Purpose & Purposelessness

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Cory Duchesne
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Purpose & Purposelessness

Post by Cory Duchesne »

Hey there, it's been a while since I've been here. This time I'm here to (eventually) talk about purpose and purposelessness in human behaviour.

One of the premises I'm starting from is that science cannot give us purpose or values. Science can certainly help our values thrive, but fundamentally, no, science cannot give us purpose. At the very core of meaning and purpose, science is only there to fill in details as we see fit.

If you disagree on this point, this is not the thread to voice your opinion. This issue has been brought up, undoubtedly, in dozens of threads on this very forum. If you wish to thrash it out one more time, go for it, but not here please.

In relation to purpose, what I wish draw your attention to is human suffering. And no, I'm not talking about the gross examples of human suffering that Sam Harris might bring up in his ethical thought experiments. Genocide, injury in combat, homicide - these are all horrible things, but their horribleness is so obvious that I'm going to assume you all know better than to engage in these things.

Instead, the suffering I would like to focus on is "psychological suffering", or more specifically, the tension of anxiety and despair most of us feel to varying degrees.

It's my contention that these emotions of anxiety and despair are, in the average person, of great intensity. In fact, the unpleasantness of inwardness is of such a high tension that it provokes a potent fear response, and it is this fear that acts as the cause of the much grosser ethical transgression of homocide and war.

In other words, it's less stressful to die in military combat than it is to look inward at one's own consciousness.

The levels of anxiety and despair suppressed in the average person have a potential to send one's entire life into catastrophe. On some level, the average person knows this, at least vaguely, and it is from this apprehensiveness (an escape from anxiety) that human beings organize the innumerable absurdities that define our daily existence.

It is from this premise that I have established my life purpose: to document the process of "overcoming anxiety." I am not the first to do this, and each individual will vary in how he documents this process of overcoming. The ideal way to document this process would be through writing, speech and daily conduct. Daily conduct is largely about "walking the walk" and not just indulging in words.

Aside from writing and speech, one could use the more diluted forms of art - painting, music and poetry. I think most of histories greatest art (didactic art) is born out of an exploratory inwardness and overcoming, conquest of anxiety.

I'm going to stop there. If anyone would like to discuss this or take it further, then by all means.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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What is your purpose for writing about purposelessness without defining your purpose for writing about purposelessness? What's the purpose?

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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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My purpose is overcoming delusion. Delusion is the negative emotion we experience when things don't work out like we expect. However, because we live in a complex society with various streams of skill, my purpose is also to maintain a high degree of functionality. Non-deluded behaviour that preserves technology and the various streams of talent (talent, which should be at service to genius) is a frontier of consciousness that humanity has not yet become comfortable with.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Cory Duchesne wrote:My purpose is overcoming delusion. Delusion is the negative emotion we experience when things don't work out like we expect. However, because we live in a complex society with various streams of skill, my purpose is also to maintain a high degree of functionality. Non-deluded behaviour that preserves technology and the various streams of talent (talent, which should be at service to genius) is a frontier of consciousness that humanity has not yet become comfortable with.
You cannot overcome, nor determine non-deluded behavior, nor become comfortable with yourself because you are seeking to find what is not. Life in the sentient world is a continuous discovery of that which Consciousness is and Its infinite forms.


[One cannot comprehend it is their intellect of thought seeking to find a truth which has never been lost. For should truth be lost, what would make it relative to thought in mind when it cannot be found in ones mind? - jufa]


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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Well, I'm not here to argue. Thanks for your point of view.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Overcoming anxiety is a worthwhile goal in my view, I guess what you're saying is that instead of investigating the real source of anxiety (irrational beliefs) we simple lash out as if those beliefs were factual. Yet to the irrational they are factual, that is the genius of the mind or "rationalization." So I guess in my view it's not about what is the greater fear (introspection or war) rather how does one break through the door of rationalization? The mind automatically make sense of things, regardless of whether that sense is based on logic or magical thinking.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Cathy Preston wrote:Overcoming anxiety is a worthwhile goal in my view, I guess what you're saying is that instead of investigating the real source of anxiety (irrational beliefs) we simple lash out as if those beliefs were factual. Yet to the irrational they are factual, that is the genius of the mind or "rationalization." So I guess in my view it's not about what is the greater fear (introspection or war) rather how does one break through the door of rationalization? The mind automatically make sense of things, regardless of whether that sense is based on logic or magical thinking.
I'm not sure if the problem mankind faces is a paucity of intellect. I think the level of intelligence humanity has is generally pretty admirable.

