A perspective to enjoy

Everyone has a perspective, a “point of view,” or POV, if you will. We all have a vantage point from which we perceive the world around us with our senses and, moreover, everyone has their own way of thinking and feeling about what they are perceiving with those senses.

Thinking and feeling are interconnected. Thinking and feeling certain ways can cause a person to say certain things and behave in certain ways, and then, one will feel and think certain ways after having said or done what one has said and done because saying certain things (to yourself or out loud) and behaving in certain ways reinforces what one already thinks and feels. 

It’s a loop, really.

Source: The Loop of Thinking, Feeling, Being

If you’re not happily looping, however, there is a way out, and, once out, one is free to enjoy without needing anything or having to go anywhere and with the added bonus of a light-hearted happy feeling of good humor.

What could be better?

“Good humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us,” Ernest Renan (1823-1892).

It begins with cultivating an awareness of how one’s thoughts affect one’s feelings. As an online grief assistant put it (not that you’re grieving, but this applies to all feelings), “When your thoughts appear to be the product of your overwhelming sadness and grief, know that it is your thoughts that are feeding the sadness rather than the other way around. Your thoughts generate a feeling which you then act upon” (“How our thoughts govern how we feel“).

When you have a good, bad or indifferent thought, a matching good, bad or indifferent feeling will be the result. It’s all cause (thought) and effect (feeling) in a chain of causes and effects.

If one isn’t aware of how one’s thoughts affect one’s feelings and thus one’s self and the world at large, one can unknowingly let thoughts get the better of one by looping in a way that limits or eliminates happiness, because happiness, if you dig into it, is the ground of one’s being. Happiness is there all the time in the background before we muddle ourselves with thinking and feeling.

Cue music:

As a kid you were probably naturally happy, that is, unless your happiness was tarnished by someone equally tarnished, but even then, even if it feels like your happiness is or was tarnished, even if you think happiness is completely missing, it actually isn’t.

You can have everything but still not be happy and, conversely, you can have nothing and be happy. It depends on how one thinks. The trick is to limit bad thoughts and feelings and nurture good thoughts and feelings. By repeating the latter (good thoughts and feelings), the former (bad thoughts and feelings), evaporate.

Happiness doesn’t come from outside sources like cars and money, nor does it come from experiences like world travel or cannabis imbibing. We know how thoughts and feelings come and go like clouds on any given day as we age, but one thing remains in the background blue sky: one’s self prior to thinking.

To enjoy is to agree to partake. Violence begets violence. Peace begets peace. So it is. Make your choice. Enjoyment is affirmed when one says, “I will enjoy” but not at the expense of others. Just as one can initiate enjoyment with an affirmation, so too can enjoyment be prevented by a lack of attention or unrealistic expectations.

Metaphorically speaking, who one is, as a person, is like someone wearing sunglasses. The sunglasses one wears affects how one sees. When one wears pink sunglasses, the world appears pink. Likewise, so too is the world colored by the lens of one’s thoughts and feelings about what one has seen, thought or felt in the past and is seeing, thinking and feeling in the present.

The reality that we assume to be real—that each of us perceives with our senses combined with awareness—the reality that we consider to be reality, is not really reality, at least, not directly.

Looking at reality is kind of like watching reality TV. Reality TV is not reality. It’s TV reality. So too is one’s personal subjective reality. If one perceives reality as harsh and unenjoyable, reality appears harsh and unenjoyable and then one acts accordingly.

In this choice to enjoy, willpower might come to mind, but enjoyment is like sleep, you can’t make it happen. You can, however, set the stage for enjoyment. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-186) said that the will is like “the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.” The strong blind man symbolizes willpower and the lame man symbolizes one’s conscious mind. Not everyone has willpower, however. That’s where a contrasting philosophical concept called free will comes in. Whereas willpower emphasizes persistence and determination, free will emphasizes the choices we make and our individual autonomy as conscious beings (The Socratic Method). Having autonomy means one is free to follow one’s heart. 

It is one’s conscious mind that possesses the faculties to evaluate the consequences of one’s actions. It is will power and free will in combination that allows one to navigate the complexities of living. Repeated thoughts become like grooves in a record that play again and again. If one has been treated harshly, one may treat others likewise but if one perceives the world without a bias initiated by a past experience, one can get out of the rut of past thinking to realize the beauty that is in front of one, like a blue sky hidden by clouds.

Clouds are like thoughts. They come and they go. They cover the background blue sky which is the happiness we feel when we let all those thoughts drift on by.

If one can see the big-picture, one can see one’s sameness with others and the beauty of living and, if one can see that big-picture and enjoy the feeling of being and breathing in that blue sky feeling without thinking or needing, well then, one is effortlessly and naturally happy.

