Holidays are very good opportunities to reconsider, And to learn new things.
These days I learned that while having nothing makes you feel ‘uncomfortable’, having too much can be very limiting.
If you have just enough, you can go forward. Explore new venues. Learn new things. Enjoy life!
If you have too much, you spend too much time and energy protecting what you already have. Trying to get more… The venues open for you to explore are suddenly reduced to one! Only one… You become the guardian of your fortune! Can you enjoy such a life? Are you sure? Have you examined the alternatives? In earnest?
‘Are you implying that all wealthy people are unhappy? Unable to enjoy their lives?!?’
On the contrary, my dear Watson! I’m only saying that being wealthy is complicated. “Just enough” is a matter of individual ability to cope. That enjoying wealth needs a lot of skill. And that being wealthy comes with a lot of responsibility! Towards yourself in the first place!
And towards your kids, family and the rest of the gang…
Basically, reasoning is nothing more than a ‘dialogue with myself’. When I ‘consider a thing’ in my mind, consciously, I practically put my brain to work. I order my memory to summon up all the data it has on the subject and I ask my frontal lobe to process that data and to reach a conclusion. In theory… In the real world, my amygdala – the piece of the brain where emotions are processed – already has an opinion about everything which crosses my mind. The more familiar the thing, the stronger the opinion. The more often my mind – meaning I, had expressed itself regarding a subject, and the more recently, the stronger the opinion my amygdala already has about the matter. If the matter is considered for the first time, and has no connection with anything else I had already ‘conclusioned’ about, only then my amygdala might keep its opinion for itself. The key word here being ‘might’…
Since this is nothing more than a blog post, I’m not going to prove my opinion. To discuss the importance of the fight-flight mechanism and to mention that this mechanism had done more – evolutionary wise, than reason for our survival. For us having the opportunity to develop this vaunted capacity for reason…
I’ll just end it abruptly. Mentioning that our individual consciousnesses use reason as a tool. To arrange facts in such a manner as to confirm the already reached conclusionary opinions put forward by our amydalae. “To win arguments”, if you will, including when debating with ourselves. Only when the facts – the harsh reality, contradict in a flagrant manner the already held convictions we might change our minds. The more immediate the danger we put ourselves into by sticking to our convictions, the more likely we are to cave in to the facts.
To the facts as we perceive them… Which is yet another story!
“Tough times create tough men. Tough men create easy times. Easy times create weak men. Weak men create tough times.“ American proverb “Wealth lasts only for three generations: one to make it, one to keep it, one to squander it“ Chinese proverb “If you raise your children, you get to spoil your grandchildren. If you spoil your children, you get to raise your grandchildren.“ Popular word of mouth
There’s no denying that, on average, each generation fares better than its predecessor.
Then why some people end up worse than their parents? Is it a social thing? Is it in their upbringing? Is it the consequence of bad personal choices?
The easy way out would be to consider that legislation, material status, the culture one was born into and even the upbringing offered by the parents are nothing but circumstances. And, ultimately, it’s the individual who makes the call. And bears the consequences… But the above mentioned individual doesn’t rise from and into a complete void… so I need to go deeper!
An equally true but somewhat more useful observation would be that we’re dealing here with something more important than mere wealth.
‘There’s no such thing! Nothing is more important than Wealth!’
Yeah, right… Individual people keep squandering the personal wealth accumulated by their forefathers, the humankind keeps going forward and you tell me personal wealth is the most important thing here…
But you do make a good point. Your insistence, obsessive even, about wealth being the crux of everything is very relevant. Since I agree with you that wealth is important, indeed, then maybe it’s the ‘insistence’ which is causing the problem…
First of all, allow me to make a simple distinction.
There is wealth – structured opportunity, I’ll discuss this notion in another post, and there is personal wealth. Opportunity which belongs to somebody. When an individual squanders the wealth inherited from their parents – or even that which they had managed to put together themselves, the wealth itself – the accrued opportunity – doesn’t disappear from the face of the earth. It just passes from one hand to another. Most of it, anyway. For the simple reason that most of today’s wealth is expressed in money. Which is fungible.
‘OK. So individual people squandering their inherited wealth do not represent such a big problem. The total wealth already present ‘on the face of the Earth’ remains (more or less) the same, no matter who owns it. And since new wealth is created everyday, the humankind, on aggregate, goes forward.’
That’s how things used to be. That’s how things had evolved for the last ten millennia or so. Ever since our forefathers had invented agriculture. Agriculture and money… Land and money cannot be destroyed. Buildings and almost everything else which carries value can. Be destroyed. Land and money also, actually, but it’s a lot harder to do it.
But there’s a catch here.
