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Even after a brutal realization, you don’t have to live in it; you can hold it and realize everything that was previously fine is still.
We tend to retroactively extend trauma into the past while manifesting it into our future, but what if we recognize our discomfort as merely a fleeting, subjective, emotional shock?
Such insight can prevent us from shaping the world and our relations to fit our moods.
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Happiness is not finding something or adding something. If it were, rich people would be happy.
To discover happiness you must clear away the excess. We bury our happiness, suffocating it under our wants and ambitions, our fears and failures.
Once cleared away, we find happiness is not something we seek, but something we have always had.
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You can be fine, even happy, amid anxiety and outrage. These feelings come over us, but we can watch them and not identify with them.
I can’t do it for long, but sometimes when my contentment is attacked, I realize fighting empowers the negativity while simply observing without connecting causes it to dissolve.
More importantly, I can only do this when I know I am scared or threatened.
Then I must ask why I fear: nothing can destroy "me," just my attachment to my illusory social standing.
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There has become a doubling, where once the observer was doing violence to the observed through objectification or judgment.
The observer has always been attacked back: overstimulated with impossible desires and pitched ads. But today the viewer is made aware of their position as objectifiers and consumers, complicit as the cause of celebrity anxiety and depression.
The observer observes themself observing, inflicting damage upon themselves for causing the double-bind of the celebrity who is anxiously unable to fulfill their image or be themself.
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Being rational is excellent. We intake and adapt to evidence to reach a goal.
Yet, "instrumental rationality" allows us to logically make a plan (following the process of rationality), but it does not mean our goal is rational.
Example: Terrorists/bombers use rationality to achieve an irrational goal.
(Jurgen Habermas)
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Society 1: In a mad scramble to survive, every action must produce results, so any experimentation is out of desperation. If your risk pays off, you realize your lucky gains, consolidate, and undercut any competitors.
Society 2: With a social safety net, your risk is mitigated. Knowledge (gleaned through failure) becomes a practice of re-application, collaboration is commonplace, and overall success flourishes.
Fear of failure in an individualistic society engenders competition and sabotage. Support societies encourage communal progress rather than taking out your opponent.
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We should legitimately fear our awesomeness.
Your greatness is mighty, and as you embrace it, it can fly free, disintegrating the current you.
But that is only letting the small you die to become the greater you.
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“The people there are only there to make money, so we went home before sundown.”
A direct quote from a friend who went to Tulum, Mexico, where the sacred is commoditized until the tourists are scared.
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Finding purpose so we can live a meaningful existence is a crutch. Life is already meaningful: we are looking for additional security.
It is easier to glorify a singular principle (i.e., goodness, justice, God) and then submit to its precepts than to exist in an original state of chaos and confusion.
This universal submission may be for the net good, but it is slavery to a social ideal.
