Keeping the lid on our reality is
paramount. It’s not simply about trying to be happy. If you
genuinely don’t care you isolate or kill yourself. Finding a
ground that hopefully you’ve dictated is the goal. You don’t at
that point have to deal with too much freedom. You get to make
predictions about the future that feel gratifying. You get to feel
engaged and like you’re contributing. It’s a positive feedback
loop and process that is all tied up into the word “perspective.”
I think it’s easy to forget that it’s
an infinitely small perspective, and in being as such it has
implications for how we treat each other. To a certain extent, you
have to figure out every new person you meet. You’re lucky if you
still get to figure out people you already know for years on end and
not because you’re coping with their drama. We’re all going to
act in basically intelligible ways, let’s just not underestimate
the word basic. In that sense, things can make sense in thought and
theory, but not translate into a sense of action or even true
empathy.
So when you look at a relationship or
becoming obsessed about school or work or whatever, those become your
grounding. It’s not you relating with someone on the idea
and nature of your relative mediums. Well, what’s the
difference? And have I even stated the issue clearly?
Your perspective is an investment. It’s
a predictor. The very agendas you hold closest to your heart 10 years
from now will be the result of the investments you do or don’t make
today or have made before. At that level, it at least continues to
feel free in your perpetuating or abstaining from some activity. But
what happens when no one thing can work for you any longer?
What if you allow yourself to be hijacked by ideas that can’t be
nailed down? Say your goal becomes “justice.” Well you’ve just
given yourself a number of options and surface contradictions that
perhaps only you can arbitrate.
Is it better to be grounded? To me, I
think the idea of grounding and engaging in it from time to time can
be helpful, healthy, and important for developing a philosophical
position, but I think there’s certainly something to my will that
flirts with losing my own and stripping it from under others. What if
you try to ground in “love” as evidenced by your maintained
relationship or family? How many people have a solid definition of
love to begin with, let alone would find themselves espousing it in
the situation they’re working so hard to maintain?
With my small perspective, I can
feel and know I’ve the potential to do or say just about anything.
I know my will is free and constrained. I know I can be evil or
righteous. I can live basically peacefully with people I more than a
little think are trying to kill me and add stress to my life. I can
plot out the CSI style investigation before I never do that thing you
said I did and you all have my alibi. I can envision an “enlightened”
future resting partly on the back on my effort. To the greater
extent, I don’t feel grounded. I have my style and wits about
me, but I don’t feel comfortable in picking my subject, my mate, or
solitary goal.
I find myself in the ongoing
conversation. It’s when I try to forward an idea or illicit a
reaction. My toolbox is ideas and there are certain ones that
overwhelmingly win out when it comes to characterizing me or my
behavior. If I’m always doubting or judging or forming and
reforming, the potential for negative consequences from
destabilization are always there, but why don’t they win? Cus God
made me moral, right? Haha.
My feedback loop is grounded in the
complex web of feelings and explored thoughts which on the inspection
of any one layer you can find a single instance of something “good”
or “bad” or “me.” But if and when they can work together,
it’s the absolution of all 3. I think the good news is that
when you do this, the positives, practically or mentally, seem to
massively outweigh the negatives. At least as they manifest
currently. I still haven’t reacted violently to violent impulses. I
still don’t attack commitments for sport. I manage to not debase
myself for cheap thrills at the expense of some potential for more.
To that end, I
think being grounded and set in your ways is extremely dangerous.
Saying ‘how things are” without qualifying “only just now”
can prescribe a very painful and dramatic future. If we’re going to
have the temerity to speculate on the nature of existence or our
place in it, how can we look for truth in anything more than the
pools of freely flowing ideas? That is, what can we ever say for
sure other than that things change? It seems if we’re ever
going to understand the nature of things, it’s in describing
that change. From there you can maybe hope to manifest intentioned
consequences. Whatever that means.
