Truth, Beauty, Joy, Action, Kindness and Contentment

Tags

Action, Beauty, Contentment, Joy, Kindness, Perceiving reality accurately, truth

Perceiving reality accurately precedes truth. Without a clear conception of total reality the intellectually derived truths will be biased, and they will be useful only in the special situations the rationalized assumptions were founded upon. The broader and more accurate the perceptions of reality the more applicable will be the wisdom derived from one’s cogitations and derived truths. The great mathematicians, philosophers and physicists write of the beauty they find in the fundamental relationships discovered within nature, and of their joy when viewing those discoveries when revealed in their simplicity and symmetry. This feeling comes from perceiving the simplicity underlying the appalling complexity presented to the senses.

The conclusion of Ode on a Grecian Urn, “Truth is Beauty, and Beauty Truth,” by Keats, has a lovely blend of poetic nonsense and religious foolishness, similar to god being one and three at the same time. When these ideas are pulled apart by philosophers and their sense revealed, they feel tedious even tawdry, but when stated in their distilled form they sometimes stimulate a feeling of profound joy. But truth, beauty and joy are all internal to people and go to the grave with them when they die; it is action and kindness that are external to their bodies and actively out in the world, and thus they become part of the reality of the physical universe. Actions and the special form of action called kindness are useful to other people.

In Philosophers Squared – Heraclitus I wrote, “Every moment of an individual’s life is a new wisdom coming into being influenced by all of those that went before. Thus, the Proverb, possibly coined by Imhotep, “First get wisdom, and then with all thy getting get understanding.” is of crucial  importance for generating a successful human being. The recommended procedure is to get your wisdom’s perceptive apparatus properly aligned with the reality you will be encountering, before you collect the factual data you will need to cope with your future needs. The computer cliché, “Garbage in, garbage out!” is a crass restatement of that ancient proverb, and thus we should be very careful not to let garbage come into our wisdom-growing cycle.”

Action is based on the vast assembly of habits integrated into a person’s behavior from their complex of past experience and personal nature, but out of the seeming muddle comes a consistent personality and of course opportunity of the moment. But to some degree we create our opportunities, and part of that is setting attainable goals and preparing the abilities needed to cope as needed when opportunity knocks.

Intentional kindness comes to the fore when our mental, emotional, and social development reach maturity. Kindness necessitates the cultivated ability to see other people’s needs, to have enough slack in one’s own needs to be able to offer help to another person, and the conscious willingness to help them. These qualities are bred into mothers with relation to their children, and to some extent all children. Also, they are to some extent bred into men, but men have more diffused natural drives that extend beyond the family into the world beyond. In our modern world where humans have come to dominate so much of nature, it is becoming increasingly necessary for us to move away from simple consumption of natural resources and become guardians of our Earth. This requires an attitude of kindness, similar to a mother’s love, but ingrained deep within the personality structures of the leaders of our emerging society.

Contentment is available to those of us who are willing to abandon the quest for more of the material good things of life, to function wholly within those things readily available to us, and to accept the rest of the world to be as it is and do as it does.

Personal experiments on happiness, contentment and joy

Tags

Contentment, happiness, Joy

I’ve been doing some experiments this month comparing happiness, contentment and joy. It is strange how close these concepts are in my previous thoughts, and the public’s thoughts in general, but how different they are when I observe them in my momentary experiential processes. I have previously thought about happiness as the pleasant feeling one has when progressing along a path toward a worthy goal. Contentment was usually of a longer time scale and more intellectual in its feeling, and consisted of being accepting of the entire world exactly as it is, including its history, as more than just tolerable but as a wonderful thing. Joy is different in that it is always totally in the moment. Joy has as a component the realization of astonishment that this moment exists.

