You are not What you Own II

Ry · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2005 7:50 pm

You Are Not What You Own II. You are not Your Job.

The obsession with image is tied to consuming time as much as it is property Lewis Caroll portrayed it well in Alice and Wonderland, one of the best anti-consumerism movies/books yet.

The Time!! hurry!! run little rabbit run. You'll be late! What effects come from super busyness? The tolleration of many forms of injustice, which exist in plain view, is not the result of a lack of knowledge so much as a lack of sincerely giving a damn. Apathy, greed, and no-time, are stumbling blocks for compassion. In order to genuinely care or learn, one must have some time to reflect and afterward enough compassion/concern/empathy to motivate them to act. Ignoring problems, results from a need to distract ourselves. Problems that are not immediate don't exist. It's become "Out of sight... out of mind." Occupation of time can be a form of escapism. We should spend more time on personal betterment and fulfillment and less on quick comfort, pointing fingers, and acquiring money.

"As long as each one of us is seeking psychological security, the physiological security we need 'food, clothing and shelter' is destroyed. We are seeking psychological security, which does not exist; and we seek it, if we can, through power, through position, through titles, names; all of which is destroying physical security. This is an obvious fact, if you look at it." -Krishnamurti

Religions and philosophies that reinforce the destruction of man's self-worth are feeding our psychological neediness. The average credit card debt in the US is ~$8,000.00 I have seen trailers with a hummer parked in front. How did image (false image at that) become so powerful? How did the need to impress become deep enough to outweigh living essentials? It has already been mentioned how self esteem is tied to consuming material PART 1. but another aspect is the notion of consuming time. I.e. being busy = important.

It is unfortunate, but for some strange reason, people have come to link being busy with being important... The more they have to do the better. If they don't have something to do every night they feel like a loser. If their job has them pressed they need to announce it to everyone like it is a trophy, i am so important i have so much to do. "Progressive action? oh I don't have the time I am too busy it makes me feel more adult."

I believe people are seeking/have a need for fulfillment. Status be it through shiny things or long titles is one poor method for this end. Another way is to run away from it, i.e., continuous busyness. I've asked people, "how are you doing?" and I get a list of all the things they have to do.

We acquire a sense of worth either by realizing our talents, or by keeping busy, or by identifying ourselves with something apart from us--be it a cause, a leader, a group, possessions and the like. " -Bruce Lee

"That's how everyone in the world is. It's a combination of selfishness and apathy. Either that, or, a person is too busy... Humanitarian/environmental/animal rights issues are for bored house wives or people with too much time on their hands. (that wasn't meant seriously) "-Lacey C. Nocturne

Thoreau once said, "Some men fish their whole life, without ever realizing it's not the fish they are really after."
The process is more important than the product. The fulfillment in fishing or any activity is not in the ends themselves but in the proper balance of challenge and effort within the activity. Too much of people's lives are caught up in planning their lives and not in actually living them. As W.M. Lewis once wrote,"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it."

So many people place their life aim at an occupation. School, college, and nearly everything they do in their youth is a set up for a job. They don't even know what they want to do, they just know that they neeed one. If they get a good one then they have success. And success means the ability to get the most shiny things or have the most onlookers.
You do, as they say, have to stop and smell the roses. Constant activity, especially if it is trivial, can distract one from vital reflection, and self actualization. Live for the moment too, not just for the future. The process is more important than the ends of the activity.

To give a trite example, imagine you are playing a game of chess. Let's say you dominate a 5 year old. Winning is not going to matter. The value of the game is not in the goal (the ends) of winning, but in the process (the means) of the game-the challenge. Likewise if you were to play a super computer and you lost every time, in a few moves, the game would not be fun. The pleasure in the game is derived from a proper balance of struggle and effort - this applies to mental and physical activities. (...Things like martial arts incorporate both) The goal is often just something to aim towards.

Ted Kaczynski referred to this as the 'Power process' or a psychological disposition we have in ourselves which governs how much value we attribute to our actions. "Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society are excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change and the break-down of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe.Ted K

Many people have nowhere to actualize their potentials. Humans evolved doing X amount of Physical, Creative, and Mental work and most importantly Social - communal interaction. By breaking these ties, we are creating conditions for hyper competition and a backlash of superficial in-groups and creeds resulting as a compensation. By making our values so lopsided, by neglecting some of our natural attributes, we are drying up vital psychological nutrients. In our culture Arts, Music, and so on are becoming 'extras' rather than 'equals.'
(yet when we admire a civilization of the past, it is the arts, the sculptures, the literature, theater, architecture, poetry and so forth that we admire, -that is what sets it apart from others.) We need to rethink our institutional structures which give rise to this slanted approach to life which favors intellect. It is like we are on a chair with one leg too long.