Enjoy Being Wise and Save the World At the Same Time

“You think that I don’t even mean a single word I say. It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away” – The Bee Gees, “Words” (1968).

As has been said before, “the world is a mess and getting messier still” (To think or not: Zen, Tolstoy, Depression and Enjoyment).

The number of problems we face is astounding (UN Global Issues). It’s like the world is going to hell in a handbasket and we’re the cause. Go to any zoo, refugee camp or suburb. See for yourself. How can a person enjoy with a clear conscience when so much is wrong?

Singin’, “All we are saying, is: ‘Give peace a chance.'”

Even though we know, “The whole surface of Earth is a series of connected ecosystems” and “every factor in an ecosystem depends on every other factor,” we continue to pave over ecosystems with joyous abandon (National Geographic).

But a change from soil and water to roads, suburbs and industry has a funny way of affecting plants and on animals depending on those plants.

We have pollution in the ocean twice the size of Texas (source). We have poverty, crime, racism, road rage, distrust, violence and an epidemic of death by drug addiction. We have cancers and viruses and the doctors and scientists who try to help us get death threats (‘I hope you die’: how COVID pandemic unleashed attacks on scientists).

Image by Martin Shovel

It’s like nature is out to get us and humans don’t get it. Plants and animals go extinct as economics drive global destruction. People are more irrational than ever and no amount of intelligence, Artificial or otherwise, seems able to save us from ourselves.

So, what’s the answer? Is it escapism and surrender? Is it global conflict and action? Is it ruining your life worrying and not enjoying?

How can a run-of-the-mill human (one of 7.9 billion no less) make a difference, be a good ancestor, live a good life and enjoy good times with love and a calm state of mind?

In such a messed up world what can philosophy do?

Well… a lot actually.

Philosophy comes from the Greek “philein” and “sophia” meaning “lover of wisdom” (source). A lover of wisdom relates to any area where intelligence is shown. Wisdom is the ability to think and act using “knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight” (source). If we valued wisdom more than money, celebrity and immediate gratification, if we practiced wisdom religiously, as in, “with consistent and conscientious regularity” (Dictionary), we could easily solve all our problems both individually and collectively.

Psychology was born from philosophies dating back thousands of years (source). Philosophy is logic. Philosophy is religion stripped of wishful thinking. Philosophy is understanding yourself, other people, the world, and your relationship with the world and other people (source).

“Understanding” means to “stand in the midst of” from Old English understandan meaning “to comprehend, grasp the idea of, receive from a word or words or from a sign the idea it is intended to convey” (Etymology Online).

The answer starts with attention and self-awareness.

According to Kruger and Dunning (1999) without mental tools we can’t see our own incompetence. For example: “hunters who know the least about firearms also have the most inaccurate view of their firearm knowledge, and doctors with the worst patient-interviewing skills are the least likely to recognize their inadequacies” (The more inept you are the smarter you think you are).

There are so many websites endorsing the Dunning-Kruger Effect most people don’t question it, but they should: “Dunning-Kruger Effect Is Probably Not Real“. Truth is, if we’re not paying attention, we’re all susceptible to cognitive biases, as in, “systematic errors in thinking.”

Research shows, for example, there is an asymmetry in our thinking towards negativity, meaning, we register the negative more readily and frequently than positive (Negativity Bias).

But on the flip-side, we’re also susceptible to Optimism Bias whereby our brains are overly optimistic. “If,” for example, “you were asked to estimate how likely you are to experience divorce, illness, job loss, or an accident, you are likely to underestimate the probability that such events will ever impact your life” (source).

Positive events lead to feelings of well being, while negative events lead to risky behavior and not taking precautions (source).

Consciousness is being aware of your environment and body. Self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness. Self-awareness is how you understand feelings, motivations and desires (source). Whether you think overly negative or optimistic can depend on your mood. People are less optimistic in a bad mood and more optimistic in a good mood (source).

A mood is a “temporary state of mind or feeling” (Dictionary). Thinking is a way of dealing with moods. We can think our way out of a feeling by finding solutions to meet the need behind that feeling (University of Cape Town).

According to the World History Encyclopedia (2005, p. 409) the first philosopher was Zoroaster (aka Zarathustra) who lived somewhere between 1500 and 1000 BC (source).

Bachi Karkaria’s Zarathushtra (1974) 

Zoroaster praised “Ahura” (Lord) “Mazda” (Wisdom) and founded “Mazdayasna” which means “Worship of Wisdom.” Before the 6th century BC, philosophy and science were not separated from theology which probably explains how Zoroaster, the world’s first philosopher, started the world’s first monotheistic religion (source).

