The FoolQuest.com FAQ

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought”  — Henri-Louis Bergson

Beyond insight alone: abstract principle into concrete application:

intellectual approach • concrete proposal • failure of conventionality

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     The actual taboo upon strategic planning: What can ever become more toxic than the great divide, sheer failure of imagination, between passive lofty philosophical inquiry, inert and never building strategy much less taking action, and practical discussion willfully and woefully uniformed by abstract reasoning or background research, and therefore unteachably condemned only to the most rash, simplistic and misguided action? Riddle me this: When is the concrete abstract? Answer: Whenever reasoning is argued. All sound practical consideration resorts to abstract principle, just as all sound abstract reasoning must be informed by Empirical practicality. Otherwise, positions become arbitrary. And it happens all the time!

 

As shall be seen, the above rhetorical questions, in application, can even become literally a matter of life and death! Exactly this fallacious paradigm is actually formalized in the disastrous lunatic irresponsible firewall between medical research and medical practice, expressly in order to keep doctors in the dark as regards progress in cutting edge research, and researchers in the dark about real life practice. The toxic rationale, incidentally, is verificationism or justificationism, the long refuted Epistemological and Methodological doctrine that science consists of heteronomy to firm foundation in an ever growing corpus of verified or justified knowledge. -All inspired by dread of uncertainty because of fallibility in the human condition, and therefore of autonomy in Hypothetic-Deductive Method by which we learn only from our mistakes. And What bridges abstract and Axiological morality with Ontology of concrete reality, remains nothing more or less than responsibility to foreseeable consequences of free choice deciding among alternatives in taking action.

Philosophy and habits of clear thinking, creative and deductive, convergent and divergent, abstract and concrete, all remain ever crucial. Because information which one can express and yet is not used, although seemingly available, may often never be brought to bear in dealing with actual situations. Perhaps improperly indexed or mindlessly memorized for an exam. Such knowledge may be called: inert. For example, abstract principles never brought to bear and applied to concrete circumstances as ever arising. "A dunce once searched for fire with a lit lantern!" Thus writ are the koans, plain and profane. The knowledge was inert!

Alas then prevailing social, institutional and cognitive segregation under anti-intellectual anti-intraceptive taboo upon bridging abstract and concrete. Anti-intellectualism being defined as hostility and mistrust towards intellect, intellectuals, intellectualism, and deprecation of culture whatsoever, but perhaps more precisely designated as anti-intraception defined as discomfort or even opposition in very principle, toward the subjective, the imaginative, the tender minded. Alas all cretin philistine witless pragmatism, practicality and boredom with idle curiosity, that spurns all understanding as dull and needless. And alas all snobbery of rarified contemplation too lofty for banal Empiricism or crass utility, soiling ones hands with worldly power and advantage. Because philosophy indeed risks living down to ill repute as unbalanced and ivory tower effete, unless ever bridging the gap and maintaining connection between unquenched Promethean fire of the mind, being generality of abstraction, and the veritable wick, being the specificity of Empirical practicality.

In truth, compartmentalization between the abstract and the concrete, remains a prevalent and highly effective conservative memeplex, undermining both Empirical science and transfer from scientific discovery into empowering practical strategy for undertaking capable and effective action. Cognitive inertia, indeed! Thus confusing the ever hapless masses into such blithe dependency upon heteronomy to hierarchical dominance and authority. Indeed regarding hoped for liberation into purposeful and substantive deliberation, analytic yet strategic as attempted herein, all sound practical consideration needs must resort to abstract principle, just as all sound abstract reasoning needs must continually remain informed by Empirical practicality.

The very word: 'responsible,' not in the sense merely of obligation or accountability to anyone else, or of having caused some or other result,  but in the sense of the very capacity to think and act responsibly, derives from portmanteau of two other words: 'response-able,' denoting denoting initiative, the resourcefulness to assess and initiate things independently, and the very ability to respond rather than merely to react if even that, to think and to act rationally, a capacity so integral to autonomy.

 

Realism is the honest and creditable endeavor to present conditions truthfully in correspondence to reality, and an attitude or practice of accepting and confronting circumstances as they are and being prepared to deal with whatever situation responsibly, in rejection of the inaccurate and impractical. But it will be a mistake therefore also to reject the abstract, the speculative and theoretical so integral to higher order thinking, thinking for oneself, for capable autonomy. For such anti-intellectual false pragmatism as indeed to reject or to neglect the abstract, the speculative and theoretical, turns out to be vastly and so dangerously unrealistic!

 

Because as all too often, except by bridging abstract and concrete, anything less becomes senseless and arbitrary. And once set into motion of research and preparation, even before then taking action, already makes for an important outcome towards authentic wellbeing. Because as the saying goes: life is the journey, the ongoing experience even however arduous and uncertain, and not just deferred gratification in the destination or desired result in hoped for success. And in charting any path along the way, all sound practical consideration resorts to abstract principle, just as all sound abstract reasoning must remain ever informed by Empirical practicality. Because precisely such is the nature of collaboration among equals in brainstorming and creative solution finding: That anything truly concrete must be framed in abstraction. Especially anything new. That description comes prior to recommendation. That any good must first be conceived of, before even becoming desired. Indeed that nothing will be too good, when lucid and striven for in earnest. That imperative no matter how explicit, all therefore indeed first begins from reasoned observation.
 

“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.”   —  Raoul Vaneigem

 

Wouldn't it be nice to bet on the horse, only after it has crossed the finish line and won the race? But to dare not so much as the very secret desire, until certainty arrives, that is only sour grapes. Yes, just for prime example, the paradoxical responsibility and ultimate heroic measures of Cryonics may epitomize all that is speculative, experimental and uncertain endeavor, in the creative tension of tantalizing engineering feasibility. But for any individual person, still unamazed even with the latest emergency room breakthroughs, waiting until the first success in more radically delayed resuscitation and reanimation, even experimentally of very small mammals, might be like waiting until the coastal cities flood before buying into all that global warming fuss and pother: Too little too late!

 

Indeed, is Cryonics selfishness distance induced? For even though death is well recognized among the most obvious roots of Existential depression in the human condition, nevertheless death itself is still generally simply accepted as inevitable. Hence even the taboos against Cryonics and Radical Life Extension research towards a cure for aging and the eradication of natural death, may be regarded as only a special application of a far broader ubiquitous and sinister Nihilistic master memeplex, not only the longstanding justificationist taboo against uncertainty and the truth that hypothesis begins in unfounded conjecture, but actually the taboo against relevance in and of itself, of possibility, of learned helpless taboo, replete with Inductivism even to the point of the oracular, never to dare bridge reciprocally inert knowledge of the near and far:

 

For, as Dr. Chen Yehezkely points out, at the most proximate and concrete all doubt vanishingly diminishes, becoming too small and few really to necessitate much rational deliberation, all readily a matter of simplest expedience. While in the loftiest even Metaphysical abstraction, doubt so vastly unfolds and diffuses as to render rational deliberation increasingly impossible, and thus we often may even be tempted to readily fall back upon authority or arbitrary choice, even in any sheer leap of faith. Whereas, rational deliberation open to controversy, dispute, criticism and dissent, resides neither in the completely concrete nor in the totally abstract, but in any intermediate range between, where, in so many surprising ways, the concrete even informs the abstract, and abstract principle may ever guide concrete considerations.

 

Thus that bogus support group mentality taboo upon strategic planning, proscribing the abstract from the practical, the vocational from the theoretical, the near and far, and all vice versa that never the twain should meet, is a highly successful conservative device or memplex surviving from antiquity, indeed undermining all intimacy, preventing alike, lofty principles from guiding practical action, and practical observation from informing and revising broader abstract principles, not only retarding Empirical scientific progress, but also responsible morality bearing in mind foreseeable consequences, indeed ruling out even strategy as such, which by definition means application of principles into practical action under Empirical observation of situation. And that is why coercion remains the default tool of policy, one way or another, in everything from education and economics to foreign affairs, while democracy is seen as an at all desirable luxury only under the right guarantees of correct decisions, but tactically irrelevant, rather than an actual viable principle of policy solution for the remedy of all manner of adverse conditions. Clearly, the abstract and yje concrete, the near and far, will never relevantly harmonize in such bizarre and deformed segregation, keeping action stupid, thinking blind and both entirely rudderless. Obviously, cogent solution to any real problem demands both abstract reasoning and concrete Empirical practicality. Indeed only thus is the world around us even intelligible.

 

Thus perhaps the most insidiously expansively and pervasive heteronymous taboo of superficiality in our times, routinely violated here on FoolQuest.com, is the trenchantly ingrained taboo upon any and all questions of relevance as manifest in the strict segregation of near and far that inxludes all lofty Philosophical abstraction, Axiological principle and scientific quest for truth and the perspective afforded thereby, from tangible and immediate practicality, strategy and action. -the effective segregation of the grasping of principles from the exigency of practical endeavor guaranteeing the hypocrisy of uplifting lofty Philosophical principles with no practical impact, or else sanctimonious Hell-bent irresponsible Moralistic ideology heedless of foreseeable consequence and any need of serious problem solving, all together with equally pointless, purpose defeating, irrelevant and destructive pragmatic or routine practical undertaking and tactics bereft of guiding vision and therefore often actually purpose defeating and frequently ending repeatedly in tragic Peripeteia.

• subversive common sense

For happiness, Epicurus espoused freedom, friendship and thought. Indeed: Happy people talk more seriously together, freely, and with less small talk. Because otherwise, to quote Olmstead: “After all is said and done, much is said and little is done.” And to quote Benjamin Disraeli: "Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” Indeed, one feature of serious conversation is agenda, moving from the abstract and general, to the concrete and particular. Characteristics of agenda are open ended inquiry in the practice of criticism and controversy, strategic planning into action and expanding collaboration. Agenda is therefore so often taboo. In any bureaucracy, especially as in any way influenced by or affiliated to what passes for education, if calls to agenda cannot simply be ignored or condemned, they will typically be countered with call for compromise in the name of convention and sensitivity, all amounting to the heteronymous annihilation of all the aforementioned responsible and liberating characteristics of agenda.

• Beware Malagenda: second degree pipedream and dishonestly heteronymous taboo upon agenda discussion

The taboo in question applies against any other attempt to bring abstract question to bear in practical strategy or even experiment, or likewise ever to exceed the bounds of third degree pipedreaming by rendering game changing concepts into strategy and application or action agenda. Why, even Sigmund Freud on his very death bed, was bullied into the abandonment of any mission of social change, relegating Psychoanalysis to the function of comforting suffering patients in Philosophical reconciliation with personal tragedy. And of course ever more pervasive and insidious Behaviorism increasingly taboos even that!

 

For further examples, the principles of justice and the banality of injustice are never deemed a practical issue in dealing with the problems of serial bullying; our social routines grow ever more perfunctory and stultifying, because intrinsic emotional needs of human nature are never allowed to inform superficial strategic action mounted towards social success or in resolution of loneliness or boredom; and of course, the exploration of outer space and the deep oceans is trivialized as a cultured luxury along with the arts, and never yet fully envisioned and exploited as the transformative technological solution to revolutionize all of our Terrestrial problems.

 

And as Dr. Chen Yehezkely points out, the perhaps inherent ambivalence of the open democratic society we so cherish, particularly in the practice of openness comes in our sense of moderation to be less than completely open, because some things must remain sacrosanct and inviolate. True enough. But which values shall be inviolately sacrosanct? Indeed, in truth, are any really? To ask so broadly and flatly is taboo. In particular, we all cleave to the sanctity of human life, while at the same time embracing the sacrifice even of human life in defense or pursuit of other cherished and urgent values and priorities. This invites every question as to under which circumstances and subject to what restrictions must life be risked, given or taken? Dishonest taboo squeamishness to confront such key questions that are invited, begged, directly and courageously, all simply as a matter of routine antiseptic exposure to daylight, can only result in policy that is tragically half baked, reckless and worse.

