> I dig it! I expect to see a lot of folks reject this notion outright, because, well, cognitive dissonance. If you've built your life around conforming, it might be tough to hear someone suggest it's all for naught.
> Thoughts?
Sounds pretty self-congratulatory, like you think you figured out something most people don't figure out.
In reality, all those "realizations" are so mainstream that they show up in Disney movies--there's nothing nonconformist about realizing any of that. And in reality, the kinds of people who act on those ideas sometimes flee their country and loved ones and live in Russia (Edward Snowden), blow their brains out with a gun (Hunter S. Thompson) or try to strangle themselves with their underwear in a supermax prison (Ted Kaczynski).
It’s one thing to hear about something on TV and another entirely to change your entire life.
If it were “gotten” by the masses via Disney shows, we’d all stop chasing it at all.
Social ties and bonds existed before money, achieved via other means.
So yeah we don’t all “get it” in the same way. As someone with enough to retire on at 40, money feels pretty pointless to me. Same old cheeseburger or whatever Gates said.
It’s what other people gave me for satisfying their goals. ️
Economic anxiety, a policy pushed by financial planners, is what motivates. Not money.
Imagine we lived in a violent brutal world where it was kill or be killed. Even if you realize that killing only brings you stress and unhappiness, you won't last very long if you stop doing it. As soon as you lay down your arms someone will come and bash your head in with a hammer and take what's left of your belongings and family.
You could decide money and the rat race are pointless and decide to just stop pursuing it. And you'll survive... for a time. Then you won't be able to function in society. Won't be able to eat, or have a place to live, effectively the equivalent of having your skull bashed in like in that previous world.
They chose how to live their dreams, did it for ~50 years and still ended up pretty comfortably. If they had the same viewpoint you have, they would probably have lived miserably until an Oxycontin OD.
I get it, there's stories every now and then of some person that died because they couldn't afford their insulin (for $275/bottle). And every time I stare at the story wondering why that person decided to kill themself for reason.
I get it that newer insulins should be cheaper, that they're way over priced. But it's disingenuous to pretend there aren't options for people that can't afford them.
Your two examples are telling given the current state American healthcare system. I don't think its a problem in Europe.
The responders pointing out that the back-to-the-landers often don't have adequate medical care aren't entirely off-base. Pharma is fundamentally broken in the US, and this places strict restrictions on the freedom of many people here: if you need medical help on a regular basis, you have no option except to work--the "rat race" as it were. Work itself won't make you happy, but I think for most people, dying of illness that went untreated because they can't afford care isn't happiness either.
But some of us are healthy, and I do have choices. In the past ten years, I've worked a rat race job, then actively chosen poverty and didn't have health insurance, and finally started a company that's successful enough that I have health insurance again. I don't think it's accurate to say that individuals don't have choices. And that goes for everyone. Certainly some have more choices than others, but we all have at least a small degree of agency in our lives. So I don't think it's entirely fair to think that everyone is unhappy because they chose a life outside norms (i.e. without health insurance).
The question remains though, whether choosing to step outside of the norms actually makes us happy. I think the answer to that is somewhat individual: we all have different things that make us happy. But for anyone, there's a certain amount of hubris in assuming that you know better than the norms. Often, norms became norms because they work for a lot of people. I think, for example, we have lots of evidence at this point that percentage-wise money does buy happiness--up to a certain amount, and depending on how you spend it[1]. But those are percentages, not absolutes--there are miserable and happy people at both extremes of wealth and everywhere in between.
I don't know where this leads us. I suspect the reality is more complicated than any of us understand.
[1] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/danielgilbert/files/if-mon...
These people live fulfilling lives and work to contribute to each others' well-being and the well-being of others. I'm working on finding a similar living situation for my partner and our child.
Your ideas about what happens when someone quits the rat race are false and fear-based.
We don't live in a kill-or-be-killed world and we have many choices about how we live.
The back-to-nature theme is fine for privileged landowning educated people. But the vast majority of everybody everywhere is dependent on the local grocery.
