Planetary Problems
Before we begin, it is paramount that we establish a basic understanding of what things are, while the explanations for ‘how’ will both come naturally as you build a basic understanding and be explained, in no very specific way, in order to accommodate the diversity of minds that may encounter this reading. We do this with the ultimate goal of creating the mindset you desire, using the simplest terms and way possible, while allowing for some eloquence to make the journey a more entertaining one. Most people strive for happiness with a basic understanding that adopting a positive attitude is an important part of becoming happy, so it is first important that we first discuss positivity and negativity. With that understanding alone, some are able to achieve their desired goals, because most simply lacked the time to think about things that aren’t immediately relevant; in a world and society that puts so much emphasis on staying busy and adopting stress into your life. Most, when things are put in the simplest terms, can run with it; or in other words, can take something they understand and continue developing an exponentially more complex understanding more tailored to their needs and made to fit how they best understand things.
After a brief introduction on positivity and negativity meant to inspire hope in your own ability to shape your subjective perspective, we will approach the subject of mindfulness and mindlessness. Mindfulness is highly regarded as a form of better cognitive functioning, while mindlessness is seen and understood as something with no practical use of any kind, by people that care about improving ability. We will then discuss what mindlessness is, how mindlessness can be a healthy practice for everyone, because this writer believes the benefits outweigh the risks, and how mindlessness can increase the quality of life in those with no chance at becoming productive members of society, that thus far haven’t been taught by those trying to help how much they can love their minds.
Now, positivity is a simple way to approach things next to the complexity of negativity. Happiness is a rudimentary state of mind, and a happy person will respond predictability. Mindfulness, said to be a conductor for happiness, is nothing in your mind at a given moment, at a mastery level. You may ground yourself by seeing something and thinking of some positive adjectives you can recall to attribute to it, but you’ll find, like with our moods, there are more ways to describe bad things than good; and you're not going to summon a dictionary and incorporate words that sound strange, that you would have to explain. You run the risk of someone shaming you for that. Who wants to deal with that? But. Positivity. It’s conducive to productivity and staying on track because of how simple it is. After maintaining a positive attitude for long enough, it becomes easy to notice when you start to slip into negativity, because your simple existence, with all the ups and downs of life, will start to become complicated; even if it seemingly stems from a simple explanation. Negativity. But, positivity. It’s not taking any long, winding roads in your mind, but the straight and narrow path of optimism that says, “I can do this, things will get better.” People don’t get lost when they’re positive, they just get hurt, again and again. But eventually the path splits into many paths in many different directions moving forward, and then you have options that have become available to you, because of your attitude and perseverance. Because of positivity. Life can be bleak, and some people maintain a perfect, positive attitude, and find themselves stuck in stasis with no options. A positive outlook is focusing on what’s available to you, in the moment, that can bring you joy; while maintaining a positive attitude, not for good things to happen to you, but to feel better about what is happening to you. Then, it makes it easier to wait for something to happen. Opportunities to arise, inspiration to strike, or even just for the right idea to pop into your head. When another path becomes available, you can only set yourself down one, but you can envision what any number of them might be like while down your path. Or while at a standstill, but that’s inadvisable. Inadvisable, but you may better envision the paths ahead. Now, the system in place will want you to move at a pace that isn’t comfortable or healthy. Does blindly staying positive make the most sense, or does something like that require thought beyond maintaining a positive attitude? Only you can know, but it’s important to not assume that maintaining a positive mindset leads to happiness. Persevering isn’t always the answer, and sometimes it is time to make a change, and only you can know. Do you think simplicity lends itself to a path like this, or perhaps a path with more hills and turns? The good news is that once you’ve established what makes you happy, it does become simple. While the process of learning about yourself never really ends, that’s what ends up keeping life from getting boring, no matter what situation you’re in. You will eventually learn, when or if, you want change in your life, or if you want the simplicity of keeping things as they are.
