The Progression of Reflection

  

    At the beginning of this week, I committed to running a total weekly distance of 50km in the mountains. I surpassed my goal by 5km, which infuses me with a new sense of strength, capability, and determination. I'm exceedingly eager to see where I can take this ability and how many more goals I can accomplish. Prior to this week, I was absolutely unaware I could successfully complete 55km running up and down mountains and through winding, technical trails. 

   Running, to me, has become the most lively defiance of mortality that I've been able to experience. In my old age, I'll be able to say that, while I had it, I used it. I didn't squander my youth by constantly waiting for the opportunity, instead, I created the opportunity. I want to be able to say that I didn't let the enormous burden of mortality prevent me from exerting my youth to the fullest. 

 Environmental integration is also a massive part of why I run and why I choose to identify as a "trail runner." When I'm immersed in the bellies of the rain forest, exerting myself and breathing heavy, I don't feel like an anomaly that's just passing through. For the period that I'm in a particular area, I feel an intimate connection to that landscape. This sounds a little woo woo, perhaps, but I'm of the conviction that simply because my sensory magnification doesn't allow me to see it, doesn't mean it isn't happening. We're in a perpetual state of symbiosis with the environments we're in. We just can't ordinarily detect it. 

  Of course, also, running simplifies and purifies life by removing the trivial exigencies and restoring the basic necessities. When you're out there on a long run, the only thing you're concerned with is ingesting oxygen, drinking a bit of water here and there, and moving. You can only be concerned with the fundamentals of existence. I think it's what you'd call a Pure Experience. An experience absolutely unadulterated by prejudice or pre-conception, you're just living in that moment engaged in that activity because there's absolutely nothing else you'd rather be doing. At least, that's how it is for me. 

 

Authenticity and Free-Will

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHT-xeU1LEk

  Heidegger introduced the identification of the "Dasein," the part of yourself you're probably most familiar with as you're lying in bed waiting for sleep to overtake you. Dasein is the "you" that examines yourself almost as a separate entity; it's often been identified as a spirit.

  As a social animal and in our modern predicament where we're forced into social institutions from kindergarten until grade twelve, it's easy to become a construct of your social environment; to let the opinions and definitions applied by someone else dictate your character. Of course, as a social primate, the idea of living authentically, or separate from the social consensus, weighs heavily on our shoulders.

  So how does one live authentically? According to Heidegger, the first step is asking the question "What does it mean to be?" Because in the pursuit of this often tantalizing, often enriching, and sometimes depressing, question, we must confront our own mortality and conjure up our own meaning. No one can live your life or die your death, it's entirely yours to live and die.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tf6BS9B2pY

  Do humans possess true free-will? Or are our actions ultimately determined beyond our cognizance, giving the illusion of free-will? Personally, I'm a proponent of a sort of constrained-freedom idea, in that, at any given time the choices available to us are limited and our choice is determined by listless variables that likely operate sub-consciously and many that operate consciously.

  Furthermore, the ability to detect the contributing variables varies by the person. Some people are super-tuned, capable of detecting most of their motives and variables that factor into any given decision, whereas some people make immediate and irrational decisions in the absence of consideration. Given that mindfulness is a measurable skill, I'd assert that your level of active mindfulness would determine how "free" you are in deciding your actions.

 I think it intimately connects to what Heidegger identified as our "Dasein." The individual-awareness that we each independently possess, and how it can be trained. To illustrate a rudimentary analogy, imagine your dasein as a muscle. The more you exert your dasein and tread into previously unknown territory, the more resilient and tough it will become. As your dasein gradually becomes more resilient and tough, you'll begin to notice that you're consequently becoming more reflective about everything, from the minutiae of existence to the more grandiose exigencies of existence. 

 Certainly, there is always a limited pool of options for us to fish from, but as our dasein becomes increasingly competent, our fishing gear improves. We acquire sonar, an advanced fishing-rod and superior bait. We become able to select rather than allow, which fish we hook. 

