On Resisting the Outside World
There is something to be said about how one ought to deal with the outside world, especially if they hope to live a meaningful life. There are many forms of conditioning and manipulation that occur during an average person’s life, especially if they find themselves in a life they seemingly can’t control. Thus, there is a fundamental need to understand the unity between the inner and outer worlds. Otherwise, I feel we’ll find ourselves permanently alienated.
To begin, we must attempt to get at what people around us often try to do. Certainly, this is not attributable to everyone, but it is often the case — people will speak to you, not as two minds attempting to solve a problem, but instead offering subjective, emotional, judgmental responses, particularly if the matter affects them personally. Furthermore, I find that our values are not our own most of the time — they are informed by waves of thought, such as ideology, religion, our particular experiences, and all of this gets in the way. It is unfortunate when we embitter our hearts with foreign thoughts and ideas.
Resisting this in its entirety is likely not possible, since we all participate in a materialist system, one with limited resources and very little patience. If, say, you don’t offer much utility to another person, they will eventually keep you on a string and only reach out when they want to get energy from you. Even worse, you may believe that your friends are there for you, only to realize that the majority of them are far too preoccupied with their own lives. High school friends, college friends, even work friends — the majority of those will become a distant memory. It’s important not to assume a defensiveness when this happens, or a loss of one’s composure, for it is not rare to stop being friends with someone with whom you only ever had a superficial bond. Indeed, it is actually a great thing when your few real friends are revealed to you.
Besides this, we must be aware of the growing mental health problem in the world, with the U.S. reporting in 2020 that 1 in 5 Americans, or about 53 million, suffer from mental illness (according to the National Institute of Mental Health). The mental health minefield can only be dealt with naturally, for it seems that we overprescribe antidepressants, but downplay the many positive factors of: 1. Exercise 2. Good posture 3. Stress management 4. Working with one’s thoughts and 5. Not being attached. There is also an anxiety with regards to increased crime, the fear of financial ruin due to inflation and other factors, as well as a lack of coherent certainty about where our society is going, both politically and sociologically. For it seems that people are fed up, so to speak, and may not want to participate in the conventional system anymore, and this kind of sentiment always breeds revolutions, or something equally unstable.
One piece of advice I think I can give is: never give in to the darkness of the world. You are not the world, nor are you supposed to map your mind onto the great number of tragedies that occur. If, for instance, we moralize about one problem, we are in turn ignoring every other problem — we proclaim egoic, moral attachment to a particular, when the world is filled to the brim with particulars. It is tiring, even, to focus on every little issue, and it takes away from the pursuit of a meaningful life. Therefore, I would say that temperance comes when we let go of ideological tethers altogether.
To-wit, one may choose to direct their thoughts elsewhere, perhaps towards their own betterment, but that does nothing to help the structural issues. Perhaps there’s a need to consider what can be done at all, whether in politics or education, because I find that people are losing hope in the possibility of a better world. At best, they are trying to make peace with their own lives. But, if we live in this isolationist way, where everyone only cares about their bread, you might find that there will eventually be a black hole where there should be a society. At the very least, we must make peace with the world, even if it’s cruel and unfair, because only then can we attempt to reform it.
If there is anything I missed in this critique, I’m open to suggestions.