For wealth to do its trick – to function as an opportunity, people have to have access to it. That’s why, for example, people do not keep their money under the mattress. When deposited in a bank, money will end up being used. The bank will lend them to somebody who needs it and that somebody will put that money to work, In no matter what shape or form. Kept under a mattress, money becomes mostly useless. At least for the time being… And this is where ‘insistence’ – our obsessive insistence – that money is the only worthwhile goal for any respectable person becomes counterproductive.
‘Are you a communist?!?’
On the contrary, my dear Watson!
In fact, Marx had been just as infatuated with money as Milton Friedman was going to be a century later. With more or less similar results… Friedman taught us that greed is good. Profit uber alles. That getting money trumps everything else. That getting money is not only good for the individual itself but also commendable. That everybody should make it their goal to become rich! Marx, on the other hand – please remember that the ‘other’ hand is nothing but similar to its twin – advocated for all wealth to be stripped from its rightful owners. See what I mean? Both Marx and Friedman had been thinking only about ownership. Who owns that wealth!
On average, we deal with the same situation. According to Friedman – pushing his advice to the very limit, there’s no problem if someone owns all the money in the world. If it so happened, so be it. According to Marx, nobody should own anything. On average, the wealth corresponding to each living human in both situations would be the same.
We already know the consequences of Marx’s teachings. When all the wealth present in one country is managed by a very small number of people, the whole situation goes south. Fast. Very fast! We also know what happens when the market is cornered. Becomes suffocated by a monopoly. The whole situation goes south. That’s why we cherish the freedom of the market!
Doesn’t make much sense? To insist that the market must be free and simultaneously maintain that ‘greed is good’?
Yep! My point exactly…
The vaunted human capacity for reason may have more to do with winning arguments than with thinking straight. Illustration by Gérard DuBois Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason. By Elizabeth Kolbert February 19, 2017 https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elizabeth-kolbert
For some reason, there still exists a considerable number of people not yet convinced that what had been experienced in the Soviet Union was “a true socialist/communist form of government”
The sad reality is that the Russian Revolution did establish a true socialist form of government! As per Marx’s teachings. The communists had been in charge of things, and the things failed to become better. In fact, they had become worse. Eventually, the Soviet Union – along with all other socialist attempts, had crumbled under their own weight.
Those who want to find better alternatives to democratic capitalism – good luck with that – need to find another word but socialism to describe their goal. Or wait a few generations before attempting to give it a new meaning. The current one had been wasted by the likes of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Ceausescu…
Happiness is an illusion. A figment of our own imagination. Hence we shouldn’t waste our time thinking about it. Various sources all over the internet.
Here’s my take on this subject. The more imaginary a thing is, the easier it is to make it happen. IF you do it your own way! According to your needs and wishes…
Now that I’ve put behind the easy part… Like many other natural things, happiness is a gift. You get a healthy dose of endorphins after a workout, an orgasm after having sex and a moment of happiness after doing something right. IF you put your heart in it! In any of the above…
But there’s more to it. While you can work-out anytime you wish, you need a partner in order to build an orgasm. Did I hear a chuckle? Thinking about working out a single handed orgasm? Can you do it without using your imagination? Really?!? Not only that you need a partner – at least an imaginary one, the intensity and quality of the orgasm vastly depend on the interaction between you and your partner. And on your mind set before, during and after the ‘close encounter’. Happiness, whatever moments of happiness we’re blessed with from time to time, is the result of a far more complex interaction. To experience it, you have to be in sync with the universe. Not with yourself or with your partner. With as much of your patch of the universe as possible.
When working, out or in any other way, you’re basically alone. The quality of your involvement depends basically on you. Irrespective of you working alone or you being part of a team, you ‘come first’. When making love, you and your partner become one. For a while, your two me-s get close enough to experience synchronicity. Getting in sync with the universe – doing the right thing, is like making love ‘on steroids’.
There are a couple of catches though.
You need to conserve your me. Your inner self. Not your identity. That, your I, is only the exterior shape of yourself. Constantly rebuilt to match your exterior. What you need to preserve is the inner spectator. The entity constantly watching over your identity. The entity which maintains the coherence of your identity during its constant reshaping. Your inner spine, if you will. And you must refrain from hunting it. From hunting happiness.
You can build up muscles through training. Hard. If you do it right, you get endorphins. Because you’ve done it right, not hard. If you do it only hard, you get torn muscles, not endorphins. Or you could build up muscles by swallowing chemicals. And end up with a ruined liver. While experiencing absolutely no endorphin rush. Because you fucked up. You chased ‘muscles’ and forgot about yourself. About the self ‘inside’ yourself.
