I'm also thinking of the Terry Pratchett concept of being "knurd". On the Discworld, the opposite of being drunk isn't being sober - sober is the middle ground on the drunk/sober/knurd scale. To be knurd is to be so completely aware of everything that one can't really function in normal society.

Took me a decade or so to finally get it when I re-encountered it in english :)

That sounds like the intense world theory of autism.

Does it imply that you can't selectively focus on things?

Right now if I am to do the dishes, I am already aware of thousands other things and concepts and deep truths about reality, and sciences, etc. etc, but I can focus on this one task, it doesn't matter what I am aware of, if I choose to do it I can do it. How would being aware of more things put a dent in that?

If so, then call it for what it is (perhaps "attention deficit disorder"?), but it has nothing to do with the amount of awareness.

Yes - the ability to focus on one thing necessarily involves the ability to ignore lots of other things. One of the key traits of autism spectrum disorder is an inability to filter out irrelevant information. Constant awareness of everything is often functionally equivalent to a lack of awareness, because it degrades the signal-to-noise ratio of your perception.

For example, the artist Stephen Wiltshire can draw extraordinarily accurate cityscapes from memory, but often struggles with basic tasks. Being aware of the precise number and arrangement of windows in every building you pass is an active impediment if you're just trying to get to the subway station.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/04/autism-artis...

This is something I have been thinking about lately. To what extent is technological progress and economic growth truly useful?

When progress is so ubiquitous in your environment that it becomes invisible, it's easy to forget that people die of easily treatable diseases in places that don't have so much "technological progress", that people still starve because of a lack of "economic growth", and so on and so forth.

People suffer here under corrupt kleptocrats every day, and I will not have people try to deny that suffering by saying stuff like "so called third world countries", implying that the "third world" is actually doing great or something.

Actually I don't see where you did use that term?

Sorry for overreacting.

That is why technological progress and economic growth matter.

I would also argue that specifically global warming is a direct consequence of technological progress and the industrialization of society. Human pollution would not be a problem is it weren't for materialism.

Technology provides comfort, as some expense. Either reliance on a central supply for food, water, electricity. Or in the form of pollution and exploitation of other humans.

In your opinion what is the ultimate value of colonizing mars for example?

edit: I am also from a "developing" country where the struggle is clearly visible.

To me it is very useful and I truly believe that we live in the best possible time, even if you consider the people that have poorest lifestyle (and especially the number of people that are forced to live that lifestyle, which has decreased a lot).

Maybe you will think otherwise? Possibly, but before you decide, please go and actually do it first, live outside the society and not using any of the technology provided by it. It is very easy to discuss how easy it would be and how much saner you would be without the western developments when you don't have to worry about a small cut infecting your blood, dying from a plague, spending days constructing the simplest of tools, fending off bears or simply living through a year with very dry summer which destroyed your food supply.

I do think we live in the most comfortable of times, but that gives me no satisfaction. The lack of satisfaction makes us dwell on mortality. I don't think I would care if I was killed during a hunt or contracted a virus after having lived a fulfilling life. So to what extent is technological progress and economic growth useful if I get no satisfaction from it?

The satisfaction you are talking about is provided by a well-developed spiritual belief system and integrating spiritual truths and teachings, to a point where they get embedded deeply into your body, mind and soul, through a spiritual path, a way of developing the inner structures and deep qualities. This is process of spiritual growth. It is parrallel to the material developments, not directly connected to it.

It has likely been like this throughout the history of humanity. Some people have been more and some less successful on this path. But there are clearly defined ways to do this, teachings that will guide you through the process and quite reliably make you enlightened (or improve your life satisfaction enough so that you will stop midway, but satisfied with your progress). Some of these teachings have been working largely unchanged for thousands of years - precisely because they work! On top of that, for your pleasure there are some new recent systems and teachings which are rehashing the new information and packaging it into new forms of information and forms of spiritual practice which might perhaps be more effective than traditional ones (time will tell), but you are free to try that. On top of that you have the good old "find your own way" of getting spiritual growth by simply meditating nonstop for a really long time (years).

The way I see it, all of those scenarios are inexplicably better, easier and more effective now than ever. The access to information, to teachers, retreats etc is just phenomenal. This was never the case to such extent as it is today. So even here the recent material progress has made it easier for you to get your satisfaction, you simply have to look.

No society progress will do the work for the person, because each person has to do it themselves. Society (or a teaching/teacher/book/guide) can only help out and show the way.

If given all these possibilities, someone still does not follow through on any of the mentioned spiritual paths in order to get their satisfaction, given all these choices and help available - my question is do they really want it then? If not, they would just end up in the same place in any other time in history.

The work isn't necessarily the difficult part, but the baggage to continue to exist and be recognized by the rest of the system is where things go awry.

Seeing as there is astonishingly low pressure to actually keep prices low, you have a maximization function in place that ends up ensuring that you're either having to maximize for capital influx to equip yourself for maximal time efficiency, or you end up having to condition yourself to be able to physically do the work, which tends to cost a great deal of time and regular personal upkeep.

Mind, this has just been forays into agriculture and basic manufacturing (blacksmithing/rudimentary fabrication).

All of this dive has also been done in an environment where most are content to live and let live. So the random interloper deciding to flex muscle to subduct your aspirations to self-sustainability are not a factor; and raw material processing has not hit the top of my research pile yet.

While everything is in reach, efficiency while doing it is always the most hard won fight to win.

On the other hand, you also learn a few warts of the system by doing this type of work as well. Our current society has become incredibly transaction-centric instead of people-community centric. When trivial transportation costs have effectively globalised the world, your ability to forge effective self-sustaining in groups outside the fiscal sense suffers.

