There are many contributors to stress in our modern way of life. Stress is known to be a far-reaching factor in the development of health issues. Stress puts strain on our hearts and other organs. Even though we can't see all the negative manifestations of stress right away, we still feel that stress in life.
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All that stress makes us want to find a way out, to escape it. The modern world has a lot of outlets for our stress, to escape the stress, but also escapes from the boredom of our lives. Many of us lack significant meaning and purpose in the bigger picture, being satisfied by our personal sensory pleasures and gratifications.
To escape the stress and boredom, many consume food that provides them with a sense of feeling good. Others do drugs to relax or feel different. But most people consume entertainment of various kinds to drown out the boredom, to phase out, zone out, veg out, numb ourselves and escape.
Drugs, alcohol, sex, sports, entertainment, gossip, TV, media and games are all used to fill time, to not be bored, to have new sensory experiences feed our thoughts and feelings, to experience sensations. They are distractions that keeps our time, energy and attention locked up in a cage of frivolity, keeping our vision looking at things that don't really matter, keeping us from looking deeper into our world and reality to see the hard truths we want to avoid facing.
People don't want to talk about heavier issues, they want to talk about “light”, mostly pointless and irrelevant topics of conversation, or superfluous chit-chat small-talk about their personal lives. The desire to talk about more meaningful things that matter more, is not too present. That's too "heavy". That's too negative. Those topics bring people "down", making them "feel-bad" about the condition of the world. They just want to "feel-good" and live in a positivity mask with rose-colored glasses.
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Ask someone what the most important 3 things are in their lives, and you will likely get "family", and "friends" in there usually, some people have "money" as highly important, or a "career", but most of all you will get people to say "being happy" is part of what is important for them. After all, that's the American Dream, the blind pursuit of happiness as a goal in life to maximize and focus on.
Our actions are being driven by the pursuit of happiness. Don’t worry, just be happy, ignorance is bliss, right? Who needs higher ideals to focus on, like truth? Who answers that truth is important in their life? Not that many.
The happiness dream is distraction to keep us focused on feeling-good in life, and avoid the negative that can bring you down, but needs to be dealt with if we want a sane world.
"Human sickness is so severe that few can bear to look at it. But those who do will become well."
– Vernon Howard
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Rather than seek to escape the boredom because we lack a truer, higher and realer purpose in our lives to spend our time, energy and attention on, we should learn to develop a care for truth to motivate and rive us towards using our time, energy and attention in more meaningful ways.
We have to be willing to be affected by reality, and feel the worry, anxiety, stress, discomfort, insecurity, doubt, and fear as a signal and trigger to wake us up to realize the supreme importance of truth in life. Then to go out and seek it and figure out what is wrong int he world and with our lives, and what is making us so stressed, sot hat we can change things for the better.
There is limited time in life. Spend in wisely. If things need to be healed and repaired, be it in the world or in ourselves, if now is not the time, when is? If it's not up to us to do anything about it, then who is it up to?
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Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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Which is why humor is such a powerful vehicle - as a segue into subjects lots of people prefer to avoid, for the reasons you say.
Is this purely from decadence, and technological advances, I wonder?
Real purpose on the biological level is food, shelter, sex. That's it.
So all the computer games in the world with as much realism as actually being there is not actually being there,(and we know this in our brains) because our basic needs have already been met.
For purpose to be real it has to have meaning, relevance. And for that to happen, does it not have to be linked (closely) to meeting the basic needs of the biological unit?
That sounded much more depressing and nihilistic than I meant it to! lol
No, purpose and meaning doesn't have to be linked to the basic needs of food, shelter, sex... lol. Those are lower basic goals for survival, not evolution in consciousness ;)
lol - no, I realize it doesn't have to be related.
?????
My point was that the further away from these basics you go, the more abstract it becomes (evolution in consciousness?)
So to make these purposes as real as possible, requires a self induced 'fooling of oneself', to 'make it' as real as possible.
But it never will be - it never can be.
Food shelter sex is the reality, the rest is degrees of a self convincing argument forcing other purposes to take the mantle of 'just as real'.
....you see what I mean?
Still don't mean to be nihilistic....
One might argue simply based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs that even a caveman would find better things to do if his needs for food, shelter, and sex were indubitably covered for life.
Maslow aside, learning could be argued to be the best way to ensure your own continued existence (unless you already decided your 'soul' is immortal). I'm not just talking about 'becoming immortal'; whether you lived centuries ago and learning about herbs or a snake could save your life, or you live in the present with the dangers of wasting away due to a lack of knowledge about the importance of diet, exercise, stress management, etc. Thus, to anyone who doesn't flinch away from the truth or escape thought altogether, our survival needs really aren't covered as well as they could be.
My mother use to tell me "your eye's are the window to your soul. If you want to be presentable you had better make sure of what people see in those eye's when they look at them." Then she would hurriedly say, "but don't you think to much about what they think. Just be beautiful you."
It has taken a while to get what she was trying to tell me. When we are young we think to much about what others think. As we get older we begin to at some point not be distracted by what people think. Truth to tell we most likely never got what others thought right anyways. Funny thing is that is when we really begin to live.
Yeah, what others say matters, we can learn from others, not live in a delusion, others can check us when we are wrong or foolish, but they can also be wrong and make false claims about us ;) Life is judgment, we have to be able to honestly judge things being said as being correct and accurate or not.
You are spot on on this. Yes people do not like to be told the truth, as a matter of fact escaping reality has a major long knock off effect. Escaping is just effective for sometime.
Yup, you can only run, but you can't hide form what you run from, life is always there to return to ;)
I love the way your detailed the photography correctly....you are talented
Thank you ;)
Nice work! Thank you very much!
You belong to a different genre of people!
Most will not have the courage to face reality!
Ignorance is bliss!
Cheers.
Thanks ;)
Thank you so much for this. We do not need to look far. FACEBOOK and all those people with perfect lives and many friends just goes to say where human consciousness is.
No one shows anything negative in their Facebook. According to Facebbok everyone has achieved the Happiness Dream as you call it.
It's time to wake up. And.... GROW UP.
Yup, lots of appearances and little substance ;)
I find this so true! I always want to discuss deep topics that I believe matter but very few people are willing to engage in any kind of meaningful conversation. Maybe it's just me and I need that kind of mental stimulation to keep from becoming bored with the day to day life...
Also thanks for the witness vote! It's a huge help! <3
Yes, substantive mental stimulation ;) Regular talk is pretty boring ;) You're welcome for the vote.
Philosophy are things alway from the ordinary. Our present day fears is the true, we don’t want to hear and do things the right way, too bad! Great post @krnel
Excellently said,
Let's give time to conquer our fear.
Discovering our awesomeness and living a well planned and fulfilled life.
Family, friends, and money 3 things to look for in life is very true. Boredom is definitely there in every human being, just a different way to get rid of that feeling. While if we always think positive then the energy of the mind we spend will be positive as well. regards @krnel :)
I wonder what is your higher purpose guys.