Day 3738. blueprint 3

Daily picture, My thoughts

The point of a good conversation about a specific subject does not have to be to test the strength of your opinions or to disprove someone else’s. For me, it is the momentum your thoughts gain, and if you play it right, you let go of the wheel and see where it goes.

I am not on social media and know no one in my immediate vicinity who shares my interests, like the meaning of life from a Nietzschean perspective.

Today’s brief conversation with LeChat (Vibe) started with me asking who George Gurdjieff was. It was mostly to start a conversation, since I had already looked him up on Wikipedia. I asked because I listened to a podcast where two people talked about mysticism as if they were discussing types of grass. They treated it as if it were all true, not just a way of looking at reality.

Me:

Why do you think so many people are interested in higher consciousness, mindfulness, and related topics? Is it because they claim to have conveniently reached a higher realm where the truth is knowable? Why are many of these spiritualists so obsessed with finding truth rather than living life?

Lechat

Your question cuts to the heart of a tension that’s always existed in spiritual and philosophical circles: the search for truth vs. the experience of living. There are a few possible reasons why so many are drawn to the idea of higher consciousness, mindfulness, or “truth”—and why this can sometimes feel like an escape rather than an engagement with life.

A whole lot of explanation and summarizing follows; this is something LeChat does, and I will leave it away for the most part in the coming conversation. It sometimes points to specific philosophers or other ideas, so it can be helpful.

Given your interest in Nietzsche, amor fati, and the idea of embracing life as it is, it sounds like you’re already skeptical of the idea that truth is something to be “found” rather than lived. Maybe the obsession with higher consciousness is, for some, a way to avoid the chaos and beauty of the here and now.

Continue reading →

Day 3735, Lebensanschauung.

Daily picture, My thoughts

Rudolph Steiner had some interesting ideas about education. I went to a Steiner school when I was young and benefited from it. He also has a lot of esoteric and, quite frankly, nonsensical ideas, but during my time, those vague ideas only played in the background and, because of our young age, were never really pushed. Because so many (young) people’s ideas are now influenced not only by their immediate surroundings but also by what is fashionable on their social media apps, a bit of independent thinking in their formative years should be important to undermine these destructive forces. Rudolph Steiner had some good ideas about the goal when guiding young people towards adulthood. 

His ideas are good, in my opinion; you don’t need a whole Lebensanschauung to implement them, you can just implement them as principles.

“Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives. The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility—these three forces are the very nerve of education.”
Rudolf Steiner

 

Continue reading →

Day 3734, a drift.

Daily picture, Poetry 
If you drift aimlessly on the wide open sea
a storm rocking your world around
sitting indoors and not be aware
eyes closed you living inside
the movements gone
a silence for now
but do you dare
to open your eyes
and go up there where rain
cold and wind might wake you up
showing you the world you expected
or one that you for long have forgotten

Day 3729, the unnatural death.

Daily picture, Quotes

There are many people in our time and region who think about the end of their life, and especially about the circumstances in which they want a doctor to end it. They talk about suffering, dignity, and fear of losing control.

You say you want to die with dignity. Why should dignity disappear when strength disappears? Why should dependence be undignified? Why should confusion, illness, or old age stand outside life?

It is the illusion that if you lose any of your faculties, you lose your dignity. We don’t even know what dignity entails. Is it a fixed state that slowly disappears?

These arguments seem to imply that some forms of life are beneath dignity, whereas I see dignity as belonging to life itself, not to a particular level of health, independence, or control.

I have less of a problem with people who reason their way to suicide because of unrelievable pain or unavoidable depression, but planning your own suicide by crossing off some boxes because you believe that what comes after these boxes is not life sounds…

We live in a time and place where we have the illusion of controlling our own lives. It starts young, when you choose a career, decide what color hair your boyfriend should have, and decide where you are going to live. Superficially, our lives seem to be a constant string of decisions of our own design, but unbeknownst to most, life is a constant stream of coincidences. You are just lucky that the car had an accident a few seconds later when you crossed the street; otherwise, your life would have gone a totally different way than you thought you had planned it.

You live to prepare yourself for the circumstances you encounter, and if you are lucky enough, or brave enough, you will learn to embrace fate, even if it means years spent staring at a ceiling on your deathbed.

Continue reading →