 

Indeed, such real prospects as of Cryonics and radical life extension, let alone anti-abortion lunatic fantasies of conscious zygotes, only further press the issue: Exactly why do we kill and die? The question is more than rhetorical lament, more than only lofty and Existential but urgently practical and immediate.

 

To wit, how well observed in foreign policy analysis of our various costly and failed policies of coercion, it is that the United States of America is all in favor of democracy in countries of no strategic importance. Prioritizing stability and therefore perpetually destabilizing politically volatile regions around the world, the lofty abstract principle of democracy is routinely relegated a nicety and a luxury prioritizing the strategic practicality and unteachable Philistine Realpolitik exigency of global security and national interest! Lofty ideology justified heedlessly unprincipled expedience. Whereas, most notably George Soros, despised by perfectionist Utopist all-or-nothing Manichean ideologues on both the Left and the Right, the pioneering Robin Hood like international financier with his own highly successful and cost effective personal foreign policy, his doctrine of constructive positive intervention, that actually strategizes and nurtures democratic and free market grassroots action, foreign and domestic, by piecemeal engineering, immediate small and reversible steps as events unfold. 

 

The intimidating schism of discourse into the impractically lofty and the mindlessly pragmatic, practical and well precedented, is one of the most successful and enduring conservative tactics and a deeply engrained taboo that few people dare violate, much less so flagrantly as here on FoolQuest.com Because what is there truly important, compelling and transformative in life no less than in drama, except as regards character growth out from the near practical implications and application of the near and far, lofty and abstract, and vice versa?

 

Alas, all intention of implementation whatsoever from any reasoned guiding principle or research whatsoever, is commonly subject to virulent attack as impractically and repressively Utopian, just as seeking to draw plans of action beginning only from the exploration of whatever general principles and background research as deemed relevant before committing in haste to tangible specifics ("Measure twice, do once" as the saying goes!), is so often scorned and derided as Utopian pipedreaming when it's exactly the very opposite!

 

Thus precisely, is such unconventional considered action as requisite to substantive change effectively fnorded out, swept into an heteronymous collective blind spot of fear and loathing, ruled out of order by adamant unwritten consensus.

 

 

1. What is the meaning of life?

First of all, as to meaning: Meaning is comprehension in the mind. There is no inherent meaning to all that simply is.

Hence:

The TRUE MEANING of LIFE is that HAPPINESS is subjective wellbeing, an INDIVIDUALLY REACTIVE STATE VARIABLE to howsoever favorable circumstances, objectively.

 

Wherein: (pleasure + engagement + meaning) ÷ t = gratification over time = fulfillment

    resulting from actively doing whatever one loves for whatever intrinsic value of whichever activity in and of itself.

 

2. What is happiness in life?

Even given the above, individual power and close relationships are by that token all the more important to happiness. Eudemonia = freedom + friendship + thought where freedom and power = autonomy + capability. Moreover, effective networking is often crucial to success.

 

Happiness comes in Eudemonia, in the Menschlichkeit of meeting ones needs by capable interaction with responsible others.

 

Engagement, visceral or intellectual, elicits the intrinsic motivation of perseverance and concentration. Underserved stimulus needs of nurture for intelligence via optimal reciprocal engagement include steady emotional support, exploration and fun, active participation, sensory stimulation with opportunity for social interaction, freedom from undue pressure and distress though suffused with a degree of pleasurable intensity or: eustress, with varied selection and alternatives of successive novel challenges neither too easy and boring nor too difficult and frustrating, promoting lifelong growth in a broad range of skills and interests, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, social and emotional.

 

Therefore, for happiness, Epicurus espoused freedom, friendship and thought. But we may add: freedom consists in autonomy together with capability.

 

3. What are our motivations in life?

See: questions 1 & 2, above.

 

Of course material and physical needs of comfort and survival will also obstruct fulfillment, unless satisfied. So the enduring ideal remains to achieve the means of meeting even material tangible needs and comfort through doing what one loves: doing well by doing good.

 

4. What defines success?

Success is attainment of whatever goals put forth, such as, in our case, love and happiness, not to mention comfort and survival, or perhaps as best put: authentic well being, all as above, in meeting ones needs by capable interaction with responsible others in autonomy, capability, friendship, freedom and thought.

 

5. Implementation?

Lamentably, only FoolQuest.com strives at (pre-)incubation towards the underserved needs of perhaps more ambitious aspiring cutting edge Entrepreneurial collaboration from scratch, perhaps even on your ideas (I'm looking and I'm interested!), teambuilding and business planning from the most embryonic "kitchen table" stage or phase, implementation from first concept to completion, showcasing innovative project proposals for business start-ups, social entrepreneurship, grassroots activism and more.

Anther underserved need pursued on FoolQuest.com, more playfully, is that of simply sharing creativity for its own joy by approaching online collaborative fiction writing more seriously, for a more valuable experience and output that does not suck!

 

 

 

Design exercise probortunity

social engineering solution finding towards the optimization of social and intellectual stimulus struggle

 

One possible strategic solution:

Creativity Should be Social

comprised of the following three elements:

Entrepreneurial Collaboration • Collaborative Fiction • Creativity Can be Popular

 

 

Towards Entrepreneurial collaboration, a selection of innovative project proposals are showcased

 

Towards fiction writing collaboration and brainstorming,

a selection of unfinished story drafts and prompts is provided

 

Creativity resources are also provided for collaboration, creativity and innovation

 

Creativity Can be Popular is one innovative project proposals for revolutionizing social life

Three more more are: Automated Sociometry, Planet Frolic TM and CliqueBusters

Automated Sociometry and Project Kriosgrad are two vastly different social entrepreneurship business models showcased here on FoolQuest.com nevertheless bearing in common strategy of offering transformative services to the public that urgently need to be universal and free of charge in order to function broadly as necessary in society, all at comparably negligible cost from tremendous profit potential in the range of lucrative fee and commission based service byproducts, with the empathy and deep human understanding for reframing commerce for innovation of whole new areas for growth.

 

 

 

 

6. The systematic failure of conventionality and of conventional alternatives in our lives....

In the words of Peter Weassel Zapfile: “Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve, and from which he cannot escape.” We are all such proverbial square pegs: The customer is always wrong! “The program never fails. You fail the program.” Cut the foot to fit the shoe! Bah, humbug! In truth, to quote Anthony Marra: “Work isn't meaningful just because you spend your life doing it.” To the contrary, in the immortal observations of George Carlin: “Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.” And lately, around the world, the masses have indeed begun just up and quitting!

Similarly and in parallel, social life often becomes no less of a secretly resented and codependent joyless chore and a bore of alienated labor in struggle for paltry conditional strokes. And therefore, so many among We, the Sheeple, conform and make do socially, just enough not to press the collapse of society, and therefore remain tolerated just barely. Although, so many retreat from the world in fear, loathing and disgust, as thoroughly and completely as they can imagine. Because social life, such as one finds it, does not become meaningful or fulfilling, simply because it so relentlessly disappoints us.

Quoth the popularity gurus: Fake It Till You Make it! If you don't have a lot of friends, never let that be known: lie about it! Brag of glowing popularity and social success. Recruit others. Parrot every bogus rightthink of unserious bad social advice. Become an utter tool and, no matter how and dystressfully ego-disyntonic (failing to align with loftier ideals of preferred self-image and expectations). And yet, all protestations of mere pragmatic conformism notwithstanding, so many, indeed including every strange and unserious transparently closeted obviously damaged self-loathing weirdo, remain nigh spiritually ever consumed with the burning question of how to perform as expected and thereby to fit in: How best to placate The Great Faceless They, thereby to obtain the key to life.

But well exceeding all typically callow lip-service from any such self professed staunch conformists, our designated rôle models in every conventional option in life, serious exemplars of approval seeking sycophantic predictive social cognition under heteronomy to hierarchical dominance, the star student under formal education, ideal employee, perfect disciple or model prisoner alike, are all so consummately well adapted, ever so heteronymously characterized as they remain, beyond mere responsive obedience and passivity otherwise, not only by every obsessive-compulsive eager beaver sore travail, but boundlessly committed initiative in anticipation of their superior's desires, paying one's dues life long, excelling without complaint or resistance, unquestioning conformist utter tools never demanding attention by requesting explanation or assistance.

And so, quite simply, why can't we all just unpretentiously and submissively follow their shining example and be more like them? Because, just as George Carlin implies, we all so chafe at the bit! Recalcitrant in such sore travail, obstinately uncooperative toward mind numbing routine as imposed by ever coercive and manipulative self-servingly moralizing authority, formal or informal, all too many typically succumb to ambivalence expressed in resentful and reluctant obedience together with covert passive hostile sabotage, instead of actually choosing between either dignified and whole hearted active compliance on the one hand, or else free and open fully effective proletariat uprising on the other hand. And such remains damaged human nature not by innate disposition, but as triggered in suffering and humiliated response to norms of sore travail, deviously guilt tripping tyranny then psychologically internalized. In short: inner conflicted ambivalence and headgames of slave Moralism.

To quote Russell Brand: “Society is collapsing and people are starting to recognize that the reason they feel like they’re mentally ill is that they’re living in a system that’s not designed to suit the human spirit.” Yes, alienation baked in. Indeed, even most anciently in the repressively totalitarian curriculum of Plato's Academy, the ancient prototype of all formal education as we have known it, boredom was deliberately inflicted upon students as a conservative measure to test and filter in favor of heteronomy and conformity by weeding out boredom prone original thinkers and innovators, purveyors of dangerous novelty, from rising to influential positions in society. In the words of Albert Einstein: “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” Ordeal of oppression ensuing life long, in every walk of life, indeed as expounded anon: at long last resolvable via simple first implementation of  the present proposal: Creativity can and Should be Social, striving at nothing less than Eudemonia, the value maximization of precisely such vastly underserved intrinsic human needs, indeed the ever elusive meaning of life and freedom in an Existentially Absurd and unfree world.

 

Indeed, in accordance with the common model of mental illness and treatment for maintenance of better mental health, one way or another, a crucial path in life remains that of what is called: self-work. And certainly, those various needs served by formal Psychotherapy if not already in lay therapy, as it is sometimes called, meaning howsoever generally elsewhere in personal life less formally, are certainly nothing less than crucial and irreplaceable. But FoolQuest.com is not therapeutic. And little, however, in the vast range of therapeutic modalities and alternatives as such, however non directive, respectful and supportive, remain so woefully underserved as the pursuit, beyond insight alone, of success and authentic relationship in general and friendship especially, specifically in sharing the authentic wellbeing that is subjective and individually variable intrinsic reactive happiness to objectively favorable circumstances of doing what one loves for whatever intrinsic value, such being the unique primary focus uniquely of FoolQuest.com

 

Any endeavor towards unprecedented solution finding might benefit from a quick review of whatever range of existing practice for which all manner of help and advice exists, plentifully, including, first of all, the more conventional, reasonable and moderately ambitious and solitary possible undertakings, especially starting small, reaching for the low hanging fruit, the more readily available will be all manner of support, qualified advice and expert texts, already. So there is far less of a gap to fill on that score.

 

“Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?”  — Frank Scully, Variety, Frank's Scrapbook, September 1950

[Low-Hanging Fruit, noun. An actual or only deceptively perceived excellent short-term opportunity.]

