if I don’t choose to follow wealth or fame or titles or
promotions or any of the shallow or superficial aspects of our live…
then what? what should I be doing? should I be practicing Ascetism or
living in the wilderness or hiding in my room?
nope… as noted before, if we are living alone, isolated from
everyone else, we have no need for philosophy or morality
or ethics or politics or history or any other social tool…
the question becomes how do we become aware given our
complete inclusion into modern society?
the trick begins once we begin to understand our addictions…
we are addicted to money and the purchasing of material goods…
it is a substitute for our lack of any type of moral center…
we try to be happy by thinking our happiness is tied into material goods
and wealth… but if you are always trying to get the latest gadget or
newest too, the iPhone 11 is an excellent example of thinking that
by buying some new toy, we might gain some happiness……
but materialism is only a temporary fix… and like any other drug,
the high only lasts so long before we need another fix of conspicuous
consumption…a new car or that second vacation home…….
we can engage in something besides the ongoing buying and selling that
dominates our lives…
but it doesn’t mean we must engage in Ascetism… we don’t need to
hold our bodies to harsh treatment to properly engage with what I am
talking about…
what do human beings really need?
we need the basics for sure, food, water, shelter, education, health care…
but we don’t need anything beyond that… we can get by on two meals
a day and nothing fancy… we have animal needs that must, must be
taken care of but we don’t have to make those needs into a fetish…
the end all, be all of existence…we can fill those basic needs with
basic, not fancy foods as we can with very expensive gourmet meals…
we can feed and clothes ourselves fairly cheap…
if we avoid conspicuous consumption in our eating and clothing habits……
it is in shelter that complicates matters but we can just as easily live in a small
one room apartment as we can in a 15 room mansion…
in other words, we can easily pare down our needs, our basic animal needs,
to a pretty minimal level… and easily still exists…
as for our other needs of Maslow’s pyramid… those needs aren’t just
physical needs, the need for safety/security doesn’t need a physical,
actual fence or living in a gated community…our safety/security needs
as all the above higher level needs are not physical, but mental, psychological
needs to be met…
in other words, the only physical need in Maslow is the lowest need level,
all the rest are mental, emotional, psychological needs…
now agreed that if we fear for our lives, it is hard to met the higher levels
of being human, the need for love/belonging or esteem or self-actualization…
but the truth is, we in America and we in the west, Europe, Japan,
Australia, New Zeeland and large parts of south America are actually
fairly safe and secure…
if we don’t listen to the fear mongering of the right, the GOP and IQ45
that try to sell fear as a means to getting elected, then we can see that
we are relatively safe and secure… sure crime happens, but the fact is
and has been documented, that the amount of crime around the world
has fallen over the last couple of hundred years…the world is safer today
then it has been…….
“the only thing we need to fear, is fear itself”
so we need to realize that the higher levels of Maslow pyramid is about
fulfilling our inner needs… love isn’t about a physical need, but it is
about a psychological need…
that is why we don’t need to run about like chickens trying to
fulfill our physical needs with such stuff like wealth or power or
material goods or titles…….
we have to fill our mental, emotional, psychological needs, but
not with physical goods like cars or wealth or houses…
we can fill our mental, emotional, psychological needs by becoming
aware of what those mental, emotional, psychological needs are…
once again, we return to Socrates and his dictum,
“to know thyself”
and “the unexamined life isn’t worth living”
if we examine our lives and we can see that we are trying to
answer mental, emotional, psychological needs with foolish
addictions like wealth, power, titles, promotions, material goods…
you cannot answer mental, emotional, psychological needs with
physical, material goods………
and that is where we have been going wrong… trying to answer inner needs
with outer material goods…
round hole… met… squire peg
inner needs can only be answered by inner goals and answers
and outer needs can only be answer by outer goals and answers…
we cannot eat love… and love is certainly an answer to a question but
not the answer to the question of, how do I meet my physical need for food…
and food isn’t the answer for the question of, how do I feed my need for love?
we must seek the right answer for the right question…
so seek what it is you are attempting to gain?
are you attempting to gain the bottom level of food, water, shelter?
then working and making money is the right answer…
but if you are attempting to gain love or esteem or the highest level,
self-actualization, then food or shelter isn’t the right answer…….
the right answer must fit the right question…
so, so knowing thyself is the proper place to know and understand
what needs you are tying to fulfill… either physical or mental/emotional/
psychological needs, then you must approach the problem with either physical or
mental or emotional or psychological answers… it depends upon what needs
you are trying to fulfill…
we don’t need fancy houses or expensive cars to attempt to answer
the question, what needs am I trying to fulfill?
that is why we don’t need to engage in a search for money or wealth or
fame or titles or power or promotions…
they don’t help us answer the question, what needs are we trying to fulfill?
we can engage in our daily lives but with the question of needs and what answers
should we engage with, on our minds…
I can go about my daily life of working at my crappy store and still be able
to engage in the questions about, what needs am I trying to fulfill?
I can still engage with my family and watch TV and root for the Niners
to go to the Super Bowl and still be able to work out what needs are my
needs……
all it takes is carving out “me time”… time to think about, to contemplate
what it means to be human and what needs am I trying to fulfill?
we don’t need to practice ascetism or anything so radical…
we just need to devote some time in our lives to think about what it
means to be human or what needs am I attempting to fulfill?
to make the goal, not to be wealthy or famous or have fancy cars
or titles but to make the goal an understanding of who we are
and what does it mean in our lives to become self-actualized…….
it just takes time for us to be alone with our thoughts
and nothing can proven to be harder then making time for us
to think about who we are and what is our place in the universe
and what needs am I trying to fulfill?
don’t escape life… simply make time to think…
Kropotkin