Imagine that! The first monotheistic God was Wisdom itself!

Starting with Pythagoras (570-495 BC)—who, incidentally, first coined the word “philosophy” (source)—Zoroaster’s followers taught ancient Greeks about the love of wisdom (source).

Pythagoras influenced Plato and Aristotle who influenced Western philosophy which influenced Christianity through medieval scholars like Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) who developed his own conclusions from Aristotelian ideas. 

Farrokh Bulsara before renaming.

Zoroaster’s religious philosophy is known for its motto ‘Good thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds.’ It teaches sharing, generosity and kindness. What could be better? Even the rock star Freddie Mercury (1946-1991) born Farrokh Bulsara got into that.

Zoroaster was also the world’s first proponent of ecology through care of the earth (source).

Let us practice wisdom in thought, word and deed! Let us enjoy thinking, Air and a little ping pong.

We can be lovers of wisdom and save the world, one mind at a time.

Utopia, Hedonia, Eudomania, Ataraxia (Oh Yeah)

Thomas More’s Utopia (1518). Photograph: The Granger Collection, New York

The word “utopia” is a pun on the Greek ou-topos meaning ‘no place‘ and eu-topos meaning ‘good place‘ (British Library). Thomas More (1478 – 1535) came up with it for his book, Utopia, which is about an island uncorrupted by greed that has qualities of perfection (read: Utopia).

More was a lawyer, judge and Catholic who practiced self-flagellation and wore a skin-irritating hair shirt. He saw Protestantism as a threat to society and served as Lord Chancellor of England until retirement, but then he irritated King Henry VIII by not attending Henry’s wedding and by not acknowledging Henry as head of the Church of England (source).

“Take that for irritating the king!” and the crowd went wild (Thomas More Trial, 1535).

More described European society as a place where, “Idle monarchs and nobles seek to increase their own wealth and power at the expense of the people, who are left in poverty and misery;” therefore, More’s utopia is “communal, allowing its people to easily meet their needs” (source).

But then we know where communal living gets us sometimes. Look at injustices in the former Soviet Union or wealth disparity in China which is as bad as anywhere.

source: Making Billions: The Richest People in the World (2020)

Nothing has changed since Thomas More’s time except for the names (and a lot of pollution). Instead of Czar Nicholas II, we have Vladimir Putin. Instead of Rockefeller, we have Bezos and Gates, among others.

Is anyone surprised?

Surely not.

Illustration by O.O.P.S.

Our problem isn’t political, it’s psychological. We can complain about unfairness, but who among us wouldn’t enjoy being rich? The drive to feel important is strong.

Cue music:

Trouble is, studies show, when people even think about money, it makes them selfish (see: Mere Thought of Money Makes People Selfish).

Psychologist Paul Piff has done studies proving selfishness occurs as a result of having more than others (see: The Science of Greed).

In one study two people played Monopoly and by the flip of a coin, one person was given an unfair advantage that made them rich. As the game went on, the “rich” started to act dominant and in the end, despite advantages clearly given, they saw their win as a result of ability.

Piff has found that people are willing to put others down to put themselves up. “A sense of power and addiction gets fueled more and more with the gaining of money” (source).

We may enjoy watching billionaires get their money taken by “f*** society” in the show Mr. Robot (2015-2019), but we know, if we were a billionaire, we too would probably think we’re special and cling to our money.

Trump appears with other greedy billionaires in Mr. Robot.

But then, how can knowing people are unfair make life beautiful? Grumbling about injustice doesn’t make things just! Feeling hostility doesn’t help us fix things. It just drains our energy and keeps us focused on problems instead of solutions.

A perfect world is perceived as impossible, so why bother? Utopian is considered “visionary reform that tends to be impossibly idealistic” (Britannica). You’re more likely to see a dystopia (a place of great suffering and injustice) than a utopia. Dystopias seem more doable.

Some people even say we’re in a dystopia now (see: Dystopia is Realism: The Future Is Here If You Look Closely).

See: The Miracle of Kindness

Journalist and Presbyterian minister, Chris Hedges, paints a dystopian picture: “The issue before us is death. Not only our individual death, which is more imminent for some of us this morning than others, but our collective death. We have begun the sixth great mass extinction, driven by our 150-year binge on fossil fuel….” (Confronting the Culture of Death).

Most of our problems individually and collectively are the result of hedonia or hedonism—from Greek hēdonē meaning “pleasure.”

Our inclination is to enjoy and seek escape by indulging in TV, video games, golf, food, drugs, drinking—whatever it takes to detach from what is displeasing (see also: Facing a Pine-scented Breeze).

