181–190 of 199 posts
If you live in a very aggressive and malevolent environment that constantly wants to break you and use you for its own needs it's important to follow these rules: 1. Don't forget to love. There is always something to love. This is the most important thing. Enemies will try to make you hate (no matter what). 2. Be happy. It may sound as a trivial advice, but to be actually happy it's very helpful to consciously set yo…
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> ...avoid things that other people control, because then you must serve as their slave. A good mantra for self-hosted FOSS as well, come to think of it.
But is it really? I just read a german translation, which says to neither wish to have, nor to wish to avoid. Does anyone here know enough greek to clarify this?
So it still works if we extrapolate that to something like "If I was in control of this software, I would make it so much better." Well, congrats, because you are (in FOSS)! Even if someone else maintains a project, you can always fork it.
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suffering can be deeper, but that's also probably stepping into psychiatry territory.. my point is you cannot reason or meditate everything away
> you cannot reason or meditate everything away Yes, there are external events that are beyond one's control, but often one's reaction to those events is amenable to reason and/or meditation. (A thought expressed, e.g., by Epictetus: "ταράσσει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ πράγματα, ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων δόγματα" — people are disturbed not by events, but by their opinions about events).
I don't agree with his analysis of modern happiness levels. It's yet another biased quantitative analysis of various metrics that are decoupled from human nature. Struggles, efforts, shorter lifespan is not a problem if your days are filled with deeper emotions, less confusion, better balance timewise (slower pace but more efficient labour). A tiny instance to try to explain my above abstract: in 2020 you can have a…
Very insightful, please share more. I agree upon what you are saying, and would love to know what active steps I could take to fill my days with deeper feelings and make them meaningful. As far as the article is concerned, I do concur with his analysis, especially about mindfulness, and CBT. I have practiced mindfulness and it does keep me stable, grounded, sharp and happy.
Also I cannot avoid the immense amount of extremely low efficiency in most organizations... there's nothing interesting in today's live for most people. Just drag fit with shallow moments. I'd rather carry wood on a horse powered carriage for 3 days. And for once I'm not exaggerating much.
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This pretty much sums up Christian ethics.
Christian ethics is all about demanding a payment, ie. the promise that one's good deeds will be rewarded in afterlife.
You go before a judge for sentencing, and he says that you have inherited a debt of a trillion dollars. He then says he offers to wipe your slate clean. Your possible responses are:
1) I don't believe you, I don't owe any debt. (atheist)
2) I believe I owe this debt, but I reject your offer. (demons)
3) I believe I owe this debt, but I will pay it myself. (good works)
4) I believe I owe this debt, and I am eternally grateful that you have paid it for me. (christians)
So your description would fall under category (3). You owe a debt of a trillion dollars and then say, hey, here's a couple hundred bucks I earned through my good deeds, we're good, right? That's a complete insult, to reject the gift, and then try to pay it back with a pittance.
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> you cannot reason or meditate everything away Yes, there are external events that are beyond one's control, but often one's reaction to those events is amenable to reason and/or meditation. (A thought expressed, e.g., by Epictetus: "ταράσσει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ πράγματα, ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων δόγματα" — people are disturbed not by events, but by their opinions about events).
The things I was thinking of are below the conscious layer, flashes and bodily pain popping randomly (PTSD like if you want a simpler picture).
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The things I was thinking of are below the conscious layer, flashes and bodily pain popping randomly (PTSD like if you want a simpler picture).
That's an interesting question. I'd say that it's at least conceivable that meditation may help mitigate some of these phenomena.
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> you cannot reason or meditate everything away 100% agree. I was born a Buddhist and was a devout Buddhist until I was 13-14 years old (then I became an atheist). I went to monasteries for weeks on end to meditate. But what I found was that meditation is not for me. I cannot get rid of my recurring mental sufferings (anger, fear/anxiety, jealousy/envy, self-/guilt) just by spending more and more time in meditation.…
What did you expect to find in meditation at 13-14 years old though? Hardly any real conflict or hardship in anyone's life at that age. Honest question, not looking to berate you.
I meditated to find Nirvana back then. But as I grew older, I realize that Nirvana is interpreted very differently even among Buddhist scholars, and thus is a relative/personal term. Nowadays, my definition for Nirvana is just to have a day without a lot of bad karma (hate, jealousy, anger, fear, anxiety) in my head. If I don't meet that daily goal, that's okay as well. For that, I find myself not needing to meditate and just need to be aware to distract my mind if I catch it in a state of bad karma. Maybe meditation will help some people catch their mind of dealing with bad karma, and maybe that approach might yield better results than me simply trying to be more self-aware and be more stoic. :)
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Very insightful. Please share more. I’ve been taking up meditation and bubiddism but still very much a novice. I find that as you open your mind and see through more things, in a way things gets less interesting. It’s that feeling that you’ve seen this movie before. Maybe this is normal for older people but I’m in my 20s and it feels very odd. How do you deal with that and not feel like a zombie.
I started meditating in college (30+ years ago) and always thought I was doing it right. Then a few years ago I began using Sam Harris' Waking Up app and realized I was doing it wrong. I'd read about people traveling to Tibet to learn meditation and how, interspersed with their actual meditation, were periods of instruction. This never made sense to me. Now I understand the value of that instruction. Sure, some peopl…
It's pretty nice. There's a introductory course on mediation, a daily meditation, and lots of theory and interview podcasts.
Harris takes you through lots of variants of 10 minute meditations, focusing narrowly (on body sensations, breathing, sights, sounds, etc.) or very broadly (taking in everything at once), or a few on wishing happiness on others.
He emphasizes, to an almost extreme degree, the search for "self", for the thinker of thoughts. It gets a bit repetitive, but the goal is keep looking but never find the self and therefore see that "self" is simply an illusion of the mind. With practice you will experience more and more the pure state of experiential flow. An interesting aspect is learning to treat your own thoughts as another "input event" appearing in consciousness, just as sensory inputs are. You observe your thoughts, but learn not to become "lost in thought".
There's also some great practical wisdom about the waste of negative thought loops, the finite nature of life, and a habit of gratitude.
He has a great bit on "the last time" which ruminates on the idea that eventually you will do everything for the last time (and you probably won't even know it. But what if you did? How would it change your attitude toward even mundane experiences?).
Also that experience is largely determined by attitude. There are miserable people in the Carribean on luxury yachts, and joyful people in the dark in freezing rain (for example on a great wilderness adventure). And it's your ability to steer your mind that makes the difference.
Good stuff.
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Stoic ethics is greatly underrated unfortunately. Despite being extremely influential from Christian ethics to modern cognitive behavioral therapy, it's relatively obscure. Everyone is familiar with it without knowing its source.
There is a picture of Epicurus or Marcus Aurelius with some pithy quote posted daily on many social media channels. The idea that "stoicism" is obscure is tenuous at best.