Federica wrote: ↑Wed May 08, 2024 8:12 pmAshvinP wrote: ↑Tue May 07, 2024 1:43 pm When you mention the craving for gregariousness, it also makes me think of hedonism. It's interesting how so many philosophical, scientific, political, and religious frameworks seem to have been attracted around the kernel of justifying the pursuit of personal pleasures, free from the interference of higher powers and concrete responsibilities. I have noticed how many of the discussions on this forum have generally revealed an underlying feeling that personal pleasure-seeking should not be interfered with in any way, placed within any higher context that hints at sacrifice or suffering, either during earthly life or across the threshold.
This is where we also find a big difference between the modern mystical/liberal spectrum and the theistic/conservative spectrum, although even the latter can be adapted to the more hedonistic soul configuration (for ex. 'liberal theology'). The former is quite aligned with the unrestricted indulgence of sensual pleasures, even if the latter are understood as highly spiritual experiences. This reminds me of Steiner's discussion on some of the Western mystics as well, in so far as their spiritual experience had a subtext of eroticism. Perhaps this is another important factor to contemplate. It suggests that maintaining the galactic loneliness is secretly sought after since at least we can continue indulging our pleasures in isolation, or so we imagine.
Yes, a mood of rejection of duty has condensed in many parts of society over the last decades. To act as duty is felt as a lack of individual purpose. In a sense, it starts from the necessary impulse to an autonomous development of the individual consciousness, but then takes it in a Luciferic direction of indulgence in pleasures.
To attenuate that, I would say that, for many, rather than a formalized philosophical or theoretical framework, this impulse takes the more general form of "pursuit of happiness". It's not necessarily focussed on cultivation of sensual pleasures. The mood is that, as long as we don't directly harm our neighbors, or the world, it's legitimate to pursue the things that make us "happy". This is even, very commonly, the goal of life. And "the things that make us happy" is a mixed bag in which we find in no particular order: "positive contribution to the world, to feel meaning", "family and relationships", and "pleasure in whatever form, as long as it doesn't hurt others".
It's easy to condemn that, but the difficulty is, before one has identified a viable life philosophy - ready-made by religion or independently pursued - it's hard to realize how priorities matter, discipline matters, and that we actually do indirectly harm others by succumbing to the pursuit of pleasures as a main driver of life. The "bubble consciousness" makes it very hard to notice.
So it starts from an impulse of individuation. But unfortunately, if that is not guided by an intense search for meaning, it can easily degenerate in a meaningless, ultimately painful, search for "happiness". And it's a very elusive happiness, in the pursuit of which people end up even more frustrated, disgusted, purposeless, and empty than ever. I've seen in the news this morning: "I quit my dream job, spent 18 months and $34,000 traveling the world, but was burnt out and unhappy". And so the life of many people becomes a desperate sequence of attempts to find the next thing that will finally make one happy.
Hence the crucial role that anthroposophically oriented communities will have to play, offering people a chance to see and make the connection between their aspiration to individual freedom, and the appropriate way to transform it into meaningfulness....
Right, but in the context of the discussions with others on forums such as this one, I find it really interesting how the last century or so has seen the explosion of the seemingly most varied intellectual outlooks, which can become quite intricate, that conspicuously serve the pleasure-seeking impulse. In that sense, it is a pronounced intermingling of the Lu-Ahr influences.
An example that stands out is post-modernist philosophy, of which Santeri Satama was a prime representative on this forum. He may have been a little before your time. He employed very clever linguistic arguments and mathematical philosophizing, which I couldn't follow for the most part. Some notable names in this stream are Wittgenstein, Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, Foucault (although I don't know much of these particular thinkers).
For ex., after some back and forth with Cleric on this thread, he wrote the following:
I can't give categorical answer to that question. I already gave my categorical answer: better instead of worse is better. Further and more complex qualifications don't improve that simple definition. As often, less is more. And before you ask, Finnish for 'pleasure' is mielihyvä, ie. mind-good, and displeasure mind-bad. Of course in practice mind-good and mind-bad can be extremely complex processes, but what other empirical criterion can there be?
... (after Cleric's response)
That is very limited and naive understanding of pleasure and Epicurean hedonism. Of course it is not limited to instant gratification, but involves full complexity of delayed gratification that comes with comprehension of polarities and their sublation. Hedonism is natural criticism of various constructions of authoritarian Big Other, ie. projections of ego.
It's a very interesting thread to check out. We are also quite familiar with the spiritual arguments for the 'candy store' of after-death multiverses that are waiting to be explored. Apparently, there are many YT channels aimed at convincing us that the Earth is a 'soul prison' maintained by deceptive beings who don't want us to awaken to our free-wheeling hedonistic nature. And also the fascination with psychedelics, which is rife on Discord as well. The quickest way to shut down a conversation of the intuitive thinking path is to try telling a psychedelic user that maybe the substances don't lead to the deeper spiritual knowledge they imagine to have found.