r0ckyreed

Right. However, racism is based on emotions and not logic. If people relied more on logic, rationality, and contemplation, the idiocy of racism will be seen through. Yes logic and emotions will always be tied together. It makes a logical person smh when they see so many people being zombies who don’t think or question anything. A logical person is not separate from their illogical fools who run society and make its laws. But that is my perspective on that. Yeah that makes sense. I do see the limits of logic because it is a linear way of thinking, but I still think it is a step up from belief and emotional reactions. Intuition seems like a trans-rational mode that we have, but i think intuition can be easily confused with confirmation bias for those who don’t know how to discern between the two. Right and people who put their beliefs and emotions above logic and truth also do so from emotions as well. We cannot escape emotions no matter what a logical person says and nor would I want to be devoid of emotions. Logic to me is what helps us keep our emotions in check so that way they have less of a control over us. Thanks for your all’s responses! I think this makes much more sense now. So many ways to perceive something lol.

I totally agree with the cartoon png of how (I am paraphrasing here) “the world would be better if people relied more on logic than their feelings.” https://www.actualized.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/logical.png I think people need to use more critical thinking and contemplate. I am not for sure what the png is implying. It sounds like Leo was trying to point out how the logic person was contradicting themselves, and they were going based off their feelings. I think I get it. I mean everything is based off of feelings. Logic is never devoid of feelings, but what makes logic more effective is that logic is able to think beyond emotional reactions and be more conscious in decision-making. My take is that the logical person has those feelings towards people who are being illogical, which I think are valid. By illogical, I mean people who don’t self-reflect and think critically about life. I mean this seems obvious to me that all of mankind’s problems stem from lack of critical thinking and not able to put their emotions in check. If society was logical, then racism, sexism, scandals, and all other bias and bullshit would cease to exist. What really is bias other than one letting their emotions cloud their judgment? If everyone contemplated for one hour a day on how they are full of shit, then humanity would make the most progress ever before. Stories of Jesus and Buddha will become laughable and racism, sexism, etc. would all become a distant dreams by the progress of everyone living a contemplative lifestyle. Of course, that will never happen.

Contemplate Leo’s self-bias episode. This is what you are doing right now. Writing a book takes time. How would you feel if the situation were reversed and you depended on sales for a living?

The real meditation only begins when you get off the couch and get after it every day! Running meditation is what people need more of. This sitting around bullshit encourages people to be sedative and live sedentary lifestyles, and not to mention likelihoods for arthritis and possibly blood clots. This has been my biggest objection to meditation. Our bodies were made to be active. Thanks for the story and reminder to never forget the true meditation that was inspired to me by Rocky Balboa, David Goggins, and Forrest Hump, and you.

I know. That is the mind screwer for me. Reality would be so limited if the perceptions of my room right now were all that existed and everything else being my imagination. In my experience, this is true. I am imagining other direct experiences within my direct experience while I’m looking at my hands and phone and typing. I also think it’s foolish to think that other life forms are lifeless inside or have no internal world and their own direct experiences. Even if I can never experience racism or someone’s own direct experience seems to me like it does not mean that there is nothing happening beyond my limited direct experience even if I am imagining it. I don’t think I can ever experience (as r0ckyreed) the perceptual bubble or direct experience of Donald Trump. But I (as God) is living through both of them and experiencing them both. If I was fully aware and could experience all perceptual bubbles, the whole notion of a perceptual bubble would seem to collapse into an infinite singularity. But it seems like to have any subjective experience, reality would have to limit itself and split itself apart from itself to play the game through many different ways for all eternity. Okay. I have been thinking of imagination as I am thinking of a purple elephant in a Las Vegas Club. But I get how in a dream, I am also imagining the whole reality I am in. In this reality, I am open to that being the case that God is imagining a reality that cannot be unimagined by the ego. The issue I have with comparing life to a dream is that in a dream, I am the only perceptual bubble or direct experience and all other characters or people hinge upon my imagination, as it seems. All I have of reality is my perceptions and thoughts. Unlike a dream, I still think that the other characters I see are different individuations of myself that is experiencing each life form and character right now even if the ego of r0ckyreed’s direct experience cannot experience their direct experience. If the ego of r0ckyreed could experience the ego or perceptual bubble of Leo Gura then it would become a new ego? It seems like there are many perceptual experiences and egos that God is imagining at a deeper level that appear real and unimaginable to the ego. It’s just that to be an ego seems to mean to be locked in their own bubble and not being able to experience other bubbles of God. I think the ego is vital for this game that is being played by the Universe.

