On Loneliness

More than India.

It's not clear if you would like to have a sincere conversation. May I ask you questions? In honesty, why did you post your reply to my comment?

There's always something odd to me about teachings in this category. For one, it's often very hard to tell where they're really going, what they're proposing, and the verbose language with sprinklings of mysticism doesn't really help. For another, they often take things that are fairly omnipresent, and then say the person shouldn't feel them. The utter focus often seems to be on the person feeling them, as if that is the biggest crime.

Such philosophies often come with implicit assumptions that, say, desire, self-concern, ambition, etc., are all negative things, which seems to be accepted in some circles, even though, to me, that is the claim that needs proving. Strangely enough, despite this being widely accepted by most people you ask, the same people don't live that way, which makes it look like an extensive signaling operation.

The commentary is gigantic but I'll try to do my best to show what I mean.

> 1. He said he was obsessed by stupid little things, and that these obsessions constantly changed. He would worry over some imaginary physical defect, and within a few hours his worry would have fixed itself upon another incident or thought. He seemed to live from one anxious obsession to another. To overcome these obsessions, he continued, he would consult books, or talk over his problem with a friend, and he had also been to a psychologist; but somehow he had found no relief. Even after a serious and absorbing meeting, these obsessions would immediately come on. If he found the cause, would it put an end to them?

> 2. Does discovery of a cause bring freedom from the effect? Will knowledge of the cause destroy the result? We know the causes, both economic and psychological, of war, yet we encourage barbarity and self-destruction. After all, our motive in searching for the cause is the desire to be rid of the effect. This desire is another form of resistance or condemnation; and when there is condemnation, there is no understanding.

> “Then what is one to do?” he asked.

> 3. Why is the mind dominated by these trivial and stupid obsessions? To ask “why” is not to search for the cause as something apart from yourself which you have to find; it is merely to uncover the ways of your own thinking. So, why is the mind occupied in this manner? Is it not because it is superficial, shallow, petty, and therefore concerned with its own attractions?

1. An exposition that I've seen in a lot of sub-philosophies or religions of this variety: a person has feelings, those feelings bother the person, and those feelings need to be corrected. For one, the exposition is extremely vague. What physical defects? Was this always a character trait of the person? Have those actions helped them in some way before?

It seems likely that this is a feature of the brain, and it could work for good or for ill. Without context, it's very hard to tell, sounds like hypochondria. I'd say that paragraph is very vacuous. But it seems a lot of people relate to it, which goes to the next question: if it's a problem many people have, why is it a problem with those many people? Also note that many people have done away with this problem, at rates that are likely comparable to those of improvement via reading such teachings, but they are not mentioned here.

2. Again, very vacuous. The benefits of finding a cause are obvious enough that I don't need to outline them. It is too bad that we don't pay attention to causes of bad things, although I don't see how that's a good argument for not seeking causes. Finding the correct cause is very helpful at times. It may also be very difficult to do so, which may be an argument against trying to find, but not finding. But trying to find a cause and failing to find it is indeed a stressful task, but in that of itself there's nothing particularly wrong.

3. The claim appears to be that that the cause of the obsessive thoughts is the person's mind, and to figure out where they're coming from is for the person to understand their own mind. That's well and good. Then it jumps straight to:

> Is it not because it is superficial, shallow, petty, and therefore concerned with its own attractions?

Eh, OK? I thought condemnation was bad? That seems quite a jump, and, more importantly, it doesn't really say anything. Those are all fairly loaded terms that require a proper context. The poor fellow, trained to take attacks on himself and his mind in stride, just accepts the claim. In the end, though, we have learned nothing.

A staggering amount of this style of spirituality seems to follow this formula: person comes with troubling thought patterns, the other person tells them that those thought patterns are bad and unjustified, and then the person leaves with "I have odd thought patterns because my mind is ". It's not much progress from the tautological conclusion: "My mind has odd thought patterns because it has odd thought patterns". Something that can be summarized as another common maxim: stop thinking about things or asking questions.

Similarly, some after that seems to suggest accepting things, which reminds me of stoicism. But it's not enough to state that one should accept things, it needs to be proven. Again the author seems to be piggybacking on preexisting agreements where Buddhist or stoic positions are perceived as wise so he doesn't need to defend them.

A lot of text but nothing concrete to hold on to if I want to avoid injecting my own thoughts into it, which, fortunately, jar too much to do it automatically. This appears to be more a stream of consciousness. One could try to extract something from it, but it would be of their own doing. I wonder if that's the appeal.

That being said, with the current lack of better options, if you want to quiet some thoughts and calm down, I'd just suggest to try Buddhism. It has a lot of the same problems since it's basically saying the same thing, but there's at least a method to the madness.

Unfortunately, Raymond Smullyan has passed, so the ideal response ("Go fight Smullyan in the Pit of Logic") is no longer available.

A lot of the stuff Derek Sivers writes on his blog[1] is thoughtful and practical writing on parts of life that might fit that category.

He also does some really good summary notes of books he's read.

[1] https://sivers.org/