Enjoy Love, Understanding, and Possibly Dancing

Source: Will Clickbait ruin Quora someday?

Here at a Philosophy of Enjoyment there is no clickbait and shrill exclamation points are strictly avoided. Yes! Here there are no broad claims made to sell you something and no “100% Guaranteed If Not Totally Satisfied!”

With a Philosophy of Enjoyment, there are no phony directives. There is no lack of logic and no lame clichés to disenchant you. There is no, “Make All Your Dreams Come True In Three Easy Steps!” Such claims beg questioning: How do you make all your dreams come true? What if your dream is world peace and a low-cost iPhone?

What then?

That, of course, depends. It depends on your philosophy and the love you have. It depends on how you think, feel and behave. If you’re open to it and not afraid to feel silly, enjoyment can be as easy as dancing freely.

People are people. More than a few are goofy, bad and scary. Most of us start off OK—even those despised today—but then we start thinking and reacting in a negative way to a world filled with people who appear cruel, irrational and greedy.

That’s when the trouble started, back on day one.

As Hans Fallada (1893-1947) wrote in Every Man Dies Alone (1946)—later made into the movie Alone in Berlin (2017)—”This boy was three years younger than Karlemann and heading in the same way—no love, no belief, no ambition, only thinking of himself” (p. 340).

The Beatles were right all along: “All You Need Is Love“.

Love is not just the domain of religion. Look at what religious people do! It’s like every self is one and the same, and differences, a matter of opinion. Anyone can be duped by fear, hate or desire, but of course, everyone knows that, don’t they?

It’s a matter of understanding.

Clickbait is prone to hyperbole, as in, a claim that’s “not meant to be taken literally, but used to create dramatic effect” (Seneca Learning).

Exaggeration is used to stir desire so you’ll buy what’s being pitched (10% off if you buy four). Getting you to want something is the sole purpose of advertising and propaganda (not to be confused with soul purpose which is quite different).

Hyperbolic geometry is not an exaggeration.

From the word hyperbole we get the word hyperbolic which is an “exaggerated claim,” that is, unless you’re talking hyperbolic geometry. Exaggerated claims tend to be short-sighted, superficial, misleading, and more than probably, disappointing—especially if you do what’s advised and no dreams are forthcoming.

It’s disappointing when expectations are thwarted by realities beyond our control.

We swim in a world where advertisers and propagandists tell us who we are, what we should be, and what values to share.

Advertising executive Jonas Sachs said this about ads, “We see 3,500 of them a day and the majority of them basically tell us you suck and if you don’t buy this product, you’re not going to be rich enough, smart enough, hot enough, and so we walk around being told 3,500 times a day how deficient and lame we are” (How Commercials Get Us to Buy Crap We Don’t Need).

No wonder people get depressed.

According to these captive audience ads, to be happy, a man needs TV football, alcohol and jewelry (to appease angry partners about TV football and alcohol).

If you watch the News or get caught in the crossfire, it’s even more depressing. There are maniacs in politics who are greedy, hateful and fear-filled who get others who are greedy, hateful and fearful to do their bidding. Without checks and balances, anyone can run amuck for self-focused reasons.

And therein is the problem: Who is this self causing all the problems?

As our natural environment gets trashed for reasons of comfort, convenience and violence, supposedly good people who claim to love others, go ahead and kill and elbow those in their way.

Silly humans. They rage and fight and trash others with words, fists and guns (sometimes with knives).

As nutty old Nietzsche observed in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883), “You yourself are the worst enemy you can encounter” (Freedom in Thought). This holds true for everybody: good, bad and nutty (including Nietzsche).

Consider your Philosophy of Enjoyment as a way to get away from not enjoying. No need to buy, do, or go anywhere. First, become aware of how one is manipulated by one’s self and others and then: Do nothing. Think, “Nothing is going to bring me down“.

With a Philosophy of Enjoyment we listen to thoughts and feelings like they’re messengers. We don’t deny them. We accept the flow of passing thoughts and feelings and ground our behaviour in reality like the psychiatrist Dr. Shoma Morita (1874-1938) recommended.

“Accept your feelings. Know your purpose. And do what needs to be done,” Shoma Morita.

The goal is to not let one’s ego or “I think” or “I want” or “I feel” run the show. The problem of unhappiness isn’t a matter of alleviating discomfort by ignoring thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings cause problems when not addressed directly. To take action in one’s life is to not be ruled by passing fancies (Morita therapy: 1919 to 1995).