@Leo Gura But isn’t my imagination limited and make believe? Isn’t Ultimate Reality that which exists when I stop imagining and believing in it? Shouldn’t I not confuse the limitations of my mind for reality? Or do you mean that God imagines the differences between which forms it will experience? Thank you ? Ain’t that the damn truth. ?

Yeah. I agree that Direct Experience is more fundamental than concepts but the tricky thing is that Direct Experience is still limited to the perspective of r0ckyreed or LastThursday or whoever you are. This issue is that I can assume that my direct experience is not the only one. That is solipsism. But that Direct Experience is fragmented and spread across infinite life forms experienced by the ONE Being. This also presents issues because if there are infinite perspectives that are being shared together and not shared together (in cases of hallucinations or whatever), what is in the gaps of our experience? When I stop observing you, you cease to appear within my direct experience and I from yours. It’s like saying that if I become deaf, then music and sound ceases to exist. But it ceases to exist relative to deaf people and exists relative to non-deaf people. And maybe other senses like telepathy could exist for aliens. Maybe we could say that sound and telepathy do exist, but we just do not have access to those senses as humans. What would we say if an alien came down with telepathy? Would we say that it doesn’t exist because it is not in my direct experience and therefore am imagining it? I don’t know. Lol. The senses are all that we appear to have, and we could know telepathy or not based on what we observe and conceptualize. It’s hard for me to believe that when I go to sleep at night that the whole human world ceases to exist and that I go into a new one if I am dreaming. But at the same time, I feel like reality is intersubjective (it is shared and created amongst all the forms and parts of God). EDIT: I have been thinking about it more and I am wondering what an object, subject, experience or thing is that cannot be experienced or perceived by the senses? All we know is through senses and through thoughts and intuition. If I cannot see that object or hear it or feel it or think about it, it is as if it does not exist from my experience. The fact that I can think of something seems to make it exist in form of a thought. But the issue is that like we discussed, “what about the actual object?” If you can see, touch, and feel an object I don’t. It exists to you but not for me. Could I then conclude that just because I can’t see it or think of it now, that it doesn’t exist? I’m just thinking out loud (or rather on the forum with y’all). ?. From the quote I gave you below from Home With God, every possible thing exists when I am not observing it. My observation of something is a mental construction of picking out one reality out of infinite possibilities which is kinda creepy. That’s cool. Thanks for your insight and thoughts! It reminds me of the quote above that I wrote from Home With God that opened me up to a modified take on idealism/realism.

Yeah. That’s what I am saying. If God has no restrictions since God is infinite, then it seems like realism is true relative to the egoic point of view. But from Absolute, the relative and reality are imagined by the Absolute. People compare life to a dream, but if that were the case, then solipsism would be true. But since God is experiencing infinite individuations of itself, life is not like a dream. Whenever I wake up from my dreams, everything in my dream dies and wakes up with me. But this isn’t how it appears to work here and now. I could awaken right now, but the other individuations of God would still be asleep? Just like in life, I can wake up from bed and my parents can be asleep. I can realize that I am them and they are me, but God will not stop their journey of being an ego because I have finished mine. Hope this all makes sense.

It’s kind of paradoxical. If I interpret reality literally based on my subjective experiences then no, I do not see a head, brain, nor my d**k, and nor a duck right now. But, based off of what has been demonstrated by science, our subjective experiences are highly influential by objective events like brain, neurons, electrochemical imbalances, and what have you. I have never seen my brain before so I am assuming I have one based off the logic that a brain is needed for experience to happen at the human level that it is right now. What would actually seeing a brain be anyways? The brain is interpreting the world and yet, the brain itself is an interpretation by the brain, which sounds very trippy lol. Given the science behind cognitive psychology and various other disciplines, the human brain has been demonstrated to be central to human experience. If you look at split-brain patients, they interpret reality very differently because their corpus callosum was severed. If you cut into BA44 (Broca’s area), then a person can no longer speak. If you sever the occipital lobe, then you cannot see, and if you cut out the hippocampus, you won’t have any memories. Now, I have never experienced these experiments and nor would I want to do them on myself. I can assume that if I were to cut out my BA44, then I would also experience Broca’s aphasia. What is the difference between logic and contemplation? Isn’t the way you figure stuff out by deeply contemplating what is? I realize that one should start out with meditation first and then move to analytical meditation or contemplation. And also, I do not know if logic or contemplation is a dead end from my point of view. I realize that logic and contemplation is conceptual and reality is actual so I can see where that could be a problem if I am devoid of actuality. But I think contemplation done right is aligned and integrates actuality and concepts together for a deeper understanding of both and their relationships to each other. Just meditating alone I don’t see conducive for long term because then you neglect critical thinking, which is a must to avoid self-deception and bias. I get it lol. I think it is safe to assume that your existence does not hinge on mine lol. I mean people are dying all the time right now and yet the world is still here. Thanks for your replies and thoughtfulness. I have been thinking about this crap for a while and will continue till I die.