And yes, hypersanity is probably the most extreme form of privilege. Also, the back-to-nature theme is great, not merely fine, and something indigenous cultures are trying to reclaim as a human birthright. They're arguably way less privileged by your standards. Privilege isn't a reason to dismiss a good idea.
Treating nature as something to live with collaboratively rather than avoid or treat as subservient/separate from us isn't privilege. It's science. Mutualism > competition.
Its 'privileged' to preach that nonsense to apartment-dwelling two-shift-working people with barely the time to visit the bodega on the way home.
Its 'privileged' to imagine this approach to live could be for more than indigenous peoples (rapidly dying out, why is that do you think?) and upper-class first-world wealthy dilettantes.
Privilege is there to be shared. This includes privileged wisdom.
Indigenous cultures are dying out due to settlers and colonizers decimating their lands, cultures, and people. This is not news. It has nothing to do with their way of life, aside from not having developed appropriate weapons and immune systems from those who would seek to kill/displace them.
As for the global food problem, I personally hypothesize capitalism needs to fall or radically transform before that can be addressed.
Learning to peacefully and freely share food seems like the simplest way to address current food issues, but people's desire for money seems to get in the way.
Your take is simply a disempowering reason to stay stuck. We can always reconnect with nature in various ways. Your perspective is self-limiting and keeps you from realizing ways to accomplish it.
Other people are probably figuring out how to do it and you haven't even bothered to find out how.
Here's the first link I found from googling "how to reconnect with nature while living in a city." These are decent approaches and I would say are barely scratching the surface.
https://permaculturenews.org/2017/02/20/can-connect-nature-c...
If you want to reconnect with nature, you can. You sound like you don't want to believe it's possible, but even the smallest amount of effort can make a load of difference. Have you done any googling to challenge your belief? Have you sought out free ways to reconnect with nature?
But I'm hyper-aware of how my situation is utterly different from billions of humans on this planet, with little or no access to even a tree. Or opportunity to sit under it. Living in high-rise apartment blocks far, far from these imagined opportunities.
The world out there is more like blade runner, than a utopia, for the vast majority of people.
The mind is a powerful tool and if people believe they can use it to reconnect, they're much more likely to find a way to. When it comes to subjective experiences, it's important to engage cognitive biases in the direction we want them to go. Beliefs are useful for that, so we need to choose them wisely. Telling people they're not capable of accomplishing things is only helpful if they're rebelling against you because then they'll take it as a challenge. For others who are already in a disempowered state, they could use your message as reinforcing their stuck perspective. I choose to view life in such a way as to promote change and well-being, not get me or anyone else who hears my perspective stuck in it.
I didn’t say there wasn’t a motivator. I said it isn’t money. Until about a hundred years ago, most folks were self employed and chased down whatever they needed for the day. It’s in that last few hundred it became mostly about money for the masses.
There are people that live isolated and off the grid lives, unmotivated by money & rat race. Your idea of survival & what makes a good life may not match up with others.
But in the context of daily life of the masses, you’re correct in that we all just chase the popular social meme. It HAPPENS TO BE money, but it could be bottle caps get you stuff that supply side is selling. It’s what supply side accepts or gtfo. The threat of being evicted from the only life one knows is not literal death, but it feels like it, so we chase money, not bottle caps as a pragmatic acquiescence to social forces.
This is such a common thing to think, but why, where is it based on? Why would you think that most people are still "chasing it" disproportionately?
If you become enligthened (for the sake of simplicity, let's equate enlightenment with realization that material wealth is not the source of happiness and not the meaning of life) - if you realize it about wealth, it does not mean that you stop working, that you stop getting money, stop producing value, stop function in society. If you would do that you would just sit somethere in the forest and do nothing all day, which is not the meaning of life either.
Instead you see material wealth for what it is - only a piece of the puzzle, not something that your happiness is directly conected to, but somethint that still makes sense to get in a small amount so that you provide your life with basic necessities for you and your family, and so that you can dedicate the rest of the time to self-development, spiritual growth, freedom etc. It doesn't mean that you disconnect from the society completely - that's not what happiness is about. Happiness is about balance, and seing things for what they are. Seing wealth as a tool, not as a source of happiness.
