Long read but hopefully insightful, this is very deep thinking that I don’t think I’ll be able to replicate in a long time (debating over these issues sparked something in me)
Our sovereign reality
By: Vitali Gusatinsky
Discussing about ones true philosophy and beliefs, gave me a sense of freedom, loss of despair and a sense of life. Some might call this an enlighting; maybe even a call, but I call it more of a false enlightment; a temporary sense, that’s all it is. Something that will go away. This particular sensation causes me to feel more submissive than free, like I’m bending to life. However strange it might seem, it’s as if I don’t want to let it happen, because by submitting I open myself to hurt. I want to escape the feeling, yet the harder I try getting away from it the stronger the sensation builds up. Accepting it, on the other hand, would halt the build-up of the emotion. As a part of this process, sooner or later the feeling does go away, you do go back to normal, every time. Yet the normal that you perceive after the event might change, as it affects you even though it seems as if it didn’t.
Being at peace with yourself, but not with others. Since most people are not in the state of thought that you are, they might feel aggressive i.e. destructive. This is the essence that retards progress, aggressiveness. But, to live “successfully” in the current environment you have to be ready to protect what’s yours, physically and mentally with force, so it’s a necessity to be aggressive in certain/most situations to an extent. And that’s everyone’s curse, the need to be violent to survive, because without that primal instinct we feel worthless, but if everyone would be at peace with themselves and others, we truly wouldn’t have problems, or would we? There is no mass-solution for enlightment, people will build culture in order to try and achieve it, although in vain, since only a minute population is affected by advances in culture and technology, whilst others suffer from it. Separation, neglection, racism, superiority, deteriorate our real subconscious goal of being at peace with ones self, or does it?
Peace becomes boring, unsatisfying, in current society, requiring humanity as a whole to mentally evolve, hence the impossibility. That’s the curse of mankind, because to let go, to ultimately regret all the crimes to mankind and injustices you’ve done, releasing yourself by crying is an injustice in itself these days; and even worse, discussing these revelations to others, such as with friends that have not had a moment of mental insight, results in catastrophe. They will pretend not to understand, to think that there is something seriously wrong with you, this is the doing of modern society. By society I mean that the commonly accepted goal, which is in this case: to have fun with no deep meaning. Fun, these days, is witnessing or acting self-destructively. I admit, I participate in these actions, I enjoy letting go, to focus on the current, but what after? We try to be drowned with constant fun, and just so that it doesn’t get boring we have moments in our lives where we’re made bored, with school and jobs. Mandatory boredom, so we would rejoice when we can again ‘let go’. So what about telling these to someone who has in fact had a certain enlightment? They will try to understand what you’ve said, to relate to emotions, but what in fact they’re doing is adapting that, processing and emitting a certain uncertainty to questions posed, because their enlightment differs from yours. A solution is a difficult task to achieve. By finding someone who can truly, and I mean truly understand you, is practically impossible, and nearly no one will ever find a person that can understand them. The sad part is that most people that they could relate with most is people that they meet in everyday lives: friends, foes, strangers. The risk involved of self-exposing your mind to them is too great to imagine the ultimate possibilities found in a success. By exposing ones developed inner-child; you open yourself to a number of insults, neglection and ultimately self-destruction. Situations where one does try to open oneself to another and fails, usually results in a destruction of self-esteem. A person might be physically well and strong, but he is sick with the disease of not understanding himself. Not being well mentally is as bad, if not worse, as being physically ill. Both are twined to each other. By being inner-minded, or basically fundamental to ones beliefs, you are mentally ill. Not in modern society’s view of a deranged individual, but in the sense that you’re at a loss of not knowing ones self. And by that, how can you sleep at night peacefully, subconsciously knowing that something is amiss? This is where role models, physical or spiritual (religion) come into play, trying to solve the puzzle by putting pieces into the wrong position, putting a sphere into where a triangle goes. A good, modern example of how this is, by discussing the meaning of the word culture to a student. Now, some will say that it’s about self-expression and the goal to achieve greater knowledge and peace, but most will refer to museums and theater. Misconceptions like this make it so hard to break the barrier of not knowing to achieve the full potential ones self. So does fun make a person sleep at ease? Yes and no; most cloud their minds with substances, looking for a shortcut to a curvy road, some even believe they found one. By shortcuts, I’m referring to finding a purpose/meaning in life by using drugs.