 

                                                                                                                   -All too often unripe and unpalatable-

 

 

And yet, all too many experience an outcomes gap, meaning: no results no matter one one does, only continual frustration under ever the same sycophantic user unfriendly Existential bait-and-switch, the same racket. A racket is any dishonest scheme or ongoing transaction, all not as it contrives to present itself and as is tacitly accepted or endured by the majority of those involved, but in actuality a scam or fraud, a deceptive practice of coercion and manipulation conducted for the benefit of the few cronies at the expense of the many. Get with the program: The program never fails. You fail the program! The masses will always comply in ever greater effort and diligence jumping through hoops and fighting amongst ourselves for scraps, believing and rationalizing just about anything, all in order to obtain whatever artificial scarcity and bait-and-switch, no matter how plainly contrived. For it remains that Eudemonia, capable relationship, Eros which is liberating union with alien difference, and especially true friendship, will accrue only for serious people, arising as byproduct of full engagement in purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication and never otherwise.

This holds true as manifest and self-evident, because all such hallmarks of the cult of socialization as: heteronomy, futility, meaningless mediocrity, craven social skills and hierarchically predictive social cognition, ever facile calculating sycophancy of emotionally distant simple minded popularity and social success, all remain nigh tautologically antithetical to the genuine close involvement ever essential of autonomy, values and true friendship. The latter comprising the noble philosophical ambition of Eudemonia.

 

As Socrates so famously declares: “An unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.” For it is the oppressor, in all of his guises, who in whatever lies and subterfuge, exhorts the masses to cast aside all values and principles and never to think of feel too deeply. Our rôle models, the star student, ideal employee, perfect disciple or model prisoner alike, are all characterized, beyond mere responsive obedience and passivity otherwise, by obsessive-compulsive eager beaver hard work and initiative in anticipation of their superior's desires, without complaint or resistance. Exactly such adaptation of enthusiastic approval seeking, still held up as exemplary in order to vindicate systemic failure and disappointment in most every walk of life, remains, by hierarchical intent, indeed the benchmark that for better or worse, most of us will fail and fall by the wayside, make do, for each to learn their place and accept one's lot. Gentle reader, have you a name for your suffering? Mine might be: heteronomy, a pervasive feature in society of everything so insufferable. So, what do I bring to the table? I propose a unique solution, an alternative, but I cannot do it alone. Can we talk? It may well be that I do not have what you need, but dare we seek for it together?

As so excellently and eloquently expressed in that Postmodern driving staccato refrain of The Godfathers: “Birth, School, Work, Death...”

“It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.”  —  Edwin Land 

FoolQuest.com is not yet another website for being set up for failure at every turn and in every walk of life, (in such dystressing user hostile outcomes gap). Nor recreation (dreary small talk, fake fun, nightlife, etc., the dull and trivial Ecclesiastically futile and meaningless alienation of Existentially Absurd desperate effort and struggle to recover on one's own time and expense, from the learned helpless sheer exhaustion, fear and loathing entailed in...), formal education and socialization (that which none dare call: indoctrination or brainwash), employment, soul crushingly joyless workaholism in pursuit of material success alone (e.g., Network Marketing and similar scams). No solitary and self-reliant so called: "well-formed plans" (consisting of tasks and factors entirely under ones own control, even abandoned entirely to our own devices, and entirely without regard to actually getting results). No such blatantly heteronymous self-help/self-improvement peer pressure fitting in socially howsoever dishonestly and at the dire cost of alienated lonely boring and stressful compromise ego-disyntonicly. Not via religion or ideology, nor Moralism even however secular into self abnegation whether material, sexual or otherwise. Nor magic, Zen or other Mysticism or otherwise via inaction seeking sheer apathetic bliss intrapsychicly, entirely in a crushed spirit of resignation and hopeless disregard of external conditions one way or the other. Nor likewise unflagging effort by sheer purported power of positive thinking motivational cheerleading snake oil behavioral conditioning and Transactionally dysfunctional bogus support group marshmallow throwing (blithe dispensation and exchange of invalidation sickly sweet patronizingly insincere positive strokes or sweet nothings in order reciprocally to pacify hesitation and discontent, a reciprocal sickly sweet brush off). All in a'priori abrogation of medical ethics in explicit violation of the Freudian injunction against suggestion, not to mention even further and more desperate levels of reaction formation as bolstered by thriving industries of psychopharmaceutical medication and self medication, currently feasible or into possible futures. -And leave us not forget the most open exhortations to evil such as Fascism and bullying, even devil worshiping sadomasochism outright...

 

That is your way, it is not mine, thus spake Zarathustra! Seek then elsewhere for plenty of all such as above. ersatz exuberant consolation to insidiously stultifying and perseverant plodding mediocre institutionalization of docile heteronymous denial and alienation, the sheer skilled incompetence of committee politics for the rest of us, dishonest Anti-Critical lip service to false emotion and no end of existing resources all thereto, many claiming such great reliability and success. Indeed, alas how all such dubious sublimation remains woefully typical in the Existential bait-and-switch of the human condition.

 

At the risk of arrogance, it has been rightly observed that discourse online often tends to quantity over quality, and with much repetition. And yet of course, there remain diamonds to be painstakingly sifted from the effluence. To anyone espousing or defending any of those life options herein so roundly rejected and condemned, I am available to debate the matter upon request, but on one condition please. Do me this courtesy. After all, I routinely do as much for others. In order to save us all time and needless redundancy and keep our discourse fresh and interesting, please at all read and familiarize yourself with the arguments here on FoolQuest.com against whatever said life options that you espouse and seek to defend, in order then to form whatever pertinent rebuttal instead of only blithely repeating points already covered and countered here on FoolQuest.com. Such points already answered will only garner the response: Asked and answered, along with the pertinent hyperlinked reference. Please: I shouldn't need to explain this! Why should I be expected to take anything more seriously than my opponents in any such a controversy?

 

In the words of Eric Hoffer: "A mass movement [in contrast to a practical organization] attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation [...] to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self." Worse, ostensibly practical organizations such as those of formal formal education and employment, are actually just respectable mass movements in promulgation of socialization and self abnegation, once indeed publicly embracing religion and virtue, and now instead even Zen Mysticism and Motivational Behaviorism. Indeed historically, they all have their ancient roots in cults, one way or another, with the dean, guild master or corporate boss, all following in anointed footsteps of the High Priests of old. There seems actually a lack of real new vision. What would a real practical organization opening congenially suitable doors for each of us, particularly any conceivable practical organization as might be suited to individuals in a democracy, even truly look like? That is a central question here on FoolQuest.com And the only thing we have to sacrifice, is sacrifice itself!

 

Lonely people often fall prey to their own wishful thinking and unrealistic expectations, even sheer snake oil everywhere proffered to the vulnerable and unwary. Lonely people craving popularity, may often struggle to keep themselves occupied, drift into unhealthy habits or even addiction of one kind or another, join into dysfunctional social circles or bullying cliques, even gangs and cults, and enter into generally unviable relationships.

 

Alas and astonishingly, across the socio-political spectrum, no matter the range of ideological perspective upon responsibilities, the authentic wellbeing and thriving that is subjective and individually variable intrinsic reactive happiness to favorable circumstances of doing what one loves for whatever intrinsic value, even the most ambitious meaningful collaboration, autonomy, friendship, freedom and thought, such being the primary focus uniquely of FoolQuest.com, are elsewhere barely even considered if not fearfully taboo from consideration at all, so really dismissed as pipedream for wont of prior foundation or justification! Nor are values of authentic relationship often found at the crux of any practical outreach, as they so desperately need to be.

 

 

The real world Matrix

In society, disarming propaganda manipulation and unremitting cognitive dissonance come in adjunct to ongoing coercion. Thus the chains upon the mind remain distinct and different from those upon the body. Alas that good science and engineering feasibility can be so often thwarted for wont of political will and public consciousness. Because of prevailing taboo and crimestop. At the very least, let truth to power be shouted from the roof tops! Ever popular and propagated denial of objective physical reality is magical thinking and delusion, and all the more prevalent, that timid slave mentality of such blithe acquiescence to chimerical and ever mutable and yet in the meantime constructed and yet intractable social reality. Innovation and subversion whereof therefore beginning even in deep dark secret, when generally speaking, any two or more begin doing things differently and persist. And yes, in particular as extolled herein. What is the Matrix? Wake up, Sheeple! Here is the Matrix: No maya or samsāra of Virtual Reality, but no less constructed and chimerical social reality. An insane priority. A will-o'-the-wisp! And yet so contractive. And when the dance finally collapses and dissipates, the spell broken and no longer enforced, the dancers ashamed and benumbed, all just walk away, gaze forever reciprocally averted. Such has it ever been.

    

In the words of Neil Gabler: “American society is a society in which individuals have learned to prize social skills that permit them, like actors, to assume whatever rôle the occasion demands and to "perform" their lives rather than just live them.” And forced cheerful willful positivity and interminably vapid small talk notwithstanding, a morbidly serious matter. Nothing could ever be less playful. Competent or incompetent, whether in true hardnosed practicality or in sheer aimless and empty actingout of mimesis, many all the same remain no less consumed with the burning question of how to perform as expected and to fit in: How best to placate The Great Faceless They, thereby to obtain the key to life, playing somebody else's game.

   

Moreover, given tautologically that social interaction occurs only between more than one entity, can there even be any such thing as individual social success? Because surely cooperation and team effort is required. Otherwise, individual performance notwithstanding, any person remains at the mercy of others, therefore ever fearful of rejection and exclusion. Perhaps instead, by whatever criteria, a better measure of success might be in due service one way or another, within societies most broadly or more proximately, to the needs and desires of each participant in whatever constructed social reality. Surely a better agenda of better functional, more emotionally secure and worthy a striving between people of good will, responsible adults. A long overdue paradigm shift away from, in such immature unrelenting subtext, all such harrowing intimidation of the individual as manifest in the endlessly oppressive and destructive dance of hierarchical dominance, terrified jockeying for power, perpetual suspicion, justifiable paranoia and necessary hypocrisy, that quashes anything happy and genuine.

   

Alas that as things stand, not only the most hapless and broken, or even the most ordinary and average, but especially our best and brightest, so often meet only with failure and frustration. Nothing works! Why then must it come as any shock to so many, the very idea that there may remain not only whatever personal human imperfection, whatever various defects of individual personality and character, great and small, but also the most intractably severe and pervasive systemic problems and stumbling blocks out there in the world at large? As if the very notion of such stock iconoclasm, where actually anything new! Indeed as in the words of Russell Brand, that: “Society is collapsing and people are starting to recognize that the reason they feel like they’re mentally ill is that they’re living in a system that’s not designed to suit the human spirit.”

     

And speaking of bullying, alas mean spirit and the decline of civility. Because far better than all such fawning sycophantic social skills, hierarchically predictive social aptitudes and cynical popularity contest, remains any true social grace of honest, trustworthy and creditable Menschlichkeit whereof there remain 15 purported signs. And in the words of George MacDonald: “To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.” Therefore beware the 18 Easy Ways to Destroy trust. Indeed, in dedication to lofty consummate dharma and right action of Chivalric values, gaining élan and repute, artfully by saving face for others who stumble, as must we all eventually. A far cry from, so much kinder and more noble, a far, far better thing than any of the usual pointlessly toxic bullying power plays of entrapment and humiliation. And new beginnings in autonomy, freedom and individual will to power over ones own life, become possible, practical and practicable in outreach together intentionally choosing how and why to interact and relate to one another. And no one else need approve.

 

A dose of reality

Alas that as things stand, not only the most hapless and broken, or even the most ordinary and average, but especially our best and brightest, so often meet only with failure and frustration, boredom and loneliness. Someone once kept a tabulation of time and expense expended in using an online dating forum until “getting to a cup of coffee” by which was meant, a first date in order just to meet in person. Let alone any further connection or interaction. I only wish I’d kept the URL of the article. Now why is said missive so unusual? Why is there never seen anything resembling a business plan for the considerable personal investment, with projections of time and effort expended, and projected results, for any ongoing endeavor at individual social outreach, by whatever means, online or IRL (In Real Life, offline onsite)? In answer, there remain two obvious possible reasons: That prevailing wisdom about just putting oneself out there, is all just half-baked to put it kindly, and because any dose of quantifiable Empirical reality inevitably remains quite bluntly just too discouraging. Social climbing and fitting in remains an eager and dedicated full time job, 24-7. For such remains the cult of socialization, whatever superficially trendy gloss upon the most enthusiastically cornball conformism.