Happiness is not so much in what we can get, as it is in our ability to appreciate what we have already got. Dissatisfactions are judgments in a relative stance to what we are 'used to.' We take so much for granted. What someone experiences as pleasing or displeasing is relative to their 'neutral point' A neutral point is where on the spectrum a person falls pertaining to the amount of things they take for granted, expect, or feel entitled to.

We take for granted simple pleasures like being able to have ice in the middle of the summer. These, were once great luxuries, before of the advent of refrigeration. Now they have moved into the zone of expectancies. We require a certain level of things just to feel neutral and then we must add on top of that point to gather happiness. We start to require so much just to be neutral that we spend too much time 'running in circles;' we lose sight of more important things. Chiefly b/c we substitute in tangible acquisitions in an attempt to fill our social void. Many adult social scenes center around alcohol, a drug to break inhibitions... So, how can we lower our neutral points?

Reflection is a good first step. With our imaginations we can remind ourselves how much we have to cherish. We can compare our circumstances with others in harsher times or places, or even hypotheticals. (thus a strong imagination is linked to a deeper ability to empathize-i think)
But our imaginations can only take us so far. There is definitely something to be said for deep reflection and the practice of such things as Zen and Taoism, but these are very difficult for most people.

Sometimes it is worth our wild, to purposely hold 'renunciation' for some of our privileges. To live the warrior way, to garden, farm, or fish, [sleep without an electric blanket] even though we don't have to, at least not for the products they bring. We value most what we (willingly) work for; and we value less what is given to us with out some sense of 'deservence'or effort that we had to invest.

People enjoy exercising their freedoms and their skills. We love to choose things and we feel best with things when we have earned them. It may be a good practice then to allot a certain amount of time where you will reflect about things you take for granted and even deprive yourself of certain comforts for a time so that they will not be unappreciated. It is not to call the things you take for granted bad or evil as some religions do. It is actually to do the opposite, value increases as we miss things, as we lower our neutral points.]

Before we can have reflection we must make the time for it. We must also not be afraid of it. Too much time is gobbled up in the need for money -both for over charged necessities and for consumerism. (but in a different system it would not have to be this way) Purposely remaining frivolously busy is a form of escapism and it detracts from our time to reflect. This escapism is reinforced by the view that having "so much to do" equates with important-ness.

Reflection is about far more than, how we appreciate, and what goals we choose to pursue. Without some time to reflect on what we want (as opposed to what we are told to want/do) how do we choose which tasks to do? We end up repeating the same day over and over in our business cycle and wake up older in a mid-life crisis. We must break the association between busyness and importance.

Constant action is as bad as constant thinking/philosophizing. There must be a balance of thought and action. Also the thoughts and actions must not simply be orders or cultural 'supposed to's.' Such as after college you get married then have kids, work, work, work, then you die.

Bruce Lee once said,

Quote:

"Balance your thoughts with action. -If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done." p43 Striking Thoughts

The inverse also holds true. Too much action leads to too little thought and ultimately, much meaningless action. We do not want to be armchair philosophers nor do we want to be mindless worker ants. However, the latter seems to be the far greater disease. Don't be 'just another brick in the wall.'-Floyd Find ways to make time- for yourself, (that does not mean escape in entertainment, it means finding what you really want, and knowing yourself) for your children, for others in need.

Self validation is so vital. We must not look to impress others in order to impress ourselves. So many people juggle so many projects at once in our super fast paced produce and consume culture. People even eat on the go. What may I ask is everyone racing for? We are only in competition with one another, and there is no reason this hyper competition could not be switched with a system based on cooperation. People live like they are inside a hive. Like little bees, they work gathering pollen (money) for honey (shiny things).

Shiny things are nothing but shiny things... Human beings are far more important. Let us act as if we believe this.

Quote:

If parents love their children, they will not be nationalistic, they will not identify themselves with any country; for the worship of the State brings on war, which kills or maims their sons. If parents love their children, they will discover what is right relationship to property; for the possessive instinct has given property an enormous and false significance which is destroying the world. If parents love their children, they will not belong to any organized religion; for dogma and belief divide people into conflicting groups, creating antagonism between man and man. If parents love their children, they will do away with envy and strife, and will set about altering fundamentally the structure of present-day society."-Krishnamurti

Much of this results from our need to distract ourselves. When not at work, we lead plastic lives, full of instant gratification-at almost any cost, and endless hours of electric entertainment to consume our time. I believe much of this is caused by an imbalance of actualizing several neglected human attributes, in particular creativity and social activity.

