It was quite a hectic morning. Professor Evans resumed class.
“Alright guys. Let’s continue with the lecture.” Evans waited some seconds, before starting the second part. “I’ll start with the static lifestyle.
I’m sure you guys know what I mean when I say it’s about the lazy lifestyle. At the same time, I don’t just mean a lazy lifestyle. I mean a lifestyle which is static in its played out purposes. The most common lifestyles habits of this type are mostly useless consumerism and outrage that your dish was salty even if you were the one who cooked it, when you could just improve or redo it over.
It’s about looking at painted purposes, all played out, than striking a balance between both consuming and acting out purposes. (See C. 19, Ex Legacy, on royalroad.com)
Another way of living your life is to reject anything and everything. To entitlement and gratitude, lies nihilism - the ghost of ideals which does not seek answers or narratives to play in, or to consume. It does not seek a 'why'. Consider it a cheap elaboration, if you will. Experiences accumulate to harden you.
Take the supposition of ‘man has lived all of the life asked of him; humanity has lived all of the life and story which it has evolved for.’
That's about it. That’s the supposition for the nihilist. That’s the same supposition for the mind who rejects it in order to bring ‘change’. Go to 'The birth of tragedy out of the spirit of music', by Nietzsche. Then, we have narrativists. MBTI personality typing speaks for itself, in the regard of narrativists, if just accounting for nature.
Relating to music, as in Nietzsche's book, it is like any ghost, like any ideology, as in the ideology/need of survival. It is easy to lose all standards, stemming from ideologies and physical laws, when bidding music.
It takes learning, to be a voice of reason of music, in judgment of emotional output and rational output. If a nihilist can be a voice of reason, a distinct narrativist can be a voice of reason. If a distinct narrativist can be a voice of reason, a tyrannical animist can be a voice of reason - than mere superstition devoid of logistical cynicism.
The things which remain undiscovered, and the various sides which you haven’t seen - all these indicate man’s natural desire for adventure. Humans will be explorers of land, explorers of the sea, and explorers of new adventure parks. When you won’t explore, you are liable to conquer. That’s what totalitarians do. Static music might suck. Anarchic music might suck. And you know why it sucks for you.
The problem with rejecting anything and everything about the world, or claiming everything about the world means rejecting all the inspirations to conquer, all the masteries to seek, and rejecting all the avenues not yet explored. Suppose you were to, taking a historical example, speak of apartheid in the face of wanting to explore, it would certainly be a rejection of all the knowledge which were united, for the sake of technology - the same technology which would lead to similar outcomes in whichever regions of the world.
It is easy to look at the wind and steal a piece from it, to listen to music, and be inspired by it.
The tide pool - the visualistic construction of water rising, to represent upward civilizational flourishing - follows closely with the notion of the 'transcendental ghost', or the transcendental good, in terms of how the material and the non-material economies align.
Among human needs, is the desire for one's music to be transcendentally transfigured in time. It can be civilizational transcendence as well, hence the Renaissance, and the scientists linked. These mnemonic needs, towards emotions and logistics, are the desire for a legacy, for knowledge, in the form of our vanities, through which we share our own histories, and the history of people important to us.
It sounds grand and pompous when I mention the Renaissance. That said, birth can be one of the most static and tyrannical things you might think of. Rather than thinking of the Renaissance, think of fireworks. Fireworks disappear in an instant after firing off cool displays of light. That said, we can maximize the experience itself if not time.
The legacy is the small and giant winds which blow. The legacy spurs us forward, through each generation, through each era. It spurs us towards action, towards the need to go out in the world, hear its sounds, see its wonders and feel its richness, as to compete and spend some of the time we have on earth.