    

Alas, in Existentially Absurd social reality, there remains such dystressing user hostile outcomes gap, wherein instrumentality equals zero, meaning, even causally and deterministically, no relationship between performance and outcome, no real hope, no results no matter what one does, other than mounting frustration and defeat. So much then, it might seem, for individual real world freedom and capability. Society is no conduit to success, but a filter of the incompetent and noncompliant alike and without distinction, a crushing and threatening obstacle course to be overcome, an unremitting chore and a bore, setup for failure; thus to self-esteem, a proverbial death by a thousand cuts.

    

And any claims to the contrary, are just part of the racket. Indeed, from any end user standpoint, the existing system has remained broken from time immemorial. Alas the masses abide in false hope from blinding propaganda myth. And what a racket! A racket, no matter how reputable, can be any dishonest scheme or ongoing transaction, all not as it contrives to present itself and as is tacitly accepted or endured by the majority of those involved, but in actuality, indeed, a myth, scam or fraud of heteronomy, a deceptive domineering practice of coercion and manipulation conducted for whatever benefit of a few cronies at the expense of the many. Nothing works! Why then must it come as any shock to so many, the very idea that there may remain not only whatever various defects of individual personality and character, great and small, but also the most intractably severe and pervasive systemic problems and stumbling blocks out there in the world at large? As if the very notion of such stock iconoclasm, where actually anything new! Indeed as in the words of Russell Brand, that: “Society is collapsing and people are starting to recognize that the reason they feel like they’re mentally ill is that they’re living in a system that’s not designed to suit the human spirit.”  

   

And yet even if not in so many words, the admonition seemingly persists: Just get with the program. The program never fails, you fail the program! In truth however, in so far as the distinction even matters, many both fail and are being failed, as they see it, for wont of meaning and intrinsic fulfillment necessary in order to sustain pleasurable engagement, quite regardless of all extrinsic reward, punishment and broken promise of conventional life options. Indeed, the ranks of the bored, lonely, isolated and alienated ever swell, ripe for radicalization and renunciation of prevailing values one way or another and of one kind or another. And if not in mendacity of manipulative empty pandering propaganda to rage, destruction, and yes, even such malice as the most extreme coordinated serial bullying, cause inspired or otherwise, if not even more extreme violence and mayhem, then it had better be into righteous indignation, constructively idealistic resistance and truth to power. For as as Socrates so famously declares: “An unexamined life is not worth the living for a human being.”

  

Such palpably urgent need of anything so radical and divergent as anywhere proposed herein, arises in the inherent failure so typical of perpetual heteronomy. Indeed enduring and unexamined heteronomy to such a host of such readily debunked standardized life options of flagrantly well refuted conventional expectation and propaganda ideology. Wake up, Sheeple! And all the more so as regards apologism for serial bullying, exploitation and abuse. Even the urging to helpless passive forbearance on the part of those victimized.  And all hence such urgent and dire need of CliqueBusters TM, embryonic first concept proposed of the most radical and subversive known anti-bullying initiative and innovation. Again, not to digress, but the dire menace of pandemic serial bullying overshadows all else.

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 shared concerns. Alas, such seems so seldom the case. It may be generally accepted that common interests and passions remain a key factor in building relationships. But in actuality, interests in common may turn out to be the least predicator in interpersonal compatibility. Indeed, interests in common need not correlate with shared core values or character, by far more profound. Moreover, it may be generally accepted that people make friends as a result of chance propinquity by spending casual time with one another. But as shall be seen, this too simply is not true. In truth, given limited options, people have often come to accept the need to cultivate and acquiesce to tolerable relationships with whomever most continually proximate. Hence a necessity of lowered expectations and fearful timidity. A sore travail.

So famously to quote George Bernard Shaw: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.” And in the celebrated words of Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Hence in any more ambitious and intentional paradigm shift away from status quo and into Eudemonia, capability and greater expectations of ourselves and of one another will become most desirable. Thus better investment of time and attention together. In short, freely to relate to one another instead of fitting in socially to all manner of repressive, isolating and toxic expectations. New and better collective endeavors such as herein proposed, must be tailored by social engineering design of new and lasting social institutions serving as better, more freely accessible and more efficient hubs for social connection.

Substantive conversation on any topic or subject, exceeds lecture and short-answer formats for transition of information. Full engagement in substantive conversation and even into the practice of controversy consisting in the welcome and invited exchange of criticism as inherently friendly expression of abiding respect, involves people more profoundly with one another. Whereas, conventionally expected vapid small talk, deliberately insubstantial and distant conversation and pervading anti-intellectualism/anti-intraception, conflict aversion and the conviction that disagreement is tantamount to strife, thwarts vital social and intellectual arousal and stimulus appetites. Thus undermining attachment, bonding and relationship, particularly friendship. And thereby inflicting such crushing oppression of protracted loneliness and boredom. Or worse, mounting peer pressure and targeting for serial bullying. Yet again, not to digress.

And what a racket are such as above conventional expectations, of irresponsible authoritarianism masquerading under cache of respectable and reliable sociology. Of norms in blithe recursive authorization of said norms. Sophistry, slight of hand and victim blaming to make the most outrageous imposition seem only fair and judicious. For a racket, no matter how reputable, can be any headgames, dishonest bad faith scheme or ongoing Ulterior Transaction, all not as it contrives to present itself. And yet as is tacitly accepted or endured by the majority of those involved. But in actuality, indeed, a myth, scam or fraud of heteronomy, a deceptive domineering practice of coercion and manipulation conducted for whatever benefit of a few bullying cliquish cronies at the expense of the many. Thus, it never works for anyone else, because inherently, it cannot work. Therefore, no measure of denial, compliance, delusional wishful thinking and lunatic faith or willful positivity and perseverance will ever prevail.

And in better though taboo alternative in the first place, so very clearly, paradigm shift favoring rather than routine and perhaps even fairly benign well meaning exercise of authority, let alone worse, instead ongoing Dialectical collaboration among equals in brainstorming towards creative solution finding. Indeed, reserving recourse to whatever mode of authority as the even somewhat rare exception, ever only as need actually arising. Because ongoing Dialectical collaboration among equals in brainstorming towards creative solution finding, continues to be discovered as most conducive not only primarily to Eudemonia, to authentic wellbeing, of such paramount intrinsic value and fulfillment, but thereby indeed also excellence called: arête. Indeed perhaps even extrinsic value of networking and material success, but actually through doing what you love. And all because Eudemonia, important close human relationship with psychological visibility, Eros which is liberating union with alien difference, and particularly true friendship in autonomy, arises entirely as a byproduct of purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication and believe it or not, never otherwise. 

   

Not by way of any as so commonly extolled cult of socialization (that none dare call: brainwash) to excruciatingly vapid small talk or facile sycophantic social skills, hierarchically predictive social aptitudes and cynical popularity contest, cretin social success, alienated and alienating disrespectful sore travail of mediocrity, invalidation and conditionality. Nor by any compliant behaviorally conditioned heteronomy to formal education, corporate employment or any other dysfunctionally inoperant conventionality and setup for failure. Every mind numbing habit that exists to keep conversation stupid, emotion stunted, and the masses intimidated of one another, isolated even together, complacent and powerlessly bereft of  initiative.

   

And all such remains the looming and dire implication whereof the oppressed masses still so often balk. Indeed, of all such shabby subterfuge as so routinely foisted upon us all in every walk of life, We the Sheeple, the mortally terrified labor pool of mindless worker drones and desperate careerists, remains nothing more or less than a classic blithe propaganda big lie, futile and Existentially Absurd. And that's not your fault! In the alternative, and returning to theme: Crucial peak experience of Eudemonia, attachment and connection forged together in the creation of meaning and in the joy of engrossingly engaged purposeful interaction together, convivially substantive communication and even playful psychological visibility, all are elicited nigh inexorably in the course of heady collaboration among equals, brainstorming in creative solution finding. Thus indeed full and true inclusion in Eudemonia, Heaven on Earth! And these are conditions and situation that can at all be understood and just perhaps even reproduced at w ill according to plan, if only together we shall find the honest diligence, resolve and wherewithal, and stay interested. Thus genuine autonomy in meeting ones needs for the dignity of capable interaction with even adequately responsible others, and thereby at long last together changing our story. And how many can say that? Any questions? Any objections? Any takers? You are all invited! Dare we take action? Let's talk!

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we are all admonished per the venerable maxim of journalism: Never bury the lede! Yes, spare us all from thinking too hard. Get right to the point. Who, what, where and when, and only then, if ever at all: why.

No need of sweating the devil in the details. Nobody cares. Never wax philosophical. Don't build up an argument like some sort of academician! After all, logos, the appeal to intellect, remains most notoriously the least persuasive among all advertising strategies. But sometimes, it just cant be helped. And (anti)social media short attention be damned!

The lead or lede is the first few lines emphasizing the most important key salient aspects or points of any story. Or else maybe just the  hook or grabber, the most interesting and surprising details to arrest reader attention. But what is the true lede?

Indeed, it remains well understood, how the most authoritative, economical and ostensibly objective bare bones news reporting of every unending calamity, ever  up to the minute, and so devoid of all background, indeed meant thereby to be so authoritative and reassuring, instead only becomes so crushingly senseless and therefore instead has been found only to promulgate such pandemic mass anxiety. And all in such unresolved dramatic tension and suspense simply ever but never at all at last to learn, ever but never finally at all to explain, ever but never at all just to know and understand, Oh Dear Lord: Why.

And so, just perhaps, the true lede, alas so routinely buried, ever remains: Why?

Indeed, so famously to quote Friedrich Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Yes: From amongst all of Kipling's Six Honest Serving Men, not last or least but most particularly first and foremost: Why, oh why?

So famously to quote Hennery David Thorough, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Indeed, in the words of Brad Meltzer: “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”

All hence, as Simon Sinek contends, dramatic and compelling branding to differentiate relevant value proposition and process to align strategy with whatever desired end results or objectives, begins not with what? or even how? but: Why? For meaningful engagement and outreach from the very core of the human condition.

Indeed, in the bold interrogative irony of Ross Perot's 1992 vice presidential running mate Admiral James Bond Stockdale: "Who am I, why am I here?" And for that matter at last, why and what for, is my own strange Message in a Bottle, this very website, FoolQuest.com?

Answer: Gentle reader, unmet friend, never fear: I am just another looser, stuck in a rut, a maladroit wanna-be with a cable modem, ever mouthing off online. And as my own boss, I have fired myself for utter failure and incompetence in the sore travail of life! No, I don't want your money or your devotion. I am no bogus formulaic callow motivational grifter here to tickle your ears, psyche you up, and then leave you in the lurch, abandoned once again to your own devices and set up for failure. On the contrary:

Gentle reader, unmet friend, I might not have what you want, but dare we seek for it together?

After all, in the words of Barbara Sher: “Isolation is the true dream killer, not your attitude.” And to quote Mark R. J. Lavoie: “Life dies inside a person when there are no others willing to befriend him.” Indeed, as George Orwell observes in ‘Conversation with a Pacifist,’ even at all thinking clearly, becomes increasingly difficult in bored and lonely isolation without expression.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Absurd

 

It remains Existentially Absurd to seek for meaning in life because there can be none. Because life is inescapable chaos, suffering and injustice, all ending only in death, most repugnantly Absurd and pointless of all. Therefore no matter what, gaining knowledge and understanding will never discover meaning or consolation in life, again because there shall be none to discover, no matter how one balks at the ugly truth. Therefore seeking meaning in life by gaining knowledge and understanding, remains quite pointless. Can there then be any other remedy at all, save for utter denial, if anything only even all the more pointless and Absurd?

