[Ibon]

Actually there is some research to support the idea some folks are just lucky. Well, in fact they are more curious and out going and optimistic so keep poking looks by for opportunities, they are constantly on the lookout,
A heads up attitude.

I agree with this. And then there is a bit of fearlessness required as well. And then trust. And of course stepping out of the way and allowing the momentum to guide you instead trying to direct.

There are a lot of subtleties that contribute to what looks on the surface like luck.

[Ibon]

Stories are one thing. Being/living the story builds character and humility. Surviving these things is the gateway to wisdom. Not many folks, especially in the US, would even grok what I'm talking about.
Are YOU experienced?

It was long expeditions deep into wilderness that contributed more to my later success than my formal education. Hitch hiking across the country to get to a trail head somewhere, sleeping under bridges, canoeing several hundred kilometers on a river.

I looked already back then at suburbia and consumerism as a death trap. That later I entered the world of commerce for a couple of decades raising a family, yeah I was in it but never of it since I never lost the deeper truths gained those years on the road with hardly a dime in my pocket.

I remember that I didn't have a choice. I was driven by a passion to go deep. Consensus reality always made me squirm.

Domesticated or feral?

Most people only know domesticated.

[roccman]

I think a lot of life is about luck. Luck here being something like how the improbable can happen, or how the most likely thing doesn't come about. You can work really hard and still have bad luck. You can work less hard and have good luck. You can work like an average person and, if you have bland luck, do pretty well.

I think it was in Moby Dick I read, "There is fate, free will and chance. And chance trumps all".

[roccman]

Stories are one thing. Being/living the story builds character and humility. Surviving these things is the gateway to wisdom. Not many folks, especially in the US, would even grok what I'm talking about.
Are YOU experienced?

I heard once, "write your own gospel, live your own myth".

ITO being "experienced", well, depending on what you are alluding to - most are not experienced. That there are plant teachers and these lessons can be quite severe. Yet, when one has these experiences - one quickly realizes that much work - beyond the veil, needs done.

The trick, of course, is to 1) find the time and 2) find the courage.

[evilgenius]

I think a lot of life is about luck. Luck here being something like how the improbable can happen, or how the most likely thing doesn't come about. You can work really hard and still have bad luck. You can work less hard and have good luck. You can work like an average person and, if you have bland luck, do pretty well.

I think it was in Moby Dick I read, "There is fate, free will and chance. And chance trumps all".

Yep. The biggest one, not exactly like the kind of luck I was first talking about, is who your parents are. That shapes a person far more than anything else. The next thing is who your friends are, but those begin from the position your parents place you in to start your life. The impact of your parents upon who your friends are is the only reason why I say they are more important. All things being equal, your friends will influence you much more than your parents.

But a person can overcome both of these, by telling the truth. I know that sounds kind of lame. Don't they have to seek the truth first? What is truth? Is it in a code of some kind? Maybe it has to do with whatever brings success, or power? A person can begin finding out by starting with themselves, by keeping their word. That alone will teach them much about how other things masquerade as truth. Don't give your word lightly, and watch how many people will make assumptions that you have given it. Don't allow circumstance to alter your word, and watch as the excuses seek to abandon you to the abyss.

[roccman]

What is truth? Is it in a code of some kind? Maybe it has to do with whatever brings success, or power?

I think the highest value in life is the intent to speak genuinely. Truth? I have a belief - verified through personal experiences - that we are merely human - participating in and contributing to something we are not equipped to understand (without some help). That humans are not entirely free - nor entirely slaves. That there is a cadence to life that humans can access - if one listens - and that locking into this cadence removes fear, superstition, and idle time. That intelligence and energy are the highest virtues (according to Tolstoy) in life. That there is a power in belief - and that individual belief can be usurped into herd belief. Think belief in "democracy" or belief in a flag, god, football team. And that through herd beliefs egregores can be manifest. Tribal gods can get some legs and start to stomp around.

Best to be a free agent - then proudly jump into the abyss.

[evilgenius]

What is truth? Is it in a code of some kind? Maybe it has to do with whatever brings success, or power?

I think the highest value in life is the intent to speak genuinely. Truth? I have a belief - verified through personal experiences - that we are merely human - participating in and contributing to something we are not equipped to understand (without some help). That humans are not entirely free - nor entirely slaves. That there is a cadence to life that humans can access - if one listens - and that locking into this cadence removes fear, superstition, and idle time. That intelligence and energy are the highest virtues (according to Tolstoy) in life. That there is a power in belief - and that individual belief can be usurped into herd belief. Think belief in "democracy" or belief in a flag, god, football team. And that through herd beliefs egregores can be manifest. Tribal gods can get some legs and start to stomp around.

