"Humanity is a thin layer of bacteria on a ball of mud hurtling through the void. I think if there was a god, he would've given up on us long ago. He gave us a paradise and we used everything up. We dug up every ounce of energy and burned it. We consume and excrete, use and destroy. Then we sit here on a neat little pile of ashes, having squeezed anything of value out of this planet, and we ask ourselves, "Why are we here?" You wanna know what I think your purpose is? It's obvious. You're here, along with the rest of us, to speed the entropic death of this planet. To service the chaos. We're maggots eating a corpse"
- Quote from the HBO series, West World
- Quote from the HBO series, West World
I find the above interpretation of who we are a lot more humbling, liberating and "real" as opposed to all the meaning, purpose and grandeur that we tend to give to human life. This is the basic message I took away from the book "The Courage to be Disliked". Yet another life-help type of a book ( the first of its kind that I actually managed to complete cover to cover) but it is presented in the format of conversations on philosophy and psychology.
The ideas are quite similar to all the other happiness and life guides- Live in the now, Serenity Prayer, , Living for oneself and contribution to others are the usual concepts.
However there are extremes being used to drive most of these conversations which made this book interesting for me. For example, any kind of excuse to not reaching a goal is condemned (no surprises) but the philosophy goes on to say that weakness/display of excuse is actually power play because the weakest person is also the most powerful person in the room ( eg: a baby is so powerless and in that it yields a power on everyone due making them wanting to have to take care of its needs.)
As another example, there is a mention of how recognition and praise actually are manipulative and are indicative of a certain power distance where as gratitude is devoid of any manipulation.
The basic philosophy is based on Adler's psychology as opposed to Freud's. One of the most fundamental principles of Adler's psychology, the authors write, is its teleological worldview (driven by end goal) as opposed to etymological worldview( cause- effect). This was striking to me as are all things teleological (Remember the movie Arrival/ Story of my Life by Ted Chiang?)
The concept is that any cause that a person attributes to a certain behavior that they think they aren't happy with is actually an excuse and a means to an end that has been decided by the person. If the person blames their upbringing and childhood trauma for bad behaviour, there would have been been an intent to the resulting behavior ( for eg: to upset the parents who caused the childhood trauma) rather than the childhood trauma being the reason for it.
And then of course, the discussion moves on to happiness. The idea is that happiness is the feeling of being useful to community. Breaking this down, there are multiple concepts. There is nothing altruistic in this determination since doing something for the community is also understood as something that one does for oneself and not as a "morally superior " act. Community is not just family/friends but the while universe in its past present and future. (Remember Vasudeiva kudumbakam?)
I think it comes down to one feeling like they are actually doing something. Now, even if that something is big but hasn't changed in a while, inertia could take over and the feeling of stagnancy could make one feel like there is no use of one's time or in other words there is a feeling of "no contribution". The paradox is that we all want to achieve a state of constancy ( inertia and resistance to change) but what really makes us happy is to be able to move and change and these needs are often in conflict which is at the root of unhappiness.
So the trick is in really having the courage to rewrite the story in ways that you feel right. Simple, But not easy.
Comments