Here with yours truly, with consideration, humour, an open mind and accepting nature, by experimenting with what’s recommended, you can find advice that could change your life—even if that advice is unsolicited.

This is what your unsolicited advice sounds like, The New Yorker.

The goal is to use one’s way of thinking and feeling to understand what’s happening. Through a Philosophy of Enjoyment anyone can avoid conflict to experience beauty, forgiveness and an over-abiding feeling of happiness no matter what the situation.

Happiness comes from our being alive, not from a bag, bottle, needle or store. The goal of it all is to experience a peace of mind which can’t be bought and paid for with any amount of money.

In this philosophy we consider nuance and complexity. A person’s feelings and thoughts tend to exaggerate either the negative or positive consequences of a now-threat (the Russians are coming) or a now-reward (shark fin soup makes me happy).

The primary role of one’s brain is to help one navigate the environment. Threats and rewards fire in different parts of the brain. On a basic level our brains avoid threats and seek reward, “Cortisol makes us see things in black or white, yes or no and leads us to over-assess the level of threat in front of us. From an evolutionary viewpoint, those ancestors that thought “better safe than sorry” presumably lasted a little bit longer” (Threat vs Reward).

Source: “Threat vs Reward“

In the old days before hairdryers, Artificial Intelligence, missiles and fingernail clippers, this orientation was useful for finding food and avoiding being eaten, but in the 21^st century, it creates problems.

And there it is. Watch what you think and feel and don’t do anything to add inflammation. Take the high road. As Dr. Morita said, “Accept your feelings. Know your purpose. And do what needs to be done.” And, when it’s safe, we can dance. And, if you don’t dance, you can enjoy a good song.

On behalf of life, life is all we have. Why not enjoy it?

A Ponderous Enjoyment

It’s funny to think, as one watches an old movie, how everyone in that old film has stopped living (even the little kids grew old and died).

Well, maybe thinking about how everybody is dead in an old movie (even the little kids who grew old) isn’t that funny, but it is fun to imagine being alive in the 1920’s. In Paris. In the rain. 

If you’re a romantic and don’t mind dampness (and wool).

For more about “romantics” see Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. The reference to 1920’s Paris’ rain is a nod to American actor, producer, and screenwriter, Owen Wilson (1968- ), and a nod to the alteration of human consciousness from egocentric to universal.

Buster feeling joie de vivre. “Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter.” ~ Buster

It’s fun to imagine how the same self-feeling that Owen Wilson feels—that feeling of being Owen, of Owen-ness, of being one’s self, a “me,” a role, a personality, a joie de vivre, a “joy of living” feeling, we who are alive feel (sometimes)—is the same self-feeling Buster Keaton (1895-1966) had and you have, only Buster was a different body living in a present we think of as past.

This self-feeling is like seeing (the act of vision with eyes).

We who see know how great seeing is. We enjoy seeing trees with flowers and bees (see also: “A Way of Seeing to Enjoy (Part 1)”.

Seeing is the thing—not what is seen (although, beauty is better).

Who doesn’t enjoy seeing a Snowbird Hawthorn blooming?

What’s being seen is of the past (if you think about it).

Like the song says, “everybody look at your hands” (“Safety Dance”). If you have a hand, you see it and other appendages in the present at this location with your eyes (if you have them). What you see is experienced as seeing. (If there was nothing to see, seeing would be redundant.)

A goat doesn’t have horns because it butts, it butts because it has horns; likewise, we don’t have eyes because we see, we see because we have eyes. The world is literally nothing without you seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling, tasting and thinking about it. (See also “Good Morning Starshine” “Gliddy gloop gloopy. Nibby nobby nooby. La la la lo lo.”)

Imagine seeing yourself seeing. You’d be in the scene seeing yourself seeing. Image: Hand of the desert at night.

When we look into the sky, we see a star’s past at that location. Since nothing can travel faster than light (including what happens to us), “From where we are, the star is still in our sky, because the space we can interact with goes further into the past as its distance from us increases. In other words, we’re always surrounded by the past” (source).

(See also: Enjoy A Perfect World.)

Owen seeing without trying. “Just to be yourself and not to try to sell anything or make a good impression, that’s something worth striving towards.” ~ Owen

We who are alive continue a line of life-energy passed like a torch from our parents, their parents, their parents’ parents, back to the beginning (assuming there was one)—not to mention, procreation and the torch carried into the future (assuming there is one).