Best to be a free agent - then proudly jump into the abyss.

Interesting. You mean like synchronicity?

[roccman]

What is truth? Is it in a code of some kind? Maybe it has to do with whatever brings success, or power?

I think the highest value in life is the intent to speak genuinely. Truth? I have a belief - verified through personal experiences - that we are merely human - participating in and contributing to something we are not equipped to understand (without some help). That humans are not entirely free - nor entirely slaves. That there is a cadence to life that humans can access - if one listens - and that locking into this cadence removes fear, superstition, and idle time. That intelligence and energy are the highest virtues (according to Tolstoy) in life. That there is a power in belief - and that individual belief can be usurped into herd belief. Think belief in "democracy" or belief in a flag, god, football team. And that through herd beliefs egregores can be manifest. Tribal gods can get some legs and start to stomp around.

Best to be a free agent - then proudly jump into the abyss.

Interesting. You mean like synchronicity?

Not exactly - it is more of a perspective - an individual perspective that is revealed through experiences. Think gnosis. A knowing. The individual stewarding a "given" perspective. It is through this perspective that trivialities like politics, war, love, material existence releases its claw from around one's throat - so that room for other learning can take place. Simply - an reordering of dictated priorities. A re-wiring of beliefs.

[asg70]

Evilgenius, despite his handle, is a wise man with a good head on his shoulders. He should post more often.

BTW, truth is most often revealed through hardship. People who face terminal cancer diagnoses or people staring into the ruins of their houses that have just burned up in a fire have a perspective that those of us who are fat and lazy can't hope to reach. Most of what consumes our thoughts on a daily basis is the most trivial nonsense.

[Ibon]

Evilgenius, despite his handle, is a wise man with a good head on his shoulders. He should post more often.

BTW, truth is most often revealed through hardship. People who face terminal cancer diagnoses or people staring into the ruins of their houses that have just burned up in a fire have a perspective that those of us who are fat and lazy can't hope to reach. Most of what consumes our thoughts on a daily basis is the most trivial nonsense.

Humans do not handle abundance well. I actually think sometimes that all this over consumption is an effort to bring us back down quickly to the historical default position of having to make huge creative efforts to extract food and resources from our environment. This is what gave us our brains and integrity.

WE have only become parasitic during the past 3 generations of so and we are introducing feedback consequences to human overshoot which will indeed quite quickly take us back to the historical norm.

Hell is what we will leave behind.

[onlooker]

Yes, good posts guys. And indeed, it seems that those who have experienced true hardships in life have the capacity then to empathize with those who are in unfortunate circumstances and are experiencing bad times.

[SeaGypsy]

The posters zooming in on truthfulness are absolutely spot on. The effects are virtually all encompassing. Self worth, integrity, time acuity, cadence, clarity, the list goes on & on.

Ever met a pathological liar? Is there a more miserable, more hollow form of human life?

[onlooker]

Yes, ultimately the pathological liar is the biggest of cowards and many times the biggest of scoundrels. This is because they cannot face up to their own actions and so free themselves from any sense of responsibility or even sensibility of what they do. Ultimately, though they become loose cannons that usually go down of their own accord or so I am inclined to think.

[SeaGypsy]

I'm not so sure. From what I've seen, pathological lying starts off in childhood & adolescence as self agrandisement. Most kids exaggerate stories for effect. Also most people by adulthood work out that lying simply isn't worth the effort, it only works on strangers & mostly people can see through it.

[Newfie]

From our front page.

https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/epis ... #more-1302

It’s a little shot of TRUTH that will, if you listen closely and pay attention, excite some dark emotions. I wonder how Reese can contain his knowledge.

[roccman]

Yes, ultimately the pathological liar is the biggest of cowards and many times the biggest of scoundrels. This is because they cannot face up to their own actions and so free themselves from any sense of responsibility or even sensibility of what they do. Ultimately, though they become loose cannons that usually go down of their own accord or so I am inclined to think.

All humans wear masks. Only the individual knows the truth of the matter - the feather is weighed only against lies that have been told within an individual's story.

There are methods for one to strip away masks - that may not be known. Often painful methods - somewhat fearful. One is not born with courage - it must be cultivated through ones life. Inch by inch.

In alot of ways - the pathological liar knows its intent. To fool and use people for personal gain.

Personally, the vast majority of humans follow the "safe" path - not extreme in either direction. I find this more loathsome than one who lies continuously.