Negativity is not so simple. It’s a bottomless pit because people are so diverse, and it’s much more subjective than the optimistic candor that can apply to all. So many people are too busy enjoying life when they’re in a positive state to give positivity the detail and depth that many artists, linguists, and musicians have given negativity. It would seem elation leaves those with little motivation to strive for much else, and people generally agreeing that it felt the same for everyone; while negativity served as a catalyst. One which, when it did bring people together, and people could identify with a particular creation, it was considered a tremendous accomplishment. Many refer to negativity as a cloud, or a fog, but, often, it is simply a clarity that has someone focusing on the wrong things. Like a distortion in your vision that has you staring at something that isn’t really there. Or in some cases, something that is there. Maybe way off in the distance, too far to be a relevant concern. Or maybe something closer to home. Often, these negative fixations can become compounded by creating a series of additional negative thoughts and feelings that become distracting in and of itself, which leave one fixating on new negative beliefs. It does, however, lend itself to forgetting the origin of the negative thoughts and feelings, because negativity is not just complex. It is disorienting. But negativity isn’t something to be avoided altogether. We don’t live in a completely positive world, and even if you strive to maintain a positive space around you, if you want to understand the world around you, you must incorporate negativity. A healthy level of cynicism can keep someone safe from people. People, who by no fault of their own, are motivated by a society that has conditioned them to act out of self interest and without empathy. On a more personal level, with another person face to face, incorporating negativity can be the only language they understand, or drive yourself towards paranoia, with many other possibilities in between. It’s worth asking yourself the difficult question of whether you would rather feel hurt or alone? As we’ve discussed, positivity will still result in being hurt periodically. Absolute negativity, on the other hand, is isolating. People avoid negative people, and negative congregations are typically poor company. You lose the ability to feel good without sacrificing the ability to relate to the rest of the congregation. You could always mask your happiness, and many do, but that’s a pretty lonely endeavor. Ultimately, when you’re honest, you will seem to them predictable and simple, with your happiness being short lived, and they will appear to you as self-centered assholes stuck in stasis. You will leave and feel hurt and alone. At that point, you will have learned it’s important to keep yourself safe from negative people, but it’s equally important to treat such people with compassion, dignity, and an understanding that they are not entirely at fault for the way they are. Society is mainly to blame, and society can take the blame, because society itself doesn’t have feelings. That’s some appropriately placed negativity.
When exploring your mind, and allowing it to wander, don’t be concerned with having a very busy mind or having one absent of anything. When your mind is busy, and passing from thought to thought, you are experiencing mindlessness; and when your mind is completely blank, you have achieved mindfulness and exertion of control over yourself becomes easier. There are benefits to both, and it is important to love the mind you arrive at, even if you come reading this hoping to change your mind in some way. Loving your mind will make the process of changing it easier, and it would be difficult to argue that it’s possible to change your mind, without loving your mind. Some thoughts will be new, and revolutionary, others will have been thought of already, and won’t uncover new ground; but even those thoughts tell us something about existence, and for that reason, no thinking is ever wasted time. To think that your thoughts only serve the purpose of teaching you about yourself and your situation is to ignore your place in the greater species, working to define who we collectively are, for better or worse, as a result of everything that happens to you and everything within you. You’d do well to remember that the next time you feel meaningless, or you feel like your only purpose comes from providing bare essentials to keep yourself going. You are a human being, and you define what human beings are with everything you do and everything you are.
The popular belief is that maintaining control over your emotions and not becoming reactive is something attributed solely to mindfulness, and anyone who has a mastery of managing emotions also must be proficient at being mindful. We will deviate from this, attributing low reactivity to a variety of other things, including having adopted a perspective, through instrumental thinking, that has made doing the work of maintaining focus less important; as well as the potential, for someone that has guided their mind just enough for mindlessness to create a byproduct of low reactivity one might experience when distracted by something else for a prolonged period of time. In here, we make the distinction, within mindfulness, between what is currently thought in psychiatry and what is practiced for a lifetime by monks, in favor of the silence and control the monks are able to achieve over the more accommodating model made to help people without ever taking its antithesis, mindlessness, into consideration. Many psychiatric experts preach of the importance of clearing your mind of everything, to gain or regain control for the purpose of inducing positivity, since losing focus and letting your mind wander can set you off track if you don’t maintain clear goals, do everything in your power to understand the risks of the process and take the proper precautions, and establish and re-establish your desired attitude if necessary. Someone