I haven’t always been a happy person, and I can remember many a time when I was aware of a foul mood, and I didn’t want to flow my gloom onto my companions. So, like the song, I would put on a happy face and try to smile and be happy. Unfortunately, as most people have probably discovered, that doesn’t work very well because the underlying gloom seems to reassert itself. I discovered what worked better in those moody situations was to try to cheer up the other people by talking about funny things. That worked better because I could remember to do it, whereas the attempt to remember to be happier kept slipping away.

In an effort to align myself to the world better, I have practiced thinking about contentment for extended periods, trying to accept the world as being what it is, as there isn’t anything I can do about its history or its present behavior outside of my very local situation. That being the case I accepted everything that exists and intentionally make myself feel contented. I will be concerned with what I can do, and will orient my behavior toward positive long-term goals, but I will be content with whatever happens and move on with what I can do.

I have also been practicing the feeling of joy. That may seem strange, but surprising to me, experiencing joy turns out to be much easier than approaching and practicing either happiness or contentment. The reason is that all I need to do is think, observe and realize how absolutely astonishing it is that I exist, that the world around me exists, and that the companions I have before me exist. And, when I observe how benign, and living in harmony all of these things are, the feeling of joy is instantaneous and profound.

Joy is instantly available when you accept the wonder of reality.

What do we need for contentment now, and future happiness?

Tags

Contentment, happiness, Pleasure

Contentment is the feeling that a hoped for state of affairs actually exists, and it is potentially a steady-state goal toward which which we might strive. Many people say they are seeking happiness, which is also a comfortable place to be, but it is only a transient condition where one has the belief that a hoped for state of affairs exists and is continuing to come into existence. Both of these words refer to moments when we feel pleasure, but we must acknowledge that pleasure is only a physical and emotional feeling of the moment, and it will pass the instant something unwanted comes to our consciousness. Happiness might last for much longer because it can endure some periods of personal unpleasantness and some pain, and it isn’t much affected by distant problems of other people unknown to us. Happiness can be decreased, but doesn’t end instantly as does pleasure, if some valued person, such as our President, is know to be having a personal problem.

Contentment is different and a difficult to abide by concept in that to be content a person must be willing to accept the entire world as it is. Contentment accepts the past with all its wonders and misfortunes, the present with all of its living pains and problems and the future with all its unknowns and certain deaths. A contented person must be content with the past because there is absolutely nothing that can be done to change the past, and the present too because it passes by so quickly into the past that in an instant it is part of that past. Most of the future is totally beyond any persons control too, or even any noticeable impact, as is the past. Thus, the only thing a contented person must concern himself with is that part of the future over which he may have an influence. When those limitations are accepted, and he can see clearly what can be done, and what can not be done it becomes easier to put all of his energy where it will do the most good.

Pleasure seeking as a goal is a constant scramble, and when the temporary pleasurable state isn’t in the moment that person is disappointed and stressed, and as that high state is transient the pleasure seeker is unhappy most of the time. The unhappiness brings on stress, and the stress devolves into depression, onto ulcers and eventually disease and early death.

The happiness seeker is better off than a pleasure seeker, because they are living in a more sustainable life. They can take pleasure in the good things they have accomplished, but their pleasure is different in that in can come at any moment they choose to reminisce over their success. Their happiness is brought about by constructive deeds performed by themselves and those persons whom they value. Thus, happiness is based on a useful performance, and not on a particular stimulation of the brain which is available with drugs or other extraneous stimulation. The contented person accepts reality as it is and seeks only to change those things over which he has some potential influence. Thus a contented person is not distracted by past failures, can have deep happiness in present success and take pleasure in the moments beauties.

The contented person has more energy to do what’s needed in life’s struggles.

Reconciling evil with contentment.

