I might just be too autistic for this but I don't get why the article uses the word "existing" to refer to a conflation of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity/what have you.
Am I not existing when I'm worrying about finances or fidgeting with my hair?
I don't really see why "existing" should be conceived in such a subtractive fashion.
I'm not dismissing the value of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity when achievable (which, as the author acknowledges, these things sometimes aren't). But I am slightly miffed by the implication that any failure to reach such state is an inability to attain something as fundamental as "existence".
With all due respect, you might be overanalyzing it.
Obviously it is trivial to merely exist. All of us are doing it with (for the majority of us who are healthy) minimal effort.
The author is taking artistic license with the word as a shorthand for a specific form of existing well which is something that many people struggle with, and that many people would readily associate with this use of the term.
The Author did mention if something is happening that gives you a desire to move on to the next thing might be a state of not being present. I would characterize worry being in the future because something about the present moment is disrupting.
It's a catchy but, yes, inaccurate term. Then again, this is an area which ultimately wants to escape terms (enter infuriatingly meaningless other terms like "ineffable"), so consider letting go of linguistic pedantry part of the exercise. Maybe a better framing for you is to think of your brain as a computer (which it is) and try and let it run the programs it's going to run when the "user" stops launching processes (or practically most of the time when meditating, runs a script which runs ps and then kills threads). The idea is that like clearing your desk or letting your system run some background tasks, you'll end up with a better system if you periodically practice making space in this way.
of course you exist regardless of what you are doing. I think the term is just used because it is the most "plain" form of existing? Just being around and doing nothing else at all. I'm not sure the term used carries much weight.
Well, let's give the author the benefit of the doubt and try not to regard his article or its ideas in a subtractive fashion either; there's more here than the headline.
There's a lot of woo around meditation and mindfulness, but I genuinely believe that one of the most valuable habits I've acquired is just sitting still for a few minutes in the morning with zero distractions and observing where my mind goes.
9 times out of 10 it tells me exactly what it wants/needs to deal with that day, and if I want to stay emotionally balanced and pursue my deepest callings, I need to follow its suggestion.
If I don't do this I become out of touch with my inner state, less focused, less intentional, and over time, emotionally erratic.
The article's caution about doing this exercise if you have a condition like PTSD is very good advice, because eventually, the real shit you need to deal with will rear its head.
Everything you need for self-understanding and balance is there in your mind, speaking to you, all the time. Most of the time instead of listening we pull out our phones and distract ourselves. Or maybe we do what other people have told us to or follow some other drive.
But if you can and do set all that aside and just listen to the mind from time to time, it's almost a superpower. I suspect that many of humanity's greatest works have come about this way. Someone listening to what their mind just wouldn't shut up about, creating the conditions for hundreds or thousands of hours of flow state, and then just following its lead.
We can all be pedantic, why do you have to be alive to exist?
Depends on the specific definition of the verb existing we are talking about, right?
90% of "I'm too autistic"-insecurities boil down to words being not clearly defined (or them being clearly defined, but either people using them without care or you not being aware of the definition they use). A word isn't magically stuck the the abstract concept it refers to, people can mean different things while using the same word. In philosophy for example it is very apparent that one author's definition of existence (or any other abstract concept, like freedom) may differ fundamentally from another author's.
We can all agree that sometimes the use of an word has unfortunate side effects, like turning something simple like existence into something you can suck at. This often boils down to (A) a use of the concept we are not aware of, e.g. if Paul Satré used the word existence, he has writen thousand page book on his specific meaning of the word and the author having read Satré unbeknownst to us refers to Satré's definition or (B) the author just chose a word that sounded cool and picked somewhat imprecisely.
I think here (as so often) it is the latter, but to cut them some slack: colloquially people will say things like "I feel like I am not even existing/alive". And what they often mean by that is that their life passes in full automation mode, with them barely having any present thought at any moment — wake up, commute, work, rinse, repeat. If that is your problem, doing something that gets you out of that automation state is good.