Drugs come in many forms, some of which are completely natural and occur within us. And just as with religion, drugs are promoted by society and culture, most religions are even twined with drugs, wine/alcohol and Christianity, cannabis and rastafarism, the list goes on; and where a religion condones a drug, social acceptance of a drug can “override” this rule (such as khat in Somalia). Where drugs go wrong in seeking knowledge is that, they create the ultimate illusion of finding enlightment. A person might take a mind-altering drug, changing the shape in which their mind operates in. This might show a visible change in life, by some saying that their lives changed positively with a certain drug, where in reality what they’ve done is taken themselves away from the question and moved on. They haven’t found a meaning for life; they’ve simply found a way of living life, the two differ greatly from each other. Literature, even, is in a sense a drug. It provides questions, sometimes false answers. The concept of gaining a false answer with religion, drugs and literature is that, one thinks he is satisfied, but inside he knows something is wrong, but he no longer asks the same question from himself because he thinks that he’s found the correct answer for that specific question (and adapts this to other questions similar to the one he believes is answered). What culture should evolve to (and is slowly progressing to this), is that it asks a person questions that he himself hasn’t posed, and leave it to the person himself to find his/her individual answer, because there is no collective answer to an abstract subject such as life and what to do with it. A persons mind and opinion is like china, it stressed it will easily shatter, sometimes into an irreparable state. The worst thing I could think of with this piece of writing is to accidentally pose answers to the reader. As one movie once said, life understood is life lived. If one closes him/herself from absorbing more information and point of views, that they become obsolete. They fall off the track of life, they halt to a stop.
This is even a greater mistake than gaining false answers. This, is not to say, that it’d be healthier for a person to believe he has the answers than not gain any new answers, since the both are very similar; but at least you’re open to suggestion when you’re on the wrong path. False answers may result in stubbornness, as witnessed with many fundamental religious people. They are so certain that they know how life is supposed to go, that they close themselves from other opinions and their voice. This is not to say that there is something wrong with religion, that they’re doomed to a life of de-adaptation, because religion itself has partial answers, and many false ones (or truths that don’t apply anymore to current society). What people fail to notice is that they’re supposed to use religion as a guide, a puzzle piece and not as the whole solved puzzle itself. We’ve all been influenced (in)directly by different opinions and philosophies that we, or our parents have adapted, and it influences us, whether we want to agree with it or not.
The power of ones mind is so great, that even when he is staring straight into their own reflection, they can cast a mental shadow over a part of themselves they do not wish to see, and the same goes for their minds, and to neglect a mental process that cannot be seen (e.g. an opinion/philosophy) is much easier than a physical attribute. Most people are in such a rush to control their present, they don’t think of consequences, they neglect responsibility, which everyone has, independent of age; its how much responsibility one has that makes a difference. Most people believe that only the highest-ranking individuals in our social hierarchy or ones greater than themselves have a responsibility of using their power with responsibility, but we ourselves have power to affect it.
Most people believe that one person from a non-wealthy background affecting modern society these days is absurd, that no matter what we will not change what revolves around us. This sadly is in some aspects the truth: one cannot radically change his/her environment in a generation currently. But, one can affect the future generations and future society. If we couldn’t, then how has mankind managed to get out of the caves and into skyscrapers? Using laziness as an excuse for not interfering on current society is like complaining about being hungry when the materials for making a meal exist. Laziness, as a matter in fact, is a false answer put forth by society. The answer that laziness holds is exactly that no matter how much he/she would try, they’re powerless to society.
Society is like a wild beast, it doesn’t want to be tamed. Probably can’t, but it can be conditioned to change, whether it wants to or not; just like a human being, an injury makes it susceptible to outside influence, the injury brings reliance. So by expressing your opinion, with literature, music, visual media or journalism, a person is certain to be heard, by one or more and no matter how small of an audience, even that makes a large difference in the grand scale of things. As an example, we can look at the big bang, if it in fact did take place, it was a matter of two different atoms colliding together that sparked an immense explosion which created the world we live in today. Imagine the scale, microscopic to bigger-than-life.
Just as this text, one will at least read it and be influenced. What most people perceive as “being influenced” is that the individual actively accepts and adapts what he’s read to himself, this is why the world has Christians, Muslims, Capitalists, Communists and so forth. But in reality, we have groups of people that pretend they agree with each other, making them the manifestation of false answers. There is no absolute in the realm in personal philosophy, it’s a group of intertwined statements combined that is used to reference on how to adapt to situations, and it’s the database of experiences that keeps growing. And like flavors of ice-cream, the individual chooses a philosophy that best suites them in accordance to previous experiences in their life. For example, a person starving and in general is in a terrible environment will most likely relate to a religious philosophy where their suffering with have cause after death, where they will be flushed with immense sensation of greatness due to their previous suffering. A wealthy person will side himself with capitalism since it’s the philosophy he has been living, independent on whether or not he knows of the concept capitalism. But what really make a persons philosophy is the concepts in between their mainstream ideology, the little pieces of information they’ve gathered along the way that give texture to their thoughts. An engine is useless without fuel, just as life is hollow without change. Self-realization, what a plague in the heart of humanity. One thinks that the answer is waiting for them around the corner, whereas it’s really inexistent for as long as it’s not created by the individual himself.