The Progression of Pondering

  Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EB9avF1EXY

 The largest source of existential angst is the quest for purpose. It's a ubiquitous condition amongst humans, we seem to crave a meaning. Personally, when I was younger, the search for meaning weighed heavily on my shoulders and invaded every aspect of my existence. As I've grown older and actively pursued excellence in athletics and personal academic study, I've come to the conclusion that there is an important distinction to be made. There are two types of purpose, one of which being prone to fallacy: extrinsic and intrinsic.

   I've viscerally felt the connection we all have to the universe. I've spent much time amongst natural landscapes, breathing deeply and gazing at each and every inhabitant of these landscapes. Viscerally, I know we're all manifestations of the same source; perpetually locked in an everlasting cycle of forms, incessantly growing and decomposing. So, for me, a logical progression from there is that, through us, the universe acquires meaning and purpose. If it can be intrinsically-generated, then it exists.

   The confusion and anxiety I experienced when I was younger was a consequence of the notion that purpose is extrinsically-assigned. That we're each born with a destiny to fulfill. Indeed, the condition of purpose being an intrinsically-generated destiny is exceedingly liberating. Imagine if you were actually born into a pre-determined destiny, one which you had no agency in creating and were inevitably forced to follow. What a miserable, constraining existence an extrinsically-assigned purpose would be.

   I remember laying in bed at night sometimes frantically scrolling through potential "roles" I could fill. As though I needed to be the embodiment of some cerebral, cultural archetype. As I've come to intimately know myself through copious hours alone, I realize that the ego is extremely pliable. You could be a traveling bard one year, traveling through towns and strumming your favourite instrument, while the next year you could become an ultra-marathon runner. Of course, culture will tell you to buckle down, go to school, get a career, fill a role. Don't be silly, what're you? A hippy?!

 This existence, in this particular generation, is one of innumerable opportunity. Don't rush into university, you'll be so frequently bombarded with extrinsically-designated tasks that you'll be left scant time to discover your intrinsic nature. Discovering your intrinsic nature is fundamental to everything you will do in this life, it is the source from which you will proceed into everything you do. I've previously outlined many methods in which you can probe into your intrinsic nature, I do this purely as a service to you.

 The only inherent freedom you have in this existence is the ability to harmonize your mind and body to explore, learn, conquer and exert effort. After an arduous sentence in the public education system, I've realized we're doing it all wrong, especially in an era of amazing scientific progress. Humans are born naturally curious about the natural world. The absolutely most stifling thing you can do to this curiosity is to shove young humans into a classroom and force them to sit down and learn about the world through a book. The world is right there beyond the windows! Let them explore it! Isn't that a peculiar thing about our education system? It's absolutely devoid of experiential learning, which, in my opinion, is the most effective. I wouldn't assert that it's one or the other, a healthy balance of experience and book-studying would be much more conducive to progress.

Wander and Ponder #4

I like to provide a little musical-guidance with each of my articles. If you've read my writings before, you're probably already familiar with this. The song I choose to accompany the article with is the very song I mingled with in the writing of the exposition. So, if you'd like to experience the musical fornication that spawned this article, here you are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H43YApDQheI

The idea of the static-self is riddled with fallacy. Firstly, if you aren't continually revising, improving and refreshing yourself then, by definition, you're stagnant. Secondly, life is a continual experiential evolution, as you're exposed to new environments, activities and ideas, you change. Thirdly, be aware that, due to our inherently social nature, the people that comprise your extended social-circle will often attempt to "profile" you, or put your entire character into a box. Perhaps you've consequently encountered resistance to your personal evolution due to this, I know I have and know many people who also have. Despite this, always remember, this resistance is a product of their own attachment to an idea or concept of who you are. A true friend will encourage and nourish your personal-growth.

I think in order to fluently and efficiently evolve you must develop a strong spiritual connection. Before I continue, I will clarify that to me, spirit translates to sensitivity of self. It's a particular sensitivity regarding your personal habits, patterns and behaviours. It involves periodically scrutinizing yourself by examining your current situation in regards to your habits, patterns and behaviours. For me, this process is executed through a lengthy wander, preferably in the morning and at night, with the assistance of my favourite herbal ally. This isn't the exclusive means of achieving this, obviously quiet and motionless meditation is conducive to this, strenuous endurance-based exertion often helps me, or simply just spending time by myself near a river with an open word document/journal is effective.