@Vynce @Nahm Thanks for your all’s replies! But how does all of this explain how there are objects in consciousness that have internal worlds (are conscious) and there are objects that don’t. For instance, other humans appear to me as objects from my point of view, but I know that their soul is behind their eyes from my point of view. However, from their point of view, there is no eyes or head and I am merely an object whose subject is their imagination. What makes one object have a subject and another not? A human has a subject or inner world of thoughts and feelings, but a chair doesn’t. A dead human is no different from a chair. You see the problem with consciousness? What gives rise to subjectivity? If you say nothing or that subjectivity is the foundation for all objects, then how do you account for other human being objects who have subjects (internal worlds) vs. objects like a brick or chair that don’t? Maybe bricks have the subjective experience of being brick, and humans have the subjective experience of being human. But supposing bricks do have a subjective experience, then how is a subjectivity experience of being a brick any different from no subjective experience at all? A brick does not feel pain because it has no nerve cells or c-fibers, nor any brain to commute any experience. And for those who say “brains don’t exist or are imaginary, then consider that for God to experience a human, God needs to experience a human brain. No brain, no human experience. No brick, no brick experience? The problem with idealism is that it says that when I stop observing something, it ceases to exist. That means that when I stop observing a human object, the human object ceases to exist, and from this logic, solipsism is unavoidable because the egoic-mind cannot observe another egoic-mind. But it is infallible to conclude that other people don’t exist because I don’t see them because then what am I when they aren’t observing me? This is why I find it misleading when people say “you are God” or “you are the only thing that exists” or “there is only one bubble” because this is a misconception. The ego is Satan and the absence of ego is God. There are infinite bubbles of perception, which you could call ONE Bubble because infinity is Oneness, but it is still confusing because it could be interpreted as I (ego) is the only bubble that exists. Or I (God) is the only bubble that exists. You see how confusing that is and why people are misled to solipsism? If it is true that there are infinite bubbles that the One God is experiencing all through, then that also must mean that Direct Experience isn’t all there is. That means there is stuff happening behind the scenes even if the ego is imagining it because ego’s perspective is a limited bubble of the infinite sponge! Think about that. I know some of you will say “the ego never dies because the ego is an illusion.” But even when the human form of r0ckyreed dies, the world will still continue to exist for the rest of you. If everything is an illusion, that implies that the illusion of everything exists. If illusion doesn’t exist, then everything cannot be an illusion.

“We human beings are the individuation of the Singularity experiencing life sequentially and simultaneously.” — Home With God, Ch. 17 “A thing does not suddenly appear when you see it. You seeing it makes it appear to you. Those who dabble into quantum physics say that nothing is there until you see it. Your seeing puts it there … In Ultimate Reality, things are there before you see them. That is, multiple possibilities exist at all times. Every conceivable outcome of every conceivable situation exists right here right now. The fact that you only see one of them does not put it there, it puts it here in your mind.” - Ch. 17 “The singularity is what some of you call God … you are the singularity … you are the individuation of the singularity … you can split your Self up and move in many directions. You call these various moments through the time space continuum as lifetimes … The continuous cycle of self (for eternity) is (living with God). Death is an energy shift … Remaining with one physical body for all eternity would not serve the purpose of Eternity itself. The purpose of Eternity is to provide you with a contextual Field of timelessness within which to offer you an opportunity for endless experience with limitless variety in the expression of who you are.” — Ch. 18, Home With God

Aren’t we still in the middle of a pandemic? Omicron and all that crap is still here, and it won’t fix itself. We all take responsibility. Stay home. Meditate. If you do go out, for love of God (?) please wear a mask to stop the spread. For me personally, I would hate to be part of the murder chain of spreading Covid to someone who dies. It’s like indirect murder. Stay safe y’all.