Tags

Contentment, Evil, Guilt, Personal guilt, philosophy, religion, responsibility

Contentment is the accepting of things as they presently exist. That means accepting the past too, because that brought about the present. It means accepting the future also because it is just the continuing flow of present moments into the future from the past. Although filled with an abundance of hubris, all humanity has vanishingly small effect on the history of the universe or its present or its future. Our impact is miniscule in the vastness of the universe. And yet, in our personal world, immersed in the totality of humanity, we loom large in our personal estimation and feel we are infinitely important. We as individuals do realize we are only a micropart of humanity and have little impact upon the whole of it, so our responsibility to humanity is only slightly greater than toward the universe as a whole. So when I say accept reality to achieve contentment that really isn’t saying much, because we are only responsible for things we can affect, and as we have so very little impact on these things we have no real choice in the matter. We are forced to accept reality and humanity as it is and so we might as well be willing accept it and in so doing achieve a major step toward contentment.

A parallel problem exists with our own self. We have our personal consciousness and it seems important, and we feel we are in control of it, but this is mostly an illusion. Our conscious behavior is almost totally mediated by our brain and our social setting, which has been controlled by what our habitual learning brought to us. To a tiny extent we placed ourselves into environments where we learned to behave in certain ways. For an occasional brief moment we are compelled by circumstance to make a considered decision about the environment we are going to place ourselves within. We choose whether to join the army or go to college. We choose whether to study on Saturday nights or go binge drinking with our classmates. We choose to watch Tosh.0 or Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? Each of these decisions will obviously affect the environment we will be in for a while, and it is while we are in those environments that we develop our habits. Once those habits are ingrained and fully functional there is no changing them, although there is a small possibility of overriding them, but that requires a lot of effort, which is rarely made. We are mostly automatons with a very few, and very occasional decision points for changing who we are and what we do.

Upon those two realities, the outer one of the universe and the inner one of our own personal zombie creation, we struggle through time and our lives. I have briefly developed those to show just how little impact we have on either the outer world or the inner one. Our impact is almost an infinity of nothing times an infinity of nothing, and that is why we might as well accept reality both outer and inner and be content with the totality of the universe, ourselves included.

Evil now must be confronted, and it has been a great stumbling block for the religions and philosophies. Why does evil and the suffering it brings to humans exist in a natural world or in one with all-powerful and loving deities? With my world view of the absolute acceptance of reality, my self included as part of reality, there can be contentment even though my conscious self rejects evil. Evil things can be vastly greater than my ability to cope with them, considering the tiny ability I have to affect things. And, if I have no ability to affect something, I have no personal responsibility; it is simply part of the universe of the way things exist, and thus I have no need for personal guilt. Thus I can be content with the world and with myself.

There remains that tiny bit of self-control with which we have a tiny bit of effect upon ourselves and upon the world, and it is that quantity of control which should be the measure of the load of responsibility and of guilt which we bear. So, in the vast world within which we live, almost all of it can be filled with contentment, and we leave a little sliver of guilt for humanity’s creation of evil and a tiny sliver of that guilt as our personal burden. The rest of our lives and thoughts can be filled with contentment.

We choose our level of guilt with ourselves and contentment with the world.

What is the meaning in life? Contentment?

Tags

Contentment, Escahatology, happiness, Happy, Healthy, life, meaning, Progress, Purpose, Ultimate, Wealthy, Wise

Happy, healthy, wise and wealthy sometimes leads to contentment.

The big four human quests are happy, healthy, wise and wealthy, but these are usually considered mundane quests and the ultimate life quests are set into a higher plane of eschatology or the journey of the soul. I have been puzzling over the various possibilities of what life would be like if there is no meaning to one’s life and the relationship of that idea to contentment. Is it possible to be contented with one’s life and the complexities of the universe around us if there is no ultimate purpose to anything? What if all the myriad of purposes of our daily lives and those we let be imposed upon us by society are nothing more than temporary things which evaporate when our thoughts shift to some other idea and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, beyond these things?

An alternate reality.

What if after a night’s sleep we awoke to a new day totally free of the impositions of our previous hopes and fears and lived simply with an immediate interaction with the universe as it presented itself to us? Wouldn’t we be filled with the terror of emptiness for only a few moments, and then reawaken to a world where our personal being just interacts with the problems which present themselves to us? And wouldn’t that simple direct interaction with what is, be enlightenment and contentment? Contentment is the acceptance of what is as being what should be. Once we can accept what presents itself to us, and simply say yes to our mutual existence, we can be far more than happy, we can be contented. Contentment is the state toward which we ultimately strive, even if we haven’t been fully aware of that as a goal.