The same self-feeling and awareness of aliveness that we who are alive feel was transmitted to us by those before us like a game of tag where we who are alive are it—it being an “energy” we don’t want so the game is to touch someone who, when touched, tries to touch back (for more, see: Sammy Johns “Chevy Van” (making love in)). 

Like electricity in water, life-energy conducts itself in the form of a human baby (comprised primarily of water). Born into society, a “burning” biology begins in the baby whereby fuel (food) is burned (digested) creating body-energy to look for more fuel to keep the fire burning and possibly propagate the species (for the good of humanity).

(See also Billy Joel, “We Didn’t Start the Fire“.)

And so we feel our self as a body in a world, separate and alone. To breathe, sense, think, work and continue as a unit ad infinitum or forever—if possible.

Father plus mother equals child born to live, change, deteriorate and die and all of it traced out in DNA: “a double helix formed by base pairs attached to a sugar-phosphate backbone” (What is DNA?).

The body of a person is like a machine grown out of a mother who was herself grown from a mother. This machine is called Human or Homo sapiens, if you prefer (we answer to both).

Human society shapes the minds of its members and remains after individuals pass away. Like a tree lives on after its leaves fall away in the winter and are replaced, so too does society continue after individual people are gone.

Where it started no one is quite sure but every person throughout history has had a biology and the same “alive” self-feeling of being (or so one would assume).

Only the names and skeletal remains change.

In old films we see people experiencing a present moment captured like a memory.

Watching old films has a way of putting life into perspective (see also: Electric Edwardians).

One can imagine one’s self as a person back then and from this one might conclude:

Playing with cats is more fun.

Behaviour modification in action.

We all know life is an “on” and “off” system (see also: The Essence of This). It’s just that we prefer on to off. On (alive) is the absence of “off” (not alive) but as you can see, they go together.

Those who experience stillness know the opinions and stories we tell about identity, social roles, ethnicity, philosophy, religion, politics and so on do not exist in our immediate experience.

In the immediate experience there’s not even a “you” to be found because it turns out that “you” are a story too. Being “on” is all you know and the seemingly long brevity of existence is a twinkle in an ocean of eons. It’s just a matter of enjoying it as it goes and how it goes as it’s going! (That’s all.)

Priming, Framing, Transcending & Enjoying (part 2)

Philosophy is the study of living. The absence of a true philosophy can destroy a life. We may want what we want, but we get what we get. Sometimes we don’t know why we want what we want or, even less, why we get what we have.

There are about five billion web pages on the Internet (source). Readers who return to a Philosophy of Enjoyment or who stumble upon it, are looking for something.

Unless you’re a bot—an autonomous program on a network—you’re here for a reason.

We’re more or less a mystery to ourselves. That’s why we say and do things and think later, “Why did I say and/or do what I said and/or did?”

The post “Priming, Framing, Transcending & Enjoying” (2017) produced evidence from the sciences that says we don’t always know why we think and do what we think and do do. We can be manipulated at an unconscious level by priming and framing (source).

Priming can influence any decision including one’s judgment of happiness. Priming is when an exposure to a stimulus activates mental pathways without conscious guidance. Those pathways can become mental ruts with repetition.

In this example, dotted lines show primes from words that sound similar and straight lines show words that have associations (source).

In the dictionary priming is a “substance that prepares something for use or action.” It comes from the Latin primus meaning “first.” Priming here means the same except, in psychology, instead of a substance preparing a surface or priming a pump, it’s a memory triggered by a sensation that leads to streams of associations.

We see the word “BLUE” and get confused. Priming is more than a wandering mind triggered by sensation. Every perception that we have consciously or unconsciously sets off a chain of ideas in our neural network (McRaney, 2011).

Magicians trick us through our brain’s limitations. If life is a joke, wanting is the set up, getting is the punchline. You get it or you don’t. If you get it, you laugh and enjoy. If you don’t, there are no spontaneous eruptions of glee.

Look at Jim Morrison from the Doors. Jim wasn’t into playing it safe. Better to be wasted than see life being wasted. For Jim Morrison, life boiled down to having fun regardless of consequences.

In 1968 Jim Morrison sang, “No one here gets out alive.” It’s from the song “Five To One”. Jim had no idea when he sang that one-liner that he’d be dead three years later.

