Essentialism

The most valuable things in life are hard physical needs, the second most valuable things are soft psychological needs, the least valuable things are wants.

The most valuable time in life is now and the near future (coming seconds, minutes, hours and days), the second most valuable time is the middle future (coming weeks, months, years and decades), the least valuable time is the far future (coming centuries and millennia).

The most valuable people in life are you and your family, if you have one, the second most valuable people are your friends, the third most valuable people are your good neighbors, the fourth most valuable people are your other neighbors, the fifth most valuable life forms are sentient animals, the least valuable life forms are other animals.

And the former shouldn’t be sacrificed for the latter, except for in extraordinary circumstances.

Needs have a lot of intrinsic value, wants have little intrinsic value, thou some of them might have some extrinsic value.

At best, wants shouldn’t be striven after, at worst, they should be minimized or eliminated.

Gloominary

I really like where this is going.

I like the order in which you put this. When you say hard physical needs, are you saying things like: Shelter? Warmth? Food? Water? Et cetera?

I totally agree. Should we be using the middle time to be planning our now time? I mean have a plan whereby we plan a week or even a month ahead - we should probably make sure to have flexible time among the now time. I find a plan that is too rigid has its own entropy - by this I mean planning seems to come unnaturally to us and we condition ourselves to accept it and this conditioning requires maintenance.

Again a great order in which to see things. This strikes a chord with me.

You are onto something here - I would say that: what came before should not be sacrificed for what comes next, except for in extraordinary circumstances due to what comes before is fundamental.

I think a part of Essentialism should include the necessary way to think - a thinking essentials so to speak. Often we over complicate the matter of living and forget the essentials of life and that they are what comes before and that they should not be sacrificed for what comes next, except for in extraordinary circumstances.

An example of an extraordinary circumstance could be the need for a mental or spiritual readjustment because somehow we have diverged from our chosen path. In which case what would come next for me would be Essentialism. So Essentialism would define the essentials(what comes before) and act as a safe guard and a good next step if all else fails.

Gloominary

So totally true.

:smiley:

Who, what, where and when?

Basically what I’m saying is: ourselves, friends and family, our needs and the here/now have the most dare I say, objective value, the further x strays from these, the less value x has.

This is what I’ve termed ethical or axiological essentialism.

In terms of the how, natural means precede artificial means in value.

In terms of the why, because the aforementioned things have demonstrably more objective value than their respective opposites.

Awesome Gloominary

I dare say you are correct - My head was apparently off track. That provides a depth for me that I am not used to. The difficulty “for me” is in “how” - natural means precede artificial means in value - How to know what our “natural” means are - in the case of beauty and harmony. Happiness would be the most essential component - this would be achieved through our means. Humans are it seems geared for more than just survival.

Is there an aesthetic side to essentialism?

The further away from the objective value we get the less value it has. Is there no subjective value in life?

I might be off track here. I am saying that joy holds the most objective value. Here/now being the telltale. Hopefully I am making some sense because I will humbly admit to being a little out of my depth here.

:slight_smile:

However I will blame you for whetting my interest with the original post.

:laughing:

You could call it my weird way of determining whether:

I would say that the mother is providing the “hard physical needs” and the “soft psychological needs” in equal proportions from the outset preceding your “hard physical needs” when you reach the level of self-survival. “Soft psychological needs” then it seems are essential to the baby - her gentle, pretty smiling face - or is our “mother” what precedes our benchmark for beauty? Or maybe both? It makes me think at least.

Thanks for your thoughtful responses decode, I will reply shortly.

Correct.

It’s alright to take a few minutes out of your day to think about the future, the coming weeks or even years, or orient some of your actions towards it, however the bulk of your time, energy and attention should be focused on and directed at the here and now, as tomorrow might never arrive, and even when it does, it’ll probably be somewhat-a lot different than you were expecting.
It’s been said each day has sufficient trouble of its own to preoccupy ourselves with…and life happens when you’re making other plans.
Yea it’s important to leave our plans open ended like.