How can we be content in a world filled with sorrow?

Sadly, there are many things in the world which are repulsive, and there is a vast amount of unnecessary suffering. Innocent people and other innocent things are slaughtered for food, power or sometimes for sport and sometimes simply the mindless venting of viciousness. Can I be contented with a world that has these qualities? I hesitate to say, yes I accept those things, but if I have no power to affect them in any way, why should I hesitate to say yes? On the other side of the world the tiger kills and eats an innocent lamb, or the warrior who represents a spite-filled nation kills an innocent child, but I have no power to affect these things. Should I hesitate or condemn the universe because these things happen? Is my acceptance of personal contentment, which includes the entire universe, somehow degraded if I condone atrocities, which is part of the universe? Am I being somehow remiss for being contented, or even happy, or even healthy, or possessing some form of wealth, when some other conscious entity is deprived of these things? Being worldly-wise seems innocent enough, and wisdom keeps the person out of many difficulties which others fall prey to, but it can ignore the suffering of others located in some distant time and place.

Because I can not control everything my relationship with contentment must be limited to that part of the universe with which I can interact and influence. I cannot do everything, nor should I be expected to, but I can do something, and the ultimate goal is doing those things which I can to bring about more human contentment.

Contentment for humanity in the very long run.

At some time in the distant future humans will no longer exist, and a postulated intelligence could look back upon the entirety of human moments in time and measure up the totality of human contentment. From that remote point of view it seems that maximizing that quantity of universal contentment is the goal toward which my personal contentment should be directed. I should be doing those actions which will not only maximize my personal contentment but ultimately the contentment of as many people now and in the future as is possible. This is a striving far beyond happy, healthy, wise and wealthy of myself or even the whole of presently existing humanity. Those four things are only needed to some personally acceptable level so I can move beyond them and then to find contentment with the world which actually exists around me as an individual.

What is my ultimate goal and what is yours?

I cannot give people contentment. I can give them moments of happiness by doing some kind act, I can give them a boost in their health by guiding them into health-giving behaviors, I can give them some small bits of wisdom if they are ready to receive it and I can give them some suggestions on how to improve their worldly possessions. These are all desirable things and everyone wants them, but even if they dedicate their entire time and effort to obtain them and finally have them all to the maximum available they still will not have contentment, because contentment is of a different dimension. It is a state of mind and the emotional acceptance of the world as it is and one’s relationship to it.

Heaven is where one is content with things being as they are. It can be here and now.

Food doesn’t bring contentment – it’s being in control.

Tags

Contentment, Discontentment, eating, Feasting, Gluttony, happiness, Unhappiness

Obesity is caused by eating too much food is in the news today. Apparently it is another really slow news day, but the upside of that non-news may be that another war didn’t start today. That would be news, but who wants it, other than the media, whom live on reporting other local people’s suffering. So that’s the positive side of human fat. Not much.

Why do people eat so much when it makes them heavy and unhealthy? It would seem that people eat because it makes them happy. I enjoy eating and apparently everyone else does too, but overeating creates an unpleasant feeling which lasts for hours. I know, I have over-eaten at holiday parties several times. One time, I felt so bad I had to leave and walk for half an hour trying to regain my normal comfortable feeling. During that walk I promised myself that I would never do that again, and I haven’t, at least that badly.

Eating too much makes one’s stomach hurt, and makes one feel logy for hours, so how can a person be happy if they hurt? How can they continue doing things which they know will bring them pain? And if they are half conscious, why do they keep eating when they know it will bring on short-term pain, medium term crummy feeling and permanent poor feeling physically from carrying excess weight, and the final nails into their self-esteem, the social and psychological condemnation. Many people of this world have chosen this unpleasant life path voluntarily, so there must be an explanation.

