💾 Archived View for tilde.club › ~oldernow › 2023-11-01-05-47-08.gmi captured on 2023-11-14 at 08:01:18. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-11-04)
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Why is it that billions of humans act in a way that is so clearly against their own interests?
Although they use different terminology/lingo to describe it, a preponderance of religions/philosophies I've encountered identify The Problem as mis-identification of <ineffable> with the purely conceptual notion of a free-willed, individual self - which identification devolves into the conviction of literally being said imprisoned-and-isolated-from-all-else-therein monster.
But that's prelude to my opinion of the answer to your question, which is: flogging itself is part of the monster's strategy to re-assert/re-confirm its alleged existence.
I don’t know what the solution is.
The solution presented by the selfsame religions/philosophies - which, again, tend to use different terminology/lingo, and tend (probably due to monsters having participated in the writing and/or interpretation thereof) to be diluted/polluted by stories/fables/metaphors/analogies that presuppose the reality of such monsters - is what a couple of them refer to as "salvation" from said monster-hood, which they seem to associate with so-called "dying to self" - where "self" (some call it "ego") is what this post has repeatedly called "monster".
How is that accomplished?
Well, first and foremost, it is not and cannot be accomplished by the monster, because the monster doesn't want to die, and thus tends to invent clever ways to appear to be "religious", "righteous", "above it all", "woke" etc., repeating such to themselves enough to become convinced of "being saved" therein.
But, in fact, all such "ways" only reinforce monster-hood.
Although this author has chanced upon many such explanations that have seemed best for a season (but you know how information can seemingly lose its efficacy when repeated over time), the most efficacious of late is in the midst of the following offering on so-called "nondualism" (i.e. not monster/non-monster, self/not-self, and so on):
NOT ONLY IS “WHAT IS” EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IS WHAT IS
(But the author would be remiss in failing to admit he's been in and around such information for what is likely an above-average amount of time, which likely constitutes a context rendering that set of verbiage more effective to him than the same might seem to other monsters coming at this sort of information for the first - or even merely the 99th - time.)