Every human being has potentials to fill. Our potentials are of the mind, body, and creative spirit. To increase and exercise these brings peace and fulfillment which is different than happiness. This is different from the kind of happiness that is just escaping pain. And the healthy kind of happiness is what I'm talking about. Most happiness as we know it is escaping pain, be it mental stress or sometimes physical. Thinking about these things lets them sink in, (become processed) thus the need for busyness. (Ever hear somebody tell a person with a tragedy to "stay busy"?) But the busyness creates more of the stresses b/c it causes us to keep ourselves from reaching these potentials.

Most of the time we have no choice. We have to do school work and money work or we don't eat. Sometimes school work or job work can fulfill some of our potentials like intellect. (and I mean college not the rest of school which doesn't even do that) school is going to bother most the physical types and the creative types b/c as it is now school neglects these things terribly. We seek to be happy, in things, in other people, in all the wrong areas. Sex is also pushed and tied to self esteem, it becomes about more than just love it becomes tied to validation, cultural validation. But that is too long a tangent.

People have within themselves a vocational disposition. An artist must make art; a runner has to run etc. We need to meet our potentials to reach this fulfilling-happiness. A builder needs to build and scientist must discover, a musician must create etc. The levels of imagination, curiosity, and creativity compel them to do so. These needs are what I call 'psychological Hunger'.
Each of us has a PH divided over many attributes. India, Japan, Native Europe and Native America, all developed action based religions and philosophies. If you were making tea then you mastered it. If you shot arrows then you mastered it. Archery today can be very fulfilling for the archer even though it has no strict pragmatic value. That is because the process is more important than the product. These activities are simply mediums for us to actualize our potentials.
With current society, many of the natural activities like hunting and farming and generally being outside, -which require a high level of skill in the Big 3 (physical, mental, social) skill, have been taken away- the human spirit still wants to act in these things. The products of these activities has been taken care of, by technology. We don't have to worry about hunger, thirst, or shelter any more. You can go to the store and get anything with little to no effort. I already explained how effort and goal relate to value. The big problem is the process has not been replaced and we are missing out on all that spiritual growth.

[There is another component besides creative physical and intellectual and that is what I call a freedom seeker. But that one is so complex I'll ignore it and save it for last. Think of Ted K's view on Autonomy.]

When people evolved we needed certain physical and psychological securities. Food, water, sleep, heat, those things needed for the body. We needed creativity to make tools and so forth so we could get those things, and then intellect to reflect on trial and error improve tactics etc...For the bulk of human life, we worked with other people and we exercised all of these attributes. Social interaction (not hinged on competition) is ingrained in our program. We love each other and we like the loving process. We had to divide our talents and work together. Today our basic needs are already there for us with minimal effort, and we know how effort links to value and thus pleasures. So we need new goals but more importantly new activities for us to work out these missing processes.

It seemed reasonable and a good thing to make our biological necessities an easy thing to obtain, and it is a good thing. How was one to know the invisible effects of what stripping the process away does to us as people? It is fixable. But today we fly around without recognition of our deeper PH naggings. Our society compensates with vicarious living and a structure that favors only one of the Big 3, intellect. The imbalance leads to an unhealthy spirit, a person in need of external validation.

Loss of the social begets hyper competition, loss of the physical begets power-seeking through groups, loss of compassion begets scapegoat-ing under class for instant gratification, lost of imagination thus foresight begets a rapid destruction of the environment for quick gains, lost of creativity begets social uniformity and fear of change and thus fear of improvement, lost of SA begets a slue of mental illness and so called chemical imbalances. You get my point.

If you read the rants on greed and on apathy then you can see how this all ties together. *Sorry I don't have the one on Apathy up yet.

The priority hierarchy is the biggest mystery to me. I know parents who will escape from the responsibility of raising their kids through work. Kids, who run from school for entertainment, people who ignore inhumane practices for the sake of consumerism and comfort.

For example I had an argument with someone who wanted a diamond and called ME selfish for explaining the debeer's monopoly and their shady practices using slaves. I was just trying to say (if you must get one then) to buy from polar-bear the only non-debeers owned company for diamonds.

Anyway you know what I am saying. Why does humanity take a back seat to short term personal comfort? And chance for object-made status? If the system doesn't change we will continue to crank out depressed individuals. But rather than changing the way we live, we change the people who dislike it by prescribing them drugs.

And Americans are over medicated for the sake of pharmaceutical companies' profits. over Americated

Anti-Neocons