If food doesn’t bring pleasure beyond what the body needs and therefore wants it must be a mental habit or a psychological need that drives them to keep eating, or more probably an interaction of both. If food is felt as a release for some psychological suffering then it would be more sensible to address the pain directly and solve whatever problem is causing the overeating. The root cause of overeating would be a discontentment with their relationship with themselves and the world around them. Overeating is a way they are coping with this imbalance and trying to bring it into balance. It brings them closer to where they want to be. Big is important and in control. Eating puts one into greater control of the world around them because it makes them bigger.

We all know that obese people are in fact even more dependent upon the world around them for support than normally sized ones, but that may not be the way it feels from the inside of people. There is a primal feeling of control when one is bigger than those around and conversely there is a primal feeling within the smaller people when in the presence of big ones that because they are smaller they are less significant. Since, both of the people in this social situation have this inbred feeling it becomes even more powerful. There develops a respect for the physically bigger person which they haven’t earned by their physical actions, because they are incapable of them, but because of their mass. Bigger is better. It’s a primal thing.

People eat because it gives them the contented feeling of being in control.

Here is why you should invest in capitalism and contentment.

Tags

Capitalism, Contentment, happiness, Socialism

Why are some people unhappy with Capitalism?

Capitalism is unsatisfying to many people, even though it provides an abundance of goods and services at an affordable price to nearly everyone. The other economic systems have provided fewer goodies, and if the quantity and quality of goodies is the measure of life satisfaction, then those people living under those other systems would be even less contented.

People living within a capitalist society appear to want the goods available because they frequently go into voluntary debt to the money lending banking system to obtain them. Once enmeshed into that system, they are compelled to work and earn money to pay back their borrowed money plus interest to the system or be ostracized and deprived of much of their worldly goods, which they bought with the capitalist credit.

Most people choose to work for the available better products rather than voluntarily live at a lower standard of living, with fewer goods or of lower quality. As a rule of thumb most people live ten percent beyond their annual income almost until they near retirement. By that time, if they have been consistently employed, they usually own their home, with the mortgage paid off. So, by their old age, these folks have paid off their debts and can finally enjoy themselves.

If, from the beginning of their earning years, they had always spent ten percent less than they made, in only ten years they would have had a capital base equal to a whole year’s salary upon which to build a substantial money-generating income which would then equal their previous 10% privations, but without further effort.

Capitalism can build contentment for some people.

Capitalism is capable of building contentment for those people who are willing to invest some of their earnings into their own capital building, but it consumes the income of those people who spend more than they make. The consumers are forced to spend their time working until later in their lives to pay off their debts, but after a while the investors’ capital has grown and they gain more and more free time as the years pass. After the first few years of slight privation, they have an investment which will give them a security which the overspending worker doesn’t have, even though he is working full time all his life.

A socialist might hope that the government sponsored social system which he has paid into with his labor will take care of him in his sickness and old age, and perhaps it will, but perhaps it won’t. If that system hasn’t created as great an abundance of the goods and services as some other, there will be fewer of these things for him to have. Therefore, he will be forced to live at a lower standard of living and of contentment, if he considers contentment to be the possession of goods. Contentment is a feeling and belief that one’s relationship with the world is as it should be. But, that can’t be the case if he can easily see others who live in abundance while he, who has worked all his life, lives in relative poverty. People choose to be capitalists by their own spending and investing behavior when young, and likewise people choose to be victims of capitalism if they choose to spend money which they must borrow. Those who have an abundance of earned goodies feel they are right with the world and that is contentment.

Capitalism is good to investors and bad to over-consumers.

Advertising is designed to destroy your contentment.

Tags

Ads distort your reality., Ads ruin your happiness, Advertising causes unhappiness, Contentment, Contentment and advertising, Contentment is the ultimate goal

Contentment is the primary goal of the Probaway – Life Hacks blog and contentment is the highest goal toward which a human can aspire; it is the state beyond happy, healthy, wise and wealthy to which all of those are directed. Opposed to contentment is advertising; it is the enemy of contentment because its goal is to compel a customer to purchase some item, which he would not buy without the advertising.