Image by Jon Kudelka

Trouble is, for some of us, no sooner is a pleasure over when it’s wanted again (just ask any addict). The ancients knew this. Aristotle (384-323 BC) said, “I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self” (source).

Perturbed people perturbing.

For there is a danger in pleasure when people do what they please—especially when there are 7.9 billion of us (see Worldometer). By focusing on personal pleasure we put our self before others and neglect responsibilities.

Moreover, some people are susceptible to the disorder of psychopathy which is a lack of care for others, extreme egotism and a failure to learn from experience (source).

What do you think?

Get to know yourself with this interesting test:

Measure your degree of psychopathy with the:

Psychopathy Spectrum Test.

The philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC) promoted pleasure but not a materialistic money-oriented version because it lacks prudence, as in, “the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason.” Epicurus taught that “grabbing easy worldly pleasures is a mistake because ultimately they don’t satisfy” (source). His goal was the pleasure of not suffering.

The Roman Stoic Epictetus (c. 50–135 AD) seems to agree saying, “Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well” (The Enchiridion).

This is where the Greek eudomania (U-de-‘mO-nēa), ataraxia (at-a-rax-ia) and “Oh Yeah!” comes in.

Eudomania means “good spirit,” or “happiness” in English. Aristotle said that eudaimonia is “the only human good that is desirable for its own sake (as an end in itself) rather than for the sake of something else (as a means toward some other end)” (Britannica).

From eudomania comes ataraxia which is “tranquility” or serene calmness “untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet” (Merriam-Webster).

For ancient philosophers like Epicurus, Aristotle and Epictetus (along with most religious traditions), serene calmness or peace of mind is the ultimate pleasure, but it only comes by way of practicing self-control and virtues like justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance.

Source: Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter Public School Character Education

Here’s the kicker:

You can be in a good spirit in a good place here and now! No need for dope, booze, or anything in particular. You don’t do anything but watch how thoughts come and go. Watch how thoughts stir up emotions that can rob you of joy and trouble the world.

Forget concepts and look around. We’re in a utopia now. It’s called Earth. Only, we don’t see it as it is (Anaïs Nin, 1961).

We’re blinded by profit margins and personal desires, but if you practice virtues like prudence as advised by anyone wise, you can enjoy simple moments of beauty, tranquility and transcendence until you too get it and say, ” Ooooh Yeah.”

Enjoy.

Breathe in the air (and enjoy)

“Long you live and high you fly
Smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be” (Pink Floyd, “Breathe”, 1973)

Contrary to popular belief (and advertisers everywhere), people don’t need a product, service or lifestyle to enjoy life.

A moment of peace in a park or beside a drainage ditch with a Great Blue Heron can stop a busy brain from blocking beauty.

Without the blinders of identity and self-interest, a person can go from listening to an interior monologue capable of souring any perspective (and ruin your life), to enjoying the smallest things—a ladybug on a leaf, ducks quacking and water vapour (for no reason).

Breathing can be enjoyable. In the midst of a problem, you can enjoy breathing (assuming that it is safe to do so).

If you hold your breath long enough, your body breathes for you. Combine this breathed sensation with a heart beating autonomously and you can appreciate self-driving organic automation. 

But breathing and heart-beating (consciously or not) gets boring. After breathing (even if it is enjoyable), people get distracted and ask like Peggy Lee did, “Is that all there is?”

What’s easily enjoyed is easily ignored. We might want to enjoy more, but therein is our problem: What we enjoy triggers our brain’s “reward” centers and makes pleasure habit-forming (see also: “Hedonism, Selfishness and a Womb with a View”).

A pleasure repeated can “set up potentially harmful routines, such as overeating, smoking, drug or alcohol abuse, gambling and even compulsive use of computers and social media” (Breaking Bad Habits).

Enjoyment (and addictive drugs) prompts the brain to release dopamine—a chemical responsible for transmitting signals between nerve cells.

Dr. Russell Poldrack, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas comments, “If you do something over and over, and dopamine is there when you’re doing it, that strengthens the habit even more. When you’re not doing those things, dopamine creates the craving to do it again” (source). 

(Saturday Cartoons)

Therefore, it isn’t prudent to do whatever thou wilt. One will soon find one’s self on auto-pilot, following a predetermined sequence of operations conditioned by habit prompted by pleasure.

One may soon find one’s self on a Hedonic Treadmill chasing a craving for happiness that becomes evermore unattainable.

source

“The hedonic treadmill, which is also referred to as hedonic adaptation, is a metaphor for your set point of happiness. The idea here is that no matter how good or bad something makes you feel, you will eventually return to your original emotional state” (developgoodhabits).