And so it is for many people who argue that nursing homes are full of people who played it safe and now live with mental deficiencies. Rather a full life that is shorter than a slow life that is longer, so the argument goes. For Jim and others like him, the hardest thing to do is do nothing.

But doing nothing can be a good thing. By not doing and enjoying a moment of stillness, time feels extended. You can see how driven, agitated and restless our brains normally are (see also: “Enjoy a Funny Feeling“).

Can you watch a pot boil?

Can you stop and stare like a sheep or a cow? Can you enjoy the stillness of a lull or the silence of no sound? Can you not do anything, at least, for a while?

Existence is the starting point. If you don’t exist the absence of pain is assured and the absence of pleasure, although sad, isn’t bad either. 

Want buys you a Kinder egg in hopes that you enjoy the toy inside. What you get from wanting is a prize, guaranteed. 

Rather than fight the current of your stream of consciousness or think what you want is important, go with it. Let life take you.

What did Kurt Vonnegut Jr. say in Breakfast of Champions (1973) when a character sees the question, “What’s the purpose of life?” Answer: “To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!”

The universe exists because you’re in it and of it for when you cease to exist, you and your universe go together.

If you’re reading this, this reading is your life. Primed by sensations, you make a collage of images from your consciousness pasted from memories, emotions and thoughts that exist only in your skull.

Memories hidden from conscious awareness prime associations without you knowing why. That’s when you confabulate—as in, fabricate imaginary experiences as compensation for a loss of memory.

Framing is like priming except different.

Large and small decisions are based on a “frame of mind.” Words used to frame perceptions are based on thoughts and feelings these same words evoke in you. Framing is circular or, more usually, rectangular.

Appearances frame perceptions based on visual cues. Feelings frame perceptions based on emotional responses. We think we know what affects our behaviour, but in truth, we don’t always. It’s how you spin it.

The painter René Magritte once said, “There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us.”

On TV when someone is falsely accused or “framed,” evidence can be construed as damning or inconsequential. If you effectively frame, you strategically magnify losses and gains depending upon the desired outcomes.

The truth is, most of the time, we’re unaware of the influence of our unconscious. We react in the situation (the ground) to some thing embedded (the figure). We toggle between positive and negative and sometimes mistakenly frame what we think we saw.

Framing is how we see an idea, issue or reality based on context. One’s perception of reality is not set in stone or passively observed. One constructs reality as one sees it.

“Each morning when I awake, I experience a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.“

You could be somewhere and smell a rum-dipped cigar. Automatically you think of your grandfather. Grandfather loved his garden. His garden was replaced by a Walmart which reminds you, pick up vegetables and rum.

To enjoy the full experience of this movie, there is laughter and tears, but there’s a big difference between a brain as thing and the experience of thinking or the heart as a pump and not the home of loving.

The trick is to enjoy what transpires as it’s transpiring.

The Point of Enjoyment 2

As John Steinbeck said in The Winter of Our Discontent, “You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.” Good one John.

So true.

We might not appreciate advice but we’re free to give it. It’s like everyone is saying, “I want what I want! Is that so wrong?” but the world says, “Sorry. You can’t have that—but… you-can-have-this.” 

And we make do (or we make don’t).

Contrary to what we might think, “If you want to avoid repeating history, it’s best not to try to learn from it” (Science Behind Repeating Mistakes).

When a mistake happens, say, “Forget about it” like Donnie Brasco. Sing “Walk On By” with Dionne Warwick and move on. Like the weeping philosopher Heraclitus said in 469 BC, “Everything flows.” Nothing lasts. We’re all a little disappointed.

We all dance a tango with the world. In moments of dissatisfaction and/or lamentation it’s not surprising that we ask, “What’s the point?” and find the point lacking and/or nonexistent.

The psychologist Tim Carey wrote, “It’s a funny thing about the point… we rarely think about the point except in those situations when we question if there is one. Most people… meander through their days… getting on with the business of living by making their lives be the way they want them to be” (What’s the Point?…).

Carey concludes: “We have no objective, irrefutable, immutable point that drives us all except, perhaps, the point of keeping our worlds in the states we are satisfied with” (…life is the point).

Cue music: Les Baxter “Blue Tango” (1952).

The propensity to keep one’s self satisfied reinforces the Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) which states, “Behaviour is the control of perception,” which means: “we do things to get what we want” (PCT).

Seems like a no-brainer.

