hedonism, time, etc
Pleasure seeking.
A tragedy of the modern era is man's ability to itch every carnal craving through shallow means.
Pleasure is experienced and gone. The experience of pain avoided for a moment. When this becomes a lifestyle, it is an endless pursuit of highs. Hedonic adaptation, the person becomes adjusted to the state of being high. It sets a baseline that can even produce frustration, sadness, and anger when deviated from. The pursuit of pleasure sabotages one's ability to enjoy pleasure over time. The desire is never fully fulfilled. It will return demanding more. Meanwhile, it sabotages your ability to reverse out of the hole. Holistic rewiring is needed.
Pleasure, biologically, is a reward system. When one games the system, forgets what it was built to incentivize, and clicks the pleasure button, the logic that animates life is no different than the mouse clicking the dopamine button until starving to death. This is our anatomy and our wiring. Reward systems are meant to guide, not to be gamed.
In the fullness of time, the life of pleasure-seeking blends in with the most horrific of other lives. If you spend your time thinking only of your primary - or even secondary - desires, your peers are tyrants, fools, and torturers.
This comes from an unexplainable aversion in me toward some of my friends’ lives, the methods they use to perceive things, and their empty striving toward a good life. The definition of which contains scarce substance. I break for them.
There is a little gap between emotions and feelings.
Emotions are the raw experiences and sensations. The rising tide of chemicals and pressures within one's body we all experience. As those rise, there is a crucial moment before they are named as any specific thing ("good," "bad," "sad," "jealousy," "lust," etc).
Occupy that space and apply wisdom to the naming of emotions. Feelings are powerful anchors. Once an emotion is named it must run through the whole body and be processed by the mind thoroughly, requiring variable energy depending on the depth of the feeling and what else it connects too. Additionally, emotions are change catalysts. neurotransmitters & modulators provide the horsepower to create structural change in the mind. The mind doesn't only change when we want it to, in ways that serve our higher purposes. Very often the opposite.
Thoughts on my reading this morning:
It is incredulous to me the breadth of resources that are orchestrated to make a normal moment in my life possible. This morning as I meditated and looked out on Texas Hill Country - I was struck by what lay before me. On the table on my right lay my Kindle, with a page open from Leo Tolstoy's daily reader. Wisdom from the generations of men before me, bare to the universe worn on the e-ink of a device with 10s of parts, architected by a company of over 1 million people. It contains storehouses of books, making the library of alexandria seem a kiddie pool. On the specific page opened, I can see Marcus Aurelius, Lao Tzu, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a verse from the Book of John, and a note from Tolstoy. The wisdom traditions of vast empires that enabled the social cohesion of hundreds of millions and has influenced the life decisions of billions. All from different eras, none alive at the same time. Each alive again on my screen for but a moment, wisdom touching my mind as it touched theirs. Expanding into the rest of my field of view - my clothing and my watch. Clothing representative and born of globalism, the economic interconnection of billions of people. Stories of oppression and wealth woven into my pants and shirt. My watch, the ticking of time, the vestibule rocketing each of us toward our deaths, our return to our roots. This ticks the same now as it always has, yet it is relatively new to being on my wrist. It carries bioinformatic data. Available only through advanced materials science and engineering. The sweat and toil of thousands of brilliant minds over the course of history has led to me being able to understand my sleep numerically and represent it in my mind in meaningful form. What a great mystery and miracle.
This leads me to an important thought.
Each of these parts of my immediate experience are fruit of the toil of my ancestors. How can I honor their efforts and build on their suffering?
Honoring them is to use and partake in what they've built. The satisfaction of a creator is to see their creation in use, based on its design. Without fealty, the use of another's creation to further the wellbeing and deepness of the human experience is most honoring of the creator.
Extrapolate this to the Nth degree, to the furthest possible state.
LIVE A LIFE THAT COULD ONLY BE LIVED NOW. IN THIS AGE. WITH THESE TOOLS. DO NOT LIVE YOUR ANCESTORS' LIVES. THEY'VE TOILED AND WRITTEN DOWN THEIR WISDOM SO THAT YOU MAY GRADUATE BEYOND AND EXPLORE WHAT LAY FURTHER.
DO NOT BE BURDENED TRAVELLER BY THE WEIGHT OF THEIR CONSCIOUS. RATHER BE EQUIPPED AND ENCOURAGED. THEY HAVE CREATED GREAT HORDES OF WISDOM AND TOOLS FOR YOUR JOURNEY AND FIND DELIGHT IN ITS USAGE, JUST AS YOU WILL FOR YOU DESCENDENTS.
LIVE NOW.
Use this as a decision making razor. N = 1. The life of Joe.