The problem is one of character, whether that means a capacity for gratitude and appreciation, or a capacity for restraint, self criticism, and carrying pain. How can human beings improve their character? That's a relatively big question with some important empirical considerations.

One place to start would be examining your own biological makeup and consider what your vulnerabilities might be.

People needlessly beat themselves up, beat up on others, but they also needlessly aggrandize and exaggerate their achievements (or their sense of entitlement inflates beyond reason).

This stems from ignoring how causality rules the very core of who we are.

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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Humanity's fundamental problem is psychopathy; 1-4% of the population are amoral "intra-species predators" with a preternatural instinct for predation and manipulation and the best worm their way into power. Worse, they've institutionalized themselves into social structures and the culture at large and most people just serve the harmony that they have instilled. For a good primer check out Thomas Sheridan interviews.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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brad walker wrote:Humanity's fundamental problem is psychopathy; 1-4% of the population are amoral "intra-species predators" with a preternatural instinct for predation and manipulation and the best worm their way into power. Worse, they've institutionalized themselves into social structures and the culture at large and most people just serve the harmony that they have instilled. For a good primer check out Thomas Sheridan interviews.
That's a gross underestimation of all world problems, there are many situations that cloud peoples' minds in plethora of contexts. You shouldn't IMO boil the context down to 'psychopathy', which is way too generalized anyway.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Purpose for me is an emotional-intellectual=spiritual state of connectedness between my mid and frontal lobes. Or so i believe..
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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brad walker wrote:Humanity's fundamental problem is psychopathy; 1-4% of the population are amoral "intra-species predators" with a preternatural instinct for predation and manipulation and the best worm their way into power. Worse, they've institutionalized themselves into social structures and the culture at large and most people just serve the harmony that they have instilled. For a good primer check out Thomas Sheridan interviews.
I watched Thomas Sheridan on youtube yesterday. My impression is that he has succumbed to a popular trend as of late. His is the "eloquent delusion".

Words like psychopath or "sub-species" are tossed around far too easily. I think that the large number of psychopaths that Sheridan has encountered are the result of Sheridan's tendency to mimic and mirror the people around him to gain warm feelings of acceptance (from humanity, rather than reality) and this has resulted in a bitter man.

I can admire his dissatisfaction with the rat race, but his is merely an eloquent delusion and hypocrisy.

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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Scientific American often makes articles subscriber-only days after release so I'm reposting in full here. I doubt they mind free publicity for this new SA-published book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success.

Book Description
Amazon wrote:In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a scale of “madness” along which we all sit. Incorporating the latest advances in brain scanning and neuroscience, Dutton demonstrates that the brilliant neurosurgeon who lacks empathy has more in common with a Ted Bundy who kills for pleasure than we may wish to admit, and that a mugger in a dimly lit parking lot may well, in fact, have the same nerveless poise as a titan of industry.

Dutton argues that there are indeed “functional psychopaths” among us—different from their murderous counterparts—who use their detached, unflinching, and charismatic personalities to succeed in mainstream society, and that shockingly, in some fields, the more “psychopathic” people are, the more likely they are to succeed. Dutton deconstructs this often misunderstood diagnosis through bold on-the-ground reporting and original scientific research as he mingles with the criminally insane in a high-security ward, shares a drink with one of the world’s most successful con artists, and undergoes transcranial magnetic stimulation to discover firsthand exactly how it feels to see through the eyes of a psychopath.

As Dutton develops his theory that we all possess psychopathic tendencies, he puts forward the argument that society as a whole is more psychopathic than ever: after all, psychopaths tend to be fearless, confident, charming, ruthless, and focused—qualities that are tailor-made for success in the twenty-first century. Provocative at every turn, The Wisdom of Psychopaths is a riveting adventure that reveals that it’s our much-maligned dark side that often conceals the trump cards of success.
SA Article (Source)

This month's issue of Scientific American features an excerpt from Kevin Dutton's new book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths (Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 2012). In the excerpt, Dutton, a research psychologist at the Calleva Research Center for Evolution and Human Science at the University of Oxford, explains how many of the personality traits and thinking styles that characterize psychopaths are also hallmarks of successful surgeons, politicians and military leaders. Sometimes, it's helpful to think like a psychopath.