Perhaps I'm an idealist or naively optimistic but I think the most potent means of inducing wide-scale change is by altering or assisting individuals in their personal journey. By illuminating the means through which one can attain what Aristotle termed "The Good Life," I think you could effectively produce a culture of fulfilled people.

Of course, the route to a culture populated by fulfilled denizens is arduous and demands a high degree of effort on the part of every individual. You can't passively expect fulfillment to arrive on your doorstep like a curious squirrel. You must actively exert yourself, challenge yourself both mentally and physically and engage in enriching and stimulating dialogues with other humans while being accepting of dissent. Indeed, dissent is incredibly resourceful for advancing your own set of opinions. The trouble occurs when you reject and insult dissent or, even worse, insult the person offering the dissent.

To abandon that digression and return to my original point, I'd like to delve deeper into the nature of identity and self as a dynamic and perpetually-evolving-thing. The patterns of existence differ individually in terms of the content but the context is generally the same, and has been for most of human-existence. I think it intimately intertwines with the seasons, with the wobble and orbit of the Earth. As the warmer and more hospitable seasons arrive, I've invariably experienced a massive outpour of energy from my body and mind, all of my energy wants to be directed towards exploration, growth, and exertion. As the winter season arrives, which typically, for most of European history (which is where my ancestry derives from) indicates the coming of a harvest and stockpiling and consequently, a type of introverted hibernation.

 I think a substantial degree of our cultural ailments in regards to psychological maladies stems from this notion that spirituality is "woo woo nonsense," and that science can answer all questions. I'm far from anti-science, I'm a science enthusiast. I just also think that enthusiastic existentialism and philosophical inquiry still have a major role to play in assisting our journey's towards our ideal-selves: free from psychological ailment, free from stress and living completely fulfilled and content in our situations. It's very important to develop an acute sensitivity to yourself and your impact on others, to listen often, to your heartbeat, to feel what it is to be alive. To take your shoes off once and a while and allow your fundamental connection with the Earth to be restored. To breathe deeply, move often, think more, develop rationality and adopt a healthy amount of skepticism.

 Plato likened the absence of awareness to being dragged dangerously along by a horse-carriage. In the absence of sensitivity we often allow our circumstances and emotions to determine how we behave and think. This is a very dangerous threat, indeed, one which threatens our autonomy and diminishes our potential.

Musings on Non-Violence, Time, Economics and Innovation

http://youtu.be/TTFm_fxeusA

When you utilize an attack-weapon, or kill-device or seek harm and initiate force, you manufacture a scenario of necessary response from the victim. Primally, I know that the wielding-with-intent of a weapon against me would induce a dominantly visceral response, not one of arduous logic. I would thereby expect the initiation to almost automatically create a violent scenario. 

 Once it has been initiated, either with a gesture towards the weapon, a firing of the weapon, a swing, or any other means of initiation, you have generated a fundamentally visceral and primal situation. These situations are resolved without foresight or lengthy reflection, but an instantaneous reaction, a reflex of survival.

This doesn't necessarily claim that it's resolved with a reaction of force, flight is a potential response in many cases. The undertaking of flight with the subsequent pursuit from the initiator is still a violent scenario. You're forced into a state of completely adrenaline-filled terror or, more accurately, desperation for survival while someone pursues you further.

Violence is an equation that begins with an initation. You could argue that violence begins with the formulation of motives but at the point it is yet to be violent. Also, motives can be subsequently abandoned and never enacted, therefore violence does not occur in the formulation of motives but in the initiation. Once you have initiated force against another, you have then manufactured the scenario of necessary response. In the absence of initation there is consequently an absence of violence.