 

"Birth, School, Work, Death"

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE -or is it?

 

The Existentially Absurd ever consists in two parts: First, on the one hand, an indifferent physical universe unmoved by human and animal suffering, and secondly, on the other hand, social reality remaining both incubator of and shaped by unique and often extravagant human incompetence, evil and stupidity. Any tear in the façade of constructed social reality may promote such lucidity as to reveal the disheartening indifference of reality to all of our yearnings and best interests. In Existential Philosophy, "the Absurd" as Albert Camus names the human situation investigated also by uncompromising Zen, and that must stick in one's craw, impossible neither to stomach nor to expel, refers to a relationship between the rational mind and the irrational world, the powerless disillusioned and alienated Sisyphusian contradiction, conflict and tension between human nature characterized by the tendency to strive for value and meaning in life, on the one hand, with the frustrating human inability to do so in the brutally indifferent and unyielding real universe and most particularly in contention with the unreason and injustice of other people, on the other hand.

 

Camus recognized three categories of response to the Absurd: suicide, which Camus rejects as only the more Absurd, transcendent denial via religious delusion, or else acceptance of the Absurd. But how can one live then? After all, Zen in quest of futility, exhorts complete surrender to the Absurd, perhaps as the next best thing to just being dead. But the Absurdism of Camus holds that meaning may be sought for, only in the rebellion of open eyed confrontation with the Absurd. Futility in the face of the Absurd should never deter us from unrelenting and righteous struggle. Kierkegaard expands thereupon, contending that true faith demands that it is precisely when it makes no difference what one does, one way or another, that one must therefore take action! After all, as the saying goes, the best causes are all hopeless lost causes.

 

How then might Camus and Kierkegaard conceivably have responded to Emortalism, ever advancing Longevity, Radical Life Extension research with the objective of the eradication of natural death by the pandemic degenerative condition only named as: aging, indeed much as hither to with such pandemic killers as smallpox and polio? Indeed, how might Camus and Kierkegaard related to the ongoing practice of Cryonics? Mot to digress, however.

• Absurdist fiction - notable quotes

 

Life as a grand gesture?

In 'The Deconstruction of Reality : What Modernism and Postmodernism Say About Surface and Depth' author Ken Sanes expounds:

"Some of these theories of postmodernism then take an additional step, arguing that since life (or much of life) is a fiction or since fiction is all we can know, we should join in the drama ourselves and live a life of play. In effect, they recommend that we treat life as a symbolic arena for the acting out of fantasies. In place of merely discovering that reality is a construction, they would have us consciously take over the process of creating it, inventing selves, subcultures and alternative "realities," as forms of social experimentation."

Quoth the Bard: "All the word's a stage." And in the ongoing drama of real life, inner conflict, ambivalence, may be either more plot driven, resultant of circumstance and conflicting external pressures, entirely situational, or alternatively inner conflict, ambivalence, may be more character driven, a dramatic clash of conflicting motivations unique to individual personality. Indeed, any real person, no less than some fictional character, may become utterly embroiled in whatever dilemma, situationally, or they might be even just be somewhat neurotic, and actually take refuge in ambivalence out of sheer irresponsible decidophobia. Some rise to shoulder even the most crushing responsibility, while others evade any responsibility at all upon very principle. But we all confront Existential Absurdity. Indeed, some say that one becomes addicted to shame when another's heart is closed to one, because, however excruciating, the sheer megalomania of taking the blame protects one from the ugly truth that we really have no control over others and the universe or God. We can neither make others love us or, ultimately, even protect those who do. Indeed, our Frankensteinian creation having escaped our control, social reality that only exists as the aggregate of individual participation, generally remain no less baffling, unfathomable, destructive and crushingly Absurd than objective external physical reality that exists independently regardless.

Indeed, in the face of our complete ineffectuality to fathom the world in which we live, much less gain any power over the actual situation or circumstances in which we exist, Albert Camus extolling the uplifting act of creation, recommending to approach the world as no more that the setting for living out ones own ongoing dramatic performance. In the alternative to remaining a puppet of such bewildering external conditions, freedom is the possibility to think and behave as however we may prefer, in life affirming passionate pursuit of a life rich in experience, creating meaning and finding beauty to make life worth living. Absurdly free characters, perhaps poor cousins to Nietzschean supermen, include the seducer, the actor, the conqueror and the artist. One can even seek Absurd freedom in rejection of Absurd personal constraints, including neuroses and other personal baggage, or such taboos as promoted howsoever arbitrarily by society, all values save for those of a full life, and yet inefficacy in the face of intractable reality remains daunting as ever. Therefore, Camus dismisses and denies the existence of any intrinsic external meaning to discover, recommending instead, the cultivation of any meaningful human experience to express as by the arts and the artistic life. Camus surrenders all hope in any attempt to explain or to solve the problem of the Absurd, instead recommending only artistic expression in the quest for meaning and dignity.

 

In the words of Kurt Vonnegut: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”  Nietzsche passionately extols the possibility of perseverant lonely struggle for self realization and the achievement of meaningful growth and personal accomplishment, even in suffering if need be. Indeed, in Brave New World, Aldous Huxley even perhaps amplifies upon Nietzsche:

“Actual happiness looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.” 
 

Bait-and-switch is when bait, the chimerical allure of any one desirable good on howsoever advantageous terms, is dangled out to beguile and ensnare the mark into the switch, reluctant and bewildered Transaction for some other, lesser and more costly approximation entirely. Resignation, exhaustion and defeat ensue, selling out and buying in. Thereafter, desperate hopes may endure, of later someday somehow trading the investment of life long compliance, for ones actual hearts desire all along, and thus at last recovery of ones own long lost and craven bartered soul. But all for naught! If You Desire Anything You've Never Had, Try Something You've Never Done. On the level, then: I do not have what you need, gentle reader, but dare we seek for it together? At last arrives the hour of Faustian recantation and cheating the cheaters. But don't balk, or you might miss out!

Because power and influence remain a function of capable relationship on ones own terms, interaction with responsible others. Am I then your unmet friend? Can you even see me? Will you make yourself known to me? Can we talk? I do not have what you need, gentle reader, but dare we seek for it together? Expert or layperson in whatever fields, old pro or neophyte aspirant, we each and all bring to the table whatever ones own insights, questions, answers, knowledge, talent, ideas, perspective, experience and connections. -Alas, hard work all too often so vastly unappreciated and blithely squandered. Befuddled masses yearning to breath free! What then is liberty, freedom so alluring yet forbidden, taboo, that nevertheless all people so yearn and strive for? Freedom whether in creative expression or effective action. Freedom of association, self esteem and more. How is freedom actually experienced? By what values? And most importantly, what must we do, I and thou, gentle reader, to win our freedom, liberty to pursue happiness? Can we organize? Should we? And how so?

In the words of Viktor E. Frankl: "It did not matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—hourly and daily. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the task which it constantly sets for each individual.” In other words: Metaphorically playing the proverbial ball where it figuratively lays. But what then should one fail therein, or balk at the task? What when Absurd expectations grow ever more wearisome and repugnant? In the end, precisely how is identification of tasks putatively set before us by life thus nigh anthropomorphized, any different interpretively, and so neatly divorced from, any conceivable meaning creation regarding life to be lived? What shall become one's own priorities? What remains individually most important? And mixing in more metaphor: Nose so close to grindstone, when comes time to take a step back in order to sharpen blunted and jagged grindstone?

Alas, as things stand, so dazed and confused, we all oppressed, find ourselves continually robbed of such very capacity of intellect and sensitivity for ever crucial substantive communication much less purposeful interaction, by such crushing intimidation, manipulation, and confusion, under social norms of paranoid distance, uncritical willful positivity, dishonestly cheerful triviality and interminably banal small talk, all as Behaviorally Conditioned by systematic reward and punishment. Under exclusion and isolation of serial bullying, no dissident lone individual will ever prevail in any tasks set before them by life. But returning to Ecclesiastes, any two or more individuals, should they only find one another, connect, and so resolve, may interact more congenially, freely, intelligently and effectively. Indeed, all else remains Ecclesiastical vanity and futility! For to reiterate: Even so little as ever crucial substantive communication much less purposeful interaction, can never be compelled. To further reiterate: One can but extend invitation, as indeed herein on this very website: FoolQuest.com, my own proverbial Message in a Bottle. 

Out there in TV land our fictional heroes, ideal whereof we all cannot but stand so helpless, Absurdly unworthy and in awe, make epic struggle and contend but ultimately unite in the face of adversity. Meanwhile here in the real world we languish and despair under a veritable epidemic of bored and lonely alienation. Many hit TV shows and blockbuster movies, pander and mock us, serving up vicarious experience not merely of stimulation, adventure and compelling discovery of meaning and arête, but in some context of true friendship, profoundly close relationships or situations that so many of us are very badly missing. Indeed, It is the simulated freedom, challenge and achievement in mastery and competence, together with social connection, that explains the addictiveness of multiplayer videogames online, for so many. And all such realization should be received as a call to action for urgent actual lifestyle changes. True life drama must either advance or falter and fizzle out in anticlimax of anti-drama. After all, how would our heroic avatars, our cherished rôle models, heed the call to action and rise to the challenge? 

This much may be known: Without decidedly formidable connections, appeal for help from whatever powers that be of status quo, generally remains futile and opaque. And rather than sweeping the world out of nowhere, even the slightest glimmer of daring, heroic and transgressive subversion necessarily begins in microcosm, in real life no less than in drama, when any two or more individuals, indeed boon companions or hitherto unmet friends, begin doing things differently together and persist. For such will be the first germ of interaction perhaps even as proposed herein, within a small intentional social circle let alone any grander intentional community, amongst ourselves together turning away from the social rat-race, living our truth, and perhaps even together reaching out in the world at large but even actually at all on our own terms. Just maybe: We can be heroes, asking of others what no one else does, and offering in return, what no one else offers. Subjective happiness, being most precious and scarce of all achievements going beyond characteristic individual disposition alone, remains a reactive state variable of inner life, responsive to favorable external circumstances or: happenstance as arising, situation in objective reality amenable to investigation, strategy and feasibility study. But defeatism balks at ambition and difficulty, even making do by seeking refuge from reality in wishful thinking, willful positivity and pipedream, all eventually collapsing into disgruntled despair. And indeed, hence The Great Quit. Yes, we'll all become slackers now!

Loneliness is the wont of intimacy. Hence, when mass anxiety fails to challenge our very way of life or to trouble the powers that be, and thus individual dystress 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. If as we are told, indeed keeping things light is indeed so crucial to popularity and social success, then popularity and social success must come at the sacrifice of all happiness. Thus indeed popularity and social success on the one hand, and friendship on the other, remain starkly antithetical. This is because friendship is genuine, substantive and intimate in psychological visibility, while popularity or social success depend upon boring facile superficiality and ever maintaining lonely distance. Therefore the inherent contradiction remains irresolvable in very principle, and nothing but a setup for frustration, failure and craven exhortation to lowered expectations and making do with mindless small talk. In our sick sad world, the helplessness of individual frustration and failure everywhere pervades. We should sound the alarm and shout from every roof top! And yet, the customer, the end user, is always wrong: The system never fails, you fail the system. For such remains the most aggressive normalization of deviance. And as Edward Snowden observes, oppressors who restrict our options, then pretend that we consent. Might in truth, such ubiquitous helpless pandemic individual frustration and failure, not merely of the clearly and obviously broken and disadvantaged nor even also of the most ordinary and average, but especially of our best and brightest, their possibilities squandered, actually be in any measure in truth not only because of whatever ones own individual human shortcomings and maladaptation even however flagrant, but largely in manifest consequence from whatever conceivable greater systemic defect in society, of entrenched mediocrity and worse? Of course, gentle reader, you've heard this all before. And surely such generalities of pop iconoclasm so long clichéd and dissipated of of all shock value, must come as little surprise to anyone. And yet every question remains as to precisely the nature of prevailing expectation and conventional adaptation thereto. Indeed, where is hidden the fine print in the social contract? And at what cost? How Faustian! And deep down, behind all denial and willful naivety, are we actually all of us so cynical, submissive, even Masochistic, so utterly defeated and in on the racket? Have we truly joined the enemy against ourselves? Be seeing you, Number 6. For we have all been subject to exhortation, frustrated and tantalized: “Follow your bliss!” Empty blandishment and broken promise ringing so hollow, as we are all then summarily abandoned each to our own devices, setup for failure. All easier said than done. Indeed, to quote Frederick Law Olmsted: "After all is said and done, much is said and little is done." And so, we each and all then secretly await the call, to some yearned for true to life Hero's Journey. And when it comes, don't blink or you might miss it! For it comes now. At last arrives the hour of Faustian recantation and cheating the cheaters. And more, anon.

