Simplify
I’ve decided to work through the Simple Living Manifesto, a list of 72 ideas to help simplify. I began with step one: make a list of my top 4-5 important things. I reflexively began to rattle off: family, work, school, and so on but stopped myself. Are those really the most important things in my life, or are those means to an end? I paused and tried again.
Throughout the day, I pondered on what my most important things are. I finally came up with this list:
- Life—the survival and propagation life
- Knowledge—learning the truth
- Peace—contentment and satisfaction
- Compassion—suffering with others and working to alleviate the unnecessary pains of life
- Love—to love and be loved
I value these things. I can’t justify why, but I don’t feel any need do so. I just want them. Perhaps I value those things just because I’m human.
On to the next steps: evaluate my commitments and my time. Everything I do should support those goals.
Tags: compassion, happiness, knowledge, life, love, peace, self determination, simplicity, suffering, truth
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September 24, 2007 @ 6:56 pm
Great job! I hope this journey will be a satisfying one for you, and I’m glad you found the Simple Living Manifesto to be useful.
Just FYI, as I got some criticism that the list of 72 things was too long, I will be publishing a shorter list (10 things) very soon — just the most important things you can do to start the simplifying process.
Rest assured, though, that the step you’ve already done and the ones you’re doing now are still on the list.
Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions.
September 27, 2007 @ 9:57 am
Thanks, Leo. I also enjoyed your simplified list.
I’ve also updated my list:
Life—survival and the propagation of life
Knowledge—learning the truth
Peace—contentment and satisfaction
Compassion—suffering with others and working to alleviate the unnecessary pains of life—to love and be loved
Reciprocity—rendering to others what I would wish if roles were reversed
cybr said,
September 28, 2007 @ 1:37 am
But love is a human construct like sin an morality. So the question is, do you really love (your wife, your children, your parents, etc.)? Or, are you just imagining you love because that’s what you believe?
Some cultures don’t have the same meaning for love as we in our “western culture” have.
So being a fatalist, I can say there is no such thing as love because it’s a made up human concept. We social propagate toward like minded individuals. We become sexually stimulated at the thought of mating. We are attached to our young ones because we are biologically trying to ensure the survival of our species. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
You say there is no god, I say there is no love. And I’m right. You can’t prove to me that love exists. So stop trying to point it out. It doesn’t exist. It’s a made up idea.
cybr said,
September 28, 2007 @ 1:41 am
So if you will, scratch off peace, compassion, and (ok, you grouped love with compassion)…
And come up with something more real and physical.
cybr said,
September 28, 2007 @ 2:53 am
Oh yes, and I forgot to add…
Love is the cause of sins (for lack of a better word) against humanity and its individuals. Love is the cause of wars, lies, incest, indoctrination, abuse, divorce, selfishness, suicide, mindfuck, greed, envy, slothfulness, pride, lust, gluttony, wrath… Need I go on?
Check the news, read a novel, brush up on history.
I’ll make my case that we need love about as much as you claim we need god.
So next time you tell someone you love them, think about it.
“Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness, and cleanliness is godliness, and godliness is lovingness, and love is empty just like me.”
“Imagine there’s no love. Leave it behind. No hate to follow. Let no emotions bind. Imagine all the people Living free for thought…”
“If you’ve got to belong to something, Belong to us and we’ll make you pc, Peace and Love, Incorporated.”
“I like it – I’m not gonna crack, I miss you – I’m not gonna crack, I love you – I’m not gonna crack, I killed you – I’m not gonna crack.”
September 28, 2007 @ 9:48 am
cybr,
You give a pretty good description of what love is: an emotional brain state. I would also say that love is the actions that we take based on those feelings. Both of those are demonstrable. I think you might enjoy Your mama’s soul doesn’t love you and Crazy Little Thing Called Love.
So what if love is a product of oxytocin? It still does all the things that I want: it feels good, it helps us to work cooperatively, etc. Lack of sufficient love causes those things that you mentioned. Love as I define it does exist and is easily observable.
It just doesn’t exist in some abstract, love-conquers-all, God-is-love kind of way. If someone wants to define God as identical to love, I could get into that. Just don’t say God created the universe. I see no reason to believe that love created the universe.
Unless we’re talking about our interior universe. Perhaps love is the center of our minds in some weird, undemonstrated way. Perhaps God/Love is the creator of the reflection of the universe which is our mind:
cybr said,
September 28, 2007 @ 10:10 am
Religion does all the things that many believers want. And if feels good to them. Many will argue that it can create cooperation. I pointed out that actions are not love, they are only the embodiment of actions taken based on physical and psychological desires. People say they love to do certain things all the time, but that doesn’t make what they do good for the individual or the whole. Your point is useless. You still can’t prove it to me.