And there are a lot of people who already live like that! Sure there is a small amount that strives for wealth for the sake of wealth and kill their health in the pursuit of career success, but the rest are just living their lives.
So yes absolutely there are a lot of people who get (in terms of integrating into their life, and not just hearing them as a distant logical idea) these concepts that come up in disney movies.
Getting into a back and forth online in a no stakes social forum is asinine.
There is a very legitimate and valueable reason to debate anyone: is to develop your own worldview, beliefs, ability to articulate and learn something new. The worldview, at least a stable functioning one doesn't just come up in our minds by simply watching the world/other speakers, it requires active participation, whether it be simply thinking about the world, writing about it, or yes discussing/debating it with other people which forces you to make your own claims, formulate your thoughts, risk being wrong and ridiculed by other people, developing your language skills, figuring out what you actually think about certain topics, etc.
It is seemingly childish and short-sighted to ignore the value of discussion just because it happens to be through the internet.
Truly words to live by.
Of course it feels pointless to you - you don’t _need_ any more of it.
It feels pointless to me too, but my background wouldn’t allow me to live anywhere but on the street at my current age of 28 (without money, that is).
I hope by 40 I will eventually earn enough to retire and be the same champagne socialist as you currently sound.
Living a life of service to others opens doors not available to those who sell themselves purely for personal gain.
Have you identified the fundamental needs for humans to thrive? You can google "universal needs" if not and then see if you can find ways to meet all your needs without money.
The perceived need for money goes down for those who learn alternative strategies for meeting their needs, are open to the possibilities, and trust themselves more than the world says to.
This describes me well as I've gone through having that realization due to some extreme peak experiences. It makes life harder as well as more interesting, although I'm not sure if I'm better or worse off. I care more about things that are broken in society which I cannot fix, although I try where I can.
I would also say that if you believe it is "self-congratulatory" that is also not right. Part of the realization that comes with this is that society is just a game everyone plays, and really we're more or less all the same. I think you may believe it is "self-congratulatory" because in typical society someone only acts different from another in order to advance oneself in the hierarchy. Someone who comes to a realization of this sort simply doesn't believe in the hierarchy in the first place.
Agreed.
> This describes me well as I've gone through having that realization due to some extreme peak experiences. It makes life harder as well as more interesting, although I'm not sure if I'm better or worse off. I care more about things that are broken in society which I cannot fix, although I try where I can.
Okay, but caring more doesn't matter. So basically you're saying you have the right thought, but aren't taking the right action because most of the time you feel you can't. Yep, that's the problem: right action is hard, right thought without right action is pretty pointless, and even right action doesn't always produce right results.
> I think you may believe it is "self-congratulatory" because in typical society someone only acts different from another in order to advance oneself in the hierarchy.
No, I believe it's self-congratulatory because nlh (like most people) likely doesn't act different from anyone else.
I know I'm criticizing you and nlh here, but I don't mean it unkindly. The same criticism is true of me.
I'd also say that trying to make yourself "want" things that are inherently unpleasant can be a fool's errand, depending on your definition of "want". Cold, detached action is often needed to bridge the gaps between waves of fickle motivation.
But far more often, none of those things. And either way, I never have heard such people say they wish they'd been average.
and yet...
Me, I can see that this stuff is empty, at least some of the time. I can even stop chasing it, for a few hours or days at a time. I can't seem to do it for long, though.
As others say, plenty, “including Disney movies”, “see” this world-beyond-the-world - but they see it askance, through a glass darkly, with the chattels and symbols of the artifice world wrought throughout. Fear holds shut the doors of perception, because to even deeply consider, never mind act upon, the idea that we live in a consensual hallucination, presents the illusion of being capable of devaluing one’s entire existence, and therefore one’s identity. Status becomes meaningless, the system of the world looks like a sad plastic toy being fought over by children, surrounded by immeasurable bounty they cannot or will not perceive.
The thing is, the yawning chasm of gnosis is only six inches deep, but it appears unfathomable. Once you’ve really made the leap, it’s easy enough to live by the convictions it presents.
