let somebody else walk before me, I am aware of a broader situation and avoid potential conflict. But the unperceptive person, they never sees it, or it just strikes them as odd.
Is there kindness around you that you cannot perceive because you are too self-absorbed?
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There is, in judgment, a resistance to forgiveness.
We hold the judged outside of us, yet “the judged” persistently returns as a beleaguered challenger, demanding forgiveness.
We do not forgive through an effort of will: that only masks and creates resentment. We must turn towards the pain and open ourselves in order to see beyond it: to merge with the other is forgiveness, not holding them away.
In seeing through the pain we encounter understanding: we encounter an innate kindness on the other side of understanding.
Open kindness exists outside of us (the same place we put the judged) and yet is also within us (as the other can be too).
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Jordan Peterson decries Marxism by considering “the great leap Forward” in China, which cost 40 million lives. Peterson asked whether or not that change was due to “love or hate” and claimed it was instead due to delusional ignorance.
I agree, and he is right to escape the moral value binary.
Applied to Western societies, nationalism, capitalism, and Christianity also manifest deadly delusional ignorance.
However, from a stance of Buddhist detachment, everything can be declared “delusional ignorance,” which may simply be the state of man no matter how far we assume we have progressed.
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Our naivety can be a virtue.
When wisdom accepts brutality and evil out of an overly weary and worldly common sense, aspirational hope is patronized.
This brand of wisdom accepts the unacceptable, promoting a moral deficiency of stagnation.
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Apocalypse is, from the Greek, an uncovering or revelation. We use the word today to mean a world-ending catastrophe.
The hidden meaning is when reality is disclosed to us (revealed), it destroys our assumptions: the truth was always there, but upon being forced to witness it, it shatters us.
(via Zizek)
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To be denied your planned desires provokes an overreaction.
We move through life assuming our accommodations, requests, and pleas will be met with reciprocity, or at least entertained. While this is a conceit, it is also a mainstay of civilization.
While being spurned smacks of petty boundary setting, if not outright malice, there is no justification for our rage as our mind spins up destructive scenarios: We are owed nothing and in turn owe them nothing.
Their boundary established the relationship: you are free from a relationship or politeness. For this clarity, we should thank them.
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Some people show up.
Sounds simple, and there are always exceptions, but someone willing to spend their time and take action (not just verbal, digital, and mental time but actual time) are the ones you should prioritize.
