Member Skype #28 Warmup – Stories, Meaning & Purpose
This is the Warmup thread for Member Skype Call #28, which is focused on stories, meaning, and purpose.
This discussion topic is an excellent suggestion from Russell: An open session for canvassing the way we view ourselves and the world around us.
For information about MSC 27, see the following post:
My own skeptical approach to the stories we are given can be ‘exciting’ at first, but often I hear from people that they eventually find it tiring, jading, even ‘depressing’.
After all, our lives are built upon stories, which are repeated to us over and over from the moment we enter the world.
We evolved from bacteria. We live on a giant spinning ball. Our experts have discovered lots of extinct, gigantic lizard-birds, buried just beneath the surface. Our sun is a giant ball of gas, and the only reason why there is life on earth is because this rock happens to sit in the ‘goldilocks zone’^, and thanks to the wonders of technology, now humans are living longer and healthier lives…
^Trolololol. These guys are pro trolls.
Okay, so we snap out of that nonsense. We turn to ‘independent researchers’, even the ‘truth movement’ for new explanations, for better answers to the eternal question: ‘why?’…
Now we learn that the pyramids are actually thousands upon thousands of years older than we are being told, and they were built by an advanced civilisation, possibly from outer space, and the ancient Mayans had a calendar, predicting the future, and thanks to the internet, now we are going to take down teh evil elites by exposing muh pizzagates, and we had better do it soon, because nuclear war could break out in the blink of an eye…
Okay, so now we learn that this is all complete and utter nonsense, too.
Great.
Just great.
Where does that leave us? What are we to make of this thing we call ‘reality’? How do we give meaning to our everyday lives? Why do we even bother?
Well hopefully at least one other person will join me on Sunday, and we can bounce some ideas off of each other.
I for one am optimistic about my own personal future, and cannot remember being less concerned about the state of the world, than I feel at this very moment.
In fact, I have been slowly hinting at some of my own explanations regarding what might be ‘going on’ for some time now.
See for example:
MSC #06 – Higher Intelligence? (4-Feb-2018)
And if my own interpretation of reality is a fair one, then I have absolutely nothing to fear from any body or any thing.
I wish I could say that, according to my interpretation, nobody else has anything to fear, either — but this is not necessarily the case…
In any event, what is your interpretation of what is going on here? What stories give your life meaning? Do we even need stories to lead purposeful existences?
How much weight do we give our own memories? Should we spend any time at all reflecting on our own narratives, the visions we have of the story arcs of our lives?
So many questions, so little time…
See you on Sunday (Australia time), friends 🙂
I think this is going to be a fun one, especially since we’ve been sharing stories of our upbringing on the gematria and language msc post.
I am definitely planning to attend!
As you rightly point out, this topic flows on nicely from some of the previous calls. Should be a good one.
Listen to the last five minutes of this, starting @35:33
https://youtu.be/L9QqMAB8Ap0
Very interesting POV and pertinent to the discussion.
Thanks for posting this.
At the end he says, ‘If you take any subject, any the arguments that people make, all they are is empty, false cliches’.
Yes, when you equip yourself with a basic (fundamental) understanding of what some people refer to as ‘logic’ (or ‘objectivist logic’), in both theory and practice, then when you listen to the normal folk speak, all you hear is empty rhetoric: Cliches, parroted soundbites, old wives tales, commonly-accepted myths, and so forth.
Truly it is phenomenal just how devoid of reasoning and evidence the normal person’s utterances tend to be, moment to moment, day to day, year to year.
To listen to the normies have conversations about anything beyond the trivial, is like listening to special needs children trying to communicate abstract ideas.
And of course, this is not so far from the truth.
We humans seem to have a natural propensity to tell coherent and self-contained stories rather than to give exhaustive and unadulterated accounts which contain unanswered questions or even contradictions. People like a good story and good stories pose a question and answer it at the same time, seemingly leaving the listener with the benefit of the digest. I don’t know why this is, but I have witnessed this inclination in myself. A story well told seems to give the listener something for free – but it seems that once again there’s no free lunch.
What a topic – I’d love to partake. What’s the time going to be?
The call normally begins around 9am Brisbane, which is 1am Berlin.
The calls usually run through to about 1pm Brisbane, which is 5am Berlin.
I say ‘usually’ because there is a small chance I will sleep through my alarm tomorrow. I will set three different alarms to minimise the chance of sleeping through, but this may not be enough.
Generally my sleeping patterns do not adapt to full-time work for the first few weeks, so by the end of the ‘busy season’ I am a walking zombie.
Then on top of that, even though I don’t go out much these days, I am going out tonight for a buddy’s birthday thing in the city.
With all of that said, I will do my best to the be there bright and early tomorrow morning.
Participants are encouraged to message me on skype whenever they are ready. Usually I try not to add people during the recording, but on this occasion we can make exceptions, given the subject matter at hand.
tl;dr From 1am Berlin Sunday morning, through to as late as 6am, maybe even 7am, who knows. Message me when you are on skype and I will add you to the call 🙂
I want to try to make it to this call. I hope you make it there JLB. Are you saying you might show up late? or that you might not even show up at all?
This quote by Jung has stuck with me for a while “A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning”
Hey Crew
Yes Nate M interesting comments on the video link in regards to living in the “present moment”
I know stories are necessary for people to make sense of what is before them, or what to expect ….. as well as a being a guide to things of what passed.
The difficulty of discernment and appropriate action/reaction to our present moment circumstances will always be couched in the shadows of the competing stories that we have assimilated, formulated or extrapolated, that make up our decision making.
Look forward to the discussion Regards Russell
–Where does that leave us? What are we to make of this thing we call ‘reality’? How do we give meaning to our everyday lives? Why do we even bother?
story of my life. i find myself ‘here’ looking for new meaning… new chapters to write. the nothing – ala never ending story – continues to gain ground on my psyche, as this decade or so detour into ACT hasn’t landed the answers i hoped it might by now.
looking forward to listening. im sure it will offer a prequel of a kind to the existence / death call next month.