Happy people are sociable, extroverted and known to reach out, exert effort in order to actively make things happen, attentively pursue new understandings, choose creative activities, seek new achievements, and thereby uplift their own thoughts and emotions, even improving their circumstances by centering their lives around whatever pleases them most. Activity and goals thereof ever put forth must be varied and novel yet well-suited to personality, practiced diligently and successfully in a continued stream of fresh positive experience so as to outweigh negativity bias. Schedule and routine must also be flexible in order to avoid getting into a rut. “Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” --Action, power and initiative! Additionally, in order to get more out of life and give the most in return, for gifted, intelligent creative personalities to best relate and fully and richly meet the need for communication in order to overcome the sad, painful frustration of boredom and loneliness, exactly such volitional or intentional activity cannot merely be solitary, but must also constitute social activity or most intensely: real substantive cooperation and collaboration. After all, volitional or Intentional activity is often characterized by contact and recognition between individuals. As according to Aristotle, happiness is contingent upon the exercise but also the communication of the meaningful values of imagination, free will, personal choice, independence, competence and achievement, together with connection, self awareness and conscience informed by rationality. Moreover, happiness is not merely and actively experienced, but interactive expression and response, affiliation and shared enthusiasm. That is why even ongoing strategic discourse in earnest seeking happiness, can already be involving and uplifting. Heaven is an imagined condition of plenty of whatever has been most scarce in any given life experience. And Heaven on Earth would be any thriving association wherein individual needs are routinely fulfilled rather than frustrated. Communities vary in so far as the very nature of the association between people differs, with resultant fulfillment and frustration. And so, hope may endure that the more optimal social relationship the better individually. At any rate, for most of us, there is plenty of room for improvement! Out there in TV land our heroes struggle and contend but ultimately unite in the face of adversity, while here in the real world we languish and despair under a veritable epidemic of bored and lonely alienation. Many hit TV dramas pander and mock us, serving up vicarious experience not merely of stimulating adventure and discovery, but in some context of profoundly close relationships or situations that so many of us are very badly missing. Indeed, It is the simulated freedom, challenge and achievement, together with social connection, that explains the addictiveness of multiplayer videogames for so many. And all such realization should be received as a call to action for urgent real-lifestyle changes. Real life drama must either advance or falter. After all, how would our heroic avatars rise to the challenge?
tivity; seeking together the challenge and stimulation of relevant worthwhile and demanding goals put forth and yearning to take command and control of our own lives. Fearless stimulation seeking: Opportunities such as they are, that typical consumers readily respond to, consist in any part of the at least howsoever ostensibly self achievable and in any other part of howsoever at least ostensibly guaranteed provisions. Indeed, so often as we are all left to own devices whenever it really matters, successful entrepreneurs tend towards solitary self reliance, reluctant to delegate, and therefore stressfully overworked. Because, by contrast, the vast uncertainly of teambuilding and real cooperative investigation is always daunting. But how else can entrepreneurship serve as a creative outlet, given that to begin with, creativity is a gregarious mode of expression rather than a reclusive practice of contemplation? Happiness comes in meeting ones needs for capable interaction with responsible others. Indeed, great entrepreneurs recognize not only that they must play to their strengths but to recruit for complementary strengths and skills beyond their own. A common twice exceptionality, lifelong deadly social and career learning disability among gifted underachievers, ongoing products of lifelong asynchronous development, in even somewhat rebelliously stunned apathetic bored and lonely deficiency of all such executive function including poor memory and low organizational skills, in actuality may be entirely due to severe underarousal to such fully active responsiveness as arising only to howsoever valued high standards of social support towards the grievously undersupplied stimulus of true pleasurable, engaging and meaningful opportunity. That is why FoolQuest.com remains dedicated, first and foremost, to systematic and concerted cultivation of exactly such optimally pleasurable, engaging and meaningful interaction so essential to human flourishing. And what could be better? No one is lazy doing whatever they themselves experience as worthwhile. Engagement, creative tension, remains more than merely productive means to whatever end, indeed, an intrinsic motivation, a fundamental human need not only for uplifting occupation but for truly satisfying human interaction at all. Success with anything at stake, will depend upon intense interdisciplinary creativity and cooperation and upon a variety of activities each with the full support especially of anyone more advanced therein, Dialectic in planning so as to break up tasks into more manageable parts, and due recognition of effort. It will therefore be crucial also for collaborating participants be helpful and sociable in sharing and accepting introductions and contacts towards networking, recruitment and teambuilding. Even quite without social status to enhance another's social standing passively by association, then, better by far and without desperate sycophancy, true friends and allies will still make no secret of mutual respect and real assistance. -And all entirely without demeaning and fawning sycophancy or empty patronizingly marshmallowing either. In continual substantiation of ongoing reciprocal promotion and positioning, reciprocally, true partners always makes their mutual admiration, backing and approbation evident for all to know, by rising to every opportunity to be seen fully endorsing and assisting one another's initiatives, sharing glowing introductions and integrating interpersonal networks and resources, visibly and actively backing one another's plays and looking out for one another's best interests. This is the kind of team that team players will be drawn to join in. Whereas unfriendly non communication and evasive squeamish keeping of social distance is one among many untrustworthy signs of mistrust, reservation, and dishonest devious noncooperation. To be fair, however, one major problem is that most commonly the result of the introduction of any valuable contact to what turns out to be a passive and unresponsive generally unreliable contact, let alone anyone actively worse, is that it will instantly reflect poorly upon you with the valuable contact, bringing summary estrangement of the valuable contact, much to the indifference of the cavalier unreliable contact. Nevertheless, excessive caginess protecting contacts is like holding cards close to the vest and never playing them. Moreover, if only possible, any number of good introductions may help to soften the detrimental impression made by any single bad introduction. So, there you are, a wannabe, an aspiring entrepreneur, eager for engaging challenge and even whatever legwork to help bring opportunity to fruition. And some fateful meeting and forging of alliance has oh so dramatically opened the door for you to position yourself, reach out and take action. So, exactly why has this plump and prime unripe plum fallen into your lap, oh Grasshopper? Why not anyone more qualified and accomplished? Is it perhaps because you have the initiative, gumption, vision and determination to work on spec? Or might it also be because grand ideas and golden opportunities also fall into the minds and the hands of vastly unworthy knaves and cretins, supremely unreliable contacts, only responsive while they still shortsightedly want something from you, whatever that might be or why, villains or idiots, hunter-killers of all they profess to promote, only laying in wait to exploit, waste the time and erode all hope of any so naive, unwarily open and well meaning? Beware! As a rule, rational individuals of honor ought simply to apprise one another where they stand and just talk over whatever their problems and prioritize obvious common interests. Alas, such is not always the case. Rather than finally crumbling in dejection from protracted neglect, abuse and failure, ever striking while the iron is hot, effective Entrepreneurs need to learn how to fail as quickly as possible and then recover or move on, especially after defeat veritably snatched from the jaws of victory by controlling knaves and fools that'd rather keep all of nothing than take part in something. So the strategy herein then, is to foster group cohesion by anticipating and confronting the near certainty of defection one way or another at some point down the line (probably on the part of whomever has by then or even most early on has come on board and built themselves up as the most indispensible) proverbially pulling the metaphorical rug out from under us all by dragging their feet and passive-aggressively letting everyone else down. This eventuality is to be addressed by simply asking for the commitment from all participants to confront and accept any such defection ever arising, as an effective tendering of resignation, in order then metaphorically regrouping back at the proverbial drawing board to salvage, indeed, even to completely revise and redefine the venture as required or desired, even those grand designs abandoned by such megalomaniac defectors. As a result of such a pact, any malignant narcissistic passive-aggressive and cowardly would be defector will think twice about proverbially marching off in a funk and taking all their metaphorical marbles home with them, as they come to understand they cannot thereby destroy the entire venture and dash all hope, and that the only result will be to lock themselves outside in the cold looking into the warmth of a still thriving venture even back to square one, better off and stronger without them. Obviously, business ethics is desperately important to all commerce. Therefore economics being as it is, an amoral and descriptive science towards practical application, and not any field of ethics, so often stands accused of depraved indifference, indeed admitting no values save those of greed and crass materialism. But how can this be? For in truth the indifference of economics is only scientific detachment towards the reality of whatever commerce actually transacted. Actually, most generally, the principles of economics pertain in whatever economy with whatever currency in play. It is even possible to calculate income sacrificed for the sake of other meaningful values even such as including lifestyle preference and altruism. Indeed, ever between all involved, all effort of interaction comes at some price of whatever kind, reflective of whatever sort of interchangeable market exchange supply and demand, often however entirely independent of authentic utility, the value whereof both of the unique satisfaction of innate and inalienable individual needs and due recognition thereby, that autonomy so struggles to reclaim and reassert. Collaboration is an exchange of efforts, and shared success often depends upon respect and value. What often so badly undermines trust before anything can even begin, is how, no matter what and how much is at stake, respect and value for ones work often actually diminishes and declines with the all too crucial good will and generosity of spirit to give of oneself and to labor free of upfront charge on spec in brave hopes one way or another of future gain or shared success. Even unpaid interns expect a substantial interaction with others in order to learn from them. And even lawyers routinely working on contingency for percentage of future awards in court or settlements out of court, must be naturally wary of howsoever poorly motivated, timid, halfhearted or ambivalent prospective clients. And conversely, the flip side of the same problem that of