I respect gato’s intellect immensely, however, two thinkers who i respect more are cs lewis and Tolkien. They understood the last something that gato is missing here: there is an actual God, objectively and unequivocally. and finding belief in that true God and His teachings, are what will lead to us being “complete”. This is what America has lost that we once had. There is no permanent or enduring “self actualization” without realizing that one is a child of God, and becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.
I have come to the conclusion that the Atlantic and the National Geographic along with many of our formally respected informational providers, have actually turned out to be, "grooming tools," to get the the nobodies ready for the next control feature that those we have placed in "the Knower" power positions want to tell us is or should be. Without us nobodies giving our attention to the supposed "knowers" they too are reduced to nobodies. What ridiculous terms, each person is the one to know what is best for them in their particular life circumstances.
The first clue is that it’s in The Atlantic, written by an academic. I can’t help but feel gaslit.
I suspect he and his pals have a very clear idea of what the government should do to “protect” the pursuit of happiness, and it’s buried right there on page one with: you all just go ahead and learn to love each other and Big Brother and everything will be okay.
When the founders wrote “happiness,” they did not mean rainbows and unicorns. The idea of idle navel-gazing was not written into that document. Happiness IS to make your meaning by toil and introspection; to build your family, your business, your life.
He’s not all wrong about meaning or love, he’s just all wrong in implying that he knows what those are.
I've always thought that curiosity makes the cat - not kill it.
An existence without curiosity is to starve the mind of potential for happiness.
Openness allows for curiosity and the ability to embrace paradox. Certainty without contemplation is prison to the mind.
Contemplation is an incomplete/limited set without curiosity. IMO this leads to a life of searching for ONE elusive external key to open the prison door.
To be curious and welcome uncertainty is to fill your key ring with many keys that are critical for the mind to freely pursue individual happiness.
I'm a catholic and my closest friends are unbelievers. And I'm the worst kind of catholic, one that actually believes in his choice of faith. I don't care what the next person does per se and agree with the thesis of this essay and for me it is essentially "leave me alone and if you want to know about me and what makes me tick, then ask". I won't push my beliefs on you, but I certainly will not let injustice, which seems to be the inverse of common sense, "coexist" with me. I won't accept RCMP officers trampling Iroquois elders. I won't accept abortion as a right. And I will not accept governments forcing me to do their bidding. Whether you believe in the Almighty or not, whether you have quirks that annoy me or not, either stand beside or step aside.
I've been wondering what made me different from so many people I know who have fallen prey to tribalism. I had to learn long ago to find happiness within myself. It's still a struggle, but I believe this article explains it better than anything I've seen thus far. Thank you! Good kitty! 😽
Turn away my friends. Reject this culture. Indulge in the felt presence of immediate experience. Mediate everything through your own being. Stop outsourcing your lives. You are more amazing to you than anyone else ever could be.
My teenage son frequently asks me "what is life?", my reply is "life is what YOU make it. Nobody else or any one thing can make you happy". We don't have a constitution in the UK but I recognise the division and political malaise. I think it's global. If people realised the answers are within themselves and within their power, the world would be a much better place for all of us. Like you say, too many look to external factors for elusive meaning and "happiness" and also - want it NOW!
Love this & I agree with you, happiness is a choice.
We all will go through hard times & some will believe that better times are coming & work towards that goal & look for happiness in the little daily things.
The ‘wokester warrior dictators’ believe that other people owe them happiness & they should be given happiness & not have to work for it.
America is great because it states that our ‘Rights’ come from our Creator & NOT our government.
We have the Right to Life, Liberty & the PURSUIT of happiness, not the guarantee of happiness!
Happiness is a choice that comes from within, (as you so wonderfully described). But the wokesters don’t understand this & they think that other people can give them happiness.
I am a Christian but I’m not ‘religious’, I believe most ‘religions’ end up becoming dictators instead of truly loving their Creator & other people.
For me, I seek to be more like my Creator Jesus every day.
The more we become like Him the more we love other people unconditionally & want to help others find true happiness & Love.
God is Love so the more we become like Him the better & more we can love others.
Those who do not ‘pursue’ happiness will never find it.
They think they will be happy if someone gives them riches but they won’t, look at all the celebrities that die miserable & lonely?
God gives all of us gifts & it’s our job to seek God & He will help us find our gifts as we journey through life.
Also what we sow in life we will reap, the ‘wokesters’ seek division, blaming others for their bad choices in life, they want something for nothing & are almost always ungrateful no matter what they are given for free.
I’m just a Grama & have made MANY of my own mistakes, if we don’t learn from our mistakes & change then we will continue to repeat the same mistakes over & over again.
Having a real ‘relationship’ with our Creator instead of ‘religion’ made all the difference in my life for the better.