Go on a vision quest

Figure out what “you” is that is God and then there you will have your answer.

Consciousness is Infinity. It holds every possible perspective of every living thing. When you take infinite povs to the fullest, you realize it is all one. There is no your point of view and my point of view. There is no my or you. There is just the Universe experiencing itself through all variations of itself in which right now, it is looking through the eyes of “you” and “me.” The real question to be asked is why is the universe experiencing Javfly33 and not R0ckyreed at the moment? The answer is that you are experiencing R0ckyreed and others but you are only conscious of Jayfly33. So the next question to ask is why is the Universe focused on this human Jayfly33 form instead of some other form like an ant or something. But again, these questions (if not all questions) assume a duality. For instance, your ego is created by the mind, which is created by many different cells and systems in your body from which you do not even experience. Without these unconscious systems, your conscious ego you have now would not exist. Think of the whole world like a living organism with you being inside of a gigantic brain. That is what is going on here. The Universe is playing a game with itself. It is really fascinating to think this all this through. This is “Solipsism” with a capital S (understanding Consciousness to be One and all Alone) vs. thinking your human egoic point of view is all there is. See the difference?

What are your top 5 guiding values for life? Do you act impulses or act based on your values? Acting on impulses is a representation of what you value. In fact, everything you do is a representation of what you value. What do you value most in life. Here are my top 5 values and how they have changed over time. List your own top 5. Top 5 Values (2020): 1. Spirituality/Philosophy/Personal Development 2. Creativity 3. Ambition 4. Freedom 5. Authenticity Top 5 Values (2021): 1. Spirituality/Philosophy/Truth 2. Mastery/Adventure/Blissipline 3. Fortitude 4. Humor/Playfulness 5. Creativity REVISED - Top 5 Values (2021): 1. Spirituality 2. Justice/Integrity/Compassion 3. Mastery 4. Fortitude 5. Playfulness/Humor/Wit ___________________________________________________ What do you all think? What are your top 5 values right now and how have they evolved over time since you started contemplating them? May peace be with you.

I want you to think about this scene from Hawkeye series. It gives you the perspective of people in the blip. (If the link doesn’t work, it is the scene from Hawkeye from the point of view of Yelena waking up from the blip). https://youtu.be/7hYg0w9ZINU A lot of people think that when they die, they will be put in a dark room of nothingness. What you really find is something much more radical. It is just like going to sleep. When you go to sleep and wake up, it is as if you never slept. In your experience, you lay down and wake up. When you wake up, you have thoughts about your sleep that we call dreams. Dan Dennett has a theory on dreaming in which we do not dream while we sleep, but rather, we invent it as we wake up. The same is with your ideas of the past and with the idea of death. It is all a story. When you die, you will have the same experience as being born. Compared to the Universe, going to sleep and waking up at 8 hours later we assume is the same as the Universe creating the Big Bang 8 billion years ago. 8 hours and 8 billions years are all the same in the eye of the universe. They are a “blip.” Look at the spirituality of the Marvel-verse. It is really profound. What is more profound is that it is our universe creating more and more of itself. I had a similar experience to Yelena while I was under anesthesia. It was as if I never fell asleep or took anesthesia. It was as if I reinvented everything. I could remember being nothingness and slowly coming back into ego/form. It was crazy. The weird thing was is that it’s as if no time passed at all. That’s cause there is no time I guess that’s why death is an illusion because Eternity can never die. Very mind blowing stuff. What are your thoughts?

Go back to meditating.