As it says on the PCT website, “When things are working normally, the person gets to experience what they want to experience. It is just right—like the perfect cup of coffee or tea… the person compares a ‘standard’—what they want—with what they are experiencing right now—their perception” (PCT).

Our brains measure the difference between what we want—a beautiful day—with what we get—mud slides.

The bigger the discrepancy between what we want and what we get, the more effort we put into reducing that discrepancy.

Rather than change our behaviour we vary our behaviour to control sensory inputs. We do this to feel what we want to feel. We adjust our behaviour until everything is just right. We think we should be able to control our careers, relationships, health, finances and so on. It’s a surprise when we’re told we can’t.

Effort does not guarantee success. We need to understand the difference between thinking and being.

It’s like you’re driving a car. Your purpose is to get where you’re going so you avoid potholes. It’s a negative feedback loop. You turn your steering wheel to cancel the negative effects of potholes to your purpose.

You want things “just right.” If the music is too loud or in some way not just right, you change the music, turn it off, suffer or seek escape.

Carey asks, “What is the point of saying “Good morning”? What is the point of a butterfly bursting from its constricting cocoon and fluttering off to find a flower? What is the point of going to school, of turning up to work on time, of going on holidays, of being kind, of asking for skim instead of full cream milk...” What’s the point of anything, really?

The point is there is no point, but that is the point! Everything has a point but if you don’t see it, it is indeed pointless.

The point is what you make because you’re the one pointing!

We are meaning makers and pointers. We see patterns and make connections. It’s apophenia: the “universal human tendency to attribute meaning to perceived connections or patterns and to seek patterns in random information” (source).

The pointillism of a day in the park might be to relax and enjoy, but if you don’t see the point, you won’t.

We want things we don’t have. We don’t have things we want. When we have things we want, they don’t last. We have expectations and attachments that bind us to how we want things to be.

Like good old Siddhartha Gautama said, suffering is caused by our wish for things to be other than the way they are.

Nobody but you feels your you feeling (see Here’s the Thing). Scientific instruments can show brain activity, but they can’t point to your awareness of you-ness and say, “There it is.” Nor can you prove that you are conscious other than to say you are. Your brain may fire and wire together a sandcastle of self, but your mind controls the firing lines.

As Dr. J. Schwartz said, “The brain puts out the call. The mind decides whether to listen” (see slide presentation). The brain is the only organ that you can change (rewire) with conscious attention.

You decide what is and isn’t important. One person loves old cars, another doesn’t. What’s the point of old cars? Nothing. But to the one who enjoys them there is.

What’s the point of a flower? a tree? a you? 

The point of a flower is to flower. The point of a tree is to tree. The point of you is to you. There’s no point other than to be and do whatever it is and does.

Flowering is for reproduction but to sensory perceptions of a sensitive person there’s more to flowers than anatomy. There is beauty but not everybody gets it (if they did, they would). Points are individual.

If swimming has a point, swim. If laughing has a point, laugh. We have expectations and preferences that we continually compare to the current state of our world. When they match, we’re content. When they don’t, we do something to make it “just right.”

Thoughts are like seeds. A seed (thought) contains a plant (new thought) which gives birth to more seeds containing more plants (thoughts) in a cycle. It’s all very useful but it can remove a person from the real world.

What’s pulling your strings has been fashioned by memories, dreams and conditioning (see: “It’s Not Me…). You need an ego identity, but the trouble with our big brain is that we put ourselves into psychological prisons. Reality is not what we think it is. Reality with a capital R is something else entirely.

Prove it to yourself. When you’re done reading, go outside and experience the world with your senses. It’s like cleaning a window of thought grime. Thoughts come and go as you enjoy a timeless dimension that’s always there but obscured by preoccupations.

Just dance.

Don’t overthink it.

All insides have outsides inside something else. Where does it begin? Where does it end? It doesn’t. It’s all you.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Enjoyment, World Peace… and Something Else—Guaranteed!

Let’s mash it. Let’s smash it. Let’s get creative! The meaning of life is in what you make it. Let’s juxtapose a few things. See what happens. Incongruecies can be funny. To smile, to laugh, per chance to enjoy.

Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey in the movie American Beauty (1999), said, “Remember those posters that said, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life‘? Well, that’s true of every day but one—the day you die.” In his closing narration, Lester describes meaningful experiences in his life. Despite his death, Lester is happy because there’s “so much beauty” in the world.

Lester watching stars (final scene.)