For as the saying goes, life is the journey, ever arduous, the ongoing experience, and not just deferred gratification in the destination or desired result in hoped for success. For as per chapter 64 of the Dao De Jing as ascribed to Laozi, the journey of a thousand miles, begins with but a single step. And rather than sweeping the world out of nowhere, subversion necessarily begins in microcosm, when any two or more individuals begin doing things differently together and persist. For such will be the first germ of interaction perhaps even as proposed herein, within even a small intentional social circle or group online, let alone any grander intentional community, amongst ourselves together turning away from the social rat-race, and perhaps even together reaching out in the world at large but even at all actually on our own terms.

After all, Eudemonia of important and capable close human relationship, Eros which is liberating union with alien difference, and particularly true friendship in autonomy, arises entirely as a byproduct of purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication, and never otherwise. Indeed, increasing distance, bullying and and mounting social exclusion, is all well known precursor to betrayal, never at all any glistening hallmark of secure social embedment. Even the very least of hierarchically predictive social cognition and cynical popularity contest, relentless punishment and reward behavioral conditioning making such utter tools of us all, remains ever antithetical to true friendship and free, candid, unguarded and reciprocal psychological visibility just being known and understood to one another, recognized and desired. Little wonder then, the outcomes gap, meaning: futility, no results no matter one one does, only continual frustration under ever the same sycophantic user unfriendly Existential bait-and-switch. For life is ongoing bait-and-switch, a sore travail!

To reiterate: Bait-and-switch is when bait, the chimerical allure of any one desirable good on howsoever advantageous terms, is dangled out to beguile and ensnare the mark into the switch, reluctant and bewildered Transaction for some other, lesser and more costly approximation entirely. Resignation, exhaustion and defeat ensue, selling out and buying in. Thereafter, desperate hopes may endure, of later someday somehow trading the investment of life long compliance, for ones actual hearts desire all along, and thus at last recovery of ones own long lost and craven bartered soul. But all for naught! If You Desire Anything You've Never Had, Try Something You've Never Done. On the level, then: I do not have what you need, gentle reader, but dare we seek for it together? At last arrives the hour of Faustian recantation and cheating the cheaters. But don't balk, or you might miss out!

Unreasonable people: Grand gesture is not enough!  

 

But even while rejecting religion, Karl Marx's famous opiate of the masses, or any other brand of inactive sublime apathy as weak, foul and fraudulent, Nietzsche and Camus nevertheless begin in readiness to accept the worst circumstances in life and then moving on, before questing for fulfillment in meaningful action even within those restrictions. But given pleasure principle and the natural and sane desire to minimize suffering, the problem of attaining meaningful fulfillment may be better reframed as the problem of how to be any happier by bringing about improved match between needs and circumstances, situation or environment, if only at all possible. And one most Absurdly tiresome and destructive approach in solution finding, nevertheless so popular even from antiquity, the surrender so scorned by Nietzsche and Camus, is to content oneself to modify, minimize or even eliminate needs, intrinsic and extrinsic alike. In the mockery of Jonathan Swift: "The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."

 

But the other more interesting and constructive approach, and the greater measure of hope, trust and genuine attitudinal faith, remains in seeking to improve circumstances in order better to meet all manner of needs and desires. Therefore, life as a grand and for practical purposes empty gesture can never be adequate or trustworthy. In the immortal words of George Bernard Shaw: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.” Because in confrontation with situations that any reasonable person would deem insurmountable, only the influence of unreasonable people can provide vision, experience and direction in order to restore hope. Nietzsche and Camus, then, are just too damned reasonable. Historically, humanity has struggled to meet the most pressing and basic and practical of needs first, and the loftier ones later if ever at all.

 

But in affluent technological society, replete with the most flagrant Absurdity of all manner of needless danger and privation bringing such oppressive despair even amid the plenty, the problem has become of reconciliation of priorities, of material and practical survival on terms dictated by intrinsic needs essential to fulfillment. And intrinsic needs are met or failed by social stimuli resultant from interaction that is a function of circumstances, situation or social environment. What, then, are the optimal social stimuli? -that which has even been called: the opposite of loneliness. And under what optimal circumstances, situation or social environment? And by what means is implementation feasible, the social engineering optimum social stimulus struggle, not only in principle, but practicably?

 

Mortality and death remain likely the most weighty and dire concerns in confrontation with the Absurd. And perhaps the most radical response remains that of Emortalism, the the medical, scientific and technological quest for liberation into practical immortality or: emortality, as expressed both in anti-aging research and in the practice of Cryonics. Only click the hyperlinked terms amid the present branching hypertext in order to know more. 

 

 

 

 

 

Surmounting the Absurd?

 

It has been advanced that Existentialism arose in order to blunt the despair of Nihilism. Indeed, life is Existentially Absurd and therefore often condemned as a lost cause. And hence the extol of life as a grand gesture, even however futile, as the best and most meaningful feasible quest. In 'The Deconstruction of Reality: What Modernism and Postmodernism Say About Surface and Depth,' author Ken Sanes expounds:

Some of these theories of postmodernism then take an additional step, arguing that since life (or much of life) is a fiction or since fiction is all we can know, we should join in the drama ourselves and live a life of play. In effect, they recommend that we treat life as a symbolic arena for the actingout of fantasies. In place of merely discovering that reality is a construction, they would have us consciously take over the process of creating it, inventing selves, subcultures and alternative "realities," as forms of social experimentation.

However, even in such optimistic pessimism of self reinvention and creative redemption, telling a story is one thing, and beyond gambits of Absurdly dishonest soul-destroying "Fake It Till You Make it," competently living ones aspirational story quite another. After all, the Hero's Journey begins first in refusal of the call to adventure, and therein frequently remains stillborn. Dare indeed one abandon all hope of becoming more effective and effectual, and forswear all endeavor more vibrantly to live out fantasy? Are unambitious lowered expectations surrendering and making do, truly best in life? Whereas short of the surreal, any capable fiction must at least seem plausible, by contrast responsibility of real capable and responsible endeavor demands at all actual feasibility, easier said than done.

Alas as things stand, actually by such longstanding and cunning design, employment and formal education typically exhaust such vast proportion of individual time and effort, only setup for failure. Because only a fortunate few experience job satisfaction or enthusiasm in learning. For most, employment, ever mounting anxiety of wage slavery ever less secure, and much like formal education in such submissive disciplined preparation and investment all thereto, and all on ones own time and expense with usurious compounding interest, remains interminably protracted burden and sore travail. And ever at all alleviated only by that shabbily travesty of hedonistic play called: recreation, the desperate effort and struggle to recover, on ones own time and expense, from such endless debilitation.

Indeed like unto fiction, business or project planning remaining ever provisional, conjectural, speculative, therefore, for Sir Karl Popper, became his model for faliblism, nonjustificationist science and politics. We are all fallible. Danger and misfortune abound. Risk can never be eliminated. There can only be risk management. In order then to embrace progress and make life more worth living, Popper rejects and condemns the despair and delusion of demanding impossible certainty and safety. Perfectionism is the enemy. In his philosophy of science, Epistemological Methodology underpinning any valid Scientific Method, Karl Popper, the favorite philosopher of scientists, strove to clarify and simplify Metaphysics into a field more amenable to scientific honesty and hence any hope of intelligibility.   

According to defunct yet enduring long standing tradition of verification or justification, scientific certainty ever builds upon firm foundation of verified or justified knowledge. But such is unachievable perfectionism, impossible standards leading only to despair, only exacerbating the Absurd. Indeed, according to Popper, there can be no certainty of even firm foundation, verification or justification. In practice, all good science and uplifting discovery begins from sheer speculation, unfounded conjecture, only then subject first to critical preference (such criteria as internal logical consistency and theoretical elegance) and only thereafter to ongoing Empirical reality testing, evidentiary support subject to refutation. Such is a process of elimination, narrowing the field of viable hypotheses, ever less wrong; ongoing practice of controversy, Dialectical Socratic enlightenment by refutation, wherein, without shame, strife or acrimony, errors are not to be avoided beforehand, but detected and course corrected as arising. Because how else do we learn and progress?    

Business or project planning, not unlike drama extolled by Socrates as most philosophical among the arts, remains yet another heady mode or applications of narrative extrapolation, exploration, conjecture and speculation. Business or project planning after all, is only a different kind of storytelling and plotting, even dramatic futuring scenario climaxing toward whatever hoped for outcomes; an idea to be pitched, a tale to be told, towards applied creativity, disruptive innovation, rigorously detailing any projected path to success and desired results. All factors ever so crucial to such success as Empirically observed of trustworthy, capable and respectful happy people who talk more seriously with less small talk, thriving upon creative interaction. Indeed, for modern Socratic Sir Karl Popper, investigation of reality begins only in creative unfounded conjecture.     

The difference yet obtaining, in the distinction between innovation, the name given to applied creativity, distinct from pure creativity of art for art's sake: To wit, that in innovative business or project planning, far from sublime apathy and surrender to Absurd uncertainty, actual feasibility will be at stake, and not just narrative plausibility as in story crafting. Because capable business or project planning proceeds in wherewithal of research to test reality beyond merely internal self consistency as in story background and World Building, setting the scene. Indeed, whereas fiction writers only need imagine sympathetic, interesting and at all capable characters just barely adequate to rise, ever in such mounting suspense, to ever worsening challenges contrived in any plot-driven tale, the real world drama of management team formation, no less harrowing, shall require so much more: Indeed real world dramatic outcomes in doubt regarding endeavor at management team formation, frequently turn not only upon intensive strategy, research and feasibility study, but upon successful outreach, actual search and recruitment, on spec, of any range of participants qualified in different expertise, capability and suitable temperament, including risk tolerance, work towards success in whatever hoped for future outcomes or results. Yes, just perhaps, we can be heroes! In the words of Henry Ford: Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. Anything less remains only all the more needless Existential Absurdity, abject failure. And yet, there will be no need to impose consensus. People who disagree cooperate only everyday! Whereas dogmatically erroneous consensus remains ever futile.  

Alas nevertheless, that even given shared values and objectives, strategy and action may yet meet with rejection, only fizzling out in real world anticlimax of Absurd anti-drama and disappointment. Indeed as for examples  recounted here, and here. Indeed, even given as aforesaid, such ignition of intensely motivated individualized focus, and not merely short attention, aggravation, boredom, flaccid Zen behaviorally conditioned resignation and apathy, shall we even then ever find common ground in any plan of action, agenda at hand presently? For in the words of Benjamin Disraeli: Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

  

And alas also, that endeavor set in stone without prior deliberation, due diligence, research, exploration and planning, typically remains ever doomed to obsession, delusion, hand waving and pipedream with neither clarity nor flexibility, and hence chimerically hopeless, Existentially Absurd, illusory, unachievably vanishing prospect of endurance, much less success. To quote Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower: “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” Because in the famous words of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, noted disciple of Carl von Clausewitz: "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy." -nor, for that matter, whatever other sort of antagonist, true to life dramatic obstacle or complication.  