artificial scarcity, market value even fraudulently raised by deliberately choking supply, especially manipulation being subject to withholdance after getting sucked in by whatever promises, encouraged expectations and false hope into whatever personal investment of time and effort. Conniving bullies feel little need to respect any value which by any means they can undermine and stifle before it can even come to market, and seeking to wipe the books by howsoever first denigrating whatever they intend to steal or embezzle. Because what people do tend to value and defend, comes from only their own suffering travail, investment and sacrifice, often bringing profound difficulty in letting loose of the past resulting even in cavalier indifference towards the future. And that is precisely why, emotionally at least, all participants must be vested and no one exploited, neglected or dismissed. People won't eat shit for long while working on spec! Abuse can only lead to talent flight, team disintegration and public ridicule. Indeed, just as sincere contributions must be consistently honored, valued and above all, logistically supported, contra wise with all fraudulently and manipulative withholdance of value, of promised and expected contribution and effort, of vital cooperation and recognition, no less reliably dashed, quickly and decisively. Therefore, it will always be important to create and share records, for everyone to continually Cc: all partners and stakeholders, to keep records, distribute minutes and updates of ongoing work product, conversation and interaction. Ideally, substantial and intimidating contractual penalties should accrue for typical endless procrastination and passive sabotage wasting another's time in disregard of well anticipated task interdependencies and reliance upon agreements made in light thereof. But that is not always practical. Then again, if only in protest as a vote of no confidence or censure, an offender might actually find themselves billed by the hour on behalf of each of those others who wasted their time and effort placing reliance upon such empty promises for reciprocal effort in lieu of short term monetary payment. In any case, collaborative effort must never be utterly unpaid, even in the immediate short term, but indeed paid by barter in like kind by reciprocal collaborative effort striving beyond all that can otherwise be self achievable by any single individual participant alone, with said remuneration a point of honor before all involved, watchful and vocal with all cross-purpose or ambivalence to the contrary confronted openly. Indeed, aside, obviously, from expanding opportunity and vastly improving chances of success, not to mention the crucial importance and creativity of interdisciplinary cooperation, multiple concurrent even if related and interlocking projects are an excellent way to press each participant also to invest of themselves by contribution of effort towards collective endeavors beyond whatever their own solitary division of labor amounting to more than whatever their own preexisting endeavors alone. Even demands merely of token reciprocity may help to reveal the true collaborators and expose the cagey, distant and untrustworthy bent howsoever only upon the manipulation and exploitation of involvement and enthusiasm on the part of others without task interdependent reciprocity. -in short: of wasting our precious time and zeal with typical and ubiquitous empty grandstanding and passive-aggressive betrayal, instead spotting the temperamentally unreliable that much sooner for effective risk management, harm reduction and damage control.
For such is the positive and proactive power of negative thinking! No one should ever be pressured into dishonest bland agreeability and false smiles simply not to rock the boat. Just as we are all fallible and can benefit from criticism, likewise anyone can be a downer simply because of feeling down. And as it turns out, most important in response, is not empty denial, neither reassurance nor consolation, but simply to be heard and understood, even in bearing bad tidings or alarm. Indeed, a word to the wise, effective active listening often pays off. After all, truth ignored doesn't really vanish. Indeed, far short of paralytic anxiety, simple avoidance and cognitive narrowing or tunnel vision as to constrain ones repertoire of alternative solutions, introverted defensive pessimism only seeks never to raise expectations unduly, in order thereby to consistently reduce disappointment and anticipatory stress thereof, even in rising to seize opportunity. Whereas the Contrarian realistically cautious optimism of extroverted defensive pessimism is the active caution channeling even the most perpetual anxiety constructively into advance troubleshooting by anticipating even the worst-case scenario of any situation in order thereby to carry out planning so as to minimize losses and damage. For example, any serious and successful investor, however necessarily risk tolerant, never simply relies upon luck, but demands the most rigorously critical extroverted defensive pessimism in formal business plans outlining the most rigorous risk management. Creative tension: Actually making the vague unknown your friend! Two common and deadly paralytic and heteronymous de-motivators are vagueness and hesitation in the face of the unknown. And the obvious remedies are the clarification of whatever goals put forth and learning from the successful instead of always reinventing the wheel the hard way. Alas, however, all too often vagueness is such that it will not even be immediately clear precisely how to sharpen the focus, nor is whatever learning curve in surmounting the unknown always readily apparent either. In such common event, autonomy requires actually to make the vague and unknown your friend! But this is only for people who would anticipate not merely tolerating but actually enjoying creative tension, challenge and interaction and hence alleviation of boredom and loneliness thereby accrued, all as entailed in the collaborative exchange of assistance as ever necessary or helpful to whatever common endeavors. Defensive pessimism and criticality are the singular predicate in support of improved global conditions, crucial for the one who is for all to safeguard and to pursue whatever common best interests most honestly and effectively, nevertheless and nonetheless, to the integrity to remain uniquely individual, at one and true to him/herself. Experimentally, in good or bad circumstances alike, depressive pessimists demonstrate more realistic judgment and more accurate prediction than optimists, both perform equally well and better the median norm, but neither tend to perform well in attempting to exchange respective coping strategies. And clearly, overconfident optimism also risks dangerous illusion under painfully debilitating pressures of suppression and denial of forced cheerfulness from which often accrues inertia and worse, all fortunately presentable, so long as determination is yoked together with honesty and respect.
The FoolQuest.com work ethic: The good influence The dream of bringing out the best in one another is indeed powerful, ancient and long frustrated. But cynicism and frustration aside, hope of even relative and imperfect realization thereof, may still be gleaned in the tenure of human civilization, from extensive experience and observation, often consistent from the sages of old through to the cutting edge of modern science. This much remains clear: Be reliable so that others may count on you. Stay interested. Pay attention to one another! Make interaction engaging. Make time for one another, but also leave space. Mutual support is crucial. Encourage one another's dreams. Reach out and be willing to follow your passions and likewise seek to be supportive of others in their decisions as well. Thence let us craft new vision together. For many heads, as they say, are better than one. And indeed, there is also the uplifting personal validation of together with others, genuinely focusing upon achievement of one's own dreams and goals put forth, and likewise reciprocating. Hence the emphasis upon collaborative creativity, agenda and planning. Of course, the positive power of negative thinking aside, friendship nevertheless remains a positive value proposition. Indeed, according to Aristotle, some level of friendship can found itself upon pleasure or utility. And why ever not? Or as we generally expect, similar common interests, concerns and burdens may even be the least of complex and completing factors accounting for how close friends may uniquely relate to and identify with one another, with sympathy for imperfection. Indeed, that not only is convivial company entertaining and cooperation useful, but that true care is actually uplifting. Indeed, again, according to Aristotle, the truest friendship manifests altruistic concern and even sacrifice for the other's best interests even to the point of good influence, care towards optimal character, the healthiest condition of the personality which is meaning as derived from purposeful active orientation of living towards value and hence the sterling character of ones life as a whole, with morality and integrity of fortitude even to withstand misfortune; indeed, hence the sharing of good conduct through ongoing relationship and the the practice of philosophy which is discourse ever extending one another's moral insight and compass (or, as according to Adam Smith, entirely appropriate enhanced self esteem in reflecting thereupon) being of greatest wholesome satisfaction. In brief, that truest friendship is actually a reciprocally supportive good influence between rare individuals of sterling character. Better still, however, let us also recognize autonomy as morally indispensable virtues, thus perhaps even reconciling aforesaid ancient ideals with modern views of friendship as equal, private and voluntary. And the most ideal
networks of friends somehow together strive towards all their
most cherished
values
and ideals
as above. But how might such lofty ideals ever inform any
realistic and practical minimums necessary to effectiveness and
happiness? For any purpose under the sun, building true community and optimizing a thriving attention economy may require more expansive involvement than afforded from pointlessly banal hanging out and making idle vapid small talk with mere acquaintance. Friendship denotes co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more individuals. And indeed, just as with productive creativity, sustaining social connection often depends upon the active attentive investment of such fundamental resources as interest, sympathy, time and concerted effort. Moreover, all the same principles by which pleasure, engagement and meaning drive gratification, all remain applicable in sharing the pursuit of happiness pertaining thereby no less in interaction and relationship. Happiness requires positive self worth, control and self determination, optimism, security, outgoing expressive extroversion, adaptability, purpose and immediacy. So, is there any recipe for ever at all reliably serving up all of these cherished values? And what might be the required resources? First of all, vital to the interaction of any productive free collaboration, coordination and task interdependency as ever arises, will always be the cultivation and preservation of reciprocal logistical support by the honest assessment and nurture of the integrity of healthy quid pro quo, assuring that everyone's needs including one's own are met in the exchange of all prompt and diligent vital assistance, all proffered in spirit of generosity and respect received in due appreciation and trust vindicated reciprocally. Division of labor amongst various specialists is common in any any larger venture or endeavor. But real collaboration and cooperation often entails mutual assistance addressing cross-functional task interdependency of crucial specialized parts of another's otherwise specialized tasks or roles therein. Passing beyond whatever pathologically insecure extremes of empty, insatiable and pathetic manipulation of narcissistic supply, into healthy quid pro quo and even genuine reciprocity, one ought ever be positively eager towards nurture and support in assistance to aid and better equip anyone else in any tasks, after all, involved in the very life support towards fruition of one's own vision at all shared by others, and expect no less in return; all only given requisite trust and good will to actually value and even take pleasure in such an accord, and not as any begrudging or reluctant sacrifice.