Yes exactly, more important, fundamental, essential.
Fulfilling our physical needs is more essential than our psychological needs, and our psychological needs more than our wants.
By psychological needs, I mean our need for knowledge, wisdom and understanding, our need to care for our friends, family and neighbors, and them us, our need for some financial security, as opposed to say our desire for information, idle speculation and conjecture, or as opposed to say our desire for fame and fortune, or great wealth and power, which’re totally inessential.
And by physical needs, I meant like to have a bath every few days, as opposed to having a few showers a day, or using hand sanitizes every time you venture outside your home.
At a certain point, less is more, I would argue humanity has gone way overboard with most things, which’ll be our undoing in the coming centuries and decades.
We need to cut back, individually and collectively, especially the rich and people with big addictions.
What’s inessential should either be minimized or discarded if it’s too much trouble, if it’s getting in the way of what’s essential, or it should at least not be striven for, like if you have it it’s okay, and if you don’t have it it’s okay, it’s not the end of the world, nothing to take up arms over.

Me too, we don’t need to know every detail about most things, we can’t really, for things seem to be infinitely varied, and there’s a fine line between when and where one thing ends and another beings.
There’s also innumerable ways of organizing data, and each of us organizes data according to our particular and peculiar cognition.
Instead we just have to know what’s essential about them, their essence, like every man and woman are individuals, yet they’re all essentially man and woman, and arguably the differences between the sexes are greater than the differences between individuals.
There’s nothing wrong with making generalizations, or inferences, they’re convenient and often true.
We can’t get to know the idiosyncrasies of every individual we come across, and those idiosyncrasies can be handled by the right brain, the left brain doesn’t have to and can’t do the job of the right brain, we can leave some things mysterious, subconscious but not necessarily unconscious, unspoken and unwritten.

Yes philosophy is very essential now, because there’s so little of it, and an excess of science, technology, millions of books on how to make millions, but few on how to spend your millions, how much money do you really need?

How has nature been depleted due to our avarice?

Would you agree that minimalism can be unrealistic just as much as let-us-call-it maximalism?

Any change that is expected to take place faster than it actually can, whether it is toward more or toward less, is unrealistic.

A man stuck in a room the only way out of which is through some very small opening cannot make himself smaller no matter how much he wants it to happen.

A sufficiently small organism will pass through the hole and survive. But a bigger one won’t.

Not a matter of reason. But of reality.

Similarly, someone who has a habit, developed by his ancestors through many generations, of thinking several moves ahead will find it rather difficult, unless he has previously developed the ability, to downgrade himself to thinking only in the present.

It’s not a matter of choice. But of how strong your habits are. The stronger they are, the slower they die.

I’m somewhat cynical, skeptical and weary of technology, especially modern tech.
Without going into the specifics at this time, I think modern tech is far more detrimental physiologically and psychologically than most realize.
That being said I’m not a primitivist, just I think humanity needs to move more in the direction of reducing technology.
We have to find the right balance in all things of course, it’s just I argue we’ve dove way, far into the deep with this technology thing, and it shall play a big part in our collective undoing, unraveling.

What’s natural is what’s been meddled little, or not at all, what’s unnatural is what’s been transformed from what it once was, into something totally unrecognizable with very different properties.
There’s no precise cut off point for when something ceases to be natural and becomes unnatural, it’s a spectrum.
Humanity presently presumes the more technology, the more power, the better, and thinks little or not at all about the consequences or the unforeseeable adverse affects, where as I would caution us all to think a great deal more about such things.

Humans are equipped for more than just survival, but a lot of the things we do, like even art or music, have at least indirect or subconscious survival components to them.
It’s not that survival is the only thing that matters, it’s that there’s a hierarchy of needs and desires, and you place the essential before the inessential, I’m not exactly encouraging people to stop at the essential, and go no further.
It’s the essential that makes us most happy and healthy, the inessential is at best a little more here or there than there or here, or neither here nor there, and at worst, detrimental.
I wouldn’t be worried with making life too bland or dull, with all these gadgets, gizmos and so on, life is saturated with a cornucopia, myriad colors and outlets for whatever we desire, from food, drugs and sex, to movies, music and video games, humanity has never been more thoroughly entertained and overstimulated as now.