And yet, even though, to quote Robert Burns: “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.” (Go often awry.) -nevertheless, as Eisenhower so well understood, the intensive discourse and research of planning, brings preparation and rapport building. And into all deliberation shall be wherein enters the salient value of unprecedented serious collaborative fiction writing and brainstorming, indeed the speculative element and exploration of Science Fiction, ever new, yet all mindful of the ancient and venerated discipline of the writing craft.     

For in constraint of endless possibility, all such enfold the exchange of hardnosed critique, a fancy French word for criticism and the Socratic Dialectical practice of controversy which is the invited, welcome and appreciated free exchange of criticism, remains essential to error detection and ongoing course correction, not to mention happiness together even in such deliberation. Hence collaborative fiction writing and brainstorming bears such untapped subversive potential, so instructive as a bonding and team building exercise toward unprecedented and subversive collaboration among equals in disruptive innovative new venture creation (various business startup).           

All hence does entrepreneurship, in any alterative, tantalize with any prospect instead, in quest of liberation from bondage to employment working to enrich others, all in such poignant hope of ever finding freedom in an unfree world. And all easier said than done! Indeed, to quote Frederick Law Olmsted: “After all is said and done, much is said and little is done.”

Moreover, not only psychology but philosophy and meaning in the deepest sense, ever remain relevant to inform all endless possibility of entrepreneurship no less then as in application to anything else in life. This is because successful new venture creation (various business startup), indeed entrepreneurship for the rest of us, must struggle and innovate, imaginatively addressing unhappiness of prevailing frustrated unmet or underserved needs and desires. But profound desires are often repressed and denied, going unrecognized and scorned in heteronymous religious or ideological shame and anti-intellectualism, as ever the same desperate panic stricken sycophantic socially skilled toadying skilled incompetence and crimestop ever striving to purge an unwanted self in order to gain extrinsic rewards of social acceptance. Thus all too often, the greater the value, perhaps too abstract, the harder to sell, bridging abstract principle into appealing concrete strategy. 

Case in point: As shall be expounded throughout, and Orwellian anti-intellectual righthink taboo notwithstanding, there remains no less universally vested interest herein at stake only given any the wit to see, than literally the most important intrinsic social and intellectual human needs and stimulus appetites of social and intellectual stimulus struggle, so vastly and catastrophically underserved in every walk of life as we have known it. Indeed all as in accordance with the ancient wisdom of the greatest sages of old, as rediscovered under the very cutting edge of modern science. Indeed as entirely consistent with evolutionary neuroscience and the grand afterthought of Cultural Anthropology. For according to Martin Seligman's celebrated happiness formula of Positive Psychology, so abstract: Pleasure + engagement + meaning = intrinsic fulfillment. Indeed, bridging abstraction more concretely: Creativity can and Should be Social.

And thank you gentle reader. Because we all live in such a tightly strained attention economy, in the words of Barbara Sher: Isolation is the true dream killer, not your attitude. All hence, all the more, in the immortal words of Simone Weil: Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Better still, optimal reciprocal engagement, indeed substantive communication towards purposeful interaction, and never otherwise. And no one else need approve! Therefore, accept no substitutes! All wherein, truly generous investment of precious attention, never squandered, ever accrues the highest return in like kind, fully engaged attention. Your Impossible Mission, gentle reader, should you choose to accept it! Because we live in an attention economy, often indeed so distant, frugal and miserable. A culture especially online, of alienated short attention and minimal transitory engagement. And indignant stock rebuff is undeniably so highly economical. But who and what are we all saving ourselves for? Pay attention to me, damn it! Because realistically, high ambition and short attention remain functionally antithetical. So be interested, be interesting. Stay interested. Include me. Because, to reiterate with emphasis, optimal reciprocal engagement remains the reciprocal investment and exchange of attention that accrues highest return in like kind. And ya gotta spend it in order to get any in return!

And freely question whatever is not understood and articulate every nagging ambiguity. For as the saying goes: No question is too stupid to ask, and no answer too wise to be given. Even sheer incomprehension is a beginning and no dire impasse or cause for alarm. The readiness to speak up, question, point out and discuss communication errors and failures, remains crucial to communication at all, and sometimes even actually a matter of life and death. Mistakes are the Essence towards Intersubjectivity via fully engaged Dialectical conversational adequacy in collaborative miscommunication repair, replete with intelligently Effective Active Reading and Listening all striving at the achievement of Intersubjectivity being: the closer correspondence of message as received and understood, to content as actually intended by the sender. New ideas are often confusing. Only shopworn and well familiar old ideas are certain always to come across effortlessly.

 

 

Overcoming foreseeable resistance to featured key strategic specifics of Creativity can and Should be Social and innovative new venture creation (various business startup), entrepreneurship for the rest of us, interstitial concurrent synergy with unprecedented serious collaborative fiction writing and brainstorming taboo subversion of heteronomy to authority and hierarchical dominance by social engineering design

Many a mythic Hero's Journey turns upon endless riddles, even such as indeed will be exposed as plain and profane, no riddle at all. And along the course of the present true to life Hero's Journey, there will be much attentively to unpack and decompress, in the present densely verbose hypertext paragraphs here on FoolQuest.com

But initial drama along the course of the present true to life Hero's Journey, obtains such and so: That alas, even in shared values and objectives, strategy and action  agenda may yet meet with rejection, only fizzling out in real world anticlimax of anti-drama and disappointment. Indeed as for examples, recounted here, and here. Indeed, even given as aforesaid, even so rarely, ignition of intensely motivated individualized focus, will any common ground towards conceivable plan of action  agenda ever appear? For in the words of Benjamin Disraeli: “Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.”

In life as in myth, from the beginning the Hero's Journey is ever imperiled by distraction, diversion and compromise, from the true path. And not all compromise is evil. Meaningful compromise ever challenges dramatic priorities upon the path of individual true to life Hero's Journey. Doctors once recommended for their patients to take up golf,  even just to pass the time, even no matter how senselessly, all in order thereby to improve self esteem by gaining task mastery. All conjuring to mind the demonic Terrible Trivium from ‘The Phantom Toll Booth’ written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer. Because indeed, the seductive distraction of endlessly unimportant tasks, easy to do, spare us all from the anxieties of difficult and important challenges. Indeed, as often espoused in remedial Behavior Modification and rehab, is the recommendation of consistent participation in ongoing long term projects even at all arbitrarily. Indeed somewhat off-putting, yet entirely cut-and-dry and feasible though banal and boring drudgery. Such as, for example: community gardening, providing behavioral structure of regularly scheduled activity and association sustaining propinquity while also producing any interaction and sense of involvement to draw participants together. Such banal travesty of the rôle of gardening in the ideal and intentional community of Epicurus.

And yet, the uninspiring recommendation points halfway towards what is actually so sorely needed, in focus therein upon active ongoing cooperation. To bad it's so tedious and onerous, unless indeed one so adores gardening! In the alternative, might then anything more interesting and meaningful, turn out actually the more uplifting and successful, than such remedial drudgery as community gardening? The present proposal remains perhaps the most modest and least extreme or Draconian of all conceivable serious life strategies currently advanced in response towards solution finding coming to grips with the probortunity at hand. And yet, many would balk. Will there then be anything more important or interesting on your mind, gentle reader? Bear with me:

In the biting whit of Dorothy Parker: “You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.” Yet again, as here on FoolQuest.com, one can but extend invitation. Alas, many even who yearn for and advocate, at least in abstract principle, collaboration among equals not just in labor together arbitrarily, but actually creative solution finding, nevertheless may flat-out reject either or even both quintessentially creative pursuits advanced herein, that of going into business together for ourselves, and even that of story crafting together. -Just not their proverbial cup of tea. In that case, then the first brainstorming challenge to the agenda, might be to define and select whatever other at all conceivable challenge in focus of sustainable and appealing creative collaboration and endeavor, once whatever that scarce and fondly remembered exciting and uplifting super fun workplace project, workshop or seminar concludes, without providing follow up whatsoever, leaving all just figuratively standing out there in the proverbial cold, and not to mix metaphors, sitting on our hands, each and all abandoned once again, to our own devices. And that situation so bereft of vital social support, puts to the test, skills and responsibilities of autonomy, so atrophied and undermined under heteronomy. Do then those Behaviorist community gardeners get the last laugh? Wait: Not so fast!

Subversively and disruptively proposed herein, shall be nothing less than indeed to completely reverse traditional paradigm of heteronomy to authoritarianism, in endless possibility all in accordance with the grand afterthought of Cultural Anthropology, by instead, in liberating value maximization, resetting collaboration among equals in creative solution finding as the new norm and default human condition, then appealing to even ad hoc authority, only occasionally as need actually arising. And the strategy, mechanics and proposed plan of action in implementation thereof, shall be dubbed: Creativity can and Should be Social, in such disruptively innovative new venture creation (various business startup), entrepreneurship for the rest of us, in such subversive interstitial synergy concurrently with unprecedented serious collaborative fiction writing and brainstorming. For as John Cleese expounds: “Creativity is not a talent: it's a way of operating.”  But yet again, barring hierarchically dominant power and authority in wherewithal simply to impose implementation of more enlightened policy, one can but extend invitation. And FoolQuest.com remains your golden invitation, gentle reader. As observed of capable and happy people, let's talk more seriously!

No, not anarchy, not at all, merely civil society, informality until whatever formalities are evoked. Actual need of authority can arise in many ways. The need for moderation may arise in order to restore order and resume pertinence of discourse to agenda, let alone to quell or resolve actual conflict and acrimony passing beyond merely enthusiasm of heated exchange and the practice of controversy, and let alone urgently authoritative contravention in order to counter actual abuse and bullying of one kind or another. Authority may also serve to break deadlock and indecision in urgent probortunity.

But any default situation of constant authority, macro and micromanagement all the time, simply as the normal routine, frequently loses purpose, descending into oppressive self-serving, destruction and irrelevance. And the strategy, mechanics and proposed plan of action in implementation of aforesaid new paradigm, shall be dubbed: Creativity can and Should be Social. For as John Cleese expounds: “Creativity is not a talent: it's a way of operating.”  But yet again, barring hierarchically dominant power and authority in wherewithal simply to impose implementation of more enlightened policy, one can but extend invitation. And FoolQuest.com remains your golden invitation, gentle reader. As observed of capable and happy people, let's talk more seriously!

Situation analysis: Indeed, the probortunity at hand remains entirely in accordance with that which may be referred to as: the grand afterthought of Cultural Anthropology:

Conventionally and heteronymously, in every walk of life, authority routinely and continually and systematically stifles not only autonomy in general, but most particularly, creative solution finding. Because, from the standpoint of heteronomy, collaboration among equals remain quite inconceivable. That is, except when and as deemed needful or advantageous by whatever powers that be, especially in light of any whatever unusual special circumstances or situation of probortunity, the more dire the more propitious. Only thus ever arises for even the rank and file, such scarce and fondly remembered peak experience of creative collaboration and fulfillment under relaxation of hierarchical dominance, called: low hierarchical distance, meaning: near equality.

And yet in all terror of autonomy, heteronomy so hesitantly strives, in very limited success, to tame for heteronomy, the competitively indispensable power of autonomy and even of creative solution finding in close collaboration among equals. But heteronomy can't be tweaked or revamped. Heteronomy can only be brought to give way, at long last, to autonomy, indeed perhaps even in reversal of paradigmatically  heteronymous norms and expectations, Peripeteia as herein so subversively and disruptively conspired.