[GHung]

Yes, ultimately the pathological liar is the biggest of cowards and many times the biggest of scoundrels. This is because they cannot face up to their own actions and so free themselves from any sense of responsibility or even sensibility of what they do. Ultimately, though they become loose cannons that usually go down of their own accord or so I am inclined to think.

All humans wear masks. Only the individual knows the truth of the matter - the feather is weighed only against lies that have been told within an individual's story.

There are methods for one to strip away masks - that may not be known. Often painful methods - somewhat fearful. One is not born with courage - it must be cultivated through ones life. Inch by inch.

In alot of ways - the pathological liar knows its intent. To fool and use people for personal gain.

Personally, the vast majority of humans follow the "safe" path - not extreme in either direction. I find this more loathsome than one who lies continuously.

Sounds more like an elaborate excuse for lying, IMO.

[evilgenius]

I've been thinking about this after watching the new Thor movie at the theater yesterday. Wow, comic book relief. Yes, and no. In the movie Thor falls from where he was and winds up in this place where the leader is so stricken with a desire to see winners that everything is about winning. The first thing that Thor is asked when he lands there is if he is a fighter or food. The whole society is arranged around winning and absolutely everything else has no value. If it isn't junk, or dead, it might as well be. In that place there is enough junk all around for any creative person to do great things with, but nobody is. All they want to do is discover the next fighter.

Using another myth might help get to my point. In the garden man's downfall was taking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Basically, his downfall was coming to the point of choice. It's easy to simplify that choice by celebrating winners, and considering everybody else as food. We do that every day in the world. The US is a good example of it. Something like the evolutionary paradigm permeates everything in the US. Science is celebrated, except the part of the method that must always remain unsure of its assumptions. You don't have to look any further than go die in a ditch healthcare to see that. You don't have to see any further than I won't pay for somebody else to have a thing (national defense excepted), not in my backyard naysaying to see that. Alright, kumbaya, that still doesn't mean we are all in this together.

I think choice is the key. What we have today is a world built around saying yes to every whim that comes upon us. As such we are easy prey for those who use the power of the group, through advertising, to define us and, thus, to define the group. The group has become the size of our collective wants. We are constantly bombarded with the object of winning, as in either getting rich or otherwise following some example of success. People aren't free necessarily to think for themselves and either accept or reject choices. Political correctness is just a means to keep everything on the table, and eliminate somebody becoming a loser so that the group can remain strong. Worse, the wisdom we do develop, that could come to the aid of individuals in the midst of such choices, is denigrated. If it doesn't help us win, then people easily deny it. I think it is somewhere in the reality of each of us truly becoming individuals, and those not based upon outward designs upon some more common idea of success, though it may pick from that, that success, in the form of becoming a real person, comes.

Another example that gets at what I am saying is how the human brain develops as it gets older in youth. What it actually starts with amounts to far more connections than it ends up with. Along the way it has to pare down the number of connections in order to become something. You can't get to there from here without giving up the idea of having everything.

[asg70]

I think there needs to be a balance between individualism and the welfare of the group. If there's too much groupthink then you wind up with North Korea type situations where entire populations are brainwashed into servitude. But if there's too much individuality then you have this zero-sum-game of everyone only being out for their own individual self-interest. You won't see it here, but Ayn Rand style objectivism overtaking the right is probably more responsible for America's crumbling roads and bridges than a lack of surplus energy.

Government these days has failed because of this lack of ability for society to look beyond individual or party affiliation. You can see this morality play at work in Paul Ryan trying to decide if and when to throw Trump under the bus as he teeters closer and closer to violating constitutional separation of powers. The sort of bending of the rules that's going on now in Washington is only made possible by placing party loyalty above the rule of law, or individual politicians flip-flopping as needed to insure their next election victory.

[onlooker]

Yes Evil, I think you are getting at some important notions of what this modern world involves and in particular the US. Winning and achievement per say are not bad. However, like most attitudes and emotions they must be balanced. And they must be informed by reasonable and rational thoughts and courses of action.
How, can anyone at this point defend this hyper industrial world that is leading our species into utter catastrophe. Our modern culture has been very good at communicating reward/punishment in relation to how people run their lives. But beyond this gilded view of how Capitalism rewards hard work, entrepreneurship, smarts etc. is the underlying reality of might makes right. You see that in the relentless exploitation of the weak by the strong, in the unfair and unequal distribution of wealth and status in this world. In the very existence of a hyper commercialized culture that prices everything but seems to devalue the human relations which have formed the backbone of our gradual evolution and its successes.
So, in summary we have become so focused on the results , on achievement , on winning that we have lost our notion of sharing and caring and have allowed the law of the jungle to take predominance ie. survival of the fittest.