Cue music: “The Windmills of Your Mind“:

“Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon…

Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream…”

“

Aristippus (435-356 BC) the philosopher saw danger in pleasure and advised, “It is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without being worsted” (source).

“The vice lies not in entering the bordello but in not coming out” (Aristippus)

The philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC) agreed, but his idea of pleasure was ataraxy, “a state of serene calmness.”

Epicurus advised us not to be ambitious but to live in harmony with nature and strive for tranquility brought by contentment with simple things and the absence of pain.

Existential Comics: Was Epicurus Really a Hedonist?

Our happiness formula is backwards. We think, “If I do something great, work overtime, get straight A’s, achieve some goal, then I’ll become more successful, and then I’ll be happier.”

But a few weeks after a goal is achieved, the trip over, the new treasure made familiar, happiness levels return to normal and a new goal is needed to achieve happiness later.

The trick to evading the trap of cravings and treadmills is to not wait until later to be happy. Save time and be happy first! To do that, it’s quite simple: Go without expectations, forget who you are and shift from thinking, “I must do something,” to, “I must do nothing.” The real trick is to enjoy reality as it is, because it is.

You are free to enjoy, but enjoying the world as it is, as you are, is difficult for people who are weighed down by time and things to be done.

Accepting reality without need, fear, or demand, with a sigh, without resistance, “this is what it is,” you suddenly find yourself relaxing into what there is (see also: “This too shall pass“).

Beautiful, Average, or Disappointing—what’ll it be?

How would you rate your life thus far, overall and right now? Would you rate your life thus far, overall, and right now as (select one):

Option 1 Profoundly Beautiful
Quote: “Life is beautiful. I would not change a thing.”

Option 2 Just Average
Quote: “Life is O.K., but there are a few things I might change, if I could.”

Option 3 Rather disappointing
Quote: “Life sucks—more or less. There are many things I’d change, if I could.”

Of course, the above questionnaire is limited and it’s leading. You’re not given much for choices. Most people would probably select option 2 or 3. Option 1 sounds far-fetched—especially given the nature of vales of tears and potholes that we’re in (Latin vallis lacrimarum potholeus).

How can life thus far, overall, and right now be profoundly beautiful when aging, dying and disappointment are guaranteed—especially towards the end. Profoundly beautiful seems only to happen in fleeting moments—here and gone, here and gone, and again, if you’re lucky.

Profoundly beautiful doesn’t lend itself to a permanent state of affairs—at least, not without some training in the art of enjoying (see also: Rainbows, Religious Experience and Nerf Warfare).

Watch where you point that thing.

This questionnaire may make you say, “Hold on thar, Baba Looey! I’ll do the thin’in’ around here, and dooon’t you for-git it!” like Quick Draw McGraw used to say before hilarity ensuing.

If you paused before option 1, “I wouldn’t change a thing,” your thoughts may have gone to moments that were not beautiful. There may be many non-beautiful moments, but such is the world.

It is what it is. Things happen. Resistance is futile.

Acceptance frees us and expectations are a set up.

From chaotic to predictable and back again, we go like row boats tossed on waves of ups, and downs. The trick is, therefore, to enjoy the rowing (you may as well). 

Cue Pérez Prado “Patricia”.

For lots of people (on behalf of lots of people), life may be profoundly beautiful, but, only on occasion. Most people would probably say things don’t seem profoundly beautiful, thus far, overall and right now because, we’re too busy.

Feeling profound beauty takes a special kind of silence and a special sense of awareness of yourself and the place you’re in. In day to day life most people don’t have time to pay attention to paying attention. Only oddballs, musicians, mystics, actors and comedians have that kind of time to waste.

It can get crowded.

People.

Most of the time we’re on auto-pilot. That’s why we don’t notice what’s really going on. What matters most to most people is the life they’re in right now and only rarely is that life profoundly beautiful (or so it feels).

If anything is (or was) profoundly beautiful, we’d hardly notice. We’re critical. We’re oblivious to our breathing and hardly notice birds in the trees or the beauty of life on this blue planet.

But no more. With a click of awareness, from this moment forward (and backward), you will be aware of yourself, of yourself breathing and of your Self living and everything else. You will notice yourself noticing with your senses and with your mind attuned to the miracle of life and living like the wisest wise person ever.

That’s you.

It’s a paradox, really.

A paradox is “a proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory” (source).

In the paradox of “less is more,” for example, how can less be more? Out of two opposites “less” and “more” comes the concept that what is less complicated is often more appreciated (see also: Where Are You? The Paradox of Happiness).