Advertising is also the enemy of happiness because it attempts to make the customers believe they are unhappy, unless they purchase some particular product, and that buying that product will make them happy. No subtle qualifications to this concept either. The purchasers will be as happy as the model portrayed if the affordable thing is purchased, or they will be as unhappy as the loser pictured off to the side if they don’t. You will not only be happier but healthier too, if you take this product, a little pill for example, never mind the five hundred contraindications in the fine print, it’s much too tiny to read. You will be living the lifestyle of the wealthy and famous if you buy this flashy tastefully-designed expensive-looking product, which you can easily afford, if you just sign this loan agreement. And best of all you will be respected for buying all these things because then everyone will know you are a very successful person because you are smart and filled with wisdom. Buying these products proves you are happy, healthy, wise and wealthy.

Unfortunately all advertising, yes all advertising pitches are premeditated lies, or at the very least distortions of the testable facts, and since these distortions are intentional they are the purest of lies. These distortions are tolerated because there is a tiny chance you might actually have a need for the product. But the distortion is pressed to the maximum they think you will tolerate, to convince you that you are unhappy, unhealthy, foolish and bummish if you go away without this unneeded bobble.

About a third of TV time is devoted to advertising, and the mislabeled word newspaper is mostly advertising, and even the so-called news stories are laden with as much spin on the information as can be endured. The online material is also being corrupted by this same process and its value greatly diminished. None of the advertised media is intended to convey useful information, but it does hide behind the pretense that it does. Perhaps, the weatherman just might give a little, but even that is typically about terrible weather somewhere far away, and it is intended to keep you paying attention to sell its sponsors’ products. The rest is attractive stuff to get you to look because there might be something important to you, but it rarely delivers anything useful.

No one is selling contentment because when you are contented you don’t need much. There are ads pretending to sell contentment by illustrating someone sitting on a beautiful beach, sipping a special drink, and doing their high-tech work on a powerful online computer over a super 4G network. But that isn’t contentment, or happiness, or healthiness, or wisdom or wealthiness — it’s a fantasy distortion of those things. Contentment isn’t having every possible convenience; it is accepting the functionality of what fulfills your needs as sufficient for your present purpose and well being.

Contentment is a state of actively participating in the reality of what is available, and it isn’t idly sitting on a beautiful beach passively observing nature do whatever it’s doing. People might be perfectly happy doing that for a few minutes, but if it isn’t interactive with the events before them, then they soon get bored, and unless that unpleasant condition doesn’t spur them to get up and do something, they will soon settle into depression, and if that doesn’t prod them enough to do something active, they settle into a gloom. It is easy enough to break out of those undesirable conditions by simply doing something, and the more worthwhile the something is, the further away from a gloomy state they will be.

Advertisers promote the passive gloomy state for their customers by suggesting they are presently in it and that once they have purchased the product being presented they can settle into a perfectly comfortable state of havingness where nothing more is needed from them. In fact the item will soon have the exact opposite effect if it actually performs as advertised because the purchaser becomes a non-functional and hence a useless appendage to the item. The old advertising slogan, The clothes make the man, may be all too true because other people are no longer responding to the human within the clothes but to the external projected entity of the clothes themselves. The man is nothing and the clothes everything. When he is driving a car there is a similar effect. When he is wearing a particular cologne, he becomes merely a source of pleasant odor and is no longer a functioning part of his local reality. At its core all advertising flourishes on creating discontent. Contentment is a particular relationship with personal productive action, and you can’t purchase it, you can only live it.

Contentment is the internal reflection of interactivity with the world.

Can I maintain contentment as Doomsday approaches?