I believe this may be a contributing factor to the recent resurgence of nationalistic tendencies. As every member of the market has begun to realize how tightly coupled everything has become, there is a desire to cut out the additional complexity and figure out a way to keep the in-group/culture sustainable regardless of fiscal outcomes.

Furthermore, technological advancement inevitably introduces higher severity and complexity problems, as well as extending the physical implications of addressing those very problems. Take the increasing prevalence of ant-biotic/fungal resistant bacteria/fungi as an example, or the consequences of climate change fueled by shifts in our atmospheric composition and biosphere depletion.

It's not at all a trivial matter, and when your technological carrying capacity is mated with a positive feedback loop, (drive to procreate/attain more wealth) you have a recipe for change that won't be denied.

The only thing people seem to be selectively blind to is The bits and pieces they are willing to accept as being caused by technological progress, and whether or not they can/should be remedied.

Now that I think about it, my memory of Epictetus seems to be really hazy, so I probably shouldn't try to discuss stoicism without doing some re-reading and thinking first.

As I’m seeing it, hypersane people do not possess concern for “normal” social ambitions.

They aren’t nihilist, and still find life inherently interesting. Just find the usual social hierarchy and chasing those needs as secondary. As obligations foisted at them. They use them, sure, because they still appreciate life and have interests.

It’s a weird concept as it’s not as if we can climb inside someone and measure their emotional response to external pressures. And I get the feeling that’s why it’s difficult to grok; despite how it might feel like everyone around us is pretty typical, we’re individually capable of a variety of responses to external stimuli.

Lots of people might get really anxious about environmental collapse, or political unrest. A hypersane person, think maybe like Buddha, will react more like “Yep and individually there’s not shit we can do to stop a collective action problem. Imma go sit by a tree in peace rather than worry about saving normality.”

> Does it imply that you can't selectively focus on things?

This reminds me of Superman and General Zod in the "Man of Steel" film.

In that Zack Snyder was fundamentally incapable of focusing on one thing at a time, and decided to metaphorically barf up every half-baked idea simultaneously, making for an ungodly confusing incompetent mess of a film?

I’m not quite comfortable using the term hypersane without further explanation. It sounds like a person capable of keeping the world in “perspective”.

DNA is one of my favourite authors, but seems I'm on the wrong side of the asylum door...

Are you making reference to Jesus here? Hypersanity doesn't seem to sit well with certain other.. traits.

The historical Jesus did, of course, claim that the world was about to end. (More precisely: it will end while some people "standing here" are still alive.) For various reasons (see the many books that have been written on the subject), the passages in which Jesus describes the imminent end of the world are thought to be fairly accurate quotations, though many parts of the gospels were inserted or invented later or clearly adapted from older literature.

EDIT: Obviously, that Jesus didn't claim to be the son of God in no way implies that he wasn't the son of God. There are Christians who believe that the historical Jesus did not claim to be the son of God. Some Christians would claim, I think, that Jesus could not have truly suffered death on the cross without ignorance of his divinity.

If the state today was based strictly on religion and someone would come in and say "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's.", implying the introduction of the separation of the church and the state, you wouldn't call this man sane and a good influence?

And being the son of God is kind of the 'characteristic' of Jesus, it isn't really something you can lay to one side.

What are you suggesting would be a suitable modern day analogue?

If other people are claiming that he's the son of god, rather than he himself, doesn't that also throw the question of hypersanity into question. If you were to claim that I were the son of God, would that not colour everything else you wrote about me? You are at best not a neutral witness.

That's probably because the people who wrote about the character weren't thinking in those terms.

Mark 4, Jesus basically says he doesn't want everyone to be saved so he's confusing on purpose.

Matthew 15, he scolds Pharisees for not killing children like god commanded

Matthew 21, he goes on an anger induced rampage in the temple

Mark 11, Jesus killed a tree because he was mad that it didn't have fruit when it was out of season

Do you think these things don't count?

First of all, good point!

More people should read what the book actually says. It can be downright scary at times even if I have found it very useful.

That said, while 3 and 4 are definitely interesting I think most agree 3 was a good thing.

1 and 2 are interesting in this context only because in one case you seem to lack context and in the next you either haven't read it carefully or are deliberately misreading it.

Mark 4: Jesus is quoting Isaiah who is speaking of a people who have the Scriptures and yet have continually ignored God and will eventually murder Him. God is under no compulsion to be clear with them. It is the sobering truth of Matthew 13:12.

Matthew 15 : I have no idea what you are talking about here.

Matthew 21: The house of God is being used to turn a profit and exploit the poor. Yeah -- that angers God.

Mark 11: You seriously can't see the bigger symbolism here? Are you really concerned about a tree?

If you believe the stories, god created everything, including the tree, and the tree is 'behaving' exactly how it was created. For this, god cursed it.

I suppose this is something programmers can really identify with, but I think the greater symbolism is applying the same thing to humans.

When god created adam and eve, he created them with them with curiosity, and it was that curiosity that led them to eat the apple. For that, they were cursed.

IMO, the greater symbolism is just demonstrating the story of Eden all over again.

Most see the rejection of contemporary Jerusalem (Matt 23:38, Luke 19:43,44) and the house of the scribes and Pharisees, which produced no fruit, was about to be left desolate. In AD 70 Titus and the Romans would demolish Jerusalem and the Temple. The cursing of the fig tree, I infer, is the foreshadowing of their doom. The fig tree is used again in Matt 24:32 as an indicator of the soon return of the Son of Man.

In any case, saying Jesus hates fig trees, is missing the point.