A paradox appears to contradict the truth, but it is an implied truth. It describes an action or situation that seems absurd but is true. It challenges the mind to question common thoughts such as, “Just average is on the right side of terrible.”

Choices we make about what to do now or later and our levels of satisfaction as derived from those choices are driven by comparisons. In economic circles, they call the trade off between now and later satisfaction, “time discounting.”

 

Contrary to post-modern relativism and lack of truths, the paradox of happiness is that it comes when you are gone!

But, if you want even more than just to lose track of time and get absorbed in what you’re doing, the profoundly beautiful feeling of living life thus far, overall and right now comes only with awareness (see also: “Where Are You? The Paradox of Happiness”).

So the trick is to find your self  in feeling aware of yourself feeling aware in the space you’re in, as if you are extended into what is seen.

Easy peasy.

Boing.

Enjoy.

This Time (and space-time) to Enjoy

A dream (cue dreamy music):

“I was walking down a path in a misty forest and I came to a gate. A man at the gate said, ‘Correct, go in. Incorrect, stay out.’ I nodded agreement and the man said, ‘What is greater than God, more evil than the devil, the poor have it, the rich need it and if you eat it, you’ll die?’

I didn’t know. I said nothing. 

And the man said, ‘What is between Earth and moon?’

‘Nothing?’ I said—as if it were a question.

And the man said, ‘In our universe even a dark void of empty space absent of particles is still something,’ and in a blink, ten years passed—which seemed long (as far as blinks go).

And the man said, ‘All matter is made of atoms and sub-atomic particles ruled by probability—not certainty. You consist of particles. Particles hover in a state of uncertainty, but you don’t. You remain solid. Why is that?’

‘Your experience of the world is constructed by sensory and cognitive capacities. Your understanding of reality is a mental representation—not reality itself—but you can experience reality directly and enjoy it immensely with a shift in perspective.’

‘Instead of thinking of yourself as a being in a world ‘out there’—as in, ‘me in a world outside me’—assume a more universal less egocentric perspective. Let your feeling of self extend.’

(The man was clearly insane.)

‘The universe is defined as, “the totality of existing things…. everybody, all people, the whole world… all together, all in one, whole, entire, relating to all… turned into one…. One.”

And the man gave instructions for cosmic reflection:

‘Step One: let your senses fall victim to being here and now as it is. Be here as here being here. Feel the feeling of here. Be here like any other creature self-aware.’

‘Step Two: look at the space between things as connective. An invisible nothing connects everything into one big thing. We are as nothing—like spirits here and gone but we have one thing the universe needs to exist: Conscious awareness. Without conscious awareness, there is no reality. Reality rests on whether or not there are eyes open.’

And suddenly reality is the dream and the dream is reality.

And the man said, ‘You might wonder what’s going on in someone’s mind, but what is mind?’

And I said, ‘Your brain is a physical substance. It contains billions of neurons relaying electrical signals. Your mind is a product of signals fed by energy from the sun consumed in the form of plants and animals (aka food). Everything is entangled. Like Oliver Swofford said, “Glibby gloop gloopy. Nibby Nabby Noopy, La La La Lo Lo.”‘

And the man said, ‘How do you define a shoreline? Is it water or sand?’

It is both. (Duh.) 

And the man ignored my belligerence and said, ‘The inner workings of your mind wash over the shore as you shape and mix yourself with the world.’

‘Our experience of self interconnects with the world. One’s inner world is relational to the outer world. We think of our mind as a brain inside a skull like a peanut in a shell. We all feel alone. Sometimes we might even think we don’t belong, but peanuts cannot be separated from the immediate world. Likewise, if you see your mind and the world as relational, there’s a shift in a sense of belonging.’

‘Subjective worlds interact with objectivity. It’s difficult to disentangle a subjective view of the world from its interaction.’

‘Your mind is not simply the perception of experiences, but those experiences themselves.’

To sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists, our minds are extended by the effects we have on others and others on ourselves.

Thoughts are ethereal. Cloud-like. Invisible. Spiritual? Thoughts are gaseous abstractions floating. We are alone in conscious awareness but our minds are not just brain activity. Perceiving your mind as a product of brain functioning can make a person feel all alone but to appreciate the benefits of interrelations with the world, all one has to do is open one’s mind to receive it “as is” without ambition or critique.

Einstein perceived space and time as interwoven into a single continuum known as space-time. In space-time events occurring at the same time for one observer could occur at different times for another (source).

If life is a full-bodied movie involving five senses, memories are flashbacks and time itself is but an emotional fourth dimension you can move around in with some imagination.

(Or not.)

