>>You'd be surprised how much resources you have available if you spend zero time in front of the TV or surfing the web

Not really. Your available time, even if not wasted is still tiny. Seriously, just think about it, after college maybe you have some 40 years of peak productivity, if not less (and I suspect it is a lot less for most people). That doesn't really sound like a lot to me. Especially if you want to spend it doing things that are none trivial.

>>and spend all your free time on a hard chair with pen and paper studying

You cannot do this. You need to unwind. You need to enjoy culture, watch some TV, have relationships. Otherwise you will likely just burn out early. Plus, inspiration many times comes when you are just relaxing doing something completely unrelated to what you are pursuing.

>You need to unwind. You need to enjoy culture, watch some TV, have relationships.

In my experience, these things merely distract from underlying pain, including the underlying pain of human mortality. When you free yourself of this pain, weird and unexpected things happen.

Don't think that unwinding and freeing oneself of human mortality necessarily have anything to do with each other. I don't have any problem with human morality whatsoever. I doubt many atheists do. But one still needs to have balance in their life. Sam Altman even once said that many people work so hard precisely because they want to get away from the meaninglessness of everything, in a way. That is the exact opposite of unwinding.

Of course, one can attempt to be intensely spiritual and live their life like a monk or a yogi master; if such mental states are real and attainable then one would be without any entertainment all the time. However I doubt that would be practical for most human beings (also not sure how many people have truly achieved it historically instead of just leaving false records behind), and even if one achieves such a state, how much good can you do for the society if your existence is so remote from it already?

EDIT: I also agree that being stoic and a kind of "detached" as you mentioned in the followup explanation helps a lot. But there is a certain limit to that and one has to also be connected to the secular life in a sense.

>many people work so hard precisely because they want to get away from the meaninglessness of everything, in a way. That is the exact opposite of unwinding.

Exactly, they are putting deliberate focus on something, in this case work, that distracts them from the underlying meaninglessness, and enables them to not face it, because deep down, they find it (and/or have been taught to find it) objectionable in some way.

This deliberate turning of the head away from the existential fears creates this sensation of “winding”, but they accept it, knowing that they have methods of “unwinding”. I understand less why this is called balance, when it really sounds more like oscillation.

Of course, the winding is multi-dimensional; there is more or less stress about different aspects of life, varying over time. Relationships, finances, social status, existential angst, etc.

I’m proposing that it is possible to be OK with the meaninglessness, and even feel good about the state of things, and even while consuming minimal entertainment and distraction. I’m saying there exists a state where not consuming entertainment does not feel like you are depriving yourself at all.

>even if one achieves such a state, how much good can you do for the society if your existence is so remote from it already?

Well, the promise is literally freeing all living beings from suffering. Of course, to do this, one does have to “come back down” from time to time, and 100% agreed that coherently integrating this with existing society is a challenge. But it’s not a binary thing, and I think the level of coherence can improve over time.

I see what you mean. When I ask myself "why did I watch this series?" I realize that it is mostly to take my mind away from stress. Stress from work, stress from mortality or stress from my relationships. I have an approach on how to free myself from the suffering of this pain (pain will always exist). Unfortunately, I am too lazy at this point. My approach: eat healthy, healthy social life, exercise and meditate.

Yes, please do explain further.

Could you explain further?

I propose that there exists an active mental state in which one is emotionally neutral (i.e. no emotional valence) toward any possible outcome -- removal of access to entertainment, pleasure, one's relationships, even your own death.

I don't claim that this mental state is "better" or that anyone should try to achieve it, but experiencing it does tend to disrupt beliefs about what is necessary and important in life. Evidence suggests that desires and pleasures and entertainment and social comforts and ways to unwind that previously felt reasonably harmless and natural start to feel irrelevant and unimportant.

As far as I can tell, most of the written evidence is from the spiritual perspective, which is not always the most intellectually rigorous perspective. For a more scientific treatment of the underlying neuroscience, I'd recommend Thomas Metzinger's work; "The Ego Tunnel" is a good start. My experience is that understanding the physiological mechanisms behind our awareness, cognition, and emotion gives us a better map of how we might engineer different mental states, some of which have significant overlap with historically desirable mental states.

Metzinger proposes that our conception of "self" is basically an illusion that our brain generates in specific ways for specific purposes. Conceptually experimenting with "if this was true, what would it imply?" seems to lead to a world in which no one and no event can hurt "me", because in a way of speaking, there is no "me". Then backing down the ladder of abstraction, if I really, truly believed this, but of course still had the brain-generated perception of self, what would it imply for my everyday behavior?

The result seems to be sparser but deeper and more meaningful relationships (including with myself), much less interest in mindless entertainment and distraction, and intensified curiosity about the natural world. To the point where spending "all your free time on a hard chair with pen and paper studying" actually seems like a good idea.

Thanks for your comment. I've got Metzinger's book on my shelf so thanks for the reminder to read it :).

I must admit I have similar ideas about the self, I am currently inclined to believe that it is indeed an illusion but have not thought about the implications of that illusion (I have peace with it though).

I'm a bit more nuanced towards the emotional side. I think we all have emotions but being able to perceive them as just that, gives us true freedom. There are people that chase the emotional state/high of being happy above your normal baseline/hormonal levels, as the emotional state they want to have continuously. True freedom however comes with accepting all these states as they are. That means you are not chasing any "happy" states or getting out of other states.

How do you link the illusion of self to intensified curiosity about the world? I've always had an intensified curiosity but I'm unable to link this to "self".

Thanks for this comment. I've added it to my list of 'things to process' :).

I'm inclined to agree with you, despite the fact that I often have immense trouble being mindful (which I think is basically what you're getting at), and will go for various kinds of 'junk food', whether television or food or gaming.

The times where I've managed to focus on 'sparser but deeper' endeavors, the result was always better in every way.

I agree with what you mean.

But do you read all the medical literature before going to a doctor when something just feels weird?

Or, somewhat differently, do you read the source code of all packages on your computer to ensure there is no malware?

I'm a universalist as much as I can, but there's a reason specialization, division of labor, results in productivity increase. Somewhat funny that Kant himself also argued for division of labour, just a year after publishing the Enlightenment article, [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour#Immanuel_Ka...

I attempted that three times. It lead to low per hour performance, frustration from slow progress and to depression twice.

Turns out, I need to spend some time relaxing.

Have you done this?

That can be just as exhausting as watching TV or surfing the web. All time and life experience need not be optimized, mechanical, and efficient - just because some aspects of it 'must' be.