To get a sense of what it's like to interact with a psychopath—and how the psychopathic mind works—read the transcript of an interview with a psychopath below. The transcript also appears in Dutton's previous book,Split-Second Persuasion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011).

Secure Unit, Summer 1995

"What are you doing tonight?"

"Don't know. Going out probably. Pub. Club, maybe? Why?"

"What are you going to do there?"

"What do you mean, what am I going to do there? Usual stuff, I suppose. Meet up with some mates. Have a few beers..."

"Pull some birds?"

"Yeah, I guess. If I'm lucky."

"And what if you're not?"

"Not what?"

"Lucky."

"There's always next time."

He nods. Looks down. Looks up again. It's hot. This is a place where the windows don't open. Not because they won't. But because they can't. Don't try to outsmart him, the psychiatrist had said. You've got no chance. Your best bet is just to play it straight.

"Do you think of yourself as a lucky person, Kev?"

I'm confused. "What do you mean?"

He smiles. "Thought so."

I swallow. "What?"

Silence. For about 10 seconds.

"There's always one, isn't there, Kev? The one you think about as you're eating your hot dog on the way home. The one that got away. The one you 'never got round to' because you were just too fucking scared. Scared that if you did get round to her, you'd end up doing exactly what you end up doing every other Friday night. Eating shit. Talking shit. Feeling shit."

I think about it. He's right. The bastard. Sort-of. A sea of faces strobes across my brain as I stand in the middle of an empty dance floor somewhere. Anywhere. What am I doing there? Who am I with? The promise of emptiness yanks me back to the present. How long have I been gone? Five, 10 seconds? I need to respond. And fast.

"So what would you do?" I say. Pathetic.

"The business." No hesitation.

"The business?" I repeat. I'm on the ropes here. "And what if she's not interested?"

"There's always later."

"Later? What do you mean?"

"I think you know what I mean."

Silence. Another 10 seconds. I do know what he means and it's time to wrap things up. I rummage around in my briefcase and power down the laptop. A nurse looks in through the glass.

"Mike," I say, "it's time for me to check out. It's been good talking to you. I hope things go okay for you in here."

Mike gets up. Shakes my hand. Coils his arm gently around my shoulders.

"Look Kev, I can see that I've offended you and I really didn't mean to do that. I'm sorry. Enjoy yourself tonight. And when you see her—her, you'll know who she is—think of me."

He winks. I feel a pulse of affection and am filled with self-loathing. I say: "I'm not offended, Mike. Really. I mean it. I've learned a lot. It's brought it home to me just how different we are. You and me. How differently we're wired. It's helped. It really has. And I guess the bottom line is this: That's why you're in here and I'm (I point at the window) out there." I shrug, as if to say it's not my fault. As if, in a parallel universe, things could just as easily have turned out different.

Silence.

Suddenly, I'm aware that there's a chill in the room. It's physical. Palpable. I can feel it on my skin. Under my skin. All over me. This is something I've read about in books. But have, up until this moment, never experienced. I stand for five agonizing seconds in a stare 40 below. Ever so slowly, as if some new kind of gravity has been seeping in unnoticed through the vents, I feel the arm vacate my shoulders.

"Don't let your brain piss you about, Kev. All those exams—sometimes they get in the way. There's only one difference between you and me. Honesty. Bottle. I want it, I go for it. You want it, you don't.

"You're scared, Kev. Scared. You're scared of everything. I can see it in your eyes. Scared of the consequences. Scared of getting caught. Scared of what they'll think. You're scared of what they'll do to you when they come knocking at your door. You're scared of me.

"I mean, look at you. You're right. You're out there, I'm in here. But who's free, Kev? I mean really free? You or me? Think about that tonight. Where are the real bars, Kev? Out there?" (He points at the window.) "Or in here?" (He reaches forward and, ever so lightly, touches my left temple)
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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While Dutton offers helpful material for having relationships, to put a surgeon in the same category as Ted Bundy is clearly the result of incompetence, or just wilful hyperbole for $$.

As far as hurtful behaviour goes, I don't see how labelling certain professions in society as psychopathic or referring to people as sub-species is not itself psychopathic. Dutton is clearly enjoying a career off of this, likely in cahoots with Sam Harris.

From what I've studied, Psychopaths are violent out of a dangerous combination of attachment, vengeance, and early childhood dis-empowerment. Picture the emotions and thought processes of a severely rejected lover, but instead of fading away after a few weeks, it's permanent. Going on a murder spree is psychopathic.