However I believe that many pasttimes can do that, e.g. playing music, climbing, a walk through an unknown landscape, etc. I am pretty certain there are indigenous people out there who probably don't even know of this problem to begin with, they simply just exist in their present moment. So this isn't generally hard for a human being. But it can be hard to some.
I mean it is hard to take such a blog seriouslt tbh with a title like "how to exist". I feel there is a lot of sprituality mumbo jumbo that gets lumped with meditation which is a fairly mechnical process that you can do to relax your body and mind, like a massage.
But people are not happy with it just being message, they want to espouse it as a religion or something that will fundamentally change your thinking etc. But imo an asshole will still remain as asshole even if they medidate everyday.
If you just look at the mechanics of breathing and thought control, they can be pretty useful to apply especially if you are prone to high anxiety. But there is nothing in it that will make you a better person or help you exists or whatever
In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action stems to the industrial revolution when it was decided that workers should sell their time for a living.
Before that we used to have task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, which you cant do more than once in a while, or harvest the fields, which you can't do until it's ripe. In general humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics versus 150 years of time controlling your action.
I’m not sure where this idea came from that farming was idle and only industry required constant work. Every hundred-year old book I’ve ever read that features farming includes themes of how the farmer’s work never ends and runs from dawn to dusk.
There's a lot to do on a farm, yet no farmer is expected to be working a full 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, at moderate intensity. No farmer has to do something within the next hour or their boss shouts at them. No farmer has to feel bad, or need to catch up, if they have to take a day off unless it's planting season. No farmer has any qualm about ending a day early because they've done all they planned to do. No farmer obsesses with stimulant medication or correct dosage of modafinil to get through their daily work.
And there's a huge difference between a subsistence farmer, which most of humanity has been for most of history, and intensive farming, which admittedly benefits from machines, but it's anyway a much more regimented industrial operation.
The current pace of technological progress means that you cannot just sit and wait for the crops to grow. You need to constantly be learning a new skill on the side, diversifying your income streams, thinking and researching about how to optimize your costs and yields for the following year, etc.
This is because there is no guarantee that you can keep living the same routine till the day you die.
Also, humans are builders. Doing nothing and waiting for the seasons to change like cows in a field might not be in our DNA. Restlessness is our natural state, that's why we have all this stuff.
> In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action
Great book, but I have pinned down my obsession with action to my daily single cup of coffee habit. The idea of relaxation doesn't exist. When I sit down, it takes a minute before my brain desperately tries to find something to do. Guilt soon overcomes me. Even in the extreme anhedonia of the first days of caffeine withdrawal, I am able to glimpse a state of mind where idleness is both natural and restorative. I strongly feel that my creativity suffers because I am unable to allow my mind to drift, daydream, laze around on the couch without immediate goals other than the contemplation of life. Too bad I am too brain-washed (and lazy) to go through the unpleasant mental phase to drop the brew.
It is no wonder that our caffeine-addicted society is all about action, and we are unable to truly relax.
Necessary disclaimers given the topic and the constant disinformation: yes, I have ADHD. No, caffeine does not relax anyone's brain due to its mode of action, and any claim of doing so is misunderstanding the chemical pathways involved. The vast majority of us are too addicted and not self-aware enough to notice the effect coffee has on our lives, yet are ready to claim it's the miracle brew that only has positive side-effects
I used to sit alone for 30-40 minutes, 100's of meters below ground, in absolute darkness, absolute silence, no life around, no movement around, not even a breeze of air. Only mild thoughts to stop myself from falling asleep. Above ground, I slept under the stars and sky, in the wild, with no buildings around.
What I learnt is, recent generations have too much of self awareness, causing the communities and groups to become weaker, compared to the tribal settlements that helped humans to dominate other species.
I think this makes as dominate other species even more. Society, and especially market capitalism, is like a giant optimization function for productivity. If you step off the treadmill, you will get dominated by those who are on it and have the latest ICBMs, AI models, infrastructure out the wazoo, can produce 10,000 drones a week, etc.