I think Philip K Dick is the prophet of the ultra-sane. He saw the artifice, described it as “the black iron prison”, and spent the remainder of his days desperately trying to find his way through the thicket, but overshot, and plumbed the fringes of madness and a kind of razor-edged hypersanity. Sadly, he, like many of his characters, used the assistance of chemicals to pierce the veil, and he, like they, was undone by them. Psychedelics are a path, but they’re like taking a sledgehammer to a walnut, and usually break something else. You get there, but all too often you lose an important thread somewhere on the way.
So, if you keep going back to the void, you’re still bound. Take the step. Stop wanting. Start being. Watch the world and laugh - it’s quite a brilliant bit of absurdist performance art.
Doing so does devalue your existence up to the point of inversion, but the thing is, your value system also shifts so dramatically that it does not matter. If anything, looking back at the past is more akin to recalling an entertaining time spent in the playground, and is by no means valueless - just valueless as a mercantile/social exchange.
A final aside: I think many find their way across the Styx as a result of trauma - feeling that the world has in one way or another wronged or rejected you often provides the instigation and fortitude to turn one’s back on it to reconsider - before emerging to engage with it once more on absolutely different terms. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that many terminal patients are blissfully peaceful, happy people, despite their own impending mortality - knowing you have no future is an incredibly liberating experience, and allows you to live Here and Now. It’s just such a shame that it takes pain and death to shake the scales from eyes that so easily could have been free sooner.
I was one of the very lucky ones - I was going to die for several years - but I didn’t. I wept, I wailed, I mourned, I accepted, I lived for the small things, the dew on an ant, the bobbing of a bird in flight, the spray of salt off the sea, the myriad specks in the sky that speak of countless worlds and a dispassionate universe. I have not once even considered reentering the chattel world - this way of being brings me joy and contentment, and allows me to share that with others. I am small. I am finite in time and space. I am dust. This is good. This is beautiful.
Final final aside: Huxley’s Island explores quite a bit of this, actually, and it’s a great read either way.
A consensual hallucination is kept alive and reinforced by the consensus. Take away psychedelics and few if any stand any chance of maintaining a conducive way of looking at things long enough for the mental shift / cascade / holy spirit descending on / knowledge and conversation with the HGA / initiatory state (different descriptions for the same underlying experience) to trigger. Something as simple and common as a 9-5 job is enough of a barrier, by forcing on you daily interactions / hallucinations to keep you away from the path. The black iron prison is the ultimate brainwashing agent.
Now also take into account that most don't even know there is a path, nevermind what it looks like. For these reasons and more yet unwritten, I am a strong advocate for psychedelics. They take away all the excuses and blast the gate to the mysteries to smithereens.
As it is said: "To Know, To Dare, To Will, To Keep Silent"
It is "knowing" that is so important or in other words direct experiential knowledge [1]
Once you know, you can dare and you can will.
Well said. Yes people are afraid to question themselves and are actively discouraged and distracted from it. Any PKD book you'd like to suggest regarding this ?
Some of his intermediate period stuff, like Flow My Tears the Policeman Said and Radio Free Albemuth is a softer landing, as you can see the ideas that lead to his later work building from his earlier more facile metaphysics.
I re-read his corpus last year in the order he wrote them -and finished feeling like I understood his entire mental journey, tortured twists and turns and human fallibilities and all. He was prolific, so I only recommend that route if you have a thousand hours spare.
The problem is keeping those insights. One has to hold on to them, ensure they don't get lost in the ever increasing sea of information. To revisit them periodically and imbibe in oneself. Another problem is not knowing if you are the only one to see it this way. It shouldn't, but it is.
Oh boy, yes. I find that holding on to that fragile mote of sanity is often like something you can only see on the edge of your field of vision, which, the moment you look directly at it, draws you into its complexity so deeply that you lose your image of the whole in your journeys within it.