This idea is based off of my other post titled Discipline is Ratshit - The Art of Blissipline. I often hear people talking about procrastination and how it is "bad" or must be avoided and dealt with. But rarely, do I hear people talking about how procrastination is actually a good thing. I mean think about it. What is procrastination really and what is its function? Here is what I am come to as a result to my contemplations on the matter. I may be wrong, so please feel free to contribute or disagree or whatever. What is Procrastination? (My personal answers from my Contemplations) Procrastination is avoiding emotional labor is the thought the first crossed my mind. But I realized that procrastination as a concept is much more broad than that. I came up with the definition that procrastination is the "process of delaying, postponing, or avoiding something." This means that if you have any thought of something and you either delay, postpone, or avoid doing it at the moment, you are procrastinating. This makes it seem silly to "eliminate procrastination." If we eliminated procrastination, then every thought you have of doing something, you would have to act on it right at the given moment. If I have a thought that I want to call my parents, then me not calling them would be procrastination. But I guess it really depends on how it is framed. For instance, you may be studying or you may have been procrastinating on your work, school, or life purpose. You then take action to do your life purpose, work, and school studies when a thought to call your parents or go out with your friends seeps into your mind. The thought to hang out with others may appear to be a distraction, or it could be viewed as a way to procrastinate, or your current attempts to grind to get your work done and stay busy doing schoolwork that you don't wanna do could be viewed as the distraction or the procrastination from facing your fears in calling your parents, etc. You see? Distraction and procrastination are relative to what your current highest love, bliss, and inspiration you have at the given moment. That is why being Blissiplined is important as opposed to being disciplined. Blissipline is simply being a disciple or student of what your highest bliss, love, and inspiration. It is being an employee of your higher-self. Whereas discipline is traditionally thought of as grinding through work to get it done. The discipline mindset views procrastination as the enemy, as something to "eliminate." But you are not really eliminating procrastination through your disciplined mindset approach. What you are really doing is procrastinating on your highest bliss, inspirations, and love for life. The disciplined mindset may view thoughts of inspiration to hang out with friends and call family as a distraction that will lead you to procrastinate, but actually, the real distraction is your not following your inspirations and love. You may think that grinding through your work or your 9-5 grind is your inspiration, which it actually may be your initial inspiration at first. I may have an initial inspiration to write a book. I may be flowing through it, but I may get to a point where that flow begins to turn into a grind. When it becomes a grind, I may not have that initial joy as I once did, and that is okay. The mind needs to procrastinate in order to critically analyze our choices and plans, as well as to keep us in alignment with our highest values, joys, and inspirations in life. If you are having fun and are in alignment with your higher self, procrastination is not such a bad thing as long as it is expanding you towards your higher-self and not as an escape to go into your lower-self. "Sometimes doing nothing very often leads to the very best of something." -- Pooh. Conscious Procrastination Vs. Unconscious Procrastination Conscious procrastination is "the process of actively delaying, avoiding, and postponing areas of your life that are no longer serving you, so that you can embody more love, inspiration, insight, and wisdom into your life, to better help you be in flow with your mission and highest bliss." This is what I was discussing above in that conscious procrastination is deliberately delaying our tasks so that way we can tune into where things in life are already figured out for us. On the contrary, unconscious procrastination can lead to negative results for our lives. I define unconscious procrastination as "the process of delaying, avoiding, or postponing something despite knowing that it will have negative consequences for you." I think unconscious procrastination is what people often talk about when they are wanting to "eliminate procrastination." They really want to eliminate unconscious procrastination but not conscious procrastination. Without conscious procrastination, we cannot be in alignment with our highest blisses in life. Society, as well as our mind, is always designed to keep us busy with problems, but our soul or spirit is always designed to keep us attuned to our intuition, passions, fun, cheer, excitement, joys, etc. Our soul/spirit is the child to our adult selves. Our minds are the rational adult and our spirit is the emotional child. None is "better" than the other. Both parts of our psyche are important. We need the child-like part to connect back with spirit, magic, and wonder, while also keeping the adult-like part to have the rationality to help us survive. The key is balance and how our relationships are with all the different parts of our minds. It is kind of the Id and superego in Freud's psychoanalysis model. We can't be too disciplined and neither can we be too impulsive either. I mean, we can but a "healthy" psyche is not at discord with itself. The ideal is for all parts of our minds to be welcomed and for all parts to be on the same mission to serve our higher-self. What I mean by higher-self is being in harmony with our intuition, heart, passions, joys, bliss, creativity, and all that makes us our best and highest versions of ourselves. Our lower-self is fearful, disconnected from feelings (hyper-logical), depressed, uninspired, addicted, etc. Conscious procrastination is about being on the path towards our higher-self. If that means to take a break and do nothing so that you can quiet your mind for an answer to come, then go do that. Productivity is a trap, which can make people believe that procrastination is an evil to be procrastinated with (see what I did there? lol). But in reality, the productivity mindset that unused time is wasted time has the energy of your lower-self if you can intuit that. How can you ever waste time if you enjoy time and are in alignment with your higher-self? Your higher-self doesn't need to work to figure things out. Your higher-self is always tuned into where things are already figured out for you. Your higher-self is your intuition. All you have to do is do nothing, connect with being, listen to your intuition, and have the courage to follow your heart. I hope all of that helped! I encourage anyone to contribute to these ideas here. All perspectives are welcomed!

