Tag: problems

American Mind: Independence and Social Consciousness

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

—Martin Niemöller

Our culture suffers from a serious malady: social myopia. We believe our self-reliance to be greater than our reliance on fellow men. We think of ourselves as lone islands rather than contiguous continents.

Our independent mind is a serious insult to our social consciousness. We see ourselves as independent from our fellow man. As social creatures, we are a product of our society: every facet, good and bad. Every individual is a cell apart of communities. Together we are the tissues that comprise the institutional organs of the greater organism that is our country and world. To see other people’s problems as though they are independent of ours is to deny the makeup your consciousness: you are an amalgam of inherited traditions—of thoughts and beliefs— passed down through long histories of struggle. To deny someone else’s struggle is to deny the origin of your own traditions, to deny the genesis of your strength.

“Some legislators only wish to vengeance against a particular enemy. Others only look out for themselves. They devote very little time on the consideration of any public issue. They think that no harm will come from their neglect. They act as if it is always the business of somebody else to look after this or that. When this selfish notion is entertained by all, the commonwealth slowly begins to decay. ”
― Thucydides

The notion of competition has been distorted: our primary enemy is ourselves. True success is contingent upon overcoming yourself, not others. The process of overcoming personal weakness is transcendental; it allows us to evolve towards a higher plane of consciousness, a plane that becomes a new plenum of human potential that others can look to for inspiration, for overcoming their own situation, their own weakness.

Society is a product of mutual affections, a creation of collaboration. The cliche still stands: you are as strong as your weakest link. When we see the failures of others, and fail to improve their condition by extending a hand, in the form of loving counsel or generous support or wise words, we become the failure: we embody the problem.

Occupy wall street is our problem. Poverty is our problem. Crime is our problem. People are our problem. The social world is as much of the objective reality we live in as any other natural phenomenon. We create the world we live in by improving upon the condition of humanity. We enlarge this world through dialogue, through humble understanding, through empathetic motives to improve our condition by improving the condition of others, by subjugating our hubris, our insecure ego, and realizing that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You are a part, I am a part, society is the whole, life is the whole, quality living is the whole. We must elevate the parts if we are to realize the greatness of the whole.

If we want to fully awaken humanity we must first fully awaken ourselves, said Tzu. Be the change you see in the world, said Ghandi. We must be salt unto the earth, said Jesus.

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war and until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained… now everywhere is war.
—Haile Selassie I Of Ethiopia

 

People Problems

I don’t like being an audience member. I prefer being an active participant. And this goes for all of my life’s activities. Whether it involves one-on-one interactions with people, or small groups, or society at large. The situations and people I want apart of my life require that I function as an active participant in their development. I can’t afford to be a glassy eyed bystander all the time. I hold the same desire for others as well; specifically that they may maintain the same attitude and relation to me as I hold for them. I want them actively contributing to the development of my life, my perspective, my abilities, my ideas, etc.

Regarding people, I don’t want to listen to them all day talk about their personal problems. On the flip side, I don’t want to talk about my life problems all day either. I don’t want to talk about fleeting circumstances, nor do I want to talk about flaky people. I want to talk about, first and foremost, good ideas. Sure, I can talk about events and the people involved and what not but, in the greater scheme of things, those topics are insignificant aspects of life. They change. People change, and our opinions about them change even quicker. Events happen, but there are always more events to talk about the next day. Ideas are the most resistant to change, but “truth” (in the proverbial sense) and understanding certainly don’t (Unfortunately bias and stubborn habits of thought don’t change as quickly as they should). That’s why I desire talking and thinking about ideas, visions, goals, things that endure.

I’m sure some people may find my position disagreeable, but the bottom line is that I don’t care about problems you don’t want to fix. In fact, I don’t care about any problems that A) cannot be fixed or solved or changed and B) that you don’t want to fix. The consequence of this philosophy of mine is that I don’t spend time with too many people. However, the people I do spend time with are either thinkers, or they are easy going. Ideally I could have the best of both worlds, but that’s just me being ideal. Usually I find the easy going people. Less frequently I find the thinkers. But usually the easy going people don’t think, or the thinkers are not easy going. Oh well.

Whatever the case, I don’t want to share your problems. I wouldn’t want you to share my problems either. I want to talk about solutions, about a better life more generally, about the positive aspects, or the critical aspects, with the thought of improving or accreting understanding. It’s good to be skeptical, it’s good to challenge and exercise doubt. But lets not get carried away and allow ourselves to fall into complete skepticism, or worse cynicism or nihilism. But skepticism is good, and sometimes being discontent is a great thing, but only if your intention is to improve circumstance, to actually develop or change things for the better.