Too much self awareness is still a problem. Even if you have ICBMs and drones, a society that puts less emphasis on individuals than the community, can survive through offsprings and community traditions and beliefs. As long as the community lives on through its children, it's fine.
For example, people in my community are mostly known by their family name, and not by individual's name. Family name alone is used as far as possible. My grandpa never liked to be called by his own name.
The idea is, as long as there is someone to carry the family name, individuals should not matter.
One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen.
One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is?
EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
Your brain is a prediction machine. I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function. I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable. Maybe using that life force to focus on the things you're avoiding by rumination and escapism is good enough, and we don't have to be cosplaying the dead to get there?
> I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function
It isn't.
> I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable
Not having an opinion about everything for 3 minutes != vegetable.
The author of the post is selling what he himself doesn't understand. Paying attention to your inner chatter without judgement is part of a much broader tradition. Westerners stealing bits from cultures they don't understand is nothing new. Neither is the polarizing fascination/dismissal it entails.
I have this same cactus same thing, but later on I realized even when I do nothing, and even my tinnitus is there I realized it doesn’t bother me anyway. I miss that deep winter / snow silence now and then but kind of learned to live with it I think. I realize this is very different experience for everyone.
> It’s oddly difficult to do nothing, and while you’re doing nothing, it’s oddly difficult to feel at ease.
I don't have difficulty with this. Doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and simultaneously feeling perfectly at ease just comes naturally. I know that my experience is not universal and that many people do struggle with this. If you struggle with this and you were wondering, serenity really is very nice, and I wish I could share it, and I'm sorry that I can't.
Been doing this for 20 minutes in the morning for a few decades now. It has had an impact. I am a rather “high gain” person emotionally. I now tend to notice emotions and observe them, which helps when they threaten to suck me into a self-perpetuating ruminative vortex. Also, it has made me gentler, and an easier person to be around. I’m now well aware that whatever disturbances occur, there will be echoes and resonances tomorrow morning during my sit! Now for a moment of honesty: this is a religious practice for me. A prayer that “landed” for me: “Lord, I ask to be a conduit of grace.”
"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement! Many people struggle greatly with falling asleep. Personally, while I agree with you, if you are the type of person who struggles with clearing the mind, it's hardest to do when exhausted (hence common advice to practice mediation early in the day)
The article allows for breathing and blinking, but has an odd constraint of “don’t move”, which AFAIK will make one fight their own neural system trying to autoregulate arousal. I’m not an expert but in my limited understanding, remaining completely still is not “not doing anything”, it’s very active inhibitory action.
As an experiment, just get in a nice running shower, so your sensory system will get external stimulation. YMMV, but for me three minutes pass quick. I just did that and when I decided to check the time it was almost 5 minutes already.
Real “doing nothing” is just leaving things be, just chilling out and observing whatever is happening without actively participating - and three minutes is a pretty low mark for that, unless we’re talking about fellas with ADHD.
This isn't always true. It's likely true only when there is no pressure. However, when there is pressure, one can "do nothing" for long periods. If you haven't experienced that, you've lived a blessed life, and you have more to learn.
I think you're equating doing nothing with doing nothing productive. You're usually still ruminating or trying to distract yourself from the source of the pressure.
“Even thinking is often a sneaky way of escaping the existence; rumination isn’t so much about trying to solve your problems, as it is about going elsewhere in your mind to escape anxiety and uncertainty.”
Profound insight that really gets to the root of rumination.
The more you require to do this - walk to the park, a lawn, no noise - the less you will do it. In reality you could be locked in a prison and still do it.
as the author points out, even thought in your own mind is a source of distraction and you can't run away from that.
Fundamentally you can be at ease with city noise just like you can be with mental distraction. One of the big misconceptions about meditation for example tends to be that it's about avoiding or actively quieting noise be that internal or external. It's not about changing the content of your conscious experience but your relationship to it.
