Response to Awesome Human Beings "The Disturbing Truth About Why You're Still Not Happy (Despite 'Having It All')"
"Mindlessly eating" Out of that list, this is the only thing you caught me on.
Thank heaven I'm not subject to any of this - since I'm so far from "having it all" you'd need the Hubble Telescope to see it.
The problem is: meaning comes from life, not external things. There is only one meaningful goal in life, which is implied in the name: continuity of existence.
To achieve continuity of existence, you need the "Five Essentials" (which is why my Substack is named that): 1) Philosophy, 2) Attitude, 3) Knowledge, 4) Skills, and 5) Technology.
Those are the things that should be pursued. There is no "success" until you have them. And they can always be improved.
In "The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons of the Dead", Stephan Hoeller wrote this:
"Or might it be that perhaps the Gnostics truly had some knowledge, and that this knowledge rendered them supremely dangerous to establishments both secular and ecclesiastical?
It is not easy to give a reply to this question, but an attempt must be made, nevertheless. We might essay such an answer by saying that the Gnostics differed from the majority of humankind, not only in details of belief and of ethical precept, but in their most essential and fundamental view of existence and its purpose. Their divergence was a radical one in the truest sense of the word, for it went back to the root (Latin: Radix) of humankind's assumptions and attitudes regarding life. Irrespective of their religious and philosophical beliefs, most people nourish certain unconscious assumptions pertaining to the human condition which do not spring from the formulative, focused agencies of consciousness but
which radiate from a deep, unconscious substratum of the mind. This mind is ruled by biology rather than by psychology; it is automatic rather than subject to conscious choices and insights. The most important among these assumptions, which may be said to sum up all others, is the belief that the world is good and that our involvement in it is somehow desirable and ultimately beneficial. This assumption leads to a host of others, all of which are more or less characterized by submissiveness toward external conditions and toward the laws which seem to govern them. In spite of the countless illogical and malevolent events of our lives, the incredible sequences, by-ways, repetitious insanities of human history, both collective and individual, we will believe it to be incumbent upon us to go along with the world, for it is, after all, God's world, and thus it must have meaning and goodness concealed within its operations, no matter how difficult to discern. Thus we must go on fulfilling our role within the system as best we can, being obedient children, diligent husbands, dutiful wives, well-behaved butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, hoping against hope that a revelation of meaning will somehow emerge from this meaningless life of conformity. Not so, said the Gnostics. Money, power, governments, the raising of families, paying of taxes, the endless chain of entrapment in circumstances and obligations—none of these were ever rejected as totally and unequivocally in human history as they were by the Gnostics. The Gnostics never hoped that any political or economic revolution could, or even should, do away with all the
iniquitous elements within the system wherein the human soul is entrapped. Their rejection was not of one government or form of ownership in favor of another; rather it concerned the entire prevailing systematization of life and experience. Thus the Gnostics were, in fact, knowers of a secret so deadly and terrible that the rulers of this world—i.e., the powers, secular and religious, who always profited from the established systems of society—could not afford to have this secret known and, even less, to have it publicly proclaimed in their
domain. Indeed the Gnostics knew something, and it was this: that human life does not fulfill its promise within the structures and establishments of society, for all of these are at best but shadowy projections of another and more fundamental reality. No one comes to his true selfhood by being what society wants him to be nor by doing what it wants him to do. Family, society, church, trade and profession, political and patriotic allegiances, as well as moral and ethical rules and commandments are, in reality, not in the least conducive to the true spiritual welfare of the human soul. On the contrary, they are more often than not the very shackles which keep us from our true spiritual destiny. "
That true spiritual destiny is: continuity of and improvement of life itself, individually and for the species. It is there and only there that one can find the solutions to all problems.
Response to Awesome Human Beings "The Disturbing Truth About Why You're Still Not Happy (Despite 'Having It All')"
"Mindlessly eating" Out of that list, this is the only thing you caught me on.
Thank heaven I'm not subject to any of this - since I'm so far from "having it all" you'd need the Hubble Telescope to see it.
The problem is: meaning comes from life, not external things. There is only one meaningful goal in life, which is implied in the name: continuity of existence.
To achieve continuity of existence, you need the "Five Essentials" (which is why my Substack is named that): 1) Philosophy, 2) Attitude, 3) Knowledge, 4) Skills, and 5) Technology.
Those are the things that should be pursued. There is no "success" until you have them. And they can always be improved.
In "The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons of the Dead", Stephan Hoeller wrote this:
"Or might it be that perhaps the Gnostics truly had some knowledge, and that this knowledge rendered them supremely dangerous to establishments both secular and ecclesiastical?
It is not easy to give a reply to this question, but an attempt must be made, nevertheless. We might essay such an answer by saying that the Gnostics differed from the majority of humankind, not only in details of belief and of ethical precept, but in their most essential and fundamental view of existence and its purpose. Their divergence was a radical one in the truest sense of the word, for it went back to the root (Latin: Radix) of humankind's assumptions and attitudes regarding life. Irrespective of their religious and philosophical beliefs, most people nourish certain unconscious assumptions pertaining to the human condition which do not spring from the formulative, focused agencies of consciousness but
which radiate from a deep, unconscious substratum of the mind. This mind is ruled by biology rather than by psychology; it is automatic rather than subject to conscious choices and insights. The most important among these assumptions, which may be said to sum up all others, is the belief that the world is good and that our involvement in it is somehow desirable and ultimately beneficial. This assumption leads to a host of others, all of which are more or less characterized by submissiveness toward external conditions and toward the laws which seem to govern them. In spite of the countless illogical and malevolent events of our lives, the incredible sequences, by-ways, repetitious insanities of human history, both collective and individual, we will believe it to be incumbent upon us to go along with the world, for it is, after all, God's world, and thus it must have meaning and goodness concealed within its operations, no matter how difficult to discern. Thus we must go on fulfilling our role within the system as best we can, being obedient children, diligent husbands, dutiful wives, well-behaved butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, hoping against hope that a revelation of meaning will somehow emerge from this meaningless life of conformity. Not so, said the Gnostics. Money, power, governments, the raising of families, paying of taxes, the endless chain of entrapment in circumstances and obligations—none of these were ever rejected as totally and unequivocally in human history as they were by the Gnostics. The Gnostics never hoped that any political or economic revolution could, or even should, do away with all the
iniquitous elements within the system wherein the human soul is entrapped. Their rejection was not of one government or form of ownership in favor of another; rather it concerned the entire prevailing systematization of life and experience. Thus the Gnostics were, in fact, knowers of a secret so deadly and terrible that the rulers of this world—i.e., the powers, secular and religious, who always profited from the established systems of society—could not afford to have this secret known and, even less, to have it publicly proclaimed in their
domain. Indeed the Gnostics knew something, and it was this: that human life does not fulfill its promise within the structures and establishments of society, for all of these are at best but shadowy projections of another and more fundamental reality. No one comes to his true selfhood by being what society wants him to be nor by doing what it wants him to do. Family, society, church, trade and profession, political and patriotic allegiances, as well as moral and ethical rules and commandments are, in reality, not in the least conducive to the true spiritual welfare of the human soul. On the contrary, they are more often than not the very shackles which keep us from our true spiritual destiny. "
That true spiritual destiny is: continuity of and improvement of life itself, individually and for the species. It is there and only there that one can find the solutions to all problems.