The subject is happiness
and the achievement of the same, the trail long and long cold, it is as much of
a goose chase as I’ve ever undertaken.
As an evolving contrasocial philosopher for most of my life I’ve chased questions
of the why variety, enjoyed a beggar’s ration of success in the hunt, but the
subject at hand is not a “why” kind of question. It is more of a “what” or a “how” sort of
thing. Perhaps the question is more
suited to the analogy of a prospector than a hunter, but that’s of little
consequence. It’s still a work of analytic introspection validated and verified by observations of internal and
external reality.
Allow me to begin with the
following statement to set an initial reference point, define a polarity: all
positive states of being (happiness, joy, ecstasy, etc. et al) are states devoid
of contradiction between the inner
reality created by the self aware life and the outer reality shared with all
other things which are not self.
A rather chewy little
tidbit of a thought. Since every human
being cohabitates two realities just exactly what constitutes a contradiction between the two?
Allowing for imagination,
dreams, fantasies, the entire creative process which has elevated human life
above the animal it’s obvious the inner and outer realities are rarely to never
an exacting match one to the other, from this it becomes equally obvious a contradiction is not a simple matter of
some mismatch of fact between the realities.
In the inner reality of my imagination mighty starships fold space to
cross the interstellar void in a fraction of a lifetime colonizing new worlds,
no such vessels (of human construction) exist in the outer reality. A mismatch of fact on the grand scale, and
yet not a contradiction.
No, the sort of
contradiction in question is not simply a matter of facts. When considering the polarity of life matters
of fact rarely have the majority say. Of
all things divided by the frontier between the inner and outer realities facts
are actually one of the lesser considerations.
A lesser consideration, and yet the reference upon which are mounted the
things that are of critical importance to the polarity of any given moment, or series
of moments, some span of time given a discreet identity and considered as a
unit.
…to be continued…
You speak of cognitive dissonance. Hmmm... In music, not all dissonance is bad; but in traditional music it is expected that all dissonances shall be resolved. Even in modern music that embraces dissonant harmonies, there is almost always a sense of closure at the end. In cognition, though, dissonances far too often go not merely unresolved but unrecognized and even unsensed...
ReplyDeletenot being certain just where you plan to go with this in the continuation, 'nos, i'll agree with Jochannan, and trying not to sway the subject comment thusly:
ReplyDeleteour being so consistently erroneous in our perceptions, worldwide, we should teach in our schools - 'self awareness', including the knowledge of how much we can expect our attitudes to evolve over a lifetime. this might avoid much of our self sabotage, and even perhaps lessen some of the frustration based violence spreading across the planet.
a good education might include more intentional psychic embedment of socially positive memes. out with the bad, in with the good?
:) pip