Society treats complemental aspects as opposites. Then it tries to minimize the “bad” aspects, not realizing that all good aspects are minimized too. This is true for happiness and suffering, it’s also true for good and evil. You can’t separate creation and destuction, nor life and death.
An easy psychological example is that people with a poverty-mindset (e.g. insecurity) try to take from others, but they’re stingy with giving. But if you want to get, you should first give. If you want to rest well you should first work hard. If you want to earn money, you should first invest. If you want to do something perfectly you should first allow yourself to do it badly. Life is the tension between two poles, the amplitude.
Any mindset obsessed with reduction is degenerate and harmful to the collective mental health of society. This includes minimization of suffering, conflict, discrimination, offense, and expenses. Speaking of which, feelings are surface-level. They’re not valuable optimization targets. They’re side-effects of deeper and more concrete processes. One should not optimize for plus happiness or minus suffering directly, it doesn’t work.
A person trying to make as few mistakes as possible is going to ruin themselves in the process. A man trying to remove all negative aspects from himself is going to struggle with dating. A parent trying to protect their child from ever feeling the slighest harm is going to ruin that child in the process. A society trying to minimize conflict is also going to minimize growth without realizing it.
The over-regulation of society is both a symptom and a generator of degeneracy, to the extent that we’re “saved” from reality, we become unable to deal with reality. The result of this lead to life-denying mindsets. It may very well be that some people are hurt by “the r-word”, but the correct solution is certainly not to shield them from ever hearing it again.
To summarize, life does not have an excess of negative aspects. It has a lack of positive aspects. The same goes for people, and for society. The difference is very important. ”Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl shows us that suffering (the negative) isn’t what’s important. A strong positive aspect is enough to reduce the negative aspect to nothing. Surely it would be bad taste to ask a mother if she regrets giving birth on account of it being painful?
Society treats complemental aspects as opposites.
Then it tries to minimize the “bad” aspects, not realizing that all good aspects are minimized too.
This is true for happiness and suffering, it’s also true for good and evil.
You can’t separate creation and destuction, nor life and death.
An easy psychological example is that people with a poverty-mindset (e.g. insecurity) try to take from others, but they’re stingy with giving.
But if you want to get, you should first give. If you want to rest well you should first work hard. If you want to earn money, you should first invest. If you want to do something perfectly you should first allow yourself to do it badly.
Life is the tension between two poles, the amplitude.
Any mindset obsessed with reduction is degenerate and harmful to the collective mental health of society.
This includes minimization of suffering, conflict, discrimination, offense, and expenses.
Speaking of which, feelings are surface-level. They’re not valuable optimization targets. They’re side-effects of deeper and more concrete processes.
One should not optimize for plus happiness or minus suffering directly, it doesn’t work.
A person trying to make as few mistakes as possible is going to ruin themselves in the process.
A man trying to remove all negative aspects from himself is going to struggle with dating.
A parent trying to protect their child from ever feeling the slighest harm is going to ruin that child in the process.
A society trying to minimize conflict is also going to minimize growth without realizing it.
The over-regulation of society is both a symptom and a generator of degeneracy, to the extent that we’re “saved” from reality, we become unable to deal with reality. The result of this lead to life-denying mindsets. It may very well be that some people are hurt by “the r-word”, but the correct solution is certainly not to shield them from ever hearing it again.
To summarize, life does not have an excess of negative aspects. It has a lack of positive aspects. The same goes for people, and for society.
The difference is very important.
”Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl shows us that suffering (the negative) isn’t what’s important. A strong positive aspect is enough to reduce the negative aspect to nothing. Surely it would be bad taste to ask a mother if she regrets giving birth on account of it being painful?