Yup. That’s what I was referring to when I mentioned conscious procrastination. When we connect with our heart and inspiration, we also connect with creativity. I haven’t studied Eisenhower model. Not familiar with it. It can be. That would be the unconscious form of it. But the conscious form of procrastination is actively delaying something so that you can bring more energy, passion, and creativity into it later. At some point, grinding through a task for hours and hours will result in diminishing returns. I find that the best creativity and solutions come from flow and not grind. Good. What about your highest excitements and passions in any given moment? Never procrastinate on the things you love. If you always do things you don’t like doing, then that will dictate the quality of your life. Procrastinate on the things you hate to honor and act upon the things you love. Maximizing my passions and love is my top priority. When I am in touch with my higher-self, everything is in alignment.

Beautiful! May peace be with you. ?❤️

I posted this in the wrong thread! This is supposed to be in the philosophy, self-actualization section of the forum. Thanks. Sorry for inconvenience. Hear me out. I have been contemplating the nature of Value Theory, which tries to answer the question: "What is the Good Life, and how can I live it?" I have also been contemplating morality since living a Good Life is linked to the goodness and standards of conduct we bring to our communities. Please note that this here is the result of my contemplations on the subject. In no way is this absolute truth or any of that BS. I would encourage you all to contribute and expand/elaborate on my ideas here to tackle the issue of Value Theory and Morality. Thanks! To start, there are several theories in philosophy on what the Good Life is. There is hedonism, eudaemonia, desire satisfaction theory, and many more. I will focus on mainly these theories here. What is a Good Life So what does a Good Life boil down to? I mean what is it really that you want out of life? What do you really want? Cars? Sex? Drugs? Spiritual mindgasms? Here is my perspective, what you really want out of life is a feeling. That is what I find that it boils down to. What you really want is not a college degree or to travel the world, or to make millions of dollars. That is all material. What you really want is the immaterial. What you ultimately want is a feeling, the feeling of true happiness and bliss. This is related to my other post on how "Discipline is Ratshit - The Art of Blissipline." Blissipline is about being a disciple of your highest bliss in life. Whereas discipline is more commonly thought of as working your ass off and grinding even though it might not bring intrinsic happiness. Blissipline is more focused on intrinsic happiness (immediate bliss), whereas discipline is focused more on instrumental happiness (future, long-term happiness). Value Theories: Hedonism, Eudaemonia, Desire Satisfaction Theory Here is where hedonism comes in. What you really want is a feeling of bliss, of feeling content, excited, happy, and complete. Hedonism is the view that happiness is the ultimate good in that what a Good Life really is, is one that is lived happily. Most people misunderstand hedonism to be the pursuit of pleasure, but this is not true hedonism. Hedonism believes that happiness is most essential to live a good life, but happiness is not what we think. Sit down and contemplate what happiness is. For me, happiness is not a dopamine hit from sitting in a pleasurable hot tub. Although, that could be a form of happiness, I find that happiness for me means to be completely high on life itself - To be completely satisfied with the present moment and living true Heaven on earth. With true happiness, there is nothing to pursue because happiness is about being and not doing. All pursuits come from an implicit assumption that happiness needs to be chased. This of course implies that the chaser does not have happiness unless they reach a goal. But this is folly. Happiness is what is left when there is nothing left to do. The film Christopher Robin highlights this beautifully when Christopher and Winnie the Pooh say "Doing Nothing very often leads to very best of something." What this means is that "doing" is the chasing. When you stop "doing" and start "being," you are in alignment with your higher self and your deepest Blissiplines in life. All of this aligns with what true Hedonism is. Eudaemonia and desire satisfaction are closely related to hedonism, but they are distinct. For instance, Eudaemonia suggests that meaning is the center of life, and a Good Life is one that is meaningful. Desire satisfaction theory suggests that a Good Life is measured by getting what we want and desire. Eudaemonia is a good theory, but I think it boils down to hedonism. Why is meaning in life important? Also, who is it that is judging what a Good Life is and what a Good Life is not? If we look at someone else, we may say they lived a Good Life if we believed that they accomplished their goals and did something meaningful with their lives instead of wobbling around the Hundred Acre Woods all day. This is why the framing of the question of what a Good Life is essential. Eudaemonia seems appealing because our society is focused on productivity, goal-orientation, and less focused on recreation, leisure, and playfulness. But ultimately, if a person has a meaningful life, but they are not happy, did they really have a Good Life? I mean from our perspective, they appear to have a Good Life. Robin Williams comes to mind for someone I thought had a Good Life because I believe that his life was meaningful. But from Robin Williams' perspective, his life was probably a nightmare. I do not know this for certain, as I am guessing his point of view at this point, but if we take this thought experiment to heart, we can see that living the Good Life ultimately boils down to how happy you are and if you are following your heart and highest blisses in life. Difference between Hedonism and Desire Satisfaction Theory With desire satisfaction theory, I think this is more like how most people view hedonism. I think it is really easy to confuse desire satisfaction theory with hedonism, but here is the difference. Hedonism is believes happiness is essential to living the Good Life, whereas desire satisfaction theory (DST) states that a Good Life is one that where a person gets what they want. DST believes that desire is most important for living a good life. The issue with DST is