A Theory

There is a rather simple model for understanding the human experience.

In our experience of the world and its phenomenon, there are are always two strains or flavors evident to us. Every "object" that enters the field of our awareness carries a kind of positive or negative magnetic charge that creates either a feeling of pleasantness in some degree, or a feeling of pain and unpleasantness in an opposite degree.

These positive and negative lenses, through which we perceive the world of the mind, pretty much inform everything we do, everything we aspire to. Virtually all of human behavior can be understood in terms of pursuing pleasantness and avoiding unpleasantness. At the end of the day, it is the basis of all science, all religion, all culture, all instinct.

In this, at least, Freud was correct when he suggested a pleasure principle as the driving motivation for human experience.

Pleasantness and unpleasantness——happiness and unhappiness---come in a thousand different degrees and flavors, and are described by thousands of different names. The experience of unpleasantness, for example, can be described as mildly as "restlessness," or as boldly as "loathing." Pleasantness can be simple "satisfaction," or as all-consuming as "bliss."

Close examination of our experience will reveal that every phenomenon born into our awareness carries some portion of a positive or negative emotional charge. The Buddhists will say that there is also feeling that is entirely neutral, but I'm not sure about this. It's true that some experiences don't really elicit much in the way of either longing or aversion, but looking closely at these moments it seems to me that the positive and negative are more or less balanced at these times——not missing altogether.

There is, I suppose, some scientific support for this, as modern physics describes negative and positive charges to the basic workings of matter & energy. Perhaps our subjective sensation of pleasantness and aversion is really nothing more than a manifestation of that truth of physics.

In any case, I think that when cavemen first recognized that faculty of awareness in themselves, it was the awareness of pleasantness vs. unpleasantness that was the primary mystery, and was probably more mysterious than life and death itself. The experience of pleasure and pain, after all, usually seems connected to our actions, at least in part, while life and death are largely outside our control altogether.

So I suggest that religion, science, culture, etc,, aren't about understanding the mystery of life, but rather the mystery of happiness and unhappiness.

All the mythologies of religion, for example, seem to me to be stories and characterizations revolving around the dance between positive and negative, happiness and unhappiness. To "God," we attribute the causes and origination of happiness, while "Evil" is the king of all that seems to be the source of unhappiness. This explains why evil is different for every person. In the experience of war, for example, nobody in the conflict ever cheerfully admits that they are serving the cause of evil. Evil always lurks in the other fellow, they guy who is compromising my happiness.

Religion is ultimately an effort to understand happiness and unhappiness, to court one and escape the other. Buddhism states this quite boldly as its intent; other religions dramatize it through elaborate mythologies.

Similarly, the working of science, government, art & culture, seems to be mostly driven by the mystery of happiness and unhappiness. Many governments, for example, use the idea of "the greatest good for the greatest number" as their driving principle. Science, at the end of the day, is about improving our health and comfort, and eliminating discomfort. Art seeks to articulate the drama of happiness and unhappiness, and ultimating to foster happiness through the creation of beauty.

Happiness and unhappiness exist nowhere but in our selves, our subjective experience. No outer physical event in the world is inherently good or bad. A terrible thunderstorm may be bad to a person caught out in the rain without any shelter, but it is good to the farmer longing for rain to quench his parched fields. It is entirely relative and subjective.

Good and bad, happy and unhappy are also slippery qualities. It's very common, for example, to pursue some activity that ostensibly seems to be happy-making, only to find that it's long-term effect is to create unhappiness. LIkewise, it's common for experiences of present unhappiness to prove to be long-term causes of greater happiness. So a well-lived life is very much about studying and evaluating the causes of genuine a happiness, nurturing those causes and weeding out the obstructions. It is a life of intelligent experimentation and observation. Hence, a man given to hedonism early in life may realize that a more genuine happiness comes about through a somewhat more ascetic approach to life.

Good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, happy and unhappy exist only in the matrix of our awareness. If a phenomenon is extricated from the context of our awareness of it, it is entirely empty of such judgments. So it is the field of awareness itself where the science and study should be aimed. God is not in his heaven, nor the devil in Hell. Neither do they exist in other people. Only within.

Part II

Okay, so if you're more or less on board with the premise of the previous post——that our species' angst arises because of the dissonance between what we want (permanence and stability) and the shifting, squirming impermanence that circumstances really offer——where does that leave us?

Assuming that a happy state is what we all seek, there are two conceivable solutions. One, we can attempt to create permanence and stability in our circumstances and in our identities. We can try to make the world fit our desires. Generally speaking, I think this is human solution of choice. We try to make become permanently healthy, to solidify our level of comfort in the world. Through career, or family, or good deeds, we try to give our name and reputation some permanence, even eternity. Hence, a wealthy man builds a law school and names it after himself; an artist seeks glory; an actor, a star on the hollywood walk of fame. Nations try to establish themselves as cultures for the ages. We try to convince ourselves that we are real, in other words.