As for social manipulation, those who are docile and submissive all have a unique story.

I'd like to see a study done on the hopes and dreams of the victims of psychopaths. It would be interesting (and telling) to see what that would reveal. I think you'll find dividing people up into groups such as sub-species vs. superior species is very naive and simplistic.

I don't mind using masculine and feminine as analytic poles, as this gives you some ground to walk on in terms of seeing what everyday human interaction is based on (dominance and submission), but masculine psychology is a different story, and is quite diverse.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Cory Duchesne wrote:I think that the large number of psychopaths that Sheridan has encountered are the result of Sheridan's tendency to mimic and mirror the people around him to gain warm feelings of acceptance (from humanity, rather than reality) and this has resulted in a bitter man.
Cory engages in ad hominem, psychologizing his opponent and questioning his discernment to discredit and ignore him. Even if his analysis is true, which I will address in a moment, Sheridan spent many years compiling a combination of CliffNotes and a self defense guide regarding psychopathy, a subject that even a large number of mental health professionals grossly misunderstand. I mentioned it as a primer, something to get a broad overview and if a hard-working, honest intellectual disagrees with parts of it they can engage with the source material to check his conclusions. Cory doesn't engage with a single argument that Sheridan presents, he just imagines an excuse to ignore him.

His armchair analysis makes me question if he actually paid attention to anything Sheridan said, especially when in his second post Cory reveals his understanding of psychopathy to be the typical common Hollywood cariacature. In his authentic conversational style tailored for laymen Sheridan often uses anecdotes as a teaching device to illustrate points about psychopathy. He most often uses stories common to the field's literature and two personal anecdotes. Sometimes he relays information from his audience, which may be unwise. His first personal anecdote is about a colleague he worked with at Goldman Sachs who out of the blue, voluntarily confessed that he was a diagnosed psychopath. His second anecdote is about an encounter in the music industry with a veritable Nurse Ratched who introduces herself by giving Sheridan a glacial analytical scanning and tells him that he may have a future in the industry if he's willing to change to hair metal and says something that Sheridan interprets to imply that he's expected to perform sexual favors. There is no place in the first ancedote for the "nice-guy doormat" dynamic that Cory imagines. The latter has no time for it.
Cory Duchesne wrote:While Dutton offers helpful material for having relationships, to put a surgeon in the same category as Ted Bundy is clearly the result of incompetence, or just wilful hyperbole for $$.
Cory claims to understand the entirety of a 288 page work that he has not read, that hasn't even been released, based on promotional materials.
As far as hurtful behaviour goes, I don't see how labelling certain professions in society as psychopathic or referring to people as sub-species is not itself psychopathic. Dutton is clearly enjoying a career off of this, likely in cahoots with Sam Harris.
Cory appeals to the plight of poor psychopaths and attempts to portary this as hypocrisy when he doesn't understand psychopathy. But if he's wondering if science is somewhat psychopathic itself then he may be onto something. He tries to discredit Dutton with a cynical appeal to the fact that Dutton works for a living. Just because information costs something doesn't make it false.
From what I've studied, Psychopaths are violent out of a dangerous combination of attachment, vengeance, and early childhood dis-empowerment. Picture the emotions and thought processes of a severely rejected lover, but instead of fading away after a few weeks, it's permanent. Going on a murder spree is psychopathic.
Cory reveals that he shares the public's misconceptions of psychopathy. He shouldn't be judged too harshly, even many professionals don't really understand it because of lack of education, outdated literature, the tendency of psychopaths to rarely seek treatment and the apparent futility of treating psychopaths. Most if not all attempts to rehabilitate psychopaths just teach them to manipulate more effectively.

Psychopaths act without attachment. That's largely the point Dutton attempts to convey to his lay audience by comparing certain professions to psychopathy. Pure impersonal opportunism drives most of their acts, not vengeance. And the cause of psychopathy is still largely unknown. There is no clear genetic pattern. Some psychopaths come from broken homes, some loving. Some come from poverty-stricken homes, some opulent. And some come from warm, wealthy families.