I think I might. In a past life I was a full time musician and had tons of time to kill. I was able to just go to places and simply exist. It wasn't to read or work or write or meet anyone (everyone was at work after all), it was simply "I want some coffee". I'd people watch and daydream for a bit and then I'd go do something else.
Whether or not that's what they had in mind idk, but it's what it immediately made me think of. I traded near absolute freedom for money, but that's just something you have to do as you get older I guess.
It’s rather “libertarians as cats”. The heroism of being content doing nothing but drink some coffee, stands upon the backs of hundreds of people seeking to better themselves who brought that coffee to your lips.
After having kids content like this is so unrelatable. When I finally have my own time, I'm going to do something fun, not worry about existential stuff lol.
Before kids I was on and off into meditation,my place in the world, being calm or w/e.
Same lmao. Similarly, I don't want to be rude or assume things but I'm really annoyed with 20-something-year-olds giving out life advice.
(I don't know if the author is in 20s)
What's that paragraph about firefighter arson? Looks out of place, curious while there's another article on the subject on front page.
>Each year, roughly 100 firefighters are convicted of arson in North America, often on multiple counts. Most often they are young, new firefighters, frustrated by the lack of action.
Is someone tricking LLMs into writing articles about firefighter arson?
I had a rather extreme form of this existence in my late-20’s, it was the first time I had ever really experienced such a thing (circa-2011). I’d never had any pathologies in the past, and this was shortly following an unexpected violent encounter. I spoke with a psychiatrist, and it was diagnosed at the time as post-traumatic stress disorder.
I wonder if maybe there’s something of a swelling ocean full of people suffering from low-level PTSD, even just from the trauma of staying alive and well in a society that you feel increasingly untethered from, as if stuck in place while the universe expands farther in every direction. The arriving tide of midlife crises for a generation of Palahniuk’s “middle-children of history”, those who had the wherewithal and luck to avoid serious addictions and hereditary alcoholism, but who still can’t really afford to be sufficiently medicated under a doctor’s supervision, either. So we resort to the permanent morphine drip of distraction, mainlining dopamine via headphone IVs.
The bottom half of a socioeconomic bell curve that’s being aggressively flattened, as if there were a pandemic of mediocrity and wasted potential. Stuck between a misspent youth, and an increasingly uncertain future.
TLDR; I think this is a very good first step for a lot of like-minded somewhat damaged folks. I ultimately took a similar approach—mindful meditation with breathing exercises—to treat my own PTSD, it worked better than Xanax to tamp down the anxiety attacks.
P.S. - Anyone who points out my em dashes can go sit on dem dashes. This comment was boutique, artisan, 100% organic bullshit. No memory prices were harmed in the making of this comment.
> This is the strange condition of the human being. It’s allergic to its natural habitat, which is the present moment. In order to cope with this allergy, it perpetually seeks things: feelings and experiences that are not yet present. It wants to always be getting the hell out of here.
I think this is way over-philosophizing and missing the basics of modern life.
Many people live in capitalist societies and are well-adapted to continuous 1) consumption and 2) production, both of which keep the economy spinning and neither of which involve doing nothing.
Whether that's good or bad is up for debate, but to attribute the difficulty of "doing nothing" to the fundamental human condition is a huge stretch.
This is a common form of buddhist meditation in Tibetan (Dzogchen / Mahamudra) and Japanese (Soto Zen shikantaza) styles. Instructions are nearly identical. Interestingly, it's considered one of the most advanced techniques in the Tibetan repertoire.
> When you stop doing everything and just exist, you almost feel like you’re dying.
It sounds like the author drinks too much caffeine. This definitely isn't unusual in rat race culture, but it's also by no means the universal human experience.
> This is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear. There’s always something wrong, even when everything’s fine. It’s as if you can only bear the present moment when you’re trying change it into something else.
I am not a professional and I'm not trying to be dismissive here, but I'm pretty sure you're just describing general anxiety.