Religion = manmade
Relationship = Putting God first & not man & not just talking to God & learning about God but listening & looking for His answers.
Our Creator speaks to us every day through so many ways, but we won’t hear Him if we aren’t looking & listening for Him.
The difference of America from most/all other countries is our Constitutional Rights are suppose to come from our ‘Creator’ & not our government, unfortunately many in our government & the world want to destroy our Rights by changing our constitution to say our rights come from our government & not our Creator.
Forgive me for rambling this morning & thank you for this article.
maybe one of the things missing in his piece is the larger manufactured reality-show world we're living in and which is clearly fraying and TPTWB do their best to keep us under their spell.
As a ex-atheist, communist, libertarian, etc... I can honestly tell you:
Why I exist: To serve Jesus
For whom I will die: Jesus
The evidence of Jesus' resurrection is pretty convincing. I urge you to look it up. A great book with which to start: Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. A great youtube channel for skeptics: Mike Winger's Bible Thinker.
Every time I read a piece such as this, there is always this sentence--"you may have your own precepts and prescriptions... so long as these ideas and ideals... do not infringe the agency and liberty of others." But this seems to me backwards; not infringing on others is always an afterthought.
Try inverting this sentence; really this whole piece--"So long as your precepts and prescriptions do not infringe the agency and liberty of others, you may pursue your ideas and ideals to their fullest extent."
None of us can be allowed to pursue our ideas unchecked, because we all have truly bad ideas. When I was young, I used to think the world would be a much better place if everyone were like me. There'd be no murders, rapes, thefts. But as I got older I realized the world would be a horrible place because much good would go undone; many beautiful ideas would go unthought. I used to be repulsed by the evil I saw in others but now I am in constant awe of the good I find in others that I do not find in myself.
All of us must bump up against the "so long as it does not infringe on others" before we can know if our ideas and actions are "good". Happiness contains within it a measure of humility and self-sacrifice.
Marcus Aurelius and his fellow Stoics have much to teach the grievance chasers and professional victims about happiness:
• “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
• “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
I also highly recommend Oliver Burkeman’s “The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking.”
"Love one another" is incomplete. The Bible would say "Love one another, as I have loved you"
There is an example. A target. We are to love as God loves.
I respect gato’s intellect immensely, however, two thinkers who i respect more are cs lewis and Tolkien. They understood the last something that gato is missing here: there is an actual God, objectively and unequivocally. and finding belief in that true God and His teachings, are what will lead to us being “complete”. This is what America has lost that we once had. There is no permanent or enduring “self actualization” without realizing that one is a child of God, and becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.
I have come to the conclusion that the Atlantic and the National Geographic along with many of our formally respected informational providers, have actually turned out to be, "grooming tools," to get the the nobodies ready for the next control feature that those we have placed in "the Knower" power positions want to tell us is or should be. Without us nobodies giving our attention to the supposed "knowers" they too are reduced to nobodies. What ridiculous terms, each person is the one to know what is best for them in their particular life circumstances.
The first clue is that it’s in The Atlantic, written by an academic. I can’t help but feel gaslit.
I suspect he and his pals have a very clear idea of what the government should do to “protect” the pursuit of happiness, and it’s buried right there on page one with: you all just go ahead and learn to love each other and Big Brother and everything will be okay.
When the founders wrote “happiness,” they did not mean rainbows and unicorns. The idea of idle navel-gazing was not written into that document. Happiness IS to make your meaning by toil and introspection; to build your family, your business, your life.
He’s not all wrong about meaning or love, he’s just all wrong in implying that he knows what those are.
I see this as a follow-on piece to the other Atlantic article which begs for a pardon for the pandemic crimes. So it works like this:
1. I'm not responsible for what I did to you.
2. I know you are angry, but you must learn to be happy. You must do that, because I already excused myself for my crimes against you.
Atlantic magazine - the new journal of abusive relationships.
This article made me happy this morning...:)
I've always thought that curiosity makes the cat - not kill it.
An existence without curiosity is to starve the mind of potential for happiness.
Openness allows for curiosity and the ability to embrace paradox. Certainty without contemplation is prison to the mind.
Contemplation is an incomplete/limited set without curiosity. IMO this leads to a life of searching for ONE elusive external key to open the prison door.
To be curious and welcome uncertainty is to fill your key ring with many keys that are critical for the mind to freely pursue individual happiness.
I'm a catholic and my closest friends are unbelievers. And I'm the worst kind of catholic, one that actually believes in his choice of faith. I don't care what the next person does per se and agree with the thesis of this essay and for me it is essentially "leave me alone and if you want to know about me and what makes me tick, then ask". I won't push my beliefs on you, but I certainly will not let injustice, which seems to be the inverse of common sense, "coexist" with me. I won't accept RCMP officers trampling Iroquois elders. I won't accept abortion as a right. And I will not accept governments forcing me to do their bidding. Whether you believe in the Almighty or not, whether you have quirks that annoy me or not, either stand beside or step aside.
