The woman sweating her ass off beneath her burqa in Saudi Arabia convinces herself this is the best of all possible worlds just as the slave did, just as the man struggling to survive from paycheck to paycheck in capitalism just as the aging hippy who used to have a nagging sense of loneliness about the lack of community but now but manages to drive hours away in his car 6 to 9 times a year for festivities like going rafting or to the Burning Man festival and just focuses on that.

It's so easy. You fall asleep, you forget. The goal is to be happy. Utilize your stupidity. If someone points out how wrong it is, demonize them.

Everyone's a pangloss. Everyone ensures that this world will never change. That it will always be insane. Everyone has learned how to be happy by being insane.

It's simply evolution. He best adapts who believes this is the best of all possible worlds.

And so you have children and then, simply evolution, the person who exists for their children, for their family, for their welfare and no others, best passes on their genes. A morality that doesn't go beyond one's own children. No sense of community beyond one's own relatives. Even if, by some chance, you don't think this is the best of all possible worlds, you just turn away from everything but your family, you turn away from all else. And your children flourish and reproduce in turn.

And these people are the only people alive at all now.

I think that thinking in terms of games is a way to better enjoy life; turning everything into a game. Watching the movie Life is Beautiful, that is what the main character is doing while in the concentration camp and describing things to his child (while trying to shield him from the truth...)

Some games in this life I've just not played. It has caused me unhappiness to not play... but not playing was a part of playing another game... I look at what mankind has been, what men do to one another and I'm just not buying into the whole... thing so much; the whole game of interactions between men and trying to get ahead; the rate race, etc. Making money and "friends", etc. It's not a game I really want to put much time into. I think it would be kind of immoral to get very involved in it. And that is another game perhaps. The game of being a moral person. That's a game I'm more interested in doing well at.

I want to decrease suffering on a large scale. Not just working at a soup kitchen. I want to make some stories... or something, that can be widely disseminated and make a positive difference in this world. Something like what Ayn Rand did except something positive instead of negative.

...Another thing to see in Life is Beautiful is how people are like that little boy, they couldn't possibly stand to really see life for what it is. I say this in the sense of truly feeling for them. They can't actually stand it. But to improve our situation... they would need to.

Should they just learn to love the concentration camp or see it for what it is when chances maybe aren't so great they'll be able to change it?

It's not necessarily a good analogy. Of course it's not as bas as that. And it's more likely to be changed than that. But the analogy holds to an extent. And there is a point to use extreme things for analogies; things like Hitler, concentration camps, etc. Things that are less a question of degree and more obvious, thus the main point trying to be made is clearer.

Eckhart Tolle

The greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science or technology, but the recognition of its own dysfunction, its own madness. -Eckhart Tolle

I don't agree with Tolle's main idea which seems to be a repackaging of the old eastern idea of meditating about nothing thus losing sense of self. I'm really against not thinking. Don't think it's quite so easy to turn it off and on in a useful way. I could be wrong though.

I do agree with this Tolle quote though. It is the moral thing to do. (To recognize, to really get to the heart of this dysfunction.) Without Tolle's main idea though, it's maybe kind of dangerous (selfishly speaking). It means seeing this world as a hell. And probably being very alone in doing so. (And I say that from the POV of looking at socialism, veganism, atheism/deism as just baby steps.)

And if a panglossist is wrong to be a panglossist, then what of the opposite? Someone purposely looking so hard for things to be critical of?

The pangloss is causing harm, usually. The opposite is surely one hell of a wet blanket. Some balance again. Coming back yet again to the fake smile versus truthseeking.

Long ago in a land far away there was this very large group of people who were relative to other groups they had run into much better organized (homogenous) while still keeping around some few creative individuals that had helped them to build better weapons for killing. They ran into another very large group of people and had a huge war.

They won the war and took this other group of people (who looked different "enough") and turned them into livestock for meat.

Within this winner group there were some people who thought this was a horrible thing to do. They thought so and refused to take part. They were called vegans. And as long as they just kept their mouths shut and didn't take part, they were only slightly persecuted. But unfortunately they here and there would speak out about this. And well, so, eventually they were all rounded up and killed.


So then in future generations there were still a very few people here and there who thought the same, as the compassion gene isn't so easy to completely eradicate, that what was being done was horrible. But what was there to do?

Shut up and try like all hell to convince themselves that they were wrong; to panglossize things.

Some really couldn't do that though. For whatever bizarre reason their sense of right and wrong was too strong.

So if they couldn't change things, if it was a real dumb idea to even speak out, what could they do at all?

They could refuse to play any of the games. They could just reject everything. And try to just survive on the edge of society. Just observing.

Fake smiles

There is reality. There is making do with reality, finding a way to be happy within it. And then there is instead rejecting it. Saying it's not good enough. Searching for something better.

Just to try to say the latter sounds ridiculous. And hardly anyone does it really.

But to be utterly honest is to do the latter. To put on a "fake" smile is the former. To be considerate is to put on a fake smile for them and turn 'not much' into some little piece of happiness. And the goal is that it shouldn't be fake. You have to make yourself actually feel that smile. For them. To make them happy. To bring some small happiness into their lives right then and there.

To search for some distant utopia in the too far future is to not smile. To sit stony faced, although pleasant enough... usually. But to be honest often falls outside being pleasant. And as a truth seeker searching for truth, practicing the golden rule, that ought to be fine.

Except you're surrounded by people not living for the too far future. People living for today. People who need halfway worthwhile, halfway livable memories today. They hide their unhappiness from you out of consideration for you....???? You should do the same?

Pangloss the world? Put on a smile no matter how ridiculous? Make a happy moment out of consideration for them?

Strike some balance? Where the illogical smile, conjured from a half pretend world brings some little bit of of something standable into this one? But where we end up learning to hide too much negativity from one another. Destroying communication. A hell hidden by a stepford (sp) mentality. Where everyone is too nihilistic to seek any meaningful truth. Too tired to believe any real change is possible. http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6308420

?

If I strike a balance. If I do both. I'll not be acting so very consistent. This inconsistency will seem dishonest to me. But I have it in me though. After so long I can conjure a smile again. Finally.

I sort of have to forget utopia and think this dystopia is magical. This silly joke of a world. Out there is nothing of merit but within me there is something. The utopia is within. And I must just bring it out instead of looking around and reflecting how I see it nowhere around me.

...but it's unscientific. To partially hide the truth.

To hide the negative and share the positive is like throwing out the experiments that had results you didn't care for. It's utterly unscientific. It destroys the concept of truth seeking. One can either be honest all the time (at least with some people, in some medium...) or they must say to hell with learning. They must say to hell with learning much of anything. Let's just survive tolerably till we die.