For
honesty
remains the best policy. In order to
forestall needless
drama, never lie or hide issues because
problems will only escalate. Never hesitate to be truthful and
open.
Resolve needless and painful uncertainties. Never prolong
mounting
tensions. Talk over any signals raising mistrust or
discomfort because ultimately
trust suffers in the face of
nagging doubt or resentment.
No news is good news! Whatever is worst in real life is the more ideal for drama. And audiences just eat it all up. Entropy dictates that destruction will always arise more easily than construction, and that flaws and glitches more easily and more often obviate beneficial features than uncommonly beneficial features actually ameliorate detrimental or even dangerous flaws and glitches. Indeed, fun and happiness have been found to require, among other things, and to reiterate, neither Zen cessation nor motivational conditioning nor any other snake oil indoctrination to contentment in making do, but first and foremost engagement in enjoyable and meaningful interaction to begin with, with no less than a five to one ratio in favor of positive experiences, even in the form of frequent small positive acts. And all that is required is for each to do their part, not merely in so far as solitary division of labor, but reciprocal assistance, for resultant ongoing exchange of frequent positive acts, however small, in a continuous stream of fresh positive experiences thereof outweighing negativity bias. Thus is individual initiative best encouraged by interest and follow up from others, and reliable fulfillment of task interdependencies assures enhanced productivity also thereby buoying hopes of shared success. Division of labor amongst various specialists is common in any any larger venture or endeavor, but real collaboration and cooperation often entails mutual assistance addressing cross-functional task interdependency of crucial specialized parts of another's otherwise specialized tasks or roles therein. Hence, clearly optimal as any sort of wider or global condition satisfactory to individual happiness, nurturing and tangible reciprocal social support just such as by which ever at all possibly any conceivable collective all are for one and each, remains among the strongest known predictors of individual success with the possible exception of self-efficacy. And so, as far as moderate and even minimal necessary expectations go, it may be well opined that in the exchange of assistance and good turns, key always is to be extra helpful simply in order to accumulate and maintain a surplus in favors owed, by cheerfully giving more than expected, thereby preserving a comfortable margin in excess of whatever assistance one will foreseeable need to call upon in return. (But who's counting?) Yeah, verily, the parable unfolds of the hereafter as eternal recapitulation of life's reoccurring game theory puzzle of cooperative good will, wherein identically in both Heaven and Hell, all are seated together about a vast, grand and opulent banquette table heaped and loaded with sumptuous feast, but the elbows of each diner are immobilized by rigid casts and splints strangely fitted with gleaming stainless winnowing forks longer than their arms! However, whereas the malignant and suspicious denizens of the pit suffer, consumed with frustration, starve and vex, unable to crane those weird ungainly adamantine trenchant pokers back into the bitter emptiness of their own greedy gullets, the cheery, carefree and guileless good natured souls on high, hale and hearty, happy and sassy, carouse convivially making mad and merry sport of gorging one another with those crazy six foot long forks! (The Sadists would only feed each other at all if they could rob others, starving, and force them to watch, and the Masochists would only allow themselves to be fed food liberally spiced with gall Meanwhile, back on Earth, cooperative souls continue wandering like Diogenes in search of one another, while conniving jealous angry serial bullies flock together with ease to scheme and thwart us.) Indeed, just to drive home the point, for our artistic and entrepreneurial purposes, let our metaphorical feast consist of a massive heap of colorful construction blocks in a gigantic toy store, all for constructing our dream castles, thereby more explicitly putting the crucial concrete practicality of cooperative task interdependency at stake as a function of autonomy and respect, even beyond the intangible universally intrinsic value of love alone. Compartmentalization simply must not be tolerated. According to the Triz theory of inventive problem solving, only pioneering discoveries are more rare and precious than cross-disciplinary solutions, knowledge imported from one discipline into another. All solitary division of labor must often take secondary priority to a more relevant priority of effort and creativity, namely: mutual assistance and task interdependency as functions of autonomy and respect. Optimally, the entire venture must revolve around you, every time you need something, face a problem, or recognize an opportunity; and likewise, reciprocally, the entire venture must revolve around each participant in turn, any time at all, they need something, face a problem, or recognize an opportunity. Moreover, such is little more than vested interest and job description. Indeed, any consequent responsibility, commitment or undertaking must be considered as legitimately authoritative without qualification in summary pursuant requests for assistance and as regarding interdependent tasks or input of other participants. For example, as applicable, nothing can be more important to the inventor, author, programmer, etc., than whatever input required by the MBA, accountant. lobbyist or grant application specialist and their business models or implementation, seeking whatever requisite assistance, capital and resources, and nothing should be more important to the MBA, accountant. lobbyist or grant application specialist, than the needs and vision of the inventor, author, programmer, etc.. And this self same principle often applies no less between any other persons or functions involved. It should be a thrill for all involved when opportunity coalesces, unless there are dramatic conflicting ulterior priorities, unforeseen and unresolved, as all nest forestalled. Even the best most ruthless literary criticism need bear in mind authorial vision in turn seeking voice for some conceivable intended audience. Likewise in Entrepreneurial or even grass roots political new venture creation, the only at all possibly more crucially relevant consideration might be market application, amounting likewise to considerate cooperation with prospective investors or other backers as well as, ultimately, whomever the intended end users, consumers or constituent. -such being the domain of whatever appropriate marketers. Remember: Anyone assisting beyond the range of solitary self activity, is thereby more important than you are! -Reciprocally... Otherwise, while a well an established corporation might possess the wherewithal to endure the drain and recourses to spare for getting the job done at all, a new venture in formation will be well nipped in the bud. Even given all the virtues of pessimistic caution otherwise, all purpose of evasion or withholdance will not merely reduce efficiency or injure morale, but paralyze and then dash any hopeful project that much more quickly and decisively. For no matter advance in connective communication and information technology, the challenge remains to the in depth quality of human interaction with autonomy and respect. So after all, principled conduct even as reflecting of benevolent character, turns out to be, indeed crucial to the evolutionary balance between competition and cooperation, no less than practical utility and motivating joy at all, because there can be no hope that such will ever be accomplished manipulatively nor in selfish stingy reluctance, passive aggression or aloof self sufficiency on any side of the ongoing transaction. -Nor howsoever in any conceivable cross purpose or conflict of interests. No chain can be stronger that the weakest link, inevitably whatever, often worse betrayal: whomever had built themselves up as most crucial, and the inevitable catastrophic discovery whereof presenting the greatest challenge to fluid adaptive cooperation, regrouping to fall back to the proverbial drawing board and salvaging from the wreckage to start anew. The truth emerges clear and manifest, how for autonomously and respectful freely chosen and independent collaboration outside of often Hellish and alienating institutional structured social environments and preexisting institutions of employment and education that absorb the bulk of human and material resources in society, hence given there are simply no other established resources to fall back upon and no master to lead us, hence the possibility of competition under fair play opening the benefit of honest controversy, then basic reciprocal altruistic impulses may yet channel themselves into advantageous improved individual performance and ability among closely functioning partners, equals in collaboration no less than true friends, with authentic ordinary curiosity towards one another, all at the simple cost of effort in sharing time and attention. Power: We all need it, we all want it in order to survive comfortably and to flourish. But power madness and the lust for power are indeed great woes. Cooperation achieves power. But there's the rub, for cooperation often demands frustrating compromise if not submission and the surrender of power outright, worse often in disregard of dissident better judgment. Fortunately, this is not always so. For the individual will to power and happiness is indeed often expressed in cooperation and friendship among autonomously respectful equals, if possible in helping another if only they will be helped and can be, and all the more so in any self sustainable reciprocity and exchange. Thus, again, are altruistic impulses known to serve to enhance individual performance for each. Enthusiasm and lofty dedication in the abstract are