that can essentially space out, into a positive space, as a way of dealing with intense stress, emotions, and/or pain isn’t highly regarded. We, as people, harshly judge those that appear aloof and/or not fully present regardless of their achieved level of happiness or even their level of intelligence. Mindlessness is often associated with madness or chaos, but after determining whether or not someone requires meditations, and coming to the conclusion that treatment options will never bring them to productive members of society, mindlessness can be exercised enough until it induces and largely maintains a level of peace. It is not currently seen as something you can improve upon, and even if that changes, it likely wouldn’t warrant the level of respect that is earned by clearing your mind of everything. Mindfulness takes tremendous strength and perseverance, mindlessness is akin to slipping into a body of water until the temperature matches that of your body and you’ve been in long enough to forget the sensation of weightlessness. However, the process of clearing your mind is work, and as work, it creates stress even with tremendous practice. Maintaining clarity and/or silence adds even more stress, and for those managing extreme pain, whether that be from physical pain, from pain caused by mental illness, or stress induced pain, they don’t always have the luxury of taking on more stress, or might lack the ability to concentrate altogether. To ignore a clear alternative is foolhardy, and for the sake of those suffering and unable to find peace, learning a path to mindlessness offers a solution of letting go in place of holding on tight. We often judge people by their ability to be active, manage stress, and do work, but if we challenge the notion that we require stress, or that the mind cannot supply us with what we need if we allow it to do what it wants to do naturally, we can start to unbind our society from our understanding of the mind. If we set aside notions of treatment based around productivity rather than individual happiness, we can accommodate those unable to accomplish anything anyways, and create realistic expectations that won’t leave them feeling hopeless and incapable. In simple terms, those that can’t be helped any other way could greatly benefit from learning how to space out better, if capable of doing so, while others capable of being productive can still benefit from mindfulness exercises.
When entering a state of mindlessness, you are allowing anything to enter your mind that might be there. This includes insecurities and thoughts that you may find yourself in conflict with, some of which can be traumatic and jarring, especially to those that are new to letting their mind wander and listening to what it has to say. I would encourage anyone to treat mindlessness as an experience that you give yourself some distance from, like if you were to take a drug. Identify it as an experience, then you can take one of two approaches depending on your goals. The first is a non-judgmental approach, which is recommended for a more safe experience for more sensitive individuals that have trouble letting things go that bother them. The second is to allow yourself to judge and assess, to ask yourself what you can learn from each piece of information your mind gives you, being careful to not treat everything as relevant and unrandom. The second approach will feel foreign to newcomers, but working in tandem with a therapist you can trust, with good judgment that you can bounce ideas off of, will result in an increase in self knowledge, better judgment, better communication skills, and a more relaxed state of mind. Most psychiatric professionals will not recommend judging your thoughts or performing the mental work of thinking in depth on what happens to pop into your head, beyond that initial thought, because with any extensive time spent in the mind, there are chances that you can form new beliefs which can pave way to a change in behaviors or even lifestyle, that is not beneficial. It is important to maintain enough awareness during the time you spend, outside of mindlessness exploration, and remember back to the attitudes of positivity and negativity, previously discussed, to maintain direction over who you want to be; even if you decide to live an undisciplined lifestyle. Apart from some of those risks, a decrease in concentration is highly likely from mindlessness, but can be slightly curbed by tuning your focus on your thoughts and engaging in tandem with your mind more than letting it wander on its own. This author would argue that we’re not meant to be as focused as society demands us to be, so the average person will have to weigh societal readiness with the possibility of becoming more relaxed and more in tune with yourself.
Mindlessness has the potential to scare those around you. It can appear to others as though you are in blank space, and sometimes, it can appear that way to you. Mindlessness does not, often, offer quick answers and journeys; and you should not expect to avoid encounters with empty pockets of time that differ from mindfulness, in that they offer no clarity or control. A good way to think of this is like your brain buffering, like a loading screen on a computer, that can’t be expected to perform seamlessly all the time. Note the distinction, between the difference, in the silence you experience in your mind, and think to yourself whether it feels more like a mindfulness silence or a mindlessness silence; to better understand yourself and your mind. As you exercise either, your mind will change. Exercising your mindfulness skills will grant a calm control that will bring ease and peace, while spending time letting your mind mindlessly wander will make you more creative, innovative, and entertained by everything around you. To some people, control and calm isn’t the path to inner peace, and those that thrive in a more chaotic environment that can give themselves what they need, through their minds, will thrive without the need to create or seek chaos.