that desire is always future-oriented. This is the common conflation between hedonism and DST. Hedonism is more about intrinsic happiness, where as DST is about instrumental pleasure and meeting our desires. The problem with DST is that most of the time, we don't know what we really want. Sometimes, we desire for something that does not really bring us true happiness in the end. For instance, you may have desired for a college degree, to be a video game designer for Ubisoft, to have millions of mansions and women, but we later find out when we have all of our desires that something else is missing. A lot of people end up having more desires and goals to chase - trying to get even more money and even more status, while not realizing that what you desire is not always what you really want. As Morgan Freeman says in Bruce Almightly: "Since when do people know what they want?" Think about that one. Morality I go back and forth on the nature or metaethics of morality. Metaethics tries to understand what the nature of morality is. Is morality objective? Absolute? Relative? Etc.? I have gone back and forth between moral objectivism and moral relativism. Moral objectivism suggests that morality is objective. This means that there are true and false, or right and wrong ways to act in the world. Moral relativism suggests that morality is ultimately relative, which means that there is no right or wrong, or true or false when it comes to moral conduct. The moral conduct according to relativists is subjective to individuals and collective cultures/societies. No society is more right or wrong than another. However, moral objectivism states that this is false. They state that morality has correct answers that are independent from sociocultural contexts and people's opinions. For instance, there is a right and wrong answer to if a certain mushroom is poisonous or healthy. This is how a moral objectivist views morality. They view morality as having right or wrong answers that are independent to what we may believe. The earth is appears to be a sphere from the perspective of being in outer space despite a flat earther's opinion. Also, beating a child is also wrong regardless of what we believe because the act of beating a child is not the healthiest way to build a society, nor is that act selfless. Morality is really all about a community and about selflessness. If morality is not based on selflessness, of living in harmony as a community, then the community cannot function. Morality is like the water to the garden. Without morality, the garden dies. There are right and wrong ways to grow a healthy garden if that is what we want. When a relativist says that "well who says that living healthy and selfless matters?" Well, it really doesn't in the ultimate degree in the same way that it does not matter what plant you eat in the jungle. However, there are right and wrong ways to be selfless, loving, and healthy relative to how we define them. The plant is poisonous or edible regardless of what you or I believe. I, as the moral objectivist say that there is a right or wrong in that the plant is either poisonous or it isn't. But you as the relativist may say that the plant is poisonous relative to your human organism but maybe not to some other creature. This is true. But this does not dismiss the fact that relative to human organism, and relative to building a selfless society, there are right and wrong ways to do that. It isn't just its all opinion. If you care about survival (which you mostly likely do), morality will be important if you want to live in harmony with others and contribute in a positive way to the world. Of course, survival itself is relative, but relative to how you want to survive and your values, there are right and wrong ways to go about them. If you value well-being (however you define that), there will be right and wrong ways in how you go about that. Of course, there are multiple factors like well-being relative to you or to society? and etc. Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is the view of how to act morally. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism that suggests that the most moral action is one in which brings about the most happiness to the world for the greater good. Utilitarianism also operates from the notion of hedonism, which I already defined as viewing a Good Life as being in harmony with one's bliss and happiness. In the same way, utilitarianism is correct because all morality I think boils down to how conscious a society is. The more conscious a society is, the more blissful and happy they will be. Today, our society lives in fear and in prejudice, etc. True utilitarianism wants to do the best actions to raise the consciousness of humanity. They want to maximize consciousness and happiness for the world. This theory of morality is true because if morality isn't based on what a Good Life is, then what is the function of morality? The function of morality number 1 is to survive in a community setting. The next function of morality is justice and promote social harmony for communities to live together. With social harmony, there are right and wrong ways to go about that. A relativist may argue that "Well my definition of social harmony could be to blow up the world in the name of my God." But if you think about that deeper, you just create more terror and more fear in both the short-term and long-term. The utilitarian is focused on consequences of actions, but a true utilitarian cares about both. Our actions can inspire others to follow, which if we led good actions, we lead good lives for the community at large. Remember utilitarianism is tied with hedonism. What we really are after is a feeling. True hedonists live in the present moment and strive to be happy now. The classic objection against utilitarianism is the it is subjective in that people can have the "ends justify the means" in that they care about the future of the world and consequences of actions. But a utilitarian devoid of the effects of their present actions is not a true utilitarian. Our karma is our actions tied to consequences. If we do something bad now to get something good later, we are fooling ourselves because how we act now attracts what we will get in the future. Anyways, these are my thoughts on all of this. You are encouraged to contribute to these ideas here or disagree. I would appreciate to hear your thoughts on what you think about Value Theory and Morality. "The flower doesn't dream of the bee, it blossoms and the bees come!" - David Lion Thanks!