often somewhat misleading, implying but not actually committing to reciprocity at all. Alas, insecure suspicion and arrogance often insolate the individual from even the friendliest outreach, inspiring distance, defection and even covert obstruction rather than ready cooperation. The human evolutionary challenge of Tit for Tat is in building legitimate trust and intelligent autonomous respect essential to any howsoever at all whole hearted intrinsically fulfilling collaborative endeavor together with quick and decisive extrication from any dependence upon unreliable players and undependable bargains therewith, rather than falling back upon simple dominance and kneejerk abuse into the ersatz mediocrity of herd mentality or else complete social disintegration and empty pipedream unless provided resources for the extrinsic motivation of heteronymous punishment and reward systems of humiliating dominance, such as grading and requirements in school, wages at work, conditionality in family, obedience in the military, the lunatic faith and the categorical gung-ho of cult mentality, or just the heteronymous phony rat race of interminable popularity contest in what sadly passes for ordinary social life. Otherwise, not only must each participant put themselves readily at one another's disposal without caginess or reluctance under whatever sort of simmering resentment of contractual coercion, but actually to enjoy it! -Not merely tolerating but actually the maturity for actively seeking the stimulation of creative challenge via functional interaction towards alleviation of boredom and loneliness. A creative leadership niche, simply by virtue of effort and initiative that will be called for, along with the reciprocal support required internally for any chance of success. Individual initiative and experience driving interdependent situational shared leadership in parallel to best Epistemological Methodology, of social attention to acknowledged expertise and capability. Might this be worth discussing?
Beyond simply all that is merely dividual, portioned amongst, shared, participatory, or howsoever else at all in common with any others, consider the strident paradoxes of group identity, as in the emotions and illusions that sports fans typically harbor and cultivate towards their favorite teams, madness in the name of any political or social cause, even the angst ridden complex personal relationship of any Cuban national with Fidel himself, yes, on a first name basis. Emotional attachments are of actual relationship, while those of sentiment tend to the fantastical. And such illusion may even be understood as a bleakly anomic cultural feature of lonely conformity in a cold and unresponsive social environment. Why, religion even still exhorts personal relationship with God, in contrast to how, for example, Albert Einstein, who had such difficulty relating to others, instead strove to fathom the mind of a possibly metaphorical but explicitly impersonal God, through the ongoing inquiry of physics. I myself am friends with a somewhat eccentric metrology aficionado who, when he takes umbrage and personal betrayal because a local television news team weather forecaster gets it wrong, I express amazement at his utterly blithe fantasy as if they were really even acquainted! So I generally urge him instead, to close ranks with those precious few he truly respects and care for him. For, all of these are standard examples of desperately lonely and rejected infantile projection of attachment and relationship, so desperately seeking comfort. Emotional intelligence pertains to real interpersonal relationship, as even in the bonds of ordinary friendship. But does social intelligence at least nowadays, demand such attachment to society as an abstract? Because, conformist heteronomy often seems to fantasize some kind of intimacy between the individual and, not even any neighborhood of long reciprocal acquaintance, let alone whatever ones own imbedded immediate social networks, but the broadest and most indifferent if not actually abusive and alienating aspects or facets of the mass society and culture as a whole into which they are born or later entered into. And all such seems sheer delusional affect of Pathetic Fallacy, lending social reality such vividness and affect! But interpersonal emotional intelligence aside, what can ever become of my social intelligence without it? I confront hostility or simple indifference from society, lifelong. So, I still fail to attach to society as a whole, in all of its abstraction and anonymity, as it indeed, reciprocally, society quite fails to embrace me, personally. Nor does that seem very surprising. So, is this a disorder? Society isn't a person, and I simply cannot pity society whatever the injury, whenever should I fail the most ludicrous, petty and actually indecent social expectations, any more than I grieve for a disappointed loving God because of my sins. Indeed, I particularly resent cowardly inexplicit and often self-serving peer pressure from individuals hiding behind the herd mentality when they clearly suspect the weakness of whatever their own position. And so I actually find myself ashamed whenever I catch myself yielding to social pressure. Democracy and autonomy can only abhor the brutal subjugation of the self into the whole. We ought to be more considerate of one another, and flagrantly insensitive in speaking truth to power. Even bureaucrats, with help, can escape their insular worlds, and reconnect to those whom they serve. This means, surprisingly, that even government can, indeed, love you! - at least so long as and in so far as there are clear channel's by which to connect, individually. But the broadest, pervasive and most anonymous social environment can only perhaps at all adore celebrities. Indeed, is the social environment really any more personal or conscious than the natural physical environment, let alone the technological environment subsumed to our comfort and convenience? Surely, likewise, our failing societies can never be validated except as a mechanism explicitly for meeting the needs of each individual, effectively and transparently. After all, any better more tolerant society must build more transparent bridges and conduits between individuals, eschewing the all to common roadblocks and social minefields. Indeed, any screening criteria should likewise serve the needs, fulfillment and preferences of the individual in question, not any other self serving third parties, and not even under typical implicit bullying pretext of safety after all actually only seeking conditioned compliance under typical threatening and coercive subtext. For do we not hold such truths to be self evident? Beware Skilled Incompetence, the consequent dishonestly heteronymous adaptation by gutless executives marshalling information Inductively, and thereby manipulatively avoiding any relevant productive outcome of conflict on any level from controversy and never changing the course of action, fixed malagenda under predisposition to heteronymous Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink team traps of Stockholm Syndrome (to whatever degree)! And so, let us all pause for a moment to recognize those among us who demonstrate such adequate and indeed superlative social aptitude and natural grace, transcendent of the woes endured by the rest of us typical well meaning but inept nebbishes. For few of us can be so blessed as our most socially adroit. Indeed, many have had to rise to the challenge nevertheless. Therefore, particularly, let us acknowledge the consummate conformists, and all that they have sacrificed deep inside, simply in order to adapt and survive. We whiners and losers, who have fallen so far short of the bar that you have set, do, nevertheless, rise to salute you and your fortitude!
For while an
intrinsic
motive
is one that finds both its source and its reward in its own
exercise for its own sake even life long, whatever
extrinsic
motivation
as of
situational
expedience tends to be short term. And so, in truth,
expedience is something of a red herring.
Otherwise with all the whimsical romance of post nasal drip, the real appeal, if any whatsoever, of all such vapid meat puppetry as extolled by the likes of Popular Prick, is to the ego-syntonic hostility of sheer malignant Narcissism, insecure, desperate and voracious for validation from others, constantly. -hence the extroverted behavior from introverted drives. Like all self-made men, he worships his creator! "The narcissist seeks to be admired for his ability to integrate and ingratiate himself without the efforts commensurate with such an undertaking." [''How to Recognize a Narcissist'] The purported expedience of a popular prick then stands exposed as mere sickly vanity masquerading as mighty Nietzschean will to power. Hence only because the Narcissist simply lacks sufficient intrinsically motivating genuine interest, the narcissists expertise and ability generally turns out insubstantial when probed, his intellectual grasp as simplistic as his empathy is weak. Indeed, after all, Popular Prick prides himself as the expert on shallowness! Not surprisingly, then, the core dispute is over reciprocal irrelevance, given such distinctly different motivating stimulus needs and incompatible values. The authentic true human burning issues all such cynically dogged pragmatism promulgated by the likes of Popular Prick tends so blithely to sidestep -being so simplistically ingrained with the cynicism of Nihilistic value destruction, fails to relate, missing the point entirely, all pass beyond tactical efficacy into the field of intrinsic values informing objectives to begin with. Thus, even given consummate social skills and every manipulative advantage, all such brazen empathic failure is just vulgar and even ends in real insipid stupidity. For along with the requisite sensitivity even much to care, the poor wretched malignant Narcissist so often lacks the insight and interest at all, even to imagine the many splendored, varied and frankly more human needs, drives and preferences that so differently motivate others, much less howsoever cogently advise pursuant thereto.