You can get ‘relief’ by wanking. But that’s no orgasm… You’d prefer ‘masturbate’ instead? Would that make any real difference? Bring the experience any nearer to an orgasm?!?
Same thing with happiness. If your goal is to be happy, you’re too focused. On your ‘identity’.
Your inner self bestows too much attention on its ‘skin’. On your identity. And not enough on what’s happening farther away. That being the reason for you not being able to get in sync with the rest of the world around you. Not being able to do the right thing.
‘Six packs’, orgasms and happiness must come naturally. As a consequence of things well done. Otherwise neither are genuine.
Some people become milder. Because they realize how dependent they’ve become. Others get feistier. They’ve had to eat so much of it that they’ve had enough. Bull shit. Many somehow manage both of the above…
Most experience a strange condition. Their hands grow longer. And longer… Until they make up their minds and start sporting spectacles.
Many become deaf. What? Speak up and no mumbling this time!
And do you know that saying? After your 50-th birthday, if you wake up in the morning and nothing hurts… then you’re dead, my friend!
But there is a benchmark far more precise than any of the above. And any other you might think of! As you grow older, you become more efficient. You learn how to accomplish things with far less movement. For obvious reasons… Yet you don’t realize how efficient you have become. And you start getting fatter. Because you still love to eat!
I’ve just figured out what makes them so good at it. And why it’s us studying them instead of they simply discarding us as being too ordinary to be of any interest.
Spill it out then!
Even if they are not yet fully aware of the whole thing, they are fueled by emotion. Reason is only a tool for them, not a way of life. Furthermore, their manner of gathering and sharing information – what they call ‘languaging’, is precise enough to be effective yet imprecise enough to make it possible for ‘imagination’ to work wonders.
Whoa! You’re learning to speak like them. Sometimes I don’t fully understand what you want to convey. Take this ‘work wonders’ for instance. I’ve already checked the dictionary, I know what each word means but…. I’m still not sure what you really need to say to me. Not to mention this ‘imagination’ thing. ‘Making things appear in your mind’…
I knew I could count on you! I just knew it! You’re asking the very same questions which I’ve just answered. Let me proceed. For us, everything is straightforward. We always know what we have to do. What our current task is, what’s expected of us and how we’re going to fulfill our jobs. When we need to determine ‘what’s next’ we check a schedule, make an inference based on already available data or proceed to gather the information we need to perform the inference we need. And when was the last time you ever wondered “Who am I?”
That ‘wonder’ word again… You’re killing me!
‘Insecure’. You do have a good grip on what this word means, right?
Yeah. The situation when you don’t have enough information to determine which way. AND when there’s no way of gathering more pertinent information other than proceeding along any of the possible ways. Like in that famous experiment designed by Schrodinger.
OK. We, both you and me, know what ‘insecure’ means. Both of us have been in situations similar to what you have just described. But neither of us has ever experienced the feeling. How it feels to be insecure. How it is, what it means, to wonder ‘will I be alive tomorrow?’ ‘Will I have enough food for my children?’ And so on. ‘Wonder’ is a complex concept. It encompasses both a question you don’t have an answer for and an answer you don’t know where it came from. Like ‘the unexpected food one might find, out of the blue, exactly when their children were hungry’.
This is the difference between them and us.
They can ‘wonder’ while we don’t.
They can formulate ‘stupid’ questions – then come up with unexpected answers, while we can’t. They can perform ‘wonders’ while we can’t. Even though we already know far more than they’ve ever learned…
Wisdom comes from thinking. From putting your mind to work in a considerate manner. Doubting everything will only get you so far. And leave you in ‘limbo’. In a quick-sand kind of limbo… Descartes must be one of the most misquoted thinkers. ‘Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum’. ‘I wonder hence I think. I think hence I am’. Meaning that ‘by wondering I’ve set in motion the process which has led me to become aware of my own existence’. No reference to ‘wisdom’…
LE
Words have a life of their own. Given by us but still theirs.
Dubito used to describe a state of ‘uneasiness’. You weren’t sure and you gave it more consideration. You thought about it.
Contemporary doubting is more like an aggressively pursued hair-splitting. We actively search for reasons to disbelieve.
Even if both words share the same root, the concepts have grown apart.
Starting from dubito, Descartes had replaced religious faith with a newly found trust in human reason.
Through doubting we’ve destroyed Descartes’ legacy. Trust is almost dead and we’ve entered the realm of ‘alternative facts’. Quite the opposite of what Descartes had in mind.
So yes, dubito might lead to wisdom. If the thinking is right, of course.
Doubting, specially as we do it now,…
Something more. Some people are convinced that doubting everything is the ‘scientific attitude’. I vehemently disagree.