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You might be wondering what this has to do with the story of the Tragedy of the Commons. It’s fairly simple. Consider two identical parses of land, which each has the capacity to breed fifty cows. One is managed by everyone, and is known as the ‘common pastures’. Each person has five cows at the start. The other is privatised, with established barriers, for each set of five cows. Both the set of peasants for the common pastures and the peasants for the private lands know that they risk having their land go barren if they breed more than fifty cows in total. The problem comes about when one of the cows gives birth in the common pastures and the peasant responsible for it considers whether he should remove the cow from the pasture. He reasons out that someone else might graze more than five cows, so he might as well do it himself. Since the peasant cannot be sure, he thinks of the loss he will sustain by the addition of another cow by another peasant. The loss is that his own sixth cow will be less fed and the land will be more barren. The cows are the peasants’ private property, however, and the pastures are common property, so the peasant is benefiting himself more, with all potential losses shared by everyone.
This results in the cows’ growth being stunted, and the land becoming sparse. Weeds grow in the pastures. The cows eventually stop giving milk and die out. Garett Hardin refers to this as ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’. It’s about the fact that when people have free access to a shared resource, by acting rationally in their own self-interest, they cause the rest of the society and themselves to suffer losses in the long run. Common property motivates people to abuse resources and neglect its maintenance and renewal in the long run.
You see, that is an example of statism and anarchy, The same situation of the pastures going barren applies to the totalitarian as well. He may make walls, and control the people like puppets, but that would be same model as owning the properties privately. If people are allowed to hold private property, they are able to at least have stability, and the necessary statism which allows them to go out to explore methods to offer better services, and competition, along with the public opinion, which will allow them to improve comparatively, such that the better farms emerge as longer-lasting and more productive.
By allowing every individual within a society to develop to his best, and to keep developing, while providing him with tools to access both the good and the bad, we are able to prevent the tragedy of the commons. The individual can choose whether to hold five cows or six cows or four cows. He can seek more land, and maintain his enterprise with his own hands.
If the model of the 'Tragedy of The Commons' does not work, we could look at another aspect of ideology, in terms of the requirement to 'expect', not necessarily believe. Expectation is, at best, just another word for entitlement and gratitude. The summative phrase is 'relationships are made of expectations'. Individual standards expect certain choices from other cooperating standards towards any desired goal. Since it is not possible to get everyone to expect the same thing, it is easier to have expectations towards oneself first, and to negotiate expectations in relationship to other individuals, second.
Of course, standards can be nominal and expedient, or they can be real and long-lasting. Depending on personality, we favor various aspects of nominal and real standards. As such, we expect different forms of actions of entitlement or gratitude, as convenient. We expect so, from ourselves, and from other individuals.
Are the expectations nominally convincing or convincing in a rigid manner? That is the compass for manifesting oneself. Any ensuing action or set of actions speaks for itself.
Other than from expectations, Action ensues from knowledge and is hampered by caution. Action ensues from reflexes; reflex are acquired, or form part of the human DNA. Action nourishes habits. Short-term habits lead to short-term ideology. Long-term habits lead to long-term ideology. The optimal condition for action to nourish habits lies between a degree of conquered knowledge and a degree of knowledge to be explored. It is called the flow state and may be interpreted as 'passion'. Runners enter the flow state, as much as book readers do.
In poetic terms, the flow state, or rather, passion, is the romance of the intellect and contentment. A man too content may forget to seek the flow state; a man too confused or discontent may forget to seek the flow state. The flow state comes from practice. It is a sport.
The flow state, or passion, is that psycho-physical state which comes from wanting to know something, or see something through. For example, wanting to know how best to draw a painting, or how best to cook a dish. That is what novelty makes you expect. That is what familiarity makes you expect. Regardless of either, it is not necessarily an everyday occurrence.
Relationships are based on expectations. Expectations are grounded in oneself and the other, through the economic model of statism and anarchy. Expectation is inherent in lifestyle choices. Expectation is a broad term for the dichotomy of entitlement and gratitude. Expectation comes from physical laws, and it comes from an inspiration, that possesses the body, in the form of a desire. Expectation is strengthened, depending on what actions are taken. This may induce the flow state. The flow state, in engaging in mind games and sports like fighting, may strengthen relationships.
That will be the summary of what I've explained so far.”
Class had ended.