Emphatically no, Popular Prick's tactics seem only entirely suitably motivating for his fellow malignant Narcissists, indeed, who have probably already mastered them already anyhow. Bullshit self-help hucksters are typically ignorant and indifferent to the actual needs and circumstances of others, often complex and varied. Even assuming for the sake of argument, the efficacy of advice such as that of Popular Prick, then well may one ask: Even given the sheer triviality and stupidity, nevertheless as matter of practical expedient, why so onerous? Because of the intensely shallow and therefore lonely -even in a crowd, exhaustive time and attention required for something so painfully boring and repugnant, effectively locking out more fulfilling engagement. Not that a popular prick could relate, but then, they never can.
Beyond all pretensions endemic to runaway evolution and engorged cerebrality, we are still only pack mammals after all. But does that mean all detail of information content exchange, including whatever personal depth of meaning, is all mere trifling nuance and decorative embellishment to crucial interaction on the animal gut level of emotion as salient to all exactly the same social politics, struggle, dominance and submission, just as among any other primates? -Indeed, how every expression tickles others, always reflects upon each individual and determines the persuasiveness, individual standing, position, leverage and influence! And there's the rub: For, while to remember that we are pack mammals is all fine and good, to forget that we are sapient, means the abandonment of rational persuasion as ineffectual and futile, and hence the surrenders of any hope of seeking the truth for soundly crafting plans and cooperating in considered action, of Epistemological Methodology towards any salient agenda. Also, the incessant demands of arbitrary social politics must inevitably come into irreconcilable conflict with the six core polemically purposeful and authentic dramatic motivations of dialogue, because preoccupation with successful social manipulation, endless social grooming and approval seeking, together quickly become all consuming and debilitating, soon to devolve, subvert and defeat all effort at ever conveying any honest and intelligent thoughts, feelings and values, let alone planning and acting thereupon together. But let's not be pigheaded: Not all compromise is moral compromise. Compromise is often essential, constructive and consummately skilled. But even in any seemingly sensible acknowledgment towards the exigency of compromise with an imperfect world, the advocates of such conventional and normative paradigms of learning and embracing social skills, the veritable champions of heteronomy, all quite fail to appreciate how Faustian a tradeoff they often exhort, how alienating and demoralizing for the intelligent and sensitive, any simplistic reduction of whatever human outreach to any uninspired patient systematic procedure, a meaningless unfulfilling lonely boring alienating and dullardly chore, even excluding the most abusive and destructively dishonest manipulation.
Are social skills, indeed, anything more than adaptive behavior sets, extrinsically motivated trained seal conditioned responses in pursuit of vested interest under punishment and reward systems? Again, according to meta-study, simple unsophisticated and straightforward social skills training in any one social context, followed somewhat robotically, breaks down completely in transition to the next. Under those circumstances, the greatest impairment to vaunted social skills, is simply dissidence and autonomy. Hence all the greater appeal of Transactional Analysis striving towards some subversive conduct within dharma. Alas, any of the same old same old, is readily marketed to subversive mystique, nowadays.
"A
bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing
you with company."
Happy People Talk More Seriously Beware interminable pointless superficial small talk, only leaving one actually the more depleted, empty and discontent, all important expression still mute and frustrated. That is much of why bogus support groups are so oppressive: Living persistently in conventional denial will only render the anxious gnawing frustrated loneliness and boredom of small talk the more eerily mysterious. "A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you." — Bert Leston Taylor Good conversation the more uplifting, energizes and deepens acquaintance by free flowing investigative personal information exchange, ostensibly on topics of mutual interest and concern, and given equal opportunity to hold forth unreservedly with full and pointed answers and then, likewise, to make inquiry in any depth and attend with undivided concentration. Beyond the interminable shallow Machiavellian popularity contest or marshmallow throwing bogus support, the highly evolved human social intelligence is an appetite returned and fulfilled by the care and personal investment in others of authentic intellectual, emotional, purposeful and imaginative participation in the ongoing and unexpected discovery and progress of human character and relations over time in cultures of participation offering challenge and support for risk taking, deprivation resulting in frustration, emptiness, inadequacy, sadness, malaise, discontent, boredom, anxiety, alienation and anomie. Boredom often accrues from the dire mismatch of intrinsic motivation and meaningful activity to the individual, given any dearth of adequate choices often for want of authentic autonomy supportive respect and often in response to pressure. Depending upon all manner of statistical factors and correlates such as individual stimulus needs, coping, self-efficacy versus helplessness, patience versus impatience, hope versus despair, procrastination and introspection, gifted underachievers in particular may even however the more flagrantly tend, seemingly by disposition, intelligent and extrovertedly seeking more variety in external stimulation, to be more greatly than others, boredom prone, indeed actually requiring a constant and changing flow of stimulation for optimal arousal. Not that boredom isn't actually quite ordinary and prevalent to any dull routine. Boredom, after all, is a luxury of affluence and indifference free and secure from any actual struggle for survival. After all, as Bertrand Russell notes, the opposite of boredom is not pleasure, but merely excitement without distinction, even sheer terror. Which helps explain both the cultivation of even the most grinding monotony to assuage and stave off extreme anxiety, and then if not unexpected creativity then the lengths and heights of malignant madness and danger often undertaken even inspired out of sheer boredom. Boredom is a reactive state to wearingly dull, repetitive, or tedious stimuli or under stimulation, distress, distraction, the lack of interesting things to see, hear, or do physically and/or intellectually arouse and engage curiosity over time. Boredom is the distress of life inertia. Boredom is an aggravated nervous fatigue, an angst-ridden intrinsic yearning to occupy time with relevant meaningful value. Boredom is a particular restless and even irritable condition of passivity opposite to active creativity, anxious and overwhelmed, powerless and yearning for escape, not liking what one is doing but neither knowing what else to do for desperate wont of any better idea; arising, as observed by Otto Fenichel, simply “when we must not do what we want to do, or must do what we do not want to do.” Whereas, the condition of loneliness is entirely distinct from any mere circumstances of solitude or benefit of privacy. Hence, however counter intuitively, and far from maladaptive dysfunction, the benefits of privacy, retreat into high quality solitude, refreshing volitional solitary activities and behaviors, is often actually known to at all ameliorate rather than simply exacerbate sensations of loneliness. Similarly, adaptive introverted strategies, desperate recreational stopgaps in lieu of crucial meaningfully relevant engagement, for coping with under stimulating tedium of work, studies or hanging out socially and waiting patiently for an opening to the most empty and banal small talk in order to advance in popularity, by in the meantime eking out any small satisfaction, include fantasy, daydreaming, mental games, self amusement via the cultivation of new interests, appreciation, skills or hobbies, striking up conversation, arbitrary variation in routine tasks and careful observation of incidental environmental detail. After all, in order to prolong interesting events, intentional activity must be organized towards the relation of actions to objects given whatever aspects of the environment howsoever allowing and supporting whatever particular activities. A common twice exceptionality, lifelong deadly social and career learning disability among gifted underachievers, ongoing products of lifelong asynchronous development, in even somewhat rebelliously stunned apathetic bored and lonely deficiency of all such executive function including poor memory and low organizational skills, may be entirely due to fully active responsiveness arising only to howsoever valued high standards of pleasurable, engaging and meaningful opportunity. That is why FoolQuest.com is dedicated, first and foremost, to systematic and concerted cultivation of optimally pleasurable, engaging and meaningful interaction so essential to human flourishing. And what could be better? Just as boredom may illicit the biological defense which is disassociation, conversely inattention and therefore distraction and disturbance, be it from self-conscious inner emotional turmoil or any bothersome external nuisance alike, all do factor into boredom by undermining interest and involvement. Hence, indeed, one way or another, actually ignoring the problem by attentive Zen mindfulness towards immediate activity and experience and tuning out external static and ego distraction alike, indeed, metaphorically even running away from oneself, has indeed ever been found to help in coping with the lonely grinding urgency of boredom, but much like unto extrinsic motivation or chemical stimulants, surely only temporarily. -For such can never be enough, Existentially...
