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- Seen May 19, 2023
Recent topics have made me think about how utterly deluded and delusional Western cultures are.
Everyone is expected to try and "get somewhere" or to "be somebody". We grow up thinking that this is what life is all about, and we never seem to question it. You've gotta have a job, you've gotta buy a house, you've gotta dress up in respectable clothes, and above all, you must always, always, be striving for something more.
And if you don't? At best, we simply don't know what to do with you, or in other words, we don't know what's wrong with you. At worst, you'll be openly shunned or thrown in jail.
And we say, "Well of course you've got to! Do you want to just be a nobody?" We make it so that being "nobody" is one of the ugliest, most shameful things a person can do. Yet Oriental cultures have the utmost respect for what they call the "mountain hermits." The hermit is one who has played the game, and has seen through it.
The hermit knows that while the striving, the codes of conduct, and all other manner of social agreements do have some merit in the way of dignity and order, they are ultimately empty and without substance. He finds his fulfillment not from the vicious circle of "success" that requires one to go on succeeding, endlessly, but from the simple feeling of being. Thus, he retreats into the mountains, builds a small hut out of straw, and lives out his life playing with the bugs and fallen leaves.
This is, of course, a caricature of the liberated person. But the point is that not only do Eastern cultures have no uneasiness or confusion about such a person, they actively embrace him! In that culture, the hermit is living out the ultimate goal of all people, which is simply to find happiness and fulfillment in the present moment, regardless of circumstance.
But not so for we Westerners. Misery is practically written into our America's governing documents, i.e. "the pursuit of happiness." But clearly, if your happiness is dependent on some future event or object, you have committed yourself to being unhappy in the present! When the future comes, it is always now, and it seems it is never enough.
There is no other time than now. So we have institutionalized a chronic turning-away from the only thing that exists, which is the present moment. No wonder the people who are the most caught up in the rat-race, the ones who are the most "successful" by conventional standards, can often be the most deeply unsatisfied and unhappy individuals.
I say we have got the whole thing backwards, in making the future so much more important than the present. Furthermore I think that the massive overconsumption of resources in industrialized nations (*cough cough America*), as well as the widespread anxiety and dissatisfaction with life, stems directly from this hideous error. What do you think?
Everyone is expected to try and "get somewhere" or to "be somebody". We grow up thinking that this is what life is all about, and we never seem to question it. You've gotta have a job, you've gotta buy a house, you've gotta dress up in respectable clothes, and above all, you must always, always, be striving for something more.
And if you don't? At best, we simply don't know what to do with you, or in other words, we don't know what's wrong with you. At worst, you'll be openly shunned or thrown in jail.
And we say, "Well of course you've got to! Do you want to just be a nobody?" We make it so that being "nobody" is one of the ugliest, most shameful things a person can do. Yet Oriental cultures have the utmost respect for what they call the "mountain hermits." The hermit is one who has played the game, and has seen through it.
The hermit knows that while the striving, the codes of conduct, and all other manner of social agreements do have some merit in the way of dignity and order, they are ultimately empty and without substance. He finds his fulfillment not from the vicious circle of "success" that requires one to go on succeeding, endlessly, but from the simple feeling of being. Thus, he retreats into the mountains, builds a small hut out of straw, and lives out his life playing with the bugs and fallen leaves.
This is, of course, a caricature of the liberated person. But the point is that not only do Eastern cultures have no uneasiness or confusion about such a person, they actively embrace him! In that culture, the hermit is living out the ultimate goal of all people, which is simply to find happiness and fulfillment in the present moment, regardless of circumstance.
But not so for we Westerners. Misery is practically written into our America's governing documents, i.e. "the pursuit of happiness." But clearly, if your happiness is dependent on some future event or object, you have committed yourself to being unhappy in the present! When the future comes, it is always now, and it seems it is never enough.
There is no other time than now. So we have institutionalized a chronic turning-away from the only thing that exists, which is the present moment. No wonder the people who are the most caught up in the rat-race, the ones who are the most "successful" by conventional standards, can often be the most deeply unsatisfied and unhappy individuals.
I say we have got the whole thing backwards, in making the future so much more important than the present. Furthermore I think that the massive overconsumption of resources in industrialized nations (*cough cough America*), as well as the widespread anxiety and dissatisfaction with life, stems directly from this hideous error. What do you think?