These efforts can work for a little while--at least long enough for us momentarily convince ourselves that we're succeeding. We actually can change the world to our liking, at least for a little while. We can extend the average length of a healthy life. We can send men to the moon. We convince ourselves these are momentous, fabulous victories, signifying everything. We ignore the fact that to die at 90 rather than 70 is, at the end of the day, still to die. Most every human triumph, in the final measure, is slightly hollow, as the truth is never really escaped. I'm exaggerating this for effect, but you get the idea.

Eventually, the rug gets pulled away, and illness visits, poverty descends, or reputation becomes sullied. Waistline sags, the memory grows feeble, friends forget us. And through it all, we're constantly trying rebuilding the sand castle, trying to defend the illusion against the evidence.

This is the point where disillusionment can be an important gift. To become disillusioned, after all, means to be relieved of your illusions——to forfeit your false beliefs, in others words. It's not a terrible thing to wake up and see that a lot of our ambition is rather meaningless.

The danger, though, is that we'll swing to the opposite pole. If I can't make life constantly to my liking, we think, then it automatically means that life is shit. Nihilism can set it. There are people who travel in this direction, but never come to the point where there realize that nihilism is its own form of illusion.

Rather than seeking to remake the world to match our wishes, the second option, the one much less traveled, would be to work with the wishing itself, the illusion, and see if we can't bring it more into alignment with the ways things really are.

This, I would suggest, is the more revolutionary approach, and the one that perhaps has more real potential for creating a happy life. It is a life of letting to to things as they are, and it is quite alien to us. We really can't believe such a thing is possible, and dismiss the mere idea as lazy hogwash. We defend our right to hold on to delusion.

A bit of experiment, though, can begin to convince you that there's something to different approach. Perhaps our ability to truly and wholly "let go" can only happen for a sporadic few moments at a time before the need to control things again reasserts itself. Pay attention, though, and you may realize that those few moments of utter surrender to the world is as peaceful as anything you've known.

Some people with whom I talk to about such ideas will mutter that such a life would be nothing more than laziness. A life without the attempt to control the world is no life at all, they'd say.

In point of fact, though, a life of surrender very often will mean abandoning our inaction, and allowing oneself to act with unusual strength and power in accordance with the natural flow of things.

A tiny little glimpse of this approach can be experienced through a very simple meditation exercise once taught to me.

"As you pay attention to your breath, abandon the illusion that "you" are breathing. Instead, consider the possibility that the universe is breathing you."

Part 1

I don't think it takes great powers of observation or enormous insight to conclude that the human animal exists in a kind of restless condition. There are some philosophers and nihilists who would describe the human condition as one of never-ending suffering, sorrow, or original sin. I don't know that I'd go quite that far; but if you practice mere observation,  it does seem logical to conclude that our species is vaguely dissatisfied with its existence, and is almost always squirming and striving for something more.  Spend a day looking around, and you will see that virtually everyone seems to be longing for things to be different. It is the reason behind most everything we do.

I have a theory about why this is so, and here it is:  the reason we, as a species, are unhappy is that we're not entirely sure that we exist.

There is some classic philosophy behind this, which can be found in both the occident and orient. The argument is something like this: For something to truly, concretely exist, as a phenomenon it would be concrete, definite, tangible. Moreover, as some philosophers have tried to show through logic, something that truly "exists" would not materialize or dissolve, but would have stable, non-ending existence.

Since none of these qualities can possibly be applied to the concept we call "self," we exist in a kind of nervous worry about who and what we are....or even IF we are. 

Consider the evidence.  In almost every circumstance, who we are changes moment to moment. One moment I'm a husband, the next a father, now a friend, later a son to an aging father. A supervisor, an underling; an intellectual, a screaming sports fan. Even in the absence of other people and changing circumstances, the self I identify in my thoughts changes every few seconds. 

 Our emotional view of the world, which may define us more than almost anything else, is the most shifting experience of all. Blissfully content one moment, irritated the next. Happy as a clam today; on the wrong side of the bed tomorrow. Full of wisdom and common sense....30 seconds later forgetting where I put my eyeglasses.

25 years old one minute, a second later, I'm 53 years and counting.

The reality truly is that there is a new reality with every passing moment, and that nothing whatsoever is real in the sense of being concrete and stable. In the very moment that some phenomenon occurs, it is already vanishing. No wonder we're all a bit anguished about our place in the cosmos. 

That's the real nature of things: flux, change, impermanence.  Unhappiness, it seems to me, arises because we don't like the real nature of things, and we're constantly fighting against it. It's not much more complicated than that.