Even transitory boredom may often be regarded as a waste of time or far worse. Indeed, subjective time seems to drag interminably when suffering from boredom because of sheer monotony, the very infrequency of notable events resulting in boredom to begin with. "Boredom is an emptiness filled with insistence." — Leo Stein“ Boredom is often manifestation of exactly such dissident ennui in passive resistance as might actually stem from the depressive stressed out apathetic alienated lack of interest and self-knowledge of repressed desires under any static situation of manipulative coercion or captivity, unsettled, fidgety, helpless and out of touch even with ones own sense of oppression, likely thereby even overshadowing whatever joys otherwise experienced. "Boredom: the desire for desires" — Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy, 'Anna Karenina' Dangerous human error is often attributable to inattentive, stultifying and debilitating boredom and frustration on the job. Indeed, boredom is a contributing factor in however sullen and deadened anger, aggression and worse: thence to all manner of folly and vice. “A yawn is a silent shout.” — Gilbert K. Chesterton "Boredom is rage spread thin" — Paul Tillich “Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism” — Wendell Phillips Therefore:
Yet exactly such an unhappy and painfully distressful evolutionary trait or response even such as sheer boredom, when seen nonetheless as a quality filter and an individual protest in defense of autonomy and self determination, may nevertheless be valued as useful even if aversive, and recognized as a cry for change rather than blithely pathologized as entirely maladaptive. Whereas, disinterest and boredom likewise in sullen protest but actually as a defense mechanism of heteronymy, is a feature of crimestop an aspect of doublethink.
Hence:
Moreover, whereas likewise to idle and uneventful quiet, solitude may ever at least be at all private and tranquil, beyond sheer boredom alone, loneliness is the distress of being isolated and estranged from others, perhaps even rejected, unseen and unknown, helpless to connect, a painful awareness and important desire not being met, to feel needed, wanted and connected, and a longing not merely to interact at all, but actually however to relate to others, to genuinely react and respond to one another.
A common twice exceptionality, lifelong deadly social and career learning disability among gifted underachievers, ongoing products of lifelong asynchronous development, in even somewhat rebelliously stunned apathetic bored and lonely deficiency of all such executive function including poor memory and low organizational skills, may be entirely due to fully active responsiveness arising only to howsoever valued high standards of pleasurable, engaging and meaningful opportunity. Indeed, loneliness may even accrue simply from values, yearning and vision of any conceivable way of life howsoever more open and genuine between individuals. That is why FoolQuest.com is dedicated, first and foremost, to systematic and concerted cultivation of optimally pleasurable, engaging and meaningful interaction so essential to human flourishing. And what could be better? Because:
Loneliness, social and emotional isolation, consists of any deficiency or discrepancy between ones own desired versus actually achieved or at all available, quality of social interaction and communication.
Worse, none dare call out distress straightforwardly, for the shame of rebuke even since childhood. For, whereas the familiar community of old was so stifling, the modern world ofttimes seems simply estranged and obdurate! Hence, when mass anxiety fails to challenge our very way of life or to trouble the powers that be, and thus individual distress fails to evoke sympathetic feeling and therefore mutual aid, and if none any longer shall rally to the alarm sounded, then such only will signal vulnerability to predation and exploitation, merely endangering others as well as oneself. Yes, loneliness actually propagates and even promotes religion. Rightly and responsibly then, do we hesitate to reach out to others in distress of any kind. Because even though need is the motive ever to reach out at all, neediness is only cloying. Because loosing might rub off emotionally and socially! Because excessive burdens of responsibility to others often only drags down a life of promise. Because of compassion burn out. Because unconditional selflessness only invites the sucker's payoff. Because one never knows what desperately manipulative and neurotic pigheaded wretched bully or unfeeling confidence trickster will only bite the hand that feeds them! -And with utter impunity... Hence, all the more, loss, decline, disappointment, grief and suffering of any kind, are all often isolating and lonely in their subjective intensity and hence introversion. Indeed, loneliness is also associated with mortality. Indubitably, loneliness is formative, for some people exactly opposite as for others, motivating some, for example, to incisive empathy whist others to insecure withdrawn babbling egotism, making some more self sufficient and others exactly less so. And so, it will be in loneliness, whether as abiding in actual solitude or even whilst thronging amid the madding crowds, that are all conundrums and struggles of individuality contemplated, confronted and discovered, the separation and distinction of the self from the world beyond, with all personal longings and on whatever ones own terms.
For loneliness is a quality that defies simple objective measurement, even such as the frequency and duration of social interaction, but also of the nature, preference and kind. Loneliness may typically result from the dearth of an engaging social network and activities or interaction towards social integration and/or opportunities for emotional intimacy. Causes of loneliness are, most obviously, bereavement, longing for another absent or unrequited, abandonment, social rejection and abuse, isolation, neglect, not fitting in, discontent, alienation or individual dissatisfaction, reciprocal failure to relate, incompatible values, sheer irrelevance, the unsympathetic helplessness of society in denial before the powerless individual in crisis and tragedy, but also stress, overwork and underutilization of skills and capability, deficiency of stimulating challenge and hope. The outsider is the reject or unbeliever apart from common activities and purpose. Reciprocally, pandemic alienation and the boredom and despair of wage slaves and students, not even permitted the release of just giving up, is the result of sheer grinding busy work that has has lost all meaningful and satisfying initiative. The adaptive modes of acquisition include achievement, productive creativity towards fulfillment of desires, even competition, aggression, force or power to simply take whatever one wants, and influence via succorance, reaching out where achievement and aggression are inapplicable, specifically, in solicitation of attention, sympathy, concern, affectionate care and support, to nurturance, the desire to help, reciprocal and complementary to succorance in any healthy give and take. However, without trust and respect, insecure reliance upon threatening and domineering social situations, even however actually unpleasant and stressful, only exacerbates needy codependent frustrated yearnings and bottomless emptiness. Alas, the social incentives and disincentives so stifling of individual creativity, opinion, controversy and creativity, cheat us all of expression conducive to autonomous interpersonal interest and engagement in return for heteronymous non threatening conditional approval, learned helpless emptiness, boredom and loneliness. No, loneliness is not resolved by the mere presence of others, marshmallow-throwing touchy-feely encouragement or commiseration on cue, mortification, bullying and scapegoating, nor any other empty social grooming and consensual validation, nor even necessarily by intimate acts, much less any interaction the more superficial or heteronymous. -such as shallow and perfunctory political activism that fabulously promises us each a place at their table, but only really means to say (as in that wonderful line from 'The Last Emperor'): "Join us comrade, or fuck off!" Because volunteerism of any kind will never actually get you anything but chores. Rather, loneliness is only ever truly resolved by someone else who relates and responds so as to move you, uniquely, with challenge and variety, compatibly and reciprocally, ever the better to understand one another.