And then, even in as to any aforementioned howsoever even seemingly arbitrary indifference, even distaste and rejection both of business and of drama, it may then reasonably and responsibly be expected that sustainability of such vastly underserved peak experience of collaboration among equals in creative solution finding, may inevitably entail in any alternative, some other manner of salient and relevant project planning towards effective implementation, not to mention whatever probortunity as focus of collaboration among equals in creative solution finding. Because implementation is key. And creative solution finding, even however innovative, requires some or other clear focus or objective. Indeed, when all else fails, what has actually been desired all along? Hence: As to be expounded anon, bridging abstract and concrete, project planning is but another powerful and synergistic mode or applications of narrative, of dramatic futuring scenario and story crafting. Hence the salient relevance of sustained and ongoing culture of innovative new venture creation (various business startup), entrepreneurship for the rest of us, in short: of open collaboration in business or project planning towards effective implementation. Thus, the relevance of innovative new venture creation (various business startup), entrepreneurship for the rest of us, by any other name, becomes inescapable to all such proactive initiative beyond the bounds of institutional life. And indulging perhaps also pure creativity, art for art's sake, how better than in unprecedented ongoing serious collaborative fiction writing and brainstorming? Other options aside from collaborative writing, may remain less broadly accessible, readily sustainable, and thereby at al less practical. Moreover, serious collaborative fiction writing promotes appealing cultivation of the liberating power of narrative.

 

 

Suicide remains more popular than this website!

How desperate then need one be, in order simply to focus and consider probortunity at hand at all more seriously?

Blithely and blindly trusting agitated first impressions of the unfamiliar to begin with, can be somewhat unhinged. Pay no heed then, to callow cretins quailing at heightened language, big words and big ideas. Because: Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind, don't matter. Alas that not only the most hapless and broken, and knaves and fools especially, or even the most ordinary and average, but especially our best and brightest, so often meet only with desperate failure and frustration. Nothing works! Whether one deserves better or not. Whatever that even means!

Why then must it come as any shock to anyone, the very idea that there may remain not only whatever range of personal human imperfection, various defects and foibles of individual personality and character, great and small, but also the most intractable, banal and pervasive systemic problems and stumbling blocks out there in the world at large? As if the very notion of such stock iconoclasm, where actually anything new! All no less true to admit, even for seeming pretentious to say out loud and within earshot of the snickering popular kids!

Indeed as in the words of Russell Brand: “Society is collapsing and people are starting to recognize that the reason they feel like they’re mentally ill is that they’re living in a system that’s not designed to suit the human spirit.” And it remains most disheartening  and Existentially Absurd, how many people experience similar frustrated yearnings and even, leave us face it: mortal terror, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect. And all for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means. And such remains the probortunity at hand, most dire and therefore most propitious. Because Eudemonia requires, among other things, genuine autonomy in meeting ones needs for the dignity of capable interaction with even adequately responsible others. And also no less crucial, the value maximization of creative interaction, in order ever to abate pandemic boredom and loneliness for anyone.

Whoever is to blame, however one cares to look at it, whether any person is failing to function and perform socially, or society is failing to address the social needs of any person, clearly there remains whatever sort of even all too often somewhat dire mismatch and incompatibility. Probortunity remaining key to the ensuing strategic agenda for serious people wracking our brains: What must be done? Tautologically, there can be no self-help, no reliable solitary rugged self-reliant unilateral DIY (Do-It-Yourself) "well-formed plan" for interaction among more than one individual. Alas then how we each and all discover ourselves  typically abandoned to our own devices in anything meaningful. Indeed, Existentially Absurd!

 

Hacking social reality?

There are ever the many urging resignation in life and simply making do. For anyone so well adjusted and entirely sanguine in surrender to status quo, there might follow reasonable expectation of that much less urgency to do anything at all much differently or to strive towards radical change. Indeed all too often, even the most unhappy, yet dedicate themselves in hope eternal and unflagging struggle to conform, progress, win acceptance and succeed socially, one fine day, gaining thereby, at any sycophantic Faustian cost, the very key to life. Others, even more deluded, only pretend. How obsequious! What a bunch of suck-ups! Best luck to them all. 

In the alternative, should anything herein presented or proposed, be rejected as difficult or demanding and complicated, I defy anyone to point out an easier and simpler path towards any similar objectives. I, for one, would be intensely interested. If in my searching high and low, I ever came across anyone elsewhere already opening to all comers, any equivalent endeavor as herein proposed, I would simply ask to join in. All manner of demands and conditions are placed upon the individual in life, especially as pertaining to specific endeavors, often needlessly and unreasonably or even quite detrimentally. But there are also conditions that are reasonably imposed only by circumstances and of actual necessity. It's all a question realistically of what will actually be required in order to achieve whatever ends, and not arbitrary conditions imposed. Desperately seeking serious and interested people, nevertheless undaunted by the challenge before us, all easier said than done. Should anything herein presented or proposed, be rejected as unrealistic, then likewise the very objectives must be abandoned as unfeasible. Otherwise, I defy anyone to point out any lesser prerequisites towards the same objectives. I, for one, would be intensely interested.

Collaborative social engineering together crafting that ideal setting for Eudemonia and the optimization of social stimulus struggle, is the often tabooed central agenda of FoolQuest.com People do indeed buy into and uphold all every terrible evil of social reality, but people are also Empirically well known do as much for better values and in order to improve social reality, making progress every day. Indeed, "unreasonable" social engineering deconstruction and reconstruction of social reality are central to the proposed implementation of Creativity Can be Popular.

 

 

 

Let's talk! For anything private and sensitive, just email me. Or to open provocative public discourse, post to the forum. Otherwise, if you prefer to post about FoolQuest.com anywhere else online, the free promotion will be most appreciated. But please email and/or post the hyperlink so that I can find it and respond, fully and promptly.

 

 

 

Copyright 2009-2025 by Aaron Agassi

 

 

 

Please always inform me how I may be of assistance!: Congratulations! You have discovered FoolQuest.com, often by far too detailed for any individual casual interest or narrowed specific purpose of research, yet nowhere near detailed enough to meet the needs of actual preparation towards implementation. Most of the time, any brief concise plan can be sound only in principle. For practicability tends to demand detail beyond casual attention span. And even then, the necessity of ongoing adaptation to change frequently demands constant revision and improvisation. Therefore we have much to discuss. Other websites proffer the most trivial advice or blithely over simplistic and flawed solutions that will never help you. Do not be taken in by people working at frantic cross purposes, far too deep in a rut from running the rat race and consumed by utter blind terror of spending more than three minutes at a time on each sales prospect in turn, for the sheer bother and actual respect of ever simply assisting or actually so little as even paying attention to one another!

 

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. Commonly, texts upon success and worldly happiness, consist either of scientific reportage, philosophical discourse, or declaratives and instructions. But scientific reportage belongs in context of criticality and controversy of philosophical discourse, while philosophical discourse amounts to little without agenda towards application, to which declaratives and instructions typically remain inadequate. Indeed, so often as we are all abandoned to our 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? 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 under arousal 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 to rise to their true potential. 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. Yet everywhere one turns, there is such indifference, indeed timid contempt, malignant hostility and actual taboo towards engagement in very principle, as can be seen forever spawning industries of travesty. Even genuinely viable success strategies can more quickly make you miserable, much less all manner of debilitating and evasive scams. And mindlessly hanging out and recreational passive consumption never really compensate the emptiness and aggravation. As ever, marketing often strives to confuse and inveigle the consumer into desperate compensation for unmet needs, via the elicitation towards sublimation to positive associations and mystique, all seldom actually substantiated or borne out in whatever goods or services. For such is the shameless peddling of false hope, taking advantage of epidemic alienation! Hence, in flight from exactly such worldly vexation and deception, many claim solace in religion. Indeed, there are even those myriad disciplines and sophisticated techniques, ancient and arcane or bleeding edge modern, all utterly to cease caring. And others still, ever exhort a willfully positive attitude towards sheer determined drudgery as the path to success, or likewise fitting in socially at any cost, typically demanding either ruthless exploitation of others or else submission to the herd, if not, actually, even both all at once. In truth, however, only precious few of us have ever actually been happy in our travails amid the rat race under such typically oppressive punishment and reward systems as school or employment, demoralizing subtext only ever signaling the same dire lack of sufficiently engaging intrinsic value. -Nor, for that matter, politics and lip service to revolution.

 

For anyone fired up with bogus appetite and hungry to eat shit with gusto, there will always be a second helping! Vested interest can be no better than whatever the object thereof. For anyone, as is fashionable, well and masochistically adaptive and content in relentless self manipulation all in order simply to tolerate and make do under the ersatz oppressive mediocrity of status quo and travesty, life is that much more simple. Of course virtuous fortitude in forging ahead is always a good recommendation, as if such could ever actually ever be so easy! Rather, happiness being contingent upon substantive discourse, the exercise and communication of the meaningful values of imagination, adequate range of choice, autonomy, mastery (competence) and achievement, together with connection, self awareness and conscience informed by rationality, the true key to friendship and happiness is in the quest for happiness more than in resultant success alone, in any reasonable hope, in the dignity of risk, and also in true friendship. So there can be no simple and straightforward blueprint for living life, but at best, towards any hoped for improvement in our circumstances, the following thorny problem statement and daunting challenge of social aptitude and risk tolerance, all towards the hoped for fulfillment of all such real and vastly underserved fundamental human needs and values as are all seemingly ignored, thwarted, dismissed or trivialized veritably everywhere one turns except for the very frontiers of sheer escapist fantasy. Indeed, according to the latest research, those ever addictive multiplayer video games are now found to produce in simulation, exactly the beneficial sense of competency, achievement and connection, all so woefully absent from the Existential dreariness of grinding daily routine!

 

I write from some experience with repeated failure, indeed even defeat snatched from the very jaws of victory: The plain truth is that having been abandoned to our own devices, in order to actually mitigate the suffering of alienated loneliness and boredom in real life, one general integrative strategy presents itself, so obvious and direct in principle but extremely difficult in endless details and every conceivable obstacle of compatible implementation, all in pursuit of the transitory but renewable experience of fulfillment from fun pleasurable immersive engagement in personally meaningful activity and stimulating interpersonal interactivity as well understood to be requisite to happiness and human flourishing. Neglect is the collaboration killer. Happiness being, as it is, an appropriate and relevant subjective response to favorable circumstances, requires any more optimal social environment being crucial in order to intrinsically motivate or inspire determination, productivity, insight, sociability and other such highly functional behaviors or virtues as are all so often observed to be conducive even to hoped for material success in doing what you love. And no less important, also, is undertaking of all the aforesaid convivially in good company, pooling human capital towards larger endeavors beyond all that can otherwise be self achievable by any lone individual effort, sagacity, individual skill sets, connections and influence; social support being, after all, so important a predicator of success. Famous Entrepreneurs are often extolled as rugged self-made individuals, but more often in truth each was well matched by compatible partners. Therefore, clearly, outreach, networking, connection and recruitment will each be crucial, all towards location of any such as may exist, or else the strategic inception and formation from scratch, of exactly such a specifically agenda directed circle or group, which, though, and as should surprise no one, easier said than done, still seems perhaps the most direct approach.  -A unique opportunity to research and implement optimally suitable discourse and conduct, indeed to purposefully forge intentional relationship on our own terms, then to set agenda, draw plans and take action  in hopes of gaining meaningful control of our circumstances so as indeed to create value and just perhaps by even slightly improved functional coordination only amongst amongst ourselves, than the average which is often so poor, mayhap thereby actually to accrue any new competitive advantage out in the world at large also.

 

You are all invited!		Just popped in to see what condition your condition was in? So, exactly what would you like us to do about it together? Share your thoughts! All reply pertinent to content is much appreciated, especially agenda directed response. For anything private and sensitive, email me. Or to open provocative public discourse, post to the forum. Or if you prefer to post about FoolQuest.com anywhere else online, the free promotion will be most appreciated. But please email and/or post the hyperlink so that I can find it and respond, fully and promptly.

 

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