Just enjoy it.

 

Resources:

Quantum Theory – Full Documentary

A Way of Seeing To Enjoy (Part 1)

Knowing is equated with seeing. If you see the light, it could mean that you see a light blinking on a radio tower or it could mean that you know something that makes you see everything different or it could mean both.

Philosophy is equated with thinking. Religion is equated with feeling. Today, like the physicist David Bohm, “we hold several points of view, in a sort of active suspension” (Dialogue). Like poet William Blake—”To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower“—and like philosophers Søren Kierkegaard—we see the ‘eternal in the temporal’—and Ludwig Wittgenstein we say, “how extraordinary that anything should exist” (Lecture on Ethics).

Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein; from Logicomix (2008) by Apostolos Doxiadis, illustrated by Alecos Papadatos

Today we feel stoic acceptance of what the world throws at us. We say like Wittgenstein, “I am safe, nothing can injure me whatever happens” (Lecture on Ethics). With a “Click!” we connect to an awareness that leaves us feeling strangely lighthearted, for no apparent reason.

This feeling could best be described as “Self Actualization” as psychologist Abraham Maslow described, or as an “oceanic feeling” of limitlessness and oneness with the entire human race and universe as the mystic Romain Rolland described or it could be just one of those things: “What’s for supper?”

Today we go from a narrow self-centred perspective to a wider view of the world in its totality. We are ‘disturbed by joy’ like William Wordsworth was a few miles above Tintern Abbey:

“…I have felt a presence that disturbs me with joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of suns,
and the round ocean and the living air,
and the blue sky, and in the mind of man” (source)

1804. Tintern Abbey by William Havell (source).

Religious belief and the lack thereof could be understood not as rival theories but as different ways of seeing. If a believer and an atheist look at a picture and one says it’s hideous and the other says it’s lovely, who’s right? who’s wrong?

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

Wittgenstein saw religion not as theoretical but as a “collection of pictures” reinforcing rules of life in the form of morality and a way of living that is itself what is eternal (Culture and Value, 1980). If someone taps into that eternal by living its ideal, one is living and being the eternal for a time like a leaf on a tree that is seasonal.

The world is factual. Facts are identifiable by science but facts can’t answer why you are here.

Like Wittgenstein said, “We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched” (Lecture on Ethics).

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sarte concluded in The Transcendence of the Ego that, “The World has not created the me: the me has not created the World” (p.105) but these two things are connected in a consciousness that is spontaneous. Sarte wrote, “Consciousness is always ‘of something‘, and therefore defined in relation to something else. It has no nature beyond this and is thus completely translucent” (source).

Some people picture a soul as translucent, as a kind of a ‘thing’—but not Wittgenstein. He said that if you look at soul language in religion, soul is not pictured as a thing but as integrity which is equally invisible. So if someone says, “He sold his soul for money” or “He sold his soul to the devil” it really means that he’s become materialistic. He has no deep moral sense and moral sense, as we know, is not visible.

A man may have everything but feel horribly afraid of what’s coming. A good man, however, enjoying a good way—tried, true and eternal through himself and those who live after—why, he has nothing to fear. Ever.

No matter what.

He can be light as a feather. He is not chained by anything material. He can never be judged as having lived a futile life even if he dies poor and unknown and didn’t do very much. After all, what does a sparrow do? What are flamingos for?

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a person can’t get to the highest level of “self-actualization” without making it by lower level needs such as food, sex and security.

To be self-actualized is to be unafraid of the unknown, untroubled by ambiguity and triviality, self-aware, accepting weaknesses while developing strengths, living a “meaningful life” by having a purpose that goes above and beyond one’s self to a greater good (see: Self Actual).

If you were asked, “Do you understand the difference between thinking and being?” what would you say?

Understanding the difference between thinking and being is like when police catch someone in the act of a crime and say, “What do you think you’re doing!” which is another way of saying, “How stupid are you?”

This is the exact moment when the cop and the criminal give their collective heads a shake. Most people (most of the time) see the world from inside a self-enclosed bubble of preoccupied thoughts that shape how the world is perceived. But this way of seeing is limiting because it sees a world perceived through language and opinion.

When a person with soul (and a clear conscience, if possible) wakes up, looks around and says full of happiness, “This is a miracle!” he isn’t just describing an event. It’s really his reaction to something significant that he is being, becoming and enjoying.

Enjoy a Little Dream

“Tower of Babel” by Damian Parlicki.

A philosopher has a dream. In the dream she’s lying on her back beside a precarious tower. From her vantage point, it’s like she’s inside the Eiffel Tower looking up. The top looks far, far away.