And since emotion finding outlet thus becomes motivation, meaningful common goals put forth or inquiries actively pursued may greatly facilitate the aforesaid resolution of loneliness. Indeed, in substantive co-operative endeavor may the flame of just such affection be most readily be fanned and nurtured. And loneliness is but the starvation thereof. All of this is precisely why simply hanging out aimlessly or meeting others for recreation and consumption, online or even in real life, striving so determinedly only to relax and seek for oblivion from the grind, is so completely boring, futile and irrelevant ever to finding new beginnings and connection out from the sterile void. Better dead than mellow! Indeed, healing loneliness requires more than merely satisfice, making do with ordinary casual social contact, even acquiescence to the safest and dullest small talk, conditionality, towing the line, generally going along to get along, but rather, true investment in others and any genuine and meaningful engagement into their individuality. For the deeper and more intense the longing, the keener the deprivation and frustration. And, to complicate the problem, there are many needs of immediacy that are simply ill served by the abstraction and remoteness of interactivity online. That is why truly engaging interaction online best plays to the highly cerebral strengths of the medium, at which the fundamental electronic tools of the Internet even excel. The traditional Four Levels of Happiness are laetus: material physical satisfaction and immediate gratification, felix: the ego satisfaction of personal achievement, the Beatitude of contribution making an impact or difference beyond oneself, and lastly, the sublime fullness of goodness, beauty, truth and love, possibly so much as self realization. And we may hope that the fulfilling involvement of interaction and relationship enters somewhere. But even the precious pursuit of happiness is never guarantee even of hope and opportunity. All manner of daunting obstacles remain. But perhaps some measure of freedom may yet at all permit the involvement of stimulating intellectual challenge in practice and experience towards better decision making. As, one way or another, primary needs still tend to call for attention first, even barring immediate threat to physical survival, economic requirements are often experienced as the most palpable barrier to self-actualization or at least freedom and autonomy in modern life. And as a solution, many yearn for recognition of their true potential and best opportunity for fulfillment thereof, via some capable and dedicated mentorship to success and fulfillment in a situation facilitating due compensation. Alas, the deck is so often stacked against us at every turn. Certainly, there may be readily available general guidance in pursuit of the conventional expectations of others. But assistance towards one's own ends is by far the harder to find and often deficient if not fraudulent outright. Only compromise and snake oil remain ever abundant, barring the most extreme and resolute self reliance indeed. Hence, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness increasingly are quickly reduced to an ongoing invitation to bang one's metaphorical head against the proverbial wall! And at a certain threshold of sheer frustration, the realization must dawn that compromise has spared no aggravation, nor do increasingly outmoded expectations manifest any greater efficacy than any other inane sycophantic vogueing cargo-cult mimesis of success. In the end, only truth to oneself is even worth the trouble.
Is this really all there is?! Alienation can be so disorienting as to bring on nausea and rage, or perhaps more often, the desperate defense of sheer denial. Alienation is the even surreal situation wherein the individual can no longer discern meaningful value or relevantly useful propose in any feature or contents of an inexplicably hostile or indifferent surrounding environment. Among the many dimensions of alienation including powerlessness, meaningless Nihilism, normlessness (anomie), social isolation, cultural estrangement and self-estrangement amid an increasingly surreal incomprehensibly hostile environment or situation, the twisted ostensible motivation of Masochistically feigned mercy is no honest excuse for the adaptively sycophantic appeasement of faceless abusers of power, that in no way resembles genuine sympathetic compassion for individuals one can actually relate to, a legitimate and redeeming purpose, nor likewise even sound rationality. In the aftermath of Zen futile Nihilistic value destruction, skills of amoral social intelligence quickly become little more than the foulest mockery and perversion of meaningful and genuine humane sensitivity and wisdom. Indeed, Beware Skilled Incompetence, the consequent dishonestly heteronymous adaptation by gutless executives marshalling information Inductively, and thereby manipulatively avoiding any relevant productive outcome of conflict on any level from controversy and never changing the course of action, fixed malagenda under predisposition to heteronymous Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink team traps of Stockholm Syndrome (to whatever degree)! Exactly thus, whether directly by overbearing power and authority or more deviously by consensus manipulation, and often with the aid of negative stereotypes of outsiders, are dissenters and opposing views never properly argued with, but merely ignored under tacit rationalization of group invulnerability, evidence to the contrary minimized and trivialized, that decisions made by the group cannot be "made-wrong." Alienation, then, is the condition in which individuals find themselves at cross purposes with, and dominated by, forces and institutions of our own creation, driven by their own Monopolistic agendas, confronting the individual as overbearing, loveless, conditional, bullying, threatening and manipulative alien powers amid the demoralization of society. Unhappiness results
from suffering, deprivation, frustration and fear or anxiety.
Causes of unhappiness and misery include wrong doing,
foolishness, unthinking poor judgment, mistreatment, cruelty,
abuse of power, misfortune, stress,
boredom and
loneliness. Passivity, giving up and refusal to try, may all help assuage mounting anxiety at the prospect of risk, great or small. But such coping strategy is to take refuge in ever deepening depression, even to the point suicidal despair. Simply giving up typically provides some stress relief in the short term, while exacerbating excruciating despair in the long term. In such an empty Zen futility and meaningless existence, only constant guidance provides any distraction, and any measure of freedom only leads to gnawing boredom. Naturally, the unhappy are more easily manipulated because, readily, the unhappy individual is well motivated to seek consolation and relief from the pain thereof. -to feel better, to be consoled, to be reaffirmed, to feel whole and complete. As ever, marketing often strives to confuse and inveigle the consumer in to compensation for genuine underserved needs, via the elicitation of positive associations and mystique, seldom actually substantiated in whatever goods or services. For such is the shameless peddling of false hope! Hence, it becomes fairly simple for actual punishment and reward systems to control the ways and means by which the unhappy individual seeks comfort, consolation and respite. Thence, what will become more convenient than, one way or another, to market whatever the most readily available false hope instead of whatever they are really missing, but have been discouraged? All, however, to persistent futility. For what can be the point? Alas, many people can never even conceive of questioning whatever the prevalent common wisdom, no matter how consistently it ever fails them in practice, emphasizing a mythology detailing some or other prescribed mechanics of prospecting for connections in utter disregard of every purpose, sense or meaning motivating outreach to begin with, the incessant demands of arbitrary social politics inevitably coming into irreconcilable conflict with the six core polemically purposeful and authentic dramatic motivations of dialogue. In practice, often friendship grows from acquaintance in any given context, by extending the boundaries by involving the other person in other interpersonal or social contexts. Nevertheless, obviously there must be far more to it. Otherwise, loneliness would be vastly uncommon. Any true solution to loneliness must address the inextricable discontent of sheer pointlessness by the exchange of attention as only possible given engagement in the reciprocal stimulus of meaningful content, expression and attention. Because, even putting aside the most ruthlessly cynical how-to's of exploitative social climbing and frantically networking the cold and vast in actual practice and for all purposes and intents punishment and reward system of acquaintance, amid all of the failed and trivializing commonsense advice towards overcoming loneliness, suitable enough only for simple and moderate shyness or uncomplicated social anxiety, of where to hang out, flexibility, lowered expectation, making do with whatever company can be had, however empty, quiet patient perseverance in order to come off more cool, staying active however arbitrarily and likewise organizing one's schedule, who to keep in touch, how to strike up conversation, and even screwing up the courage to confide one's woes, only rarely does the sense of sheer futility and the quest for attention worthy meaning and value enter as an aspect of loneliness or frustrated motivation, alas unless in the context of the most dauntingly senseless religious proselytizing. Alas, even where the motivating quest for meaning and value is howsoever attended to, in relation to loneliness or not, and even with the sense of crisis so well deserved, nowhere does the abstract ever seem to connect to any strategic application or action agenda. Practical advice is typically divorced from abstract principle. Substantive change demands not only a healthy discontent, even however restless, but conviction that it is in what we do, the context and content thereof and how we interact that we need some point to it, and very much for it's own sake and in the doing thereof as an essential and indispensable pressing human need or core value, rather than strictly optional or auxiliary, some mere ornamental crowning touch, let alone pragmatically superfluous or actually impractical. No true friend demands your silence and stifles your growth as a human being. To overcome alienation, the values of intrinsic motivation must first be reclaimed from the clutches of systematic bait and switch of sublimation. Escape from alienated dependency upon social institutions requires nothing less than the wherewithal to organize and fully immersively engage and interact in meaningful pleasurable interaction, even cooperation and collaboration. No, it is not interminably hanging out for small talk that needs or deserves to be given any sort of a chance. Indeed, really giving anyone any chance at all, requires honest attention, genuine interest and sympathy, relative true intimacy that may likely to demand relative privacy in opposition to expectations of brainless and conformist hanging out. Individual freedom and security in any broader social contexts in order to ever really give anyone any chance, will never be achieved so long as doing nothing in particular remains so consuming and exacting a pursuit. Not everyone really has the passion for that bizarre sport. Indeed, people first of all simply need to be. Therefore, greater true civility and vastly relaxed and simplified norms must come to the defense of even however incidental casual expression of identity. Only then will average people ever finally discover personal resources to spare for cultivating real talent and passionate genuine interests. Indeed, the inadequacy of ordinary sheer social ineptitude can scarcely be any more daunting and baffling than, to the contrary, the despair that is transmitted from highly skilled Incompetence in adept compliance with every expectation. -oppression propagating among the oppressed! Perhaps we might