Cahoot: Never realised the bucket list was shallow and leaks! It never grabbed me, it is like saying, 'I'm not ready to go until all this running around is done'. Strikes me as a waste of the rest of your life if you are not happy to go at any time. Life is deeper than a some ego trip to fill in the blanks (as if you could ever fill in all the blanks!). I wonder how many people complete their bucket list and then say 'If only I could just see 'X' I would be happy to go'.Cahoot wrote:Ain’t it the truth.ardy wrote:Huck - The way to deal with things if you have no driving compulsion to do 'good', is to just deal with whats in front of you. If you see something you can do, just do it but DO NOT go looking for things. I am now 68 years old and I have resisted the urge to 'do something', as you have found out, whatever you do has an impact elsewhere. Leading a life of grace within yourself is a fine ideal but my view is that the stream of life has no plan or destination.Huck Mucus wrote:I've never given 100% to anything and, after nearly 60 years, I'm thinking about giving it a try. However, every time I think I'm ready to make a move, I argue against it. I thought I'd come here and pose some questions, the answers to which might move me off dead center. If anyone knows of a good book which addresses these things, I'd like to read it. Thanks.
I'd like to do something good but I'm not sure what good is. It asks a question: Good for who? Good for what? The answer is always different.
If I conserve a gallon of water, doesn't that just encourage them (people, population growth, land development, etc.)? We know it won't go to reserved water rights for fish, animals, etc. so . . . if I have a water right, why not waste it?
Likewise with gasoline: If I conserve a gallon of gas, doesn't that just increase supply, thus reducing price and encouraging Rush Limbaugh to laugh all the way down the road in his Hummer?
I know improving the life of the poverty-stricken, along with education, is supposed to reduce their rates of procreation. However, if the environmental footprint of a better-off person is so much larger than many poverty-stricken people combined, where is the net gain in shipping my money or energy or efforts to the poor to improve their life?
In short, doesn't helping people just encourage them, thus threatening them long term? Can't working against the perceived interests of people actually inure to their benefit? On Scalia's concentric circles of care, can't caring for those entities mid-way in on the circle (strangers) actually threaten entities which lie further out (species, water, air, space), thus threatening the necessities of life in the center (self) and those closer in (family, friends, loved ones)?
What is good and why should I endeavor to do it? I don't want to give 100%, holding nothing in reserve, unless I feel good about the investment and the risk. On the other hand, I don't want to wake up dead someday regretting that I never went balls out for a good reason.
I could go big (help the world) or go small (help my family and small sphere) but what does both?
Flame away.
I have noticed since my libido is not the all encompassing focus of my life, then other things stick their head up (snorts mildly). There are no guides apart from your conscience, or back slaps that substitute for a love of ones self without ego.
Nothing to do, Nowhere to go. If you feel the screaming need to try something you can't do more damage than our politicians.
That’s why the premise behind The Bucket List is shallow. Doesn’t ring true. Old timers usually know some version of the essence, and are sustained by the essence existent in every situation, rather than the situation itself. Contrary to literary fantasy, in modern free culture, adult males have yet to be warehoused into herds like cattle. Like the bucket list, that’s a fantasy. The closest to that is banding into packs, which describes corporate man, pack animal man. Alpha, beta, and so on. Cats, on the other hand, are either solitary or gangsters.
The classification of men has been of some interest to me. A good friend of mine claims to have slept with over 1000 women during his working life. We both worked in the same industry and other men hated him for not being able to 'keep it in his pants'. Strangely he never chased these women they chased him. So as a man who also had a strong libido in my earlier days I can understand his drive and the female response to him ie good-looking man, good in bed and in a senior management position. The strange thing was nearly all of the women were married.