Nobody truly has a hard time "doing nothing for 3 minutes" if they time it right. Morning and night tend to be when it's easiest for me, but others may differ. You should instead investigate what makes that time of day different from the rest of it. That's where the answers really are. You can and should adjust the flow of your day to make it happen naturally and unconsciously.
> This is a form of meditation, but I almost want to avoid that word because it makes people get nervous and overcomplicate it. Just think of this practice as existing without fear, for a few seconds at a time. Minimum effective dose is one half-breath.
This is already way too complicated. Nothing at this level of detail needs to be described. We already know what "nothing" is. Being too deliberate has a way of pushing the emotions elsewhere until they come back to bite you. The goal of trying to make this possible on-demand is unrealistic at best, or a self-help trap to keep people buying advice at worst.
I found myself "meditating" all the time on accident when I took on less and gave myself more time to do things. When you need a break, you need a break. The most important part for me was letting go of trying to impose control over this. I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen.
> I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen.
You assume others have had your experience and learnings from it. That’s clearly not possible so how else would you put it for them? Maybe you should contribute your own experience. But don’t expect everybody will allign to it 100%.
Today there is no guarantee that that sequence of characters, or the one it was produced in reply to, or, indeed, this very one you are reading right now did not come from a bot. There is a lot of "care" being performed and not much left to just exist.
I kept waiting for the punchline of the author turning out not to be a human after describing in detail what it thinks of the human experience. The text has all the hallmarks of AI writing at least
Am I not existing when I'm worrying about finances or fidgeting with my hair?
I don't really see why "existing" should be conceived in such a subtractive fashion.
I'm not dismissing the value of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity when achievable (which, as the author acknowledges, these things sometimes aren't). But I am slightly miffed by the implication that any failure to reach such state is an inability to attain something as fundamental as "existence".
(end rant)
Obviously it is trivial to merely exist. All of us are doing it with (for the majority of us who are healthy) minimal effort.
The author is taking artistic license with the word as a shorthand for a specific form of existing well which is something that many people struggle with, and that many people would readily associate with this use of the term.
There's a lot of woo around meditation and mindfulness, but I genuinely believe that one of the most valuable habits I've acquired is just sitting still for a few minutes in the morning with zero distractions and observing where my mind goes.
9 times out of 10 it tells me exactly what it wants/needs to deal with that day, and if I want to stay emotionally balanced and pursue my deepest callings, I need to follow its suggestion.
If I don't do this I become out of touch with my inner state, less focused, less intentional, and over time, emotionally erratic.
The article's caution about doing this exercise if you have a condition like PTSD is very good advice, because eventually, the real shit you need to deal with will rear its head.
Everything you need for self-understanding and balance is there in your mind, speaking to you, all the time. Most of the time instead of listening we pull out our phones and distract ourselves. Or maybe we do what other people have told us to or follow some other drive.
But if you can and do set all that aside and just listen to the mind from time to time, it's almost a superpower. I suspect that many of humanity's greatest works have come about this way. Someone listening to what their mind just wouldn't shut up about, creating the conditions for hundreds or thousands of hours of flow state, and then just following its lead.
Depends on the specific definition of the verb existing we are talking about, right?
90% of "I'm too autistic"-insecurities boil down to words being not clearly defined (or them being clearly defined, but either people using them without care or you not being aware of the definition they use). A word isn't magically stuck the the abstract concept it refers to, people can mean different things while using the same word. In philosophy for example it is very apparent that one author's definition of existence (or any other abstract concept, like freedom) may differ fundamentally from another author's.
We can all agree that sometimes the use of an word has unfortunate side effects, like turning something simple like existence into something you can suck at. This often boils down to (A) a use of the concept we are not aware of, e.g. if Paul Satré used the word existence, he has writen thousand page book on his specific meaning of the word and the author having read Satré unbeknownst to us refers to Satré's definition or (B) the author just chose a word that sounded cool and picked somewhat imprecisely.
