{"id":150,"date":"2013-08-16T00:01:49","date_gmt":"2013-08-16T00:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/believing-that-the-world-is-ok"},"modified":"2019-08-28T09:02:13","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T09:02:13","slug":"believing-that-the-world-is-ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2013\/08\/16\/believing-that-the-world-is-ok\/","title":{"rendered":"Believing that the world is OK"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s this belief that the world is OK. How to address this? How about step 1: What is the nature of the constituents of the matter of concern? Or as Socrates might be modernized, “What is the meaning of each thing?”. Truly<\/em> ask this, because barely any do. Plato would have us believe that Socrates was the wisest just for knowing that he knew nothing. The implication is that for the far majority, knowledge is not merely a mode of belief, but of faith, all the worse for being chosen. Phew. Exaggeration obviously? So did we check what things mean?<\/p>\n

Our world, you and I, Homo sapien level consciousness, are concerned about our lives, which are dominated by interaction with the rest of it. To an almost singular extent, the degree to which we are so dominated, or more-so, not<\/em>, is synonymous with forms of power, of which wealth<\/em> is the contemporary archetype.<\/p>\n

Let me paint you an image of Homo sapien. The greatest – by which description you intuitively know what I mean, \u00a0the most powerful<\/em> – social structure was that dominated by the Roman Empire. Let me tell you about the Roman Empire. I got these flickering impressions from Wikipedia by-the-way, so do your own issue if you’re scoffing. At least a third of the population of Italy were slaves! At least one in ten across the entire empire!! Furthermore: About half the slaves were owned by just over 1 per cent!!! Slaves could be summarily executed, had no legal recourse (awaiting changes), and could be born into lives that were nasty, brutish, and short (especially those working labour in mines and fields). So wait, why do we have the Leviathan? Anyway…<\/p>\n

Oh, and the technical term for that sort of situation is “status quo”. So stop rocking the boat!<\/p>\n

People are ok with things. Merely ‘mostly’, not ‘completely’. But; always<\/em>. Always. Always. No matter what. Always. So why the whole spiel. People suck. Always. Today too. That is the nature of society (that place your consciousness calls home).<\/span><\/p>\n

Opposition now enters (stage left), “But what about progress?” I agree, therein appears hope. Perhaps, or at least, by some arguments, ‘inevitably’. But I’m talking about the billionaires. The ‘hundreds-of-million’aires. These people are not good. And they built our cage.<\/p>\n

If you’re vibrating high enough now, you might get that feeling of the Matrix. The scene wherein everything changes from shapes to symbols, and in a single moment our intrepid hero understands how it all works. Although that of course is an exaggeration. We have but the faintest. We know but the most general and publicized.<\/p>\n

So what does the person do? That’s your question.<\/p>\n

Here’s a little food for thought while you ponder that one. In a very general way that I hope you understand, every single rule about life is invented, artificial. All those expectations and values. They’re all man-made. Thus you can decide what you want and why, completely on your own.<\/p>\n

[Temporal hiatus interputus]\n

All it takes is for one shadow to be out of shape or a single disobedient mirror for you to wonder whether “they’re” everywhere. What’s the right word for the tendrils that seem to curl around with such sleight.<\/p>\n

And once more I return to the antithetical problem: but how can the world be getting better? It seems obvious that the intuitive sense of enfranchisement, or it’s negative-form, segregation, have progressed enormously even if only over the last few centuries.<\/p>\n

[One last thing:] Paint It fucking<\/em> Black. Right? Paint it all. Take the rainbow, the girls, all the pretty colours. What place do they have in this world. There is so much darkness. So much. So much. So much. So much. So much. So much. So much, so much so msodfj ljsdfj lsdfjdslkfjioejo[peofesld.d..d.d.dfuck fuck fucked. Paint it fucking black because it’s barely else despite its faux colours. Black. All of it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s this belief that the world is OK. How to address this? How about step 1: What is the nature of the constituents of the matter of concern? Or as Socrates might be modernized, “What is the meaning of each thing?”. Truly ask this, because barely any do. Plato would have us believe that Socrates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,90,75,77],"tags":[],"metadata":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-blog-posts","category-meanwhileii","category-perspective"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1689,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/09\/30\/the-story-of-thales-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":150,"position":0},"title":"The story of Thales","author":"Pala","date":"September 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: In September 2010, Shai begins the first phase of his intellectual journey with an\u00a0essay\u00a0dedicated to the Greek mathematician, astronomer and pre-Socratic philosopher, Thales of Miletus. This the first of\u00a080 essays, written between September 2010 and July 2015, dedicated to analysing the thoughts and writings of the great ancient\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1714,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/11\/22\/a-meditation-on-platos-ion-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":150,"position":1},"title":"A meditation on Plato’s Ion","author":"Pala","date":"November 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Plato was an\u00a0Ancient Greek philosopher\u00a0who lived around 2400 years ago in\u00a0Athens. Almost all of Plato's surviving writings are dialogues (philosophical plays).\u00a0Ion\u00a0is a dialogue between Socrates (Plato's teacher) and Ion, a celebrated performer of poetry. Although Plato is always interesting, it is often hard to find a positive lesson that can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1710,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/11\/06\/ancient-greek-philosophy-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":150,"position":2},"title":"Ancient Greek Philosophy","author":"Pala","date":"November 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"What is\u00a0this?\u00a0It's an index of sorts, linking to\u00a0nodes\u00a0that relate to\u00a0philosophy\u00a0in\u00a0Ancient Greece. See also the first footnote below[1]. It was written for two main reasons: (1) As an index that can be referred to when looking for something to read about Ancient Greek philosophy; (2) as an index that can be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":977,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/08\/02\/pomegranate-express\/","url_meta":{"origin":150,"position":3},"title":"Pomegranate Express","author":"Pala","date":"August 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Socrates and Leonard Cohen sit beneath an olive tree smoking opium from a Chinese pipe. Socrates: Gestures at black tar. Is this British? It has that tangy taste. LC: You know I don\u2019t buy British. Both are silent as they mull over each other\u2019s words. LC: You know I got\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2414,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2015\/07\/27\/on-the-apology-of-socrates\/","url_meta":{"origin":150,"position":4},"title":"On The Apology of Socrates","author":"Pala","date":"July 27, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The\u00a0title\u00a0is a quirk of etymology, having been born in the Greek courts, spread through the early Chrisitan's spiritual and philosophical defences, and ended up meaning something like a \"regretted guilt\". Not so here. 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