Equilibrium1

 What is a person to society and vice versa? 

"That 'when we walk, we know that we are walking, when we stand we know that we are standing.' It is that consciousness that permits a form of progress.'

 I have been hanging out with a beautiful man who seems to have a hard time understanding himself as a contributor to society, or as a good person for that matter because he thinks himself entirely self-centred. Doing everything to serve himself.
Because he is too busy trying to make the best of who he is to be distracted with the greater good.
Isn't that, often, the best thing you can do for the greater good?
But you still need to feel momentum and fire---
and humans as closed systems, or isolated individuals
are not not the best fostered creatures for themselves or the rest.
It is an exhausting practice.

I read an old journal of mine recently where I wrote (in grade nine):
Life goal:
Be a net gain for The Universe.

I think sometimes we often get stuck like this. Either wary that we need to do more more more outside of ourselves that we forget to work on what we like about ourselves.
Or we grow wary that focusing on greater goods will erase us or misdirect what we really want and therefore isolate ourselves from feeling real satisfaction.

 But I still strive for Greatness.
 I just never want to get lost in it. To miss out because I focus on gaining.
But without it, we often don't really know our own direction or cannot be really motivated to claim it. We cannot feel purpose in such a pronounced way, we seek personal perfection instead of knowing what is good enough to help the world and ourselves is often good enough to fuel us for a long long time.

"The problem seems to be that our talents and characteristics drive us more than we drive them. We encourage or develop them or deny and frustrate them. Either way, we are serving what exists within us-- a form of personal reality or personal certainty..."


And to me, being a good person in incredibly self-centred and self serving. Is it not? I mean, if you focus on empty ends and never get affirming feedback you can never actually wholly capitalize on your own life or plug into you offer the world and vice versa

"...There is nothing odd or strange about this; nothing wrong. As I've said, we need these certainties. They are our primary reality. And society needs these contributions from us. It is good to be a successful salesman or writer. the wings need to hold firm on the planes we build for others to fly in. We need to be sung to."

I more or less said this to him:
"Any sense of power or powerlessness we have revolves around whether we believe we have the qualities with which we can have some effect on our destinies and on that of our society--no one great life-directing quality, but a whole range of them, all of equal importance, each with different roles. these permit us to change ourselves from passive beings to humans."

I think it is mildly demeaning that you say you are motivated solely by self-interests. Especially since you could not exist without society. Humans are born dependent on such things, on greater society otherwise(like other mammals) we would be born stronger, more mobile and independent. Also, that insulting thought is the root of many things socially painful-- the assumption that those ads, that consuming that being self-centred, all-consuming soulless gluttons is some sort of answer. How you typify your own wants, might be different, but your seeking without any thought of higher purpose or grander purpose than yourself is just as vacant in its destination as what a mach3 razor presents itself as offering your destiny unless you tap into all that you are giving... and recognizing yourself as a giver, or part of that which surrounds yee and made you you.pretending as though it appears as a closed system, though I am fairly certain you rationally think otherwise, is a foreign tale to me.

How can you follow through on your logic this way?
You have Aidos and Dike my dear, otherwise you would not survive. Know that you use them, and use them knowingly! Or at least feel not that you are a fraud, or fooling. Because it is but you yourself who is made a fool by habituating such a practice. You are more than just skill and self. You are quality and virtue. You are the quite lovable, nurturing, contributing you.

 So plug in!

Something talked about in Equilibrium is Plato's idea of Zeus telling Hermes to give human kind Aidos and Dike.
I want to talk about that more next time.

------------------------------- 

So, for a long time people had told me I was quoting John Raulston Saul and I would retort "I have never read JRS" and that would be the end of that. I am mid-read of Equilibrium, my first book in a long long while, and I am perpetually surprised by how much it echoes my mind. Now I am wary to keep reading, because in the future I may be quoting JRS when I mean to be just being myself. Dang.

This entry was heavily quoting and referencing the first pages of On Equilibrium 

The reason this post is titled "Equilibrium1" is because I assume I shall touch back on what reading has done to my mind.

---------------------------------------------