The phrase ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life‘ comes from 1960’s wisdom. It now appears in The Walking Dead as, “To our newest undead recruits. Good moaning. Today is the first day of the rest of your afterlife.” 

Kinda funny (not really).

The blogger Craig McKee lists 57 zombie and doomsday movies that came out from 2000 to 2015 (source). To McKee these movies tell us that “living in peace, co-operation, and connectedness with others on this planet is an illusion, a luxury we can’t afford when survival is on the line. In the end, it’s eat or be eaten. The message is that we must be suspicious of each other, mistrustful of each other, isolated from each other, and when it comes down to it, we have to struggle against each other to survive.”

McKee refers to “predictive programming.” It’s a theory about the use of entertainment to “introduce planned societal changes.” Regardless of the theory’s validity, a steady diet of mistrust, fear and violence might not be good. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be” (Mother Night).

Science tells us is that violence is transmitted like a disease (source). Violence begets violence but you can create a world where violence is rare by not being violent. Picture a beautifully interconnected world of trees, birds and flowers, “Tweet, tweet.” Now make a wish and blow out the candle. Wish for world peace, then make it happen.

Don’t look for problems or make complications. Be a wish fulfilled by your actions. Life is a celebration (see also: Enjoy an Interlude). Life is a religious experience. Death isn’t. The only thing we know about death is that it stinks.

When you know that the feeling of consciousness within you is the same as in all you’s including non-human animals, you won’t be bullied or bamboozled into hurting another “you” (like you) and world peace is guaranteed!

People will argue that it’s a crazy idea. Of course, it’s overly simplistic. Enjoying not harming is ridiculous because the world is complicated and people are too self-interested and won’t do it, but therein is the key! Not doing and self-interest are integral! Not doing is easy! World peace is as easy as watching grass grow! Now curl your toes in fun and enjoy it!

Nature happens gloriously as we occupy ourselves in fantasy, mechanized, digital, virtual or otherwise.

“The problem with doing nothing is you never know when you’re finished” –Groucho.

Wide-eyed awareness of one’s mind expanded is the answer. If the past was about groups, mobs, gangs, religions and nations clashing for control, the future belongs to the individual.

It is as the Three Musketeers said, “All for one and one for all on this ecologically interconnected ball we men with big hats and flouncy pants call the world!”

Cue music.

Through enjoyment we make the world better for everyone by not hurting anyone. Life is rare. Our forays into space have said as much.

“I can’t help that. I’ve been chubby all my life” – Frank Cannon, Private Eye.

Like a giddy child, happy in a world of fun, let’s proceed with our Philosophy of Enjoyment investigation. Is there anyone who wouldn’t want to live a happy and enjoyable life—free and healthy, having fun, finding love, doing exciting things, having friends, eating, sleeping, procreating?

Let’s ask: Why are people baffled and baffling? Why is happiness elusive? Why is self-awareness lacking and ignorance in surplus?

“Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter… Life is too serious to do farce comedy” – Buster.

To explain why the world is as it is, the political philosopher Slavoj Žižek (1949- )—a fun Slovenian if ever there was one—takes the idea that individuals are always “split” between what we consciously know and can say about stuff, and the unconscious beliefs we hold of “the big Other” (authority figures and the regime we’re under).

Slavoy zigzags between knowledge and belief saying that we don’t know what “the essence” of “their people” is but our beliefs are decisive (source).

Rub-A-Dub-Dub, Slavoj pontificates in a tub: “The one measure of true love is: you can insult the other… If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.”

Knowledge is objective truth. Belief is subjective truth. Knowledge is thought true because it’s independent of circumstances. Belief is an idea held as true to the individual who holds it but not necessarily to everyone (see also: The Enjoyment Argument).

If you know something is true then you must believe it, but just because you believe it does not make it true! We think in terms of self and other (one or the other) but we’re one together—like one cell in the 37 trillion that make up a human, so you are to the world (source).

The existence of another (a not-self) allows us each to recognize our own self, as in: “Yoo-hoo, I see you! I don’t control your body or hear your thoughts. You are separate. You are not me. Therefore, I am me” (Schalk, 2011).

The self/other (one or the other) division is how a modern person understands who she, he, they is by recognizing what s/he/they is not! But what happens when you identify yourself with another or when you behave differently than you typically act causing you to appear as other to yourself?

Reality is not a matter of consensus. As the author Johann von Goethe (1749-1832) said, “Behaviour is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.”