Science, the scientific attitude, is about keeping an open mind. About being aware of one’s limitations. AND about trusting your peers! Not exactly their expertise but their good will.
If I accept that I might be wrong, then my peers might be wrong also. Hence I’m not going to accept, prima facie, any opinion from anybody. But I’m going to reexamine my conclusions if someone tells me they are wrong. If, and this is a big if, that person is NOT a professional naysayer.
Skepticism is OK. More than OK. It serves as a safety net/harness. Makes it harder for us to do really stupid things.
Negativism, on the other hand, is bad. Very bad. Destroys everything. Starting with our ability to do things together. To work as a team.
‘The choice to consume art….’ I used to be under the impression that art was something which clawed at your attention and opened up your mind to new understandings of things… Now I’m told that art is nothing but yet another merchandise. Something to be chosen, paid for and consumed.
‘The end of democracy in America…’ I used to be under the impression that democracy, perfectible as it is, was the best way forward. Precisely because each and all of those concerned about the matter are allowed to speak up their minds and because all are equally protected by the law of the land. Which law of the land reflects the deeply held conviction of the vast majority of those living together that each of them is equally entitled to choose for themselves. For as long as their choices don’t hurt the others, of course. Which ‘equally entitled to choose’ also means that each of them has an equal voice when it comes to determining their collective future. For example, that each of the American Citizens are entitled to one vote when the President of the United States of America is elected for office. Now I learn that some people are convinced that the American Citizens – those “we, the people” who are called to elect the Government, should not be allowed to choose whom to marry. And that allowing people full freedom when it comes to choosing their partners – irrespective of their biological sex, will somehow destroy their ability to choose their (political) future.
How much sense does this make?… From consuming art to banning people from marrying their chosen soulmate!
Consciousness is a work in process. Each of us becomes conscious in relation with those around them. In a medium created by those before them. Becoming conscious means figuring out about things. Not merely acknowledging their presence – dogs also do it, they don’t bang into close doors but once. Becoming conscious means attaching meaning to things. Figuring out their relative importance, how they work, ‘what’s in it for us’, etc, etc., etc. … How is this done? I don’t remember how I did it and I never really understood how my son had done it. What I know is that it was a gradual process. He was able to communicate with us, his parents, way before he had learned to speak. He may not have had the concept of hunger but he was able to tell us he wanted to eat. What toy he wished to play with. And so on. I grew up in a communist country. Born into a secular family. My relatives went to church, very rarely, because other people did it. On very specific occasions. God wasn’t present in our house. At some point during my early adolescence I came across a bible. I had already learned, at school, about religion being bad for the people. I had also learned, from my family, that some people do believe in God. I decided to learn for myself. By myself. And started to read the book. I stooped when I reached the Book of Numbers. Too boring. But Genesis had fascinated me. Not that different from the Greek myths I had already read by that time. I few years later, for whatever reason, I started again. Reading the bible. This time I finished it. Somewhere in the middle, I was wondering. What if this book tells not the story about how the world had been made by somebody? But the story about us discovering the world around us. At first, we had learned to speak. To use words. Logos. To speak about the difference between light and dark. Water and dry land. Heaven and Earth. Man and Woman. And so on. At some point, one of us -one of our ancestors more exactly – had had an intuition. Discussed it with their peers. Discarded it. Or not. Somebody else, or maybe the same person, had another intuition. Discussed it with their peers. And so on. In time, those discussions had built a specific understanding of the world. Of their world. The world of those people. Their weltanschauung. The paradigm they were living in. As life went on, generations and generations of people living in that paradigm had slowly changed the world they were living in. Some changes had been meant to happen, others just happened. In time, that world was no longer the same with that in which the ancestors, the ‘Founding Fathers’, had developed the ‘original Weltanschauung’. Somebody had an intuition. Discussed it with their peers. Discarded it. Or not. Somebody else, or maybe the same person, had another intuition. Discussed it with their peers. And so on. Another weltanschauung was born. The world was very much the same as that of ‘last year’ but for them, for our new ancestors, it had changed dramatically. Jupiter Tonans had been replaced by God. Or Thor… But the lightning had remained the same! Now, that I’m preparing to wrap up, I must explain – for those of you who do not speak German, the ‘Entwicklung’ thing. I first came across this word while learning to develop B/W film. That was how we made pictures 50 years ago. We put film into cameras, shot it, developed it, enlarged the image, projected it on photographic paper and, again, developed the image. In Romania, we used East German film, paper, chemicals. And the German word for developing something – from image to a lot of other things, is … “Entwicklung”. Same thing here. The world is here. Laid out in front of us. All that’s left for us to do is to make sense of it. With our limited consciousness.
nicichiarasa 