I don’t see love as physically measurable. It’s not scientific. It has nothing to do with mathematics. Except maybe procreation… 1+1=3
Then define love. People have different definitions for god, morality, ethics. It still doesn’t make it real or positive.
And in this argument, if you want to relate god with love. That would only help to prove the point that it doesn’t exist. It’s not real. The interior universe is not measurable.
September 28, 2007 @ 10:51 am
If people value religion, then they are free to participate, just as I’m free to criticize religion and decline to participate.
I’m not sure which point I’m trying to make which lacks proof and is useless. If it’s about the tangibility of love, well, the fact that you and I have experienced love proves that those experiences exist. Further, certain scientific studies have linked the experience of love to the action of certain hormones like oxytocin. Love is well grounded in reality.
If you object that people have also experienced God, I would point out that their experience is real and measurable. If someone wants to define God as a feeling of transcendence and a particular set of brain states, that’s fine. I believe in that God because he has been demonstrated. I’ve had those experiences myself. If that’s God, then I believe. I don’t believe, however, that those experiences connected me with the creator of the universe, or a person who answers my prayers.
Love is different than an ethical or moral system. It requires no precise definition. Morality seeks to categorize actions into “right” and “wrong”. It needs to be precisely defined in order to do its job. Love, on the other hand, is a feeling. It’s not right or wrong. It’s an emotion that we feel that motivates us to act in the interest of another person and to be favorably disposed toward them. That’s about as precise a definition as is necessary. I want to cultivate that feeling.
These things—life, knowledge, peace, compassion, and reciprocity—are my axioms. Just as I said earlier, I can’t justify my axioms any more than just saying that’s what I want. I could try to understand why I want them, but that’s not really necessary. These things are what I want.
September 28, 2007 @ 10:57 am
To your point about the interior universe, that’s true. We can measure hormones and brain activity all we want, but we haven’t been able to measure a person’s subjective experience directly. Science hasn’t devised a way to test those experiences, but it can measure the effects of those experiences. With love, we can see the hormone levels rise, breathing rate increase, pupil dilation, etc.
I know what love feels like to me. I can’t prove that you and I feel the same things, but that doesn’t matter. The scientific method doesn’t dictate what I want. I want what I want, and one of those things is to continue to feel what I call love.
cybr said,
September 28, 2007 @ 11:17 am
Wow, imagine if we could all just define words as we want. It seems love has no accurate definition. Therefore love is mute cause it cannot be properly defined. I’ve argued that love is false and disadvantageous because of the harms it causes. I want an emotionless society because that removes desires, falsehoods, perpetual self gratification, etc. Or I guess I am trying to say that love and hate are the same thing. Love is hate. Hate is love. Eliminate one and you eliminate the other. Then as a species perhaps we may progress. We are limited by love and hate. It has kept us from evolving.
cybr said,
September 28, 2007 @ 11:21 am
Of course if we are genetically predisposed to seek the divine then I guess we’re predisposed to love/hate. Perhaps it’s time to dispose of humanity and genetically redefine ourselves without such backwards concepts that only seem to hinder us.
September 28, 2007 @ 11:46 am
If you want an emotionless society, then you are free to work toward that goal, presumably by seeking to root out emotion in yourself. That’s not what I want. There’s no right or wrong in questions of what we desire. We could perhaps talk about whether or not our actions will get us what we want, or that what we want prevents others from getting what they want, but arguing that what someone wants is “wrong” is meaningless. It is what it is.
If we could eliminate emotion, like Vulcans, I doubt that our society would be cohesive. In fact, I doubt we would see the need to continue to exist. An emotionless community is an nihilistic one, I believe, and therefore ultimately dysfunctional.
I believe that the definition of love that I offered is accurate enough. We will continue to experience love whether or not it is properly defined. Love is still useful even if we can’t put our finger on what it is.
Not so with ethics. Ethics’ only utility is in its definitions. If you can’t consult your ethics and determine whether an action is right or wrong, then it is useless. We cannot embody what we call morality within an ethical system. At least I’ve never seen an ethical system that does. Further, each of us has our own idea of morality that more or less resembles each other’s ideas. A universal moral/ethical system can’t be defined, and is therefore useless.
Regarding love and hate. I think the problems you describe arise because of an exclusive kind of love which values self, friends, and family to the exclusion of others. Or they are the problems due to the perversion of love into the hatred of a formerly loved person. They are not problems inherent in an inclusive, universal love.
cybr said,
September 28, 2007 @ 11:58 am
Or the perversion of understanding of God?
September 28, 2007 @ 12:17 pm
I’m not sure I follow, but I’ll agree that there are plenty of perverted concepts of God.