Tags

Contentment and Doomsday, happiness, Health, Ultimate meaning, Wealth, What has eternal value, Wisdom

Oblivion approaches – it’s only a matter of timing. How do you want to time the end of your world? Obviously ten billion years is much longer than our sun is going to last, and possibly some natural thing will happen within even so short a time as a billion years which would destroy everything we presently hold dear. It might be disturbing at first, but everything we hold precious will eventually be gone. Absolutely, totally beyond our human conceptions of what gone means. It is hard to even think about matter evaporating or time squishing into who knows what, but it is generally accepted by physicists that even these most elemental of things will not last forever.

When we consider living things, even microscopic ones, we must contract our hopes to a much shorter time frame, and for large animals such as ourselves we must contract even more, and for humans even more and for us as individuals even more. What we value in other humans even more and for our present mental state and circumstance even more. The whole existence we value is going to evaporate eventually and much of it will do so before our eyes and our mental perception of it if we look closely enough. But why worry about these things if they are inevitable and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it? It makes more sense to concern yourself with things over which you have some control. And, hopefully, the thing which you have the most control over is your own self and your perceptions. You can affect your relationship with all of these temporary things.

But it is possible to find a relationship with these temporary things that is valid and yet comfortable. Contentment is possible for some humans some of the time and is probably available to everyone who seeks it, all of the time, even those in desperate situations. It is a relationship with the eternal realities of the universe which can permit contentment to form in a person. It is a more exalted attainment than happiness, health, wealth, or wisdom because those can and will evaporate with the consciousness of the individual. Their association with the universals mentioned is transient. But it is possible for your relationship to the universe to be valid even if your consciousness of this relationship is only for a moment and then evaporates totally and forever.

Contentment is easy and simple; it doesn’t require giving up anything or taking up anything. Contentment is found when a person accepts the universe and all that is in it as existing and being what it is. Nothing need be added to it and nothing need be taken away. Anyone can choose to modify some part of it to their desires or choose not to; it really doesn’t matter because it is all subsumed into what the universe is. It is what it is — accept it, participate in it, enjoy it. It matters to you because it matters to you that the part you relate to matters to you. It is circular but no matter what you do or don’t do you are still part of it; you are still subsumed within it.

It is what it is and you are what you are and you are part of each other.

Does religion confer contentment?

Tags

Contentment, religion

If contentment comes to people who believe the world is exactly as it should be, then people who have internalized the dogma of traditional religions should be the most contented people on Earth. And yet, it seems they are not. The Catholic church loads its believers with guilt for the very reason that they then need the church to absolve them of their guilt, so they can lead comfortable lives. Once everyone does what is necessary to be perfected in this way, then the world is as it should be and everyone will be content. Or there is the alternate Christian belief, the Protestant work ethic, which claims that worldly success is proof that they are God’s favored ones and therefore they must exert themselves to their uttermost to change what is before them to fit their conception. The atheists just toss the whole problem out, baby, bath water and all the gods too, but these people don’t seem any more content with the world for having done so. The Unitarians pretty much give up on the whole thing and just say respect people’s beliefs no matter how ridiculous they appear or how much trouble they bring to their holders.

Everyone feels they are right and that their religious group is superior to all the others, but none of them is conspicuously more contented with their lives than the others. There is a feeble correlation of happiness with education and income and that with liberal religious beliefs, but it is mostly an after effect of having more money. That comes with having more education which comes from having more mental ability and people who think more are compelled to observe others’ thoughts which they might not agree with. Smarter, educated, hard-working people get more stuff, if that’s what they want, than dumb, uneducated and lazy people. Because those smarter people feel they have surpassed others they feel happy about themselves, but that isn’t contentment. That feeling is limited to their personal accomplishments, whereas contentment is more generalized and covers the entire universe. A contented person is comfortable with the entire universe being just as it is, and this is not a static entity that is included in the concept, but a dynamic one. Thus, come what may, a truly contented person will go with it, participate in the happenings fully and thrive to the limits of their ability relative to their surroundings.

Contentment provides the emotions needed to live fully.