I think here (as so often) it is the latter, but to cut them some slack: colloquially people will say things like "I feel like I am not even existing/alive". And what they often mean by that is that their life passes in full automation mode, with them barely having any present thought at any moment — wake up, commute, work, rinse, repeat. If that is your problem, doing something that gets you out of that automation state is good.
However I believe that many pasttimes can do that, e.g. playing music, climbing, a walk through an unknown landscape, etc. I am pretty certain there are indigenous people out there who probably don't even know of this problem to begin with, they simply just exist in their present moment. So this isn't generally hard for a human being. But it can be hard to some.
But people are not happy with it just being message, they want to espouse it as a religion or something that will fundamentally change your thinking etc. But imo an asshole will still remain as asshole even if they medidate everyday.
If you just look at the mechanics of breathing and thought control, they can be pretty useful to apply especially if you are prone to high anxiety. But there is nothing in it that will make you a better person or help you exists or whatever
Before that we used to have task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, which you cant do more than once in a while, or harvest the fields, which you can't do until it's ripe. In general humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics versus 150 years of time controlling your action.
And there's a huge difference between a subsistence farmer, which most of humanity has been for most of history, and intensive farming, which admittedly benefits from machines, but it's anyway a much more regimented industrial operation.
This is because there is no guarantee that you can keep living the same routine till the day you die.
Also, humans are builders. Doing nothing and waiting for the seasons to change like cows in a field might not be in our DNA. Restlessness is our natural state, that's why we have all this stuff.
Great book, but I have pinned down my obsession with action to my daily single cup of coffee habit. The idea of relaxation doesn't exist. When I sit down, it takes a minute before my brain desperately tries to find something to do. Guilt soon overcomes me. Even in the extreme anhedonia of the first days of caffeine withdrawal, I am able to glimpse a state of mind where idleness is both natural and restorative. I strongly feel that my creativity suffers because I am unable to allow my mind to drift, daydream, laze around on the couch without immediate goals other than the contemplation of life. Too bad I am too brain-washed (and lazy) to go through the unpleasant mental phase to drop the brew.
It is no wonder that our caffeine-addicted society is all about action, and we are unable to truly relax.
Necessary disclaimers given the topic and the constant disinformation: yes, I have ADHD. No, caffeine does not relax anyone's brain due to its mode of action, and any claim of doing so is misunderstanding the chemical pathways involved. The vast majority of us are too addicted and not self-aware enough to notice the effect coffee has on our lives, yet are ready to claim it's the miracle brew that only has positive side-effects
What I learnt is, recent generations have too much of self awareness, causing the communities and groups to become weaker, compared to the tribal settlements that helped humans to dominate other species.
For example, people in my community are mostly known by their family name, and not by individual's name. Family name alone is used as far as possible. My grandpa never liked to be called by his own name.
The idea is, as long as there is someone to carry the family name, individuals should not matter.
do you happen to be the narrator of notes from the underground?
One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is?
EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
It's not.
> I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function
It isn't.
> I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable
Not having an opinion about everything for 3 minutes != vegetable.
The author of the post is selling what he himself doesn't understand. Paying attention to your inner chatter without judgement is part of a much broader tradition. Westerners stealing bits from cultures they don't understand is nothing new. Neither is the polarizing fascination/dismissal it entails.
I don't have difficulty with this. Doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and simultaneously feeling perfectly at ease just comes naturally. I know that my experience is not universal and that many people do struggle with this. If you struggle with this and you were wondering, serenity really is very nice, and I wish I could share it, and I'm sorry that I can't.
- Rene Descartes
The second rule conflicts with the first making this impossible.
Any experienced meditator knows that to 'be content' isn't a passive action. You have to think to do it.
If you truly practice no thought, there is no 'content' to be.
As an experiment, just get in a nice running shower, so your sensory system will get external stimulation. YMMV, but for me three minutes pass quick. I just did that and when I decided to check the time it was almost 5 minutes already.
Real “doing nothing” is just leaving things be, just chilling out and observing whatever is happening without actively participating - and three minutes is a pretty low mark for that, unless we’re talking about fellas with ADHD.