imagine that in some bygone era, what once was agreeable to one's fellow human beings was simply that one shared their burden, that they might reciprocate. It still is, except that the burden now a days, rather than actually relating to one another, is the miserable compliant embrace of alienation in a milieu wherein veritably by design, no one's needs can ever be met. Boredom is resolved only by anything interesting enough to sustain attention. While love and happiness are supplied from someone from whom to exchange needed attention and engaging stimuli, that is, anyone who adequately relate to one another. -And loneliness is the absence all thereof, empty of meaning, sheer pointless futility. Indeed, the active psychiatrically Nihilistic engagement in loneliness even within social interaction, is boredom perpetuated under the noxious scam of boring people relying upon others likewise confused, helpless and not paying enough attention ever even to notice or care that no one is really paying attention to one another, repressed into sheer indifference beyond any sheer bother to relate. But surely, what we all really need to share is in the fundamental exercise of freedom being nothing less than the perceptive and intelligent quest for any effective struggle to overcome alienation and loneliness, to connect in order to mount any resistance, making every reasonable effort to improve our lives, rather than endemic blithe rationalization, bogus support group ethos marshmallow-throwing and co-validation wallowing in denial and unaware incompetent accommodation thereof. Indeed, given food, shelter, medicine and even entertainment, what else still remains more important to real progress than human connection of stimulus and attention in whatever expression and cultivation of our talents? Alas, for all too many, the necessary cost of recreation, the desperate effort and struggle to recover, on ones own time and expense, from the learned helpless sheer exhaustion, fear and loathing of exactly the ever so vigorously marketed dubious practical and existential guarantees they all swear by, namely their family lives, schooling and job careers that they lead, has become the Narcissistic superficial and introverted oblivion of sheer cognitive, emotional and social disassociation, the next best thing to being dead, leaving little room for true immersive passion, trust, care and involvement in any experience of anything or anyone else or much of any deeply personal value. Instead, only joyless unfulfilling toxic fear-based co-validation and satisfice in the embrace of superficial relations and oppressive conditionality, painfully corseted and closeted even out in the open! with determined satisfice committed to the profound alienation of networking only under whatever terms and purpose defined by unstated and uncritical consensus agenda, as proverbial cogs in the metaphorical machine and entrenchment in lives not much worth the living. -Making do in terror of being left out entirely and going nowhere at all, and worse still, of rejection, hostility, exposure and real danger to oneself and ones loved ones, of worse exploitation, even harsher abuse and life threatening decline. Lastly, determined inner life satisfice, consisting of whatever lonely individual resources and coping methods, however, weird, freakish, outré and bizarre outright or however dull, boring, downright ordinary, bland and banal. And all such culminating in the very dread of hope itself, lest the temptation to risk may somehow ever jeopardize all so hard won in meek complacency and surrender. Even the inability otherwise to relate at all! In brief, all of the crushingly heavy and somber Existential responsibilities of heteronomy. Alas, however, suffering
travail does not end at work or school. Unlike the
alienated and futile
struggle to relax endemic to
recreation and the
further aggravation and desperation of prospecting and dating, any joy in leisure and
dalliance for either their own sake, need also partake in idle
unconcern with outcome to take care of itself. -Otherwise, yet
another chore a best, if not the very worst cynical strife and deep
intrigue. Indeed, in solitary idleness and contemplation is often the larger part of cogitation, pondering and processing culminating in planning towards productive work only at the end. The same is often true interpersonal free exchange and collaborative brainstorming, likewise to culminate only much later on in any call to action and organization such as herein.
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“My first experiences of academic friendship made me smile in after years when I looked back on them. But my circle of acquaintances had gradually grown so large that it was only natural new friendships should grow out of it.” - Georg Brandes
“If a man does not
make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find
himself alone. A man
should keep his
friendships
in constant repair.”
“A true
friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the
least care of all to acquire.” - Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.” - Arthur Schopenhauer
“It's not what you know, but who you know.” - Anon. Meaning, of course: how connected you are, even for the most rank incompetents and scoundrels, that will be all too often so much more key to success even than the very greatest ability, all too often unrecognized and unrewarded. And hence, who you can get to know or: make acquaintance. Networking. Indeed, or, var: “It’s not what you know or who you know, but who you sorta-know.” In other words: six degrees of separation and all that. -Facility in extended networking, even however superficial, has been found to bring to light the competitive plumb opportunities first. Or, var: “It's not who you know, but who knows you!” For: “Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.” - Nicolas de Chamfort
But just perhaps, exactly as the abuse of power wielded by bullies and self appointed social gatekeepers who are essentially monopolistic, closing ranks in order to obstruct and extort all others, promoting mass fear and stifling intimidation, likewise friendship and generosity in helping bring success and popularity to others, the doors one is reputed to open freely for others by making introductions, networking connections and building functional webs of support, is all what actually creates value to generate demand, thus in turn leveraging one's own social capital, reputation, popularity and success.
“You have to give to the world the thing that you want the most, in order to fix the broken parts inside you.” — Eve Ensler
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” - Winston Churchill
“Create value and become known!” - Brian Macias
“If you have nothing else to do, look about you and see if there isn't something close at hand that you can improve! It may make you wealthy, thought it is more likely that it will make you happy.” - Matthew Adams
“If you want happiness for
an hour…take a nap. - Chinese Proverb.
“You will get everything in life that you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.” - Zig Ziglar
“It is literally
true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to
succeed.”
“If you have much,
give of your wealth; If you have little, give of your heart.”
“It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.” - Epicurus
“When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.” - Edgar Watson Howe
“I get by with a little help from my friends.” - John Lennon
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There are plenty of acquaintances in this world… but very few real friends.” - Chinese Proverb.
“Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure.” - Jewish Saying
“A faithful friend is the medicine of life.” - Ecclesiastes 6. 16
“My friends are my estate.” - Emily Dickinson
- Ali ibn Abi Talib, 4th caliph (602-661)
“Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.” - Thomas Jones
- Abraham Lincoln
“What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”
- George Eliot “It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them.” - Duc de la Rochefoucauld
“A true friend stabs you in the front.” - Oscar Wilde
“My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” - Henry Ford
“Only your real friends tell you when your face is dirty.” (Or, var: spinach in your teeth...) - Sicilian Proverb
“No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend until he is unhappy.” - Thomas Fuller
“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” - Walter Winchell
Lonely despair “It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire, and many things to fear.” - Francis Bacon
“No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.” - Aristotle
“We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.” - Joseph Roux
“Life dies inside a
person when there are no others willing to
befriend
him.”
“Loneliness breaks the spirit.” - Jewish Proverb
“A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.” - Gian Vincenzo Gravina
“When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?” - Kathleen Norris
4:7 Then I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun. 4:8 There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail. 04:9 Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.
“What makes
loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but
this: I have only my own burden to bear.” - Dag Hammarskjold
4:10 For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. 4:11 Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? 4:12 And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. - Ecclesiastes, King James version
"I think a man only needs one thing in life. He just needs someone to love. If you can't give him that, then give him something to hope for. And if you can't give him that, just give him something to do."
“The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” - Allan K. Chalmers
“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” — Benjamin Disraeli
“The philosophy called individualism is a philosophy of social cooperation and the progressive intensification of the social nexus.” - Ludwig von Mises
"Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. [...] Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." — Simone Weil
"Loneliness
does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to
communicate to others the things that seem important to oneself, or from
holding certain views which others find inadmissible . . . If a man
knows more than others, he becomes
lonely."
“There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.” - Michel Eyquem De Montaigne
“Philosophers, writers, artists, even scientists, not only need encouragement and an audience, they need constant stimulation from other people. It is almost impossible to think without talking. If Defoe had really lived on a desert island, he could not have written Robinson Crusoe, nor would he have wanted to. Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.” 'Conversation with a Pacifist' by George Orwell
“Friendless. Having no
favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth
and common sense.” - Ambrose Bierce Purport: By definition, a social pariah is one poor and unattractive hence offering no tacit bribe of tangible or social asset or advantage in acquaintance, feeling aggravated and with nothing to loose, indeed, lonely and desperately driven to the honest expression of sound reasoning and accurate information.
“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” - Anais Nin
“Tell me what company thou keepst, and I'll tell thee what thou art.” - Miguel de Cervantes
“Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.” — Richard Bach
“True love does not come by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” — Jason Jordan Purport: The intimacy and involvement of love, which we all yearn to receive and also to experience and to share, may be said to consist of altruistically attentive concern focused via the process of ever increasingly knowledgeable comprehension and familiarity with the beloved, authentic respect.
“A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.” - Fr. Jerome Cummings
“True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.” - Dave Tyson Gentry“
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Copyright
2004 - 2010
Aaron Agassi