Sheridan and Dutton's works are two of about a dozen over the past two decades that attempt to rectify the public's gross ignorance of psychopathy. The essence of psychopathy isn't "crazy" physical violence; it's lack of compassion, amorality and unbridled selfishness--parasitism.
As for social manipulation, those who are docile and submissive all have a unique story.
How does anxiety make one docile and submissive?
Secure Unit Psychopath wrote:You're scared, Cory. Scared. You're scared of everything. I can see it in your eyes. Scared of the consequences. Scared of getting caught. Scared of what they'll think. You're scared of what they'll do to you when they come knocking at your door. You're scared of me.
I'd like to see a study done on the hopes and dreams of the victims of psychopaths. It would be interesting (and telling) to see what that would reveal. I think you'll find dividing people up into groups such as sub-species vs. superior species is very naive and simplistic.
Psychologists already understand a lot about the psychopath's predator-prey dynamic. It doesn't matter what the target desires, the psychopath becomes that. That's how they work and they have an uncanny knack for it. One psychologist said something like, "A psychopath becomes the part that you are missing." Comparing this to the advertising industry is left as an exercise to the reader.

I never said that psychopaths were a sub-species. Sheridan does but that's a tiny polemical detail in his work and not a reason to blanketly ignore it. I said they were "intraspecies predators". Robert D. Hare, one of the world's leading experts on psychopathy and creator of the industry standard psychopathy checklist, coined that term. Anyone who objects to it is welcome to engage his work that's based on decades of experience and neurobiology.
I don't mind using masculine and feminine as analytic poles, as this gives you some ground to walk on in terms of seeing what everyday human interaction is based on (dominance and submission), but masculine psychology is a different story, and is quite diverse.
A naive Victorian taxonomy like this can be somewhat useful classifying the masses but it doesn't say anything useful about outliers. It's dangerously ignorant used in a wildly biodiverse concrete jungle.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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I don't view reality in terms of discrete nouns, particularly when the judgements are based on relatively loose sociological ideas. As far as analysing prisoners go, sure, their brains are different. The muscles you exercise and neglect tend to grow and atrophy. Einstein's brain was different in structure.

In fact, between genetically identical twins, one can have schizophrenia while the other is normal. Therefore, even in identical twins brain structure can vary quite a bit.

I prefer to see human beings as damaged rather than belonging to a subspecies or labelled. I see a trend developing in secularism that will end in a paranoid psychological war that is based on flimsy data. Psychology, neurology and sociology are a unified whole and have a few decades to grow before I launch into a war against our perceived psychopaths.

Thanks for sharing.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Cory Duchesne wrote:Hey there, it's been a while since I've been here. This time I'm here to (eventually) talk about purpose and purposelessness in human behaviour.

One of the premises I'm starting from is that science cannot give us purpose or values. Science can certainly help our values thrive, but fundamentally, no, science cannot give us purpose. At the very core of meaning and purpose, science is only there to fill in details as we see fit.

If you disagree on this point, this is not the thread to voice your opinion. This issue has been brought up, undoubtedly, in dozens of threads on this very forum. If you wish to thrash it out one more time, go for it, but not here please.

In relation to purpose, what I wish draw your attention to is human suffering. And no, I'm not talking about the gross examples of human suffering that Sam Harris might bring up in his ethical thought experiments. Genocide, injury in combat, homicide - these are all horrible things, but their horribleness is so obvious that I'm going to assume you all know better than to engage in these things.

Instead, the suffering I would like to focus on is "psychological suffering", or more specifically, the tension of anxiety and despair most of us feel to varying degrees.

It's my contention that these emotions of anxiety and despair are, in the average person, of great intensity. In fact, the unpleasantness of inwardness is of such a high tension that it provokes a potent fear response, and it is this fear that acts as the cause of the much grosser ethical transgression of homocide and war.

In other words, it's less stressful to die in military combat than it is to look inward at one's own consciousness.

The levels of anxiety and despair suppressed in the average person have a potential to send one's entire life into catastrophe. On some level, the average person knows this, at least vaguely, and it is from this apprehensiveness (an escape from anxiety) that human beings organize the innumerable absurdities that define our daily existence.

It is from this premise that I have established my life purpose: to document the process of "overcoming anxiety." I am not the first to do this, and each individual will vary in how he documents this process of overcoming. The ideal way to document this process would be through writing, speech and daily conduct. Daily conduct is largely about "walking the walk" and not just indulging in words.

Aside from writing and speech, one could use the more diluted forms of art - painting, music and poetry. I think most of histories greatest art (didactic art) is born out of an exploratory inwardness and overcoming, conquest of anxiety.