If you are being discontent for no reason, and have no desire to improve, I don’t want to talk to you. And you shouldn’t want me to because that would serve no benefit to my life. Simply commiserating is not an admirable or worthwhile past time. Empathy is good, but only when a perspective is gained that will allow me to contribute to their life, to help solve an issue or problem. My empathy falls short when it works to simply bring me down, to simply have someone to share a miserable state of being just to feel less alone, less weak.

Contrary to popular belief, we can choose our problems. How is this possible? Because we can choose how we look at things. There are no problems apart from a subjective perspective. So how should we choose our problems? First and foremost, we need to define our ends. What do we want? What is our goal? What do we desire? What am I willing to sacrifice for this end? When these ends are defined we can decide which obstacles prevent us from their attainment. It is then that we recognize problems and only then that these obstacles become our problems. But they shouldn’t stay our problems. Why? Because we want to accomplish our ends, our goals and desires, more than we want these problems.

But this requires having goals and desires, clearly defined and enunciated. If you don’t possess clear ends, everything will potentially be a problem and you won’t know why and you want ever improve yourself and you want ever get anywhere.

But some people LOVE problems. For some, problems ARE the goal. They give them a sense of purpose and place. Problems become their identity. Their sense of being. And they never ever progress beyond them. They stay a pathetic victim of themselves. Always hungry for attention and pity and futile support that will never solve anything. These people are like a diseases whose literal life supporting function is actively feeding off the life of other people, quite like a parasitic organism or bacteria or virus. Their life is attained by sucking from the lives of others. But changing this behavior would require changing their function and in turn change their ability to survive in life. Unless, however, they decide to adapt and adopt another identity, another gestalt for living.

On the less extreme end of the spectrum are those people who simply survive off attention without directly harming the person. They don’t intentionally drain your life, nor to they directly detract from your well-being. In fact, they don’t think of you at all. These people simply want an audience that reflects back their self-image. They gain their sense of self through people and as a result use them as an audience in which they can extol their accomplishments in order  to derive a sense of approval. These people are simply ego maniacs driven by extrinsic motivation, by the external rewards dolled out by the people, by the values amplified by the herd. Their sense of self is derived entirely through an artificial sense of achievement; that is, through approval from others. It’s a way to live, but a terribly sad way to live. In my eyes anyway. There’s no properly sense of self. It’s distorted through a subjective lens that’s entirely created from the opinions of others.

There’s a ton more I want to write about, but I’ll save it for later. For the record, I need to elaborate thoughts on monetary expansion policy  and how it relates to investment, inequality, debt, and finance. I also need to write on technology and culture. Specifically how there could be potentially dangerous consequences due to an over reliance on the processes  that derive semantic content and the source of that content for reliability and “truth”, as well a atrophy in our very ability to derive semantic content for ourselves, that is think critically about things in order to empirically acquire semantic content for ourselves. But more on that later.

Problems Don’t Exist.

Passion is powerful. You can’t be all thought, all machine, calculated and cool. You need warmth, fire, some fuel to spread your light. But I despise drama. Drama is unnecessary theatrics.  It is passion with problems. Problematized passion. It takes good genuine energy and creates problems rather than solutions. People who attract drama feel insignificant without it. They lack an ability to exist in tranquility. It’s almost as if they think that drama gives their life character, somehow makes them strong or resilient for persisting through these problems, problems they create within abstract of their mind. They take a perfectly good life, and instead of applying their passion, their life force and energy to synthesizing new solutions, they problematize a good thing. Of course they talk like they don’t like the drama, like it weighs on them, like a millstone they carry with them. They are constantly talking about the day when they don’t have so many problems. They are the first ones to talk about discarding this laboring load and equally quick to point out how  badly they want to set it down and dispel the drama, but they continue talking, thinking, seething about their problems, adding potency to their diluted delusion.

Problems do not exist. There. I said it. Problems are only problems when you identify them as problems. Before they are identified, we accept circumstance and situation, absolving that that’s just the way things are, for better or worse. Perhaps it is a skill to be able to identify problems, to label things are deficient, broken, and I bet it takes a critically inquiring eye to do this. But where do you draw the line?

Problems are not problems. Drama is not drama. These are facets of life. Contrary to the clamoring chorus of capitalist commercialism, our life does not need to be problematic and dramatic to be glorious and grand. They profiteer off such knave  propensities for ease, for life without suffering. They drain you of your liquid wealth and welling life as you train to maintain and gain a greater sense of self, a sense of self complete with all the accessories they sell your squeaking soul. But your soul needs no oil. Let the soul, that broken squealing soul, scream, let it scream and burst forth in melody, let it create harmony with other squeaky souls. Do not oil. Warm yourself with its friction, these triturations of life. Soon your stridulating soul will begin to warble and transform into a beautiful hum, a harmonious vibration that echoes across cold chambers where copious copies of silent, gunky souls reside, soiled and slow from the years of feeble fabricated fixes. There is nothing wrong with your soul. You are perfect as a diamond is flawed, stronger than all the universal forces and extraterrestrial elements, pressed and latticed in structural perfectitude, lined with innumerable inclusions and trace elements that straddle its knitted bonds, strontium and nitrogen, rubidium and barium, adding to the refracting flash that douses the senses when you allow transparency and light to work their way within you and shine forth.