- David Foster Wallace
and it's easy to get stuck in a local minimum. (mortgage, kids/family need a lot of resources)
If we accept the heat death of the universe and the fact nothing can go faster than light everything is bound to disappear. Trying to better Earth based life is useless. Then why bother trying to attain something higher? Just maximize your own pleasure until your conscience disappear. Suicide by psychedelic use is the only "hypersane" response.
Among the many things we've learned from science is that there are real phenomena that we cannot perceive. We use microscopes, telescopes, x-ray machines and other sensors of all kinds which create simulacra of the real phenomena which we can perceive.
Extend the analogy to our brains -- consider that there are literally thoughts we cannot think. Our brains tells us there are no thoughts we can't think, but our brains may be liars. Is there a way for our brains to grasp the literally incomprehensible?
We can try and reject our nature but it seems eminently naive to me.
It seems more likely to me that humans were forced to do stuff like that due to other things in our nature like needing to eat and drink.
In this case we all have different drivers, and different definitions of "sane". Some people love being part of a bigger whole, so to suggest these conformists aren't sane is as patronising as calling the non-conformists insane because they don't get with the program.
An important corollary to this principle is that being different is healthy - diversity is strength.
So don't be too quick to judge sanity. Except for those who think everyone should be the same - just like them, of course! They really ARE insane.
It's even so to a point that it is funny that they use this word in such an argument. Who in their right mind would assume that "sane" (and "hypersane") would be an objective enough of a concept to even dedicate time discussing? Neither science knows what is sane, nor does spirituality teachings use that word often.
Don't preempt people that might disagree with you by claiming they are in cognitive dissonance.
Be careful accepting the siren call of 'special truths' that put you in the in-group. This is the path of antivax, religion/cults, flat earthers, conspiracy theorists.
We enjoy innovation, progress, because it seemingly makes our lives more enjoyable. At least I think I do. I think I would take this life over 19th-century farmer.
The point is that there appears to be a tradeoff - disparity, constraints, entice us to create solutions. And adopt a certain amount of stress in obtaining that solution.
Or we accept everything as-is. Unchangable. Zero stress in striving. But no progress.
Realising and accepting death seems to work. You can then do things that will look insane and impossible to others. Sell everything and be a nomad, spend all your time building something, pursue a degree at 55+, retire to die, go build houses in Africa or something.
None of that is comfortable, stable or normal, so it looks crazy to any "sane" person. But is it really? No, because utlimately you're dead, legacy or not.
> Thoughts?
Happiness isn't the point of life. Keep digging.
"Society is wrong and bad and you should stick it to the man and do things the way you want" is not a particularly clever or original point. Next to every single teenager thinks themselves very bright for thinking something along those lines. They later figure out life is a lot more complicated than that.
> Seek the company of those who search for truth; run from those who have found it.
In the end, the cosmos don't care what we believe, or value, or strive for. We will die all the same. Our species will become extinct. And the universe will end.
The way you wondered your remark places you in that second camp. Irony can be a clever tool, but I’m left wondering if it was intentional.
I generally eschew most of society's social signalling. I drive only modest cars, I live alone in a sparsely furnished house (and love it!), try to eat right, keep a regular sleep schedule, try to act as rationally as possible, etc.
I realize that after my bouts of "hyper sanity," that I have to then intentionally relax some of my standards and try to selectively buy in to some of society's "insanity" in order to be happy. Because studies show that the happiest and longest lived people have strong social networks.
So while I love the idea, it's not the most fun, and it becomes counterproductive at a point.
“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”
So what makes you think not having those things will make you happy? Material wealth can make you both happy and sad, and so do all the other things.
For all I know, it seems pursuing happyness is not the best strategy to become happy.
The 'hypersane' are those among us who have realized, for better or for worse, that the traditional things that most in a society strive for - material wealth, social status, conformity to social structures, etc. - aren't really the keys to happiness and that when you "awaken" (and become hypersane, I suppose) you realize that along with those things come stress, anxiety, the rat race, and, well, a pretty boring existence.
I dig it! I expect to see a lot of folks reject this notion outright, because, well, cognitive dissonance. If you've built your life around conforming, it might be tough to hear someone suggest it's all for naught.
Thoughts?