I'm going to stop there. If anyone would like to discuss this or take it further, then by all means.
Have you experienced a state of non-anxiety?
Could you describe it?
If you have not, could you describe what you think it would be like?
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Cahoot wrote: Have you experienced a state of non-anxiety?
Could you describe it?
If you have not, could you describe what you think it would be like?
I had an experience of non-anxiety.

It was accompanied by a very clear sense of absolute truth, ecstasy, and a strong physiological sensation in my thymus area, as if I had been filled from the inside with a different type of blood.

It is not a perfect state of being, for one can still fall back in love with the world and engage in ambitious, manipulative behaviour. With that, one regresses into anxiety. And yes, those with spiritual power are more prone to behaviours that I would consider psychopathic.

Responsibility takes on a whole new meaning from this perspective, and is of importance in my view.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

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Cory Duchesne wrote:
Cahoot wrote: Have you experienced a state of non-anxiety?
Could you describe it?
If you have not, could you describe what you think it would be like?
I had an experience of non-anxiety.

It was accompanied by a very clear sense of absolute truth, ecstasy, and a strong physiological sensation in my thymus area, as if I had been filled from the inside with a different type of blood.

It is not a perfect state of being, for one can still fall back in love with the world and engage in ambitious, manipulative behaviour. With that, one regresses into anxiety. And yes, those with spiritual power are more prone to behaviours that I would consider psychopathic.

Responsibility takes on a whole new meaning from this perspective, and is of importance in my view.
I think you're correct. Anxiety and despair do permeate the perceptions of many, and the absence of anxiety is noticeable. I too had a memorable experience of non-anxiety by the time I was your age. It happened spontaneously, not as a result of method, though there are methods to assuage.

Experiencing life without anxiety and despair is a worthy purpose. Worthy of attention.

*

If one accepts the premise that genius is a high capacity for unerring and unwavering placement of attention, a capacity unbound by perceived limitations of time so that attention carries on unaffected by the changing mindscape, then consider that because unerring and unwavering must be relaxed in order to exist unobstructed and effortless, the mere act of attention itself abates anxiety. An act that is effortless, (and for a moment suspending the recitation of linear causal chain) obviously anxiety must then be an act that requires effort. Which makes sense, since anxiety can be exhausting all by itself. Thus, the non-anxious state is a state without effort. And yet, physical movement can be a part of this state, and physical movement does require effort.

An apparent paradox? Not really.

Motivation for physical movement that is part of an effortless, non-anxious state does not come from ego. And I think this becomes realized in every life.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

Post by Ryan Rudolph »

I have had quite a bit of anxiety as of late due to precarious living conditions, and I notice that is not something you can think your way out of. On the contrary, ones thoughts have the potential to entangle into a deeper web of anxiety because the thoughts are a reaction to the anxiety. This state permeates the whole being, it is not just of the brain. The brain is like the processing reactor no?

The other day I was walking along a path, and a wasp flew by me, hit my jacket, and landed on the brick wall beside me, the wasp seemed confused, probably messed up by the changing temperatures, dizzy with such rapid change. The next hour I had to walk down the same path again, and in the exact same spot, my wasp friend returned, bounced off my jacket in a similar place, and landed in almost the identical spot on the brick wall beside me...

It struck me as very odd. I stood there watching him for a moment.

Man is like that wasp, caught in confused patterns, unable to break away from self-caused cycles...
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Cory Duchesne
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

Post by Cory Duchesne »

A New Kind of Language of the Heart | Follow the Dancing Bee

Until man learns to stop priding himself for his intellect, and instead learns to focus on his character (make sacrifices), he will always be harmed by the wasp, the bee, the hornet. And what we are harmed by, we tend to become.

"God doesn't fight Satan. You understand that it's only in a
figure of speech we say that, to make things clearer. But why
should God fight Satan when He has already won? The victory is
complete right now and you can join it right now if you want.
When a Satanic force, a hostile group or individual attacks a
source of Truth, a good place, God, Truth and God's representatives never fight back."

- Vernon Howard, SOLVED The Mystery of Life, p. 122
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Cory Duchesne
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

Post by Cory Duchesne »

Cahoot wrote:
Cory Duchesne wrote:
Cahoot wrote: Have you experienced a state of non-anxiety?
Could you describe it?
If you have not, could you describe what you think it would be like?
I had an experience of non-anxiety.

It was accompanied by a very clear sense of absolute truth, ecstasy, and a strong physiological sensation in my thymus area, as if I had been filled from the inside with a different type of blood.