This isn't always true. It's likely true only when there is no pressure. However, when there is pressure, one can "do nothing" for long periods. If you haven't experienced that, you've lived a blessed life, and you have more to learn.
Profound insight that really gets to the root of rumination.
Fundamentally you can be at ease with city noise just like you can be with mental distraction. One of the big misconceptions about meditation for example tends to be that it's about avoiding or actively quieting noise be that internal or external. It's not about changing the content of your conscious experience but your relationship to it.
Is that an example of how to exist? How not to exist? I can see an argument for either one lol.
Whether or not that's what they had in mind idk, but it's what it immediately made me think of. I traded near absolute freedom for money, but that's just something you have to do as you get older I guess.
Before kids I was on and off into meditation,my place in the world, being calm or w/e.
>Each year, roughly 100 firefighters are convicted of arson in North America, often on multiple counts. Most often they are young, new firefighters, frustrated by the lack of action.
Is someone tricking LLMs into writing articles about firefighter arson?
I wonder if maybe there’s something of a swelling ocean full of people suffering from low-level PTSD, even just from the trauma of staying alive and well in a society that you feel increasingly untethered from, as if stuck in place while the universe expands farther in every direction. The arriving tide of midlife crises for a generation of Palahniuk’s “middle-children of history”, those who had the wherewithal and luck to avoid serious addictions and hereditary alcoholism, but who still can’t really afford to be sufficiently medicated under a doctor’s supervision, either. So we resort to the permanent morphine drip of distraction, mainlining dopamine via headphone IVs.
The bottom half of a socioeconomic bell curve that’s being aggressively flattened, as if there were a pandemic of mediocrity and wasted potential. Stuck between a misspent youth, and an increasingly uncertain future.
TLDR; I think this is a very good first step for a lot of like-minded somewhat damaged folks. I ultimately took a similar approach—mindful meditation with breathing exercises—to treat my own PTSD, it worked better than Xanax to tamp down the anxiety attacks.
P.S. - Anyone who points out my em dashes can go sit on dem dashes. This comment was boutique, artisan, 100% organic bullshit. No memory prices were harmed in the making of this comment.
I think this is way over-philosophizing and missing the basics of modern life.
Many people live in capitalist societies and are well-adapted to continuous 1) consumption and 2) production, both of which keep the economy spinning and neither of which involve doing nothing.
Whether that's good or bad is up for debate, but to attribute the difficulty of "doing nothing" to the fundamental human condition is a huge stretch.
"Try doing this thing."
"No."
"You can't do it because of your deficiencies."
"I won't do it because all you've done is spout a bunch of pseudoscience."
It sounds like the author drinks too much caffeine. This definitely isn't unusual in rat race culture, but it's also by no means the universal human experience.
I am not a professional and I'm not trying to be dismissive here, but I'm pretty sure you're just describing general anxiety.
Nobody truly has a hard time "doing nothing for 3 minutes" if they time it right. Morning and night tend to be when it's easiest for me, but others may differ. You should instead investigate what makes that time of day different from the rest of it. That's where the answers really are. You can and should adjust the flow of your day to make it happen naturally and unconsciously.
> This is a form of meditation, but I almost want to avoid that word because it makes people get nervous and overcomplicate it. Just think of this practice as existing without fear, for a few seconds at a time. Minimum effective dose is one half-breath.
This is already way too complicated. Nothing at this level of detail needs to be described. We already know what "nothing" is. Being too deliberate has a way of pushing the emotions elsewhere until they come back to bite you. The goal of trying to make this possible on-demand is unrealistic at best, or a self-help trap to keep people buying advice at worst.
I found myself "meditating" all the time on accident when I took on less and gave myself more time to do things. When you need a break, you need a break. The most important part for me was letting go of trying to impose control over this. I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen.
You assume others have had your experience and learnings from it. That’s clearly not possible so how else would you put it for them? Maybe you should contribute your own experience. But don’t expect everybody will allign to it 100%.
but I appreciate your comment regardless