No the problem is thousands of species have died, and thousands more will because of our consumerism.
Mark my words our health too is declining, and will continue to do so, so long as we turn to technology and quick fixes for all our ails and ills.

I’m not adverse to aesthetics, to art, beauty and symbolism, and while there isn’t an aesthetic side yet, it’s something I mean to work on, an aesthetics that’re consciously and subconsciously more reflective of our values and conceptions of beauty, rather than what the world thinks.

You are making a lot of sense and I don’t think you’re out of your depth.

Happiness is important, but so is our health and the continuation of our existence, individually and collectively.
What’s fleeting has the least objective value, for it won’t exist for very long, and while even what’s relatively long lasting might ultimately come to an end, we don’t know that for sure, we can still do our best keeping it going for as long as we possible, and hope others in the future will have as much or more success.
It may be that every species and life itself is doomed to die, but we don’t know that for sure, so we do our best trying to survive and help others do the same.

It’s not that survival is the only value, or that fleeting pleasures don’t have any value to us, we’re subjective creatures and we value subjective, fleeting feelings and things, and these things often aid us in attaining long lasting things in a round about way, anyway.
But the thought of surviving, and the ones we care about also surviving, makes us happy.
Just survival, makes us happy to some extent.
Death itself is something to be feared, even if you’re absolutely miserable and fed up with life, before you point the gun to your head, even if you manage to pull it you’ll still feel fear before you do.

Psychological needs are very important, but you won’t die without them, at least not immediately, nor will you suffer quite as greatly, compare the state of a prisoner who’s been solitarily confined for a few years to someone who’s been tortured for a few weeks.
Both will likely be in terrible shape, but the former might still be mostly together upstairs, where as the latter’s brain will probably have turned to mush.

Gloominary

I can see that you think deeply about these things - I would say it is a healthy level of depth too - obviously you are not consumed by this but rather it is one of your highest priorities. I do like your signature: Consumerism is sin.

And you should be weary of technology. From my standpoint I see that mostly it has had a terrible sociological effect.

Making better use of our technology would be a much wiser move - and reducing technology is a part of that. We have dove into the tech thing too quickly without considering the negative outcomes carefully enough. It is these negative outcomes that are now playing their roles in destroying our social construct.

This includes crops too - I was looking at pictures of what corn used to be for instance and it is nearly unrecognizable from what it is now.

Most definitely.

That is the thing isn’t it? And for centuries we have following this same pattern from what I can discern.

I can see that you are not encouraging people to stop at the essential - you are encouraging people to tread more carefully with their thoughts. I can see how your hierarchy would benefit us all - add to that a solid social component and I think we would have solved a great deal of the worlds problems.

Totally.

I can not stand consumerism - I find the advertising and business world to be dull and boring - I feel like I am dying inside when I take part - so many years ago I gave up television. The good parts of the Internet have become flooded with consumerism. Mental health in particular is declining. Physically we feel pain for a reason - if we were to take more careful notice of our bodies I think we could prevent much sickness and pain. Big pharma as I have heard it called is more in the business of business than in helping people.

I am really glad to hear that - hopefully I get to see it.

:smiley:

For me the continuation of our existence collectively is of the highest priority and that all starts with the individual. I like your concept of time Gloominary - for me it is akin to space/time for example: objective/time or priority/time. If we had your version of time in use then I say we would be performing the groundwork for the future generations to “do it better”. I hope that every species and life itself is not doomed to die - this to me is the biggest threat to our hopes. Helping others is a social construct and I suggest it has synergy with what you are saying overall.

Indeed. I think we should learn to be happy with our confines . . . the social construct right now is what needs the most help and I will reiterate that this starts at the level of the individual.

I agree - but to re-educate people to better ways ie. “Essentialism” will require quite the “Psychological Overhaul”. Still I like the example you have provided here even if somewhat of a graphic example to my soft modern mind . . . lol . . . still, keep it coming Gloominary.

:-k

I agree with everything you said, thank you for the thoughtful comments.