It is not a perfect state of being, for one can still fall back in love with the world and engage in ambitious, manipulative behaviour. With that, one regresses into anxiety. And yes, those with spiritual power are more prone to behaviours that I would consider psychopathic.

Responsibility takes on a whole new meaning from this perspective, and is of importance in my view.
If one accepts the premise that genius is a high capacity for unerring and unwavering placement of attention, a capacity unbound by perceived limitations of time so that attention carries on unaffected by the changing mindscape, then consider that because unerring and unwavering must be relaxed in order to exist unobstructed and effortless, the mere act of attention itself abates anxiety.
What you're describing sounds like an essential component of genius, which is Character. Kierkegaard put it well when he said:

"Woman's (or a feminine man's) reflection is almost overpowering to her; this is why it is so dangerous for a woman to reflect. A woman's reflection usually goes like this: if she has won on one point or another, she is so overcome herself that she cannot avoid gazing at her victory - and then she stumbles. The man is more essentially character; and character consists not so much in winning as in continuing after having won, keeping in character.

The woman endures something and counts on the approaching moment when she can take a deep breath. This moment is precisely the danger. Character is essentially continuity."


Nietzsche was carving out a similar stone when he said:

"72: It’s not the strength but the duration of the lofty sensation that makes lofty people." (Beyond Good & Evil)
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mental vagrant
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

Post by mental vagrant »

Cory Duchesne wrote:
Cahoot wrote: Have you experienced a state of non-anxiety?
Could you describe it?
If you have not, could you describe what you think it would be like?
I had an experience of non-anxiety.

It was accompanied by a very clear sense of absolute truth, ecstasy, and a strong physiological sensation in my thymus area, as if I had been filled from the inside with a different type of blood.

It is not a perfect state of being, for one can still fall back in love with the world and engage in ambitious, manipulative behaviour. With that, one regresses into anxiety. And yes, those with spiritual power are more prone to behaviours that I would consider psychopathic.

Responsibility takes on a whole new meaning from this perspective, and is of importance in my view.

Nirvana. Been there, it's like the paint streams off the world and it converts forms into a endless poetry of your favorite language, a word becomes a dictionary and you use the pages as wings.
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

Post by mental vagrant »

Cory Duchesne wrote:A New Kind of Language of the Heart | Follow the Dancing Bee

Until man learns to stop priding himself for his intellect, and instead learns to focus on his character (make sacrifices), he will always be harmed by the wasp, the bee, the hornet. And what we are harmed by, we tend to become.

"God doesn't fight Satan. You understand that it's only in a
figure of speech we say that, to make things clearer. But why
should God fight Satan when He has already won? The victory is
complete right now and you can join it right now if you want.
When a Satanic force, a hostile group or individual attacks a
source of Truth, a good place, God, Truth and God's representatives never fight back."

- Vernon Howard, SOLVED The Mystery of Life, p. 122
What if the intellect and character are diners a the same table sharing stories and building a healthy friendship, a sense of unattached ego, a certain creativity. Makes me think of Eric Orwoll's talk called IQ Wars. I think a degree of ego can be a useful tool for structuring interpersonal interactions, it's when people loose sight of why the ego was made originally that the rational perspective, attachment defective operator goes and the Stasi takes it's place.
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Patrick Watts
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Re: Purpose & Purposelessness

Post by Patrick Watts »

mental vagrant wrote: What if the intellect and character are diners a the same table sharing stories and building a healthy friendship, a sense of unattached ego, a certain creativity. Makes me think of Eric Orwoll's talk called IQ Wars. I think a degree of ego can be a useful tool for structuring interpersonal interactions, it's when people loose sight of why the ego was made originally that the rational perspective, attachment defective operator goes and the Stasi takes it's place.
Having good character means a capacity for putting others ahead of yourself, to some degree. Healthy friendship is often about cooperation despite differences, and this requires character.

The worst people hate differences so much that they all clump together into a bland homogeneity, and obviously the most extreme example of this is the Klu-Klux Clan, but the more subtle examples are what I find most interesting to attack.

Currently, mainstream secularism is very much a safety, superficial, preservationist, security culture.

It's a culture of diaper sniffers and brow-beaten fathers who just despairingly go along with whatever the women want. These types of men seem like nice guys, but they are precisely the kinds of people who will hate differences to the point where they are incapable of friendship and cooperation.

Passive Aggressive sabotage is their expertise.
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