Without a sound and ever so slowly – like a cargo ship setting out to sea – starting at the top, the tower begins to fall in slow motion straight down upon the dreamer.

With terror and disbelief she thinks, “That’s it. I’m dead.”

Inside the Eiffel Tower looking up.

Within a minute she will be killed. The screaming words of AC/DC come to mind, “I’m back in black. I hit the sack. I’ve been too long. I’m glad to be back” (Back In Black, 1980) or as another poet put it:

This is the end, my only friend, the end.
Of our elaborate plans, the end.
Of everything that stands, the end.
No safety or surprise, the end (The Doors, “This Is the End,” 1967).

In death there is no pain, only regret.

It’s like the final scene in the the TV series The Sopranos. The family is in a diner talking and eating onion rings as “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey is playin’ on the jukebox. Just as Steve Perry sings, “Don’t stop!” BINK – it cuts to black silence and remains black silence for longer than is comfortable. Ten seconds elapse before credits roll.

The silent black nothingness surprises us. We want to go back, but can’t. It’s the silent slam of a door.

Some will win. Some will lose. Some were born to sing the blues.
Oh, the movie never ends. It goes on and on, and on, and on…
(Journey, “Don’t Stop Believin‘”, 1981).

AJ says, “Focus on the good times.” “Don’t be sarcastic,” says his father. “Isn’t that what you said one time? Try to remember the times that were good?” “I did?” says Tony with pause. “Yeah? Well, it’s true, I guess.”

And so it is that we too focus on good times and let bad times roll off like duck water. It is now the dreamer who is included as one of “those people who died, died” like in the song by Jim Carroll.

And then… the dream ends. She wakes up. She sees her bed, a cat in the window and hears crows singing brightly, “Caa! Caa! Caa!” There is no tower. There never was. Dreamers see worlds behind closed eyes.

“Is that what it feels like to die?” she wonders, looking around at what was old made new.

“Is it, BINK – cut to black silence, roll credits? What if death is like being born? How would you know? Do you remember being born? Do you know when you became aware of yourself as you?”

Is it not the case that as far back as you can remember, you’ve been you? Are you not the only you you’ve ever known? It’s always been you. It’s always been now.

And so it has been for anyone ever. All we know is now! Here you are then something happens – a tower falls, a bit of cancer: Cut to black silence. You’re gone then BINK! back from a dream beginning anew.

That could explain why squirrels and birds look so surprised.

Time feels permanent while you’re in it, but it isn’t. The year could be 1822, 1922 or 2022 – doesn’t matter – you roll in the time you’re in.

Flash – you’re at work. Splash – you’re eating dinner. Zip it’s tomorrow, all the while, without interruption, you’ve been yourself to you alone.

What if we each become aware of our self as we go along living from the beginning but the you-ness in each of us feels (and is) the same! Why not? Maybe ‘you’ is a relative term?

After all, we’re all ‘you’  to each other and ‘I’ to ourselves. Every night you close your eyes to disappear and every morning you open them to be yourself again and so does everyone all the time.

Everything is in motion. Cue music: “About Time” or “The Knick.”

A woman says, “I’m Mavis. I live in Moose Jaw. I’m middle-aged, overweight and I work at Tim Hortons.”

Mavis has an idea of herself that others have come to share, but no one but Mavis knows what it’s like to be Mavis from birth to demise.

When Mavis is gone, only the idea of her will remain.

A man says, “I’m Archie from Arizona. I teach high school and play video games.” Archie has been acculturated. He knows who he is and goes around proving it. He judges others using himself as exemplar.

Charles Dickens wrote, “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other” (A Tale of Two Cities).

What is that secret? Can you see it? Peer into the pupil of another. What do you see? Do you see a black hole the same as your own? Maybe they’re not even just the same as in similar but the ‘same’ like the space around a star is the ‘same’ space near or far.

Eye see you.

A black hole isn’t a “hole” at all. It isn’t even black. It’s an orb in space that looks black because light can’t escape. If you jumped on one you’d descend towards it so slowly that “it would take an infinite amount of time” for you to be atomically disassembled and added to it (Universe Today).

Isn’t it odd how black holes look a lot like pupils in eyeballs, which, by the way, also absorb light rays (Wikipedia)?

Artist’s conception of a black hole, Universe Today, 2015.

An old philosopher said, “Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death” (Schopenhauer, 1851). The question is: If your lifespan is 24 hours, how will you live it?

A trick to enjoying a rock and roll philosophy is to recognize the significance of existence and in Hard Times rock it like Ray Charles and in Good Times roll like the Cars.

Enjoy the role of you playing you always and forever (or at least until a tower falls on you).