Time, Economics and Innovation 

Time is the ever-receding resource of temporal form. Being a temporal form, but equipped with foresight, the utilization of time as a resource is inevitable. Hence our rigid work-schedules, set sleeping schedule, eating schedules. We harness it for immense efficiency, but efficiency is relative to the pursuit. Our current pursuit is one of economic development, of extracting and utilizing natural resources to continue to expand the economy. In the effort you manufacture tasks for people, with a particular reward. This reward would be money in our case. Money being a universally-identified thing of value. 

 When you look at food, intently and carefully, you see the slavery were all intrinsically bound to. We work for food and shelter, when living in a city. This food and shelter is provided for us so that we may dedicate our time to other means. But someone has to tend to our necessary demands, we just don't all have to. So an economy is reasonably an inevitability of city-life, which itself demands the need for lawful enforcement, sewage control, waste control, electricity.. We have a lot of nuanced tasks that need to be completed by somebody almost full-time. To abandon our economic model is to abandon a system that enables immense diversification by unifying every citizen under a common value. A value is necessary for the exchange of goods and services.

 Perhaps, though, our present economic system is creating values which are fundamentally unsustainable and harmful to the environment. Harming the environment is a fundamental wrong; you do not corrupt your sustaining force if your goal is sustain yourself and your offspring. It's fundamentally incompatible with even elementary logic; if you rely on something for sustenance and continuance, you do not corrupt it for immediate or near-by gains. Particularly so in the knowledge of a time-span that exceeds your own lifetime. One which stretches for eternity, through your offspring, and through there's until it cascades down into the infinite. Perhaps a perpetual existence is possible, firstly we need to preserve home base while we work towards expanding beyond a single resource-base. Makes sense, no?

Once we've reached beyond earth the instrumental adaptations that occur on the new planets will substantially individualize the separate planets, with each becoming its own breed. The environments we'd have to respond to are as of yet unknown, but that doesn't mean they're unknown forever. Discovery will happen if facilitated. Imagine all the foreign environments were simply yet to perceive through the senses, with no present clue as to how to manage them. Our ingenuity would be released into novel environments, manufacturing an entirely novel reaction. And as we've seen on earth, once we invent our tools, our tools become an inseparably symbiotic reliance. 

Responsibility and Accountability

In order for this tribe, or cluster of people unified under a universal currency and an ever-evolving moral theory, to exist peacefully and prosperously we need to be accountable for that which we are responsible. This moral-umbrella that we're sharing is of course not a static thing, rather a continually accreting and morphing thing. With new principles slowly weaving in and antiquated principles being slowly relinquished. 

If we're all going to implicitly agree to partake in the offerings of this culture and society, we should all adhere to similar principles and if not, at least adhere to non-aggression. Always, in the proceedings of evolving this thing, ideas trump violence. Indeed, ideas can prevent violence, this requires the agreement of non-violence of course. It may not be a contract but certainly we individually agree to behave within parameters that harm no one, so we can all function in harmony and prosperity. This is what civilization is, or at least should be.

When someone commits an injurious or debilitating action against another, what do we do? Of course, under our system of justice - punishing those that harm or debilitate - we respond. The response to evil, or wrongdoings or harm or debilitating actions, is necessary. We cannot avoid it. This doesn't grant that it's an inevitability of human-behaviour, but in the occurrence of it there must be a response. With this population-density combined with the dissociative nature of our tribes, evil,  debilitating, harmful wrongdoings are evidently present. 

So how do we respond?

 I wouldn't suggest that prevention is the one and only saviour, capable of entirely expunging evil from civilization, but it's an effective agent. Through early teachings in reason, logic and philosophy, by instilling dialogue as a means of resolution, I would assert that we would experience a lower frequency of inappropriately settled disputes, thereby reducing violence. Twofold, reason encourages compassion, reason permits rational resolutions of things. For this to occur we would necessarily need every citizen, or the overriding majority, to agree under some means of unification. 

