A trial manifesto for how to live.

(A) Universal: what we want? 
(1) Bring up a family.
(2) Attain social status
(3) Attain security
(4) Avoid boredom, despair, and a sense of worthlessness or pointlessness in life
(4) Find Peace

Analysis of (A)

Most of what we think we want is in service of the above. Suppose we get a haircut. This may make us feel good. Indeed there is likely some deep need to do this to avoid harmful parasites and skin diseases. And oxytocin is released through having physical contact with others probably, probably to encourage us to attend to our hygiene for the reasons given. But beyond this it becomes tribal. By having a particular haircut we send a signal to your chosen tribe. And we adopt a tribe for status, security and finding a partner for bringing up a family. A female partner will likely chose a male based on their ability to provide for a family, more so this way around as the female is unavoidably burdened with the child for the first 9 months and so support from the male is more important. Now this section can be summarised by observing a hierarchy. Many of the things we want are secondary wants that serve more fundamental wants. A basic example would be a cyclist eating. The food serves only the purpose of providing calories to complete the cycle. The food is not the primary want. We can massively simplify our lives if we draw out these hierarchies and attend to the core. In the case of eating, get our calories from healthy and cheap food rather than expensive, branded, feel-good food where the pleasure is short lived and the actual nutrition is not really attended to. Drop that McDonalds and just head home for a proper meal. Or if we must get a fresh sandwich not something that has been in storage for weeks like the parts of a BigMac. And a fresh sandwich may well support the local economy rather than send money back to the US.

Now a really important one here is "diversion", "entertainment", "fun." When all other things are attended to we often don't just sit back and enjoy where we are. There is need to do something, like write a blog entry and we are conditioned think this is good. But actually action is like the wind blowing clouds across the sky, we should never lose sight of the sky, which we know must be there because without it there would be no place for the clouds to move to. So in a Kantian way the very basis of our action is actually a Peace and silence we can address directly, particularly when other important things are done. This is last on the list, but is really the root and most important one.

Corollary of above: Purpose

Now aspects of the above have been said before for example Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

However that Maslow was a Jew is probably quite significant here. Judaism is teleological and this affects all their thinking. To believe for example that Jews have some divine purpose biases all Jewish thinking and confines it to a world with purpose. when you hear Jews speaking they are overwhelmingly trapped in this world view for another example see Viktor Frankl: "Man's Search for Meaning." There is something tragic about people who need to find meaning. If they don't already know what meaning is how do they think they can find it? For Jews this is particularly painful because without meaning then being a Jew loses its whole substance. There is no purpose. SRH can show us this. Suppose we believe purpose is a fundamental feature of the universe, we then get the Godel statement of "what then is the purpose of purpose?" Alternatively why did God make the world in such a way that it has a purpose? These statements are beyond purpose! So we accept that purpose is not everything, and that means that there is stuff out there beyond our world of purpose. Well that is obvious if we stop for a moment. "Purpose" only turns up in certain situations. We set ourselves tasks and goals and then we have purpose. And presumably we like it because we do it again and again. But as everyone knows whatever our goal is, if we do it well, then it ends and then we have no purpose any more. So purpose cannot be that important. It is fair to say the Jews have poisoned the West with this nonsense. What we remember is after pushing clouds around the sky for a bit we put Maslow in the bin and just sit back and enjoy the sky.

But there is a very important caveat here. Do we just sit there and starve to death? Do we let other people starve to death? Well obviously not. When faced with a clear job to do we gain purpose and we do it. But then the job gets done and the purpose goes and we are back to just the sky again. Returning to the top list if we are honest there are some obvious core things to do. It doesn't really matter how we do them but we will probably end up seeking them. The key analysis here is to be mindful of the hierarchy and how we do many thing not for themselves but for another purpose, and that makes these things irrelevant in themselves. Drop the McDonalds and find something that really gives us nutrition is a great and important example. Ignore the fancy car and just find the simplest way to get to the shops, kids to school and work. Don't let advertising confuse you into thinking a car is anything but a means of transport. Now there are some car fans who will go for a drive for its own sake; when you buy a special car make sure you do this enough to make it worth it. Don't just buy it and stick it in a garage with the hope of getting it onto a race track. Alternatively maybe you buy a special car to show off at the school drop. But look at the hierarchy: anyone can spend money on a car that someone else made: what are you really looking for here? Some personal prestige and value? Well perhaps we should look at why we need that first - doesn't everyone want that? If everyone wants that then perhaps we could try giving some recognition before we try and get some? A lot easier to give than receive. Simple thoughts erase a lot of the hassles in life.

B. Why Simplify the Wants

The world, especially Capitalism is absolutely amazing at making a huge smoke screen of busyness (or business) to fill our lives.

It means we really cannot see what is going on, and we can't see very far either.

Once we begin to think this through and create the hierarchy, looking at what we are really seeking when we do things the mist begins the thin and we can see further. Wow I got that haircut to impress that girl, but now I think she's an idiot and I don't need the haircut anymore. The actual haircut was nothing. Most of our life falls into this category of things we think are cool, but looking into it, it rests on something else. A classic is accepting things to maintain friendships or social status. We may dress a way, buy things, do things to maintain social bonds. Nothing essentially wrong, but bad when we do these things not realising they have no value beyond the social bonds. On a desert island would we really care how we dress? So we can simplify.

So the mist really starts to clear. Desert Island in fact is a very good mental test. As it fades we will see the reality of our desert island. This is where the (A) list above becomes more important.

On our desert island we are going to notice some really basic things like we are born and we die. It is amazing how the mist of shallow needs can almost completely obscure this. Looking at this closely will teach us a lot about reality. Another thing we may start to notice is the natural environment. How the coconut palms grow and produce their seeds. What birds nest in them. How the evening cool brings out certain animals. How some times of year certain fish arrive. The backdrop of the world becomes clear without the mist of business. Certainly we will be busy. We must secure water and food, we need shelter and to manage any illness or disease. It is not that there is not business. But it serves us and others; we are not the slave to it. It is interesting that children have an innate interest in the natural world. Even the most conditioned girl programmed to pay attention for the rest of her life to her looks and social status will as a child have an innate interest in bugs and animals. Children's books do not animate pigs, deer, bears, rabbits or worms from some brainwashing. Children are interested in life, and can relate to living things. As the mist descends and business fills their lives this becomes obscured. We could say, that as a test of how close we are to seeing the sky mentioned above, we might ask how often we see the birds flying in it?

So to conclude this we can generate a unity between our lives, and life in general. By attending to the hierarchy of our business we can strip down superficial things and replace them with more fundamental things. For example instead of beating ourselves up for losing the job, we can focus on why we wanted it and get back to attending to this apparent need. And as we simplify we look deeper into life towards our desert island where the most important things lie. On that desert island we will note the core needs, but also the living world in which we exist. With the mist fading we will also see--between episodes of activity and purpose--the open boundless sky that precedes all our actions and we can sit back and know the Peace upon which we build all our needs and actions.