I've been wondering what made me different from so many people I know who have fallen prey to tribalism. I had to learn long ago to find happiness within myself. It's still a struggle, but I believe this article explains it better than anything I've seen thus far. Thank you! Good kitty! 😽
Turn away my friends. Reject this culture. Indulge in the felt presence of immediate experience. Mediate everything through your own being. Stop outsourcing your lives. You are more amazing to you than anyone else ever could be.
My teenage son frequently asks me "what is life?", my reply is "life is what YOU make it. Nobody else or any one thing can make you happy". We don't have a constitution in the UK but I recognise the division and political malaise. I think it's global. If people realised the answers are within themselves and within their power, the world would be a much better place for all of us. Like you say, too many look to external factors for elusive meaning and "happiness" and also - want it NOW!
Love this & I agree with you, happiness is a choice.
We all will go through hard times & some will believe that better times are coming & work towards that goal & look for happiness in the little daily things.
The ‘wokester warrior dictators’ believe that other people owe them happiness & they should be given happiness & not have to work for it.
America is great because it states that our ‘Rights’ come from our Creator & NOT our government.
We have the Right to Life, Liberty & the PURSUIT of happiness, not the guarantee of happiness!
Happiness is a choice that comes from within, (as you so wonderfully described). But the wokesters don’t understand this & they think that other people can give them happiness.
I am a Christian but I’m not ‘religious’, I believe most ‘religions’ end up becoming dictators instead of truly loving their Creator & other people.
For me, I seek to be more like my Creator Jesus every day.
The more we become like Him the more we love other people unconditionally & want to help others find true happiness & Love.
God is Love so the more we become like Him the better & more we can love others.
Those who do not ‘pursue’ happiness will never find it.
They think they will be happy if someone gives them riches but they won’t, look at all the celebrities that die miserable & lonely?
God gives all of us gifts & it’s our job to seek God & He will help us find our gifts as we journey through life.
Also what we sow in life we will reap, the ‘wokesters’ seek division, blaming others for their bad choices in life, they want something for nothing & are almost always ungrateful no matter what they are given for free.
I’m just a Grama & have made MANY of my own mistakes, if we don’t learn from our mistakes & change then we will continue to repeat the same mistakes over & over again.
Having a real ‘relationship’ with our Creator instead of ‘religion’ made all the difference in my life for the better.
Religion = manmade
Relationship = Putting God first & not man & not just talking to God & learning about God but listening & looking for His answers.
Our Creator speaks to us every day through so many ways, but we won’t hear Him if we aren’t looking & listening for Him.
The difference of America from most/all other countries is our Constitutional Rights are suppose to come from our ‘Creator’ & not our government, unfortunately many in our government & the world want to destroy our Rights by changing our constitution to say our rights come from our government & not our Creator.
Forgive me for rambling this morning & thank you for this article.
God bless you all❣️
💙✝️🦋🙏🏼🌍🌎🌏
maybe one of the things missing in his piece is the larger manufactured reality-show world we're living in and which is clearly fraying and TPTWB do their best to keep us under their spell.
Gato, the biggest bossypants of all is our government. Until we replace that bossypants, none of us
can pursue freedom.
As a ex-atheist, communist, libertarian, etc... I can honestly tell you:
Why I exist: To serve Jesus
For whom I will die: Jesus
The evidence of Jesus' resurrection is pretty convincing. I urge you to look it up. A great book with which to start: Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. A great youtube channel for skeptics: Mike Winger's Bible Thinker.
Every time I read a piece such as this, there is always this sentence--"you may have your own precepts and prescriptions... so long as these ideas and ideals... do not infringe the agency and liberty of others." But this seems to me backwards; not infringing on others is always an afterthought.
Try inverting this sentence; really this whole piece--"So long as your precepts and prescriptions do not infringe the agency and liberty of others, you may pursue your ideas and ideals to their fullest extent."
None of us can be allowed to pursue our ideas unchecked, because we all have truly bad ideas. When I was young, I used to think the world would be a much better place if everyone were like me. There'd be no murders, rapes, thefts. But as I got older I realized the world would be a horrible place because much good would go undone; many beautiful ideas would go unthought. I used to be repulsed by the evil I saw in others but now I am in constant awe of the good I find in others that I do not find in myself.
All of us must bump up against the "so long as it does not infringe on others" before we can know if our ideas and actions are "good". Happiness contains within it a measure of humility and self-sacrifice.