 We all enjoy harmonious interaction with the members that form our closes bonds. A social mammal relishes in social environments. Not necessarily all social environments, but certain ones. That one friend you reciprocate with well, your group of friends, etc. It assures us we aren't alone, that we're all traveling through this nebulous journey together, figuring it out as we proceed through. That we will support each other and relinquish prejudice and censorious behaviour and coalesce. These qualities are indisputably beneficial, my own and your own experience confirm this. 

Earlier I mentioned that due to the density and dissociative nature of our tribes we experience evil. What does that mean? How could it be corrected rather than combatted?

 It's evident, through anthropological studies, that humans are tribal animals that rely on cohesion and alliances, that we thrive in tribes. In the tribe, each member must be responsible and accountable. If you are responsible for building the huts and they collapse on me,  you're accountable. If you're responsible for cultivating the food and come winter we suffer a famine, you're accountable. There's an intricate web of responsibility and accountability, with each member relying on each other. 

 What's essential for the tribe is that each member sustain a relationship with each other, in order to track their behaviour and ensure they're working for the benefit of the tribe. When a member commits a crime against the tribe, they're accountable to the whole tribe,  because civilization doesn't progress through delinquency. 

In order to ameliorate the present state of our tribes, I would argue we need to erect more incentives for communities to function like communities. This would include things like: more localized systems of government that focus on smaller constituencies, local food production, smaller schools with fewer students, and more accountability. As our population continues to increase I think it's vital that we focus on smaller communities because as it currently stands, government is elected by the majority of the minority. Constituencies are becoming too large to accurately account for everyone. 

Journaling the Ideal-Self

The concept of the ideal-self fascinates me. I think there's an inherent image contained within all of us that represents ourselves at our best. The you that wakes up out of bed and immediately steps outside onto the dewy grass, letting the blades caress the crevices between your toes while you listen to the birds and praise existence. The you that adequately tends to your health, ensuring your cardiovascular system is healthy and your body is mobile and free of any constraining tensions. The you that reads captivating and wise fiction, the you that reads philosophy and learns how to apply reason to your decisions. The you that periodically analyzes your own beliefs and scrutinizes your patterns of behaviour as to ensure you don't become ensnared by habit and ritual. The you that consistently exerts a commendable effort in anything you do and relishes in just that, the raw effort.

Our ideal selves may individually differ in the content but I think the context remains the same. The general route-to-reward involves the same tactic: journaling. I think journaling is a universally effective tool that assists in the pursuit of whatever our ideal selves would do. The journal not only records what you've thought but serves as a reminder of who you were when you wrote that, what your ambitions were and who you wanted to become. It holds you accountable for your intentions, whereas ordinarily you could dismiss them if they weren't written down. Perhaps the most beneficial and humbling element of the journal is the reflection; peering into the past and cognitively gazing at your previous self, feeling the remnants of your old self and relishing in the progress. 

 A journal, regardless of the form it assumes, is an extension of our internal cognition. It becomes the content of our brain; the intentions, thoughts and actions we experience internally are transmitted to an external extension of ourselves. If someone were to pick up your journal, open it and begin reading it, they'd discover at least a portion of the contents of what's internally capsulated within your mind. Now this is a riveting concept. 

Let's assume you kept journals for every minor and major goal you had in life. Every little task that needed to be completed, you first journaled about completing and contemplated the most effective or satisfying means of doing so. Including mundane things like vacuuming, arranging items in your room, what you wanted for breakfast. In the journal you’d reason about things and occasionally rant about how difficult it is to vacuum that one corner in your room behind your bed, how your pet instinctively avoids the vacuum by sitting high on your desk, monitoring the vacuum incessantly. If you had a treasure trove of these journals and left them in your attic or stored them in your closet, you'd have a vault containing the experiences of yourself. An extended source of all that is you, your feelings on things, your reasoning for things, your activities, your goals, etc.. 

This could feasibly become the most valuable source of connection for your progeny once you're deceased. Imagine leaving your children with a vault of your experiences, with journals that revealed your goals and the subsequent journals that had you reflecting on the accomplishment of these goals. For a temporal creature, aware of the inevitability of time, this is a mighty and influential bequeathment.