Glad this helped! What was most helpful for you from this post? Sometimes it helps to articulate and be clear on what was helpful so you and others can have some reference point to make all of this applicable in your life. Ideas are like seeds, implementation is the water, and repetition will help you blossom. The only thing you need to do in life is blossom and be more of your truest, highest, and best version of yourself. Sometimes, it takes courage to be yourself and follow our hearts. May peace be with you. ?

Good question. I don’t know what relativists really mean when they say “morality is relative.” They seem to imply both that it is objective truth that morality is relative, which is an oxymoron, and it is also the case that morality is relative to subjective experience since like you said, all we have of reality is our subjective experience of it. Anything objective is couched with subjective experience, which paradoxically suggests that it is objective truth that objective truths occur within subjective experience. It is a mind bender that I’m still trying to understand.

Thanks for constructive feedback. Much appreciated. Feel free to ask for clarity. Sure. You can brute force things, no there isn’t anything wrong with that. It is just another perspective and another approach. What I am saying is to notice the energies between forcing vs. flowing. Notice which method brings you closer to your higher-self. Can you see the long-terms problems of not being in alignment with your higher-self (I.e., the energies of intuition, flow, creativity, love, passion, etc.)? I can force myself to meditate or to workout, but notice the energy of that. Forcing implies you are still at war with yourself, which may not be a good long-term plan. What may be ideal is to learn how to flow with your tasks. The way I find that gets me consistently in flow state is by doing conscious procrastination. In other words, I follow my intuition, and have that be my guide. I become a student of my higher-self. I find that my higher-self has the energies of flow, playfulness, love, joy, passion, effortlessness, etc. It’s all about being in an alignment with that. What I’m talking about here is similar to the concept of Wu Wei. According to Alan Watts, Wu Wei is translated to mean effortless action or as Alan Watts said, “to not force anything.” Wu Wei is about going with the flow of the path of least resistance and by doing actions for their own sake rather than having goals in mind. As you can probably already tell, the mindset of Wu Wei is conducive to flow states more frequently. Sometimes brute force may be needed, but ultimately, you want to get to a point where you don’t have to force and grind when you are tying your shoes or drive your car or play an instrument. Being in the flow and not doing any work at all is how you play with your activities. You don’t work your instrument, you play your instrument. Think of yourself, your body, mind, and spirit as an instrument for you to play.