Problems do not exist. They are in your mind. If there were no mind to observe, no eye to see, there would be no problems to probe. Overcoming yourself is a task which has no end. The road up a mountain is the same road down it. Do not confuse your life’s task, your journey. Do not tire yourself with the trifling pursuits of climbing the insurmountable where barren cliffs and cleft rifts and ice tips are all that waits you. Go instead down the road, where momentum is your friend, and follow the valley where the streams merge with rivers and  gather into looming pools and luscious lakes and lead to opulent oceans that provide cooling relief under the dense shade of living vegetation. Go where there is life.

Problems do not exist. Life begins in consciousness. Life is not simply physical minutia, else the moons and marbling spheres and stars and solar systems be living. Life is not simply movement. It is purely imagination. No mind exists apart from the life giving force of their imagination. Our eyes cannot capture meaning. That is reserved for our minds. Do not forfeit your mind and believe your eyes. Do not let your ears consume the drunken speech of other grey minds, their crannies and crevasses all canvassed in web, caught in a tangle of dense delusion, of smog that blocks the breathing flue, changing flowing channels into choking chimneys, and strangulating the stronghold of being.

Problems do not exist. They are created, by us, to achieve ends, fabricated ends, short sighted ends, poor hallow ends. Until we believe that our means are greater than our ends, we will fail to dream, fail to see opportunity where there is challenge. Our lives will encapsulate a silent storm of tears, sleeting, frozen over from lack of warmth, from lack of friction with the world, lack of authentic abrasion that causes aural ambage.

Problems do not exist. People sell you problems, don’t sell yourself problems. Don’t add insult to injury and do the job that capitalism, commercial advertising, has perfected. Problems. Everyone wants you to believe that there is a problem free life– that can be achieved by means they can provide if you forfeit a small payment in price, a small piece of your time, a fraction of your wage. We will provide you the happiness, the comfort, the pleasure, the distress-free existence if you pay for it. But this is a lie. There are no problems. And the people who buy into the problems die poor, poor in pocket and poor in spirit. They failed to save, failed to build, collect and create. They diluted themselves with the quick fixes, the shabby solutions that clutter their consciousness, until they are wrapped in flax linnens and preserved in a perfect state of lifelessness.

Problems do not exist. What exists is desire for power, power over circumstance, power over passion, power over thoughts. These people die a slave. They never learned to revolt, never embraced the chaos, the flowing flux that embodies a living life, and rebel as a self-sustaining individual, perfectly punctual in the moment. Defining and confining, constraining and restraining.

Problems do not exist. Mind exists. When our mind identifies a problem with some thing, it is not the thing that changes, but our mind, our relation to that thing. Our mind is eternal, but our attention is finite. We cannot allow ourselves to be preoccupied with any thought or feeling that does not deliver grandeur to house of being, or fails to cleanse our doors of perception. We have one life, one spectacle, a single show, a solemn act to perform. We must choose the words that echo into the ears of eternity with heart, with care. We cannot think our way out of a state of being, a dramatic scene of tragedy, we can act our way out, only feel ourselves into another line, continue playing a developing role to an ambivalent audience.

There are no problems. There is fate. There are ends. There are expectations: faulty suspensions, wry calculations, aslant anticipations. Properly viewed, problems are merely  stepping stones that carry you through life.

 

Anyway.

I believe that love for a subject, passionate unrequited love, is the only way to let yourself gain any appreciable acquaintance, since love is selfless devotion. But I’m not sure we can love people before we love ourselves. We love the me we see in thee.

 

in question

as i approach the obstacles that seemed so large and luminous in the distance before my journey, i begin to ask myself ‘were they were indeed as large as i once had imagined?’
I’m in question as to whether the obstacles get smaller as i gain confidence to walk up and overcome them and challenge them, or i grow bigger by believing in my self and acquiring the knowledge it takes for a better understanding as i continually wrap my ever expanding mind around more ideas and concepts. Either way no problem is as ever as big as it looks and seems. The only reason one would avoid facing a problem or challenege is fear. False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear is a Disease of the Mind and developement. To eliminate Fear, truth must be revealed and more importantly understood to allow a foundation for progress.