Enjoy good humor and Jonathan’s wisdom.

Sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) said that there is no reality without the colour of our wishes and fear. “Reality is what one does not perceive when one perceives it” (source).

Your mission, should you choose to accept it (hear that music!), is to start a nuclear fusion of enjoyment worldwide (with or without ice cream). You can perceive reality differently by consciousness-raising right here.

Right now.

It’s a gentle click of understanding when you enjoy reality imagined.

Everyday Ecstasy (Without MDMA)

It is written: “Don’t bring me down. Grroosss. Don’t bring me down. Grroosss.” So says the the Electric Light Orchestra and a philosopher of enjoyment in difficult times.

A rousing song can provoke a fighting spirit to not give up – to get up like Buster Keaton after a tumble and see humour in a fall. Slogans like Keep Calm and Carry On, songs like Trio’s Da Da Da and the glad game (from Eleanor Porter’s novel Pollyanna) can turn a frown around.

She’s a Rainbow

But even though the glad game (which is about finding something to be glad about no matter what happens) is nice, saying “It’s going to be all right, you’ll be fine,” can be irritating to someone who’s in a jam. Conceptually, inspirations like this might help a person feel OK (satisfactory, not exceptional) but to feel better than OK, takes more than platitudes. Feeling OK is only half the battle.

To feel better than OK is to enter a state of grace and ecstasy. That’s what we want. To feel burdens lifted and a passage made enjoyable. Ecstasy: to feel overwhelmed by great happiness (Oxford Dictionary); “a state of exalted delight, joy and rapture” (The Free Dictionary).

But today ecstasy is “associated with orgasm, religious mysticism, and the use of certain drugs” (The Free Dictionary). It wasn’t always that way. There was a time before methylenedioxy-ethamphetamine (aka MDMA).

The word “ecstasy” comes from the Greek ekstasis, which means, “‘standing outside oneself‘” (Oxford Dictionary). It is to step out of yourself into a reality that you’re not used to. It is to feel like you no longer exist. It’s a trance-like state where you immerse yourself in what you’re doing.Example: If you look at the sky and consciously experience the blueness of it, you stop attending to your self. When you stop attending to yourself, you are not self-consciously gazing at blueness.

You’re conscious but not self-conscious.

It’s like what the Indian sage Venkataraman Iyer (aka Ramana Maharshi) said, “Who is the seer? I saw the seer disappear leaving That alone… No thought arose to say I saw.”

The challenge isn’t to climb Everest, it’s to lose yourself in doing. Laugh at Seinfeld bloopers, drive very slowly, bike ride, write, draw, construct, play, work, walk, talk, sip. Do what you do without thought of reward.

Lose yourself in doing no harm and shift mentalities outward.

Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist replaces the popular notion of the brain hemispheres being left-is-logical and right-is-creative with the idea that they pay attention in different ways.

The left is detail-oriented and the right is whole-oriented.

The right hemisphere has “a more immediate relationship with external reality as represented by the senses” (Master and His Emissary).

Before depression and shock treatment, poet Sylvia Plath wrote, “I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy” (The Bell Jar).

Researchers now find that, “People who are exposed to natural scenes aren’t just happier or more comfortable; the very building blocks of their physiological well-being also respond positively” (How Nature Resets Our Minds and Bodies).

Jack London wrote, “There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive…” (The Call of the Wild).

In a letter to his son, Einstein wrote, “I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano…That is the way to learn the most…. when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes… Also play ringtoss with Tete…”  (Einstein on Learning).

Psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, examined the roots of happiness to discover that ecstasy is “a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity… characterized by complete absorption in what one does… a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task… (flow) has existed for thousands of years under other guises, notably in some Eastern religions” (Flow).

Around the fourth century BC, Zhuangzi (Chuang-Tzu,庄子) supposedly said, “Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free: stay centred by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.”

He also said, “The sound of water says what I think,” which could mean he was  in flow at the time that he spoke.

It’s like how the Dude in the movie The Big Lebowski is comfortable with what he’s got. Like a tumble-weed the Dude takes the path of least resistance. He is authentically content and complacent without doing harm. He lets life carry him along.

He’s learned how to enjoy every moment without apathy. He knows that it’s all strikes and gutters. Sometime you win. Sometimes you lose.

We can’t all be as lazy as the Dude but we can go forth and abide. We can expose ourselves to natural scenes without being obscene and put the Credence on.