It is inevitable, to arrive at questions involving your identity, as you explore your mind, as you will find yourself asking more questions in general. Some people have a strong basis for their identity, but often those same people either avoid delving deeper into themselves, asking questions that could destabilize them, or elect for simple answers to questions that could offer additional insight with a less obvious answer. In your exploration, you may have the misfortune of encountering questions or thoughts that leave you feeling worse, and for how long may depend, but you have the luxury of choice. Every question has an answer and there is context for every feeling and thought, and that’s where your power comes in. Choose not to be defined by what immediately happens to you, but by your intentions, for as fallible creatures, our intentions form the basis of our identities; and we have a responsibility to better carry out what we want, by not letting things that are irrelevant, harmful, or bothersome prevent us from carrying on.
Exercise 1
“Okay, what I’m about to tell you won’t be easy, but it will be easier than what you’ve tried in the past. We’re going to help you space out, and hopefully get lost in thought, and if we’re successful, it should get easier and easier. The ultimate goal is to distract you from your suffering, because your mind doesn’t want you to suffer. Your body does, your brain might. But the mind wants to pull you somewhere else, and we’re going to let it. Now, anything you do that helps you relax, do that now. Anything we can get you that will help relax you, let us know now, before we begin. Now, I want you to think, do you think more clearly with your eyes open, staring straight ahead, sort of glazed over, or closed, noticing the strange colors that seem to move in shapes and shadows you can’t quite place. Once you’ve settled in, I want you to think of the last great idea you’ve had. - Don’t take too long. If you can’t come up with one, try to remember the last person you took an interest in. Once you have them, construct a fantasy. Think about what you would like to do with them, or to them. You’re not going to tell anyone unless you want to, and if you want me to stop talking at any point to drift away or concentrate, let me know. Now, think about what you like about them. Can you remember the first moment you knew you were interested? Can you think of similarities between this person and other people you’ve become interested in? Try to remember the person you were interested in before them. How are they different? How have you changed between becoming interested in each of them?”
Last great idea continued (if they have one) - “Try to remember back to the state of mind you were in, when you came up with it. We’re going to want to expand on this idea, and in failing to do that, to come up with something new. What made you become interested in this idea? Was it subject matter you’ve always been drawn to, or did this seem out of the ordinary? What inspired you? Was it your mind, something external, or maybe a combination of both? Try and think of anything you can use to come up with new ideas now, even if it’s a lengthy endeavor you don’t think you have the time or ability for. It will give you direction, but perhaps not be the path you need to walk down. Don’t dismiss it and don’t assume it isn’t relevant. Trust your mind to lead you to where you need to be.”
Exercise 2
“Perhaps the saddest aspect of the cosmos is the adherence to the simple structures of biology we’ve already come to understand, for as far as we can see stars, despite our mind’s ability to conjure forms of life both fantastic and different from our own. What ends up being naturally occurring will remain the same in the same environment, while those naturally occurring structures evolve to possess the ability to create structures that are both before their time and not naturally occurring. What will actually be, remains to be seen for this reason, but to expect anything that different from us, out in space, would have had to come from someone similar to us. To put things simply, all intelligent life, in the universe, is really just different versions of human beings, spread far and wide, and what human beings choose to create would be the only variation from that.
With everything known about the Big Bang, a, largely, indefinite reaction occurring from nothing measurable; intervention, not to be confused with divine intervention, is not out of the question. If we assume that someone, or something, did intervene, and create the Big Bang, why? Why create a universe and leave life up to its own devices? But more importantly, how could someone or something become so advanced if we assume intervention was involved? If we assume that we’re all playing by the same rules, and there’s no reason not to, then how could a species discover the secret to nearly infinite abundance? Any species that could set off a Big Bang wouldn’t exist within the parameters of a planet, because we wouldn’t have reason to believe that they would be so different from us; and to have the time to discover how to create an infinite abundance of energy, matter, and resources would require a species to not undergo the sustainability issue of creating waste as a byproduct to ensure comfort and distraction, as a way to create a society that could advance without culling the population in a way that would create instability, or simply not advancing at all to self sustain for as long as possible.
Maybe the known universe is a numbers gambit, made by those with an advanced understanding of probability and mathematical predictive models, to see if a species made in their own image could uncover new discoveries and technologies, not barring the restraints of ethics and morality that they do and existing at a much faster pace of time than they do. A universe that would be left to its own devices, with discoveries that could be incorporated, to them, as they saw fit. Perhaps our meaning to life is nothing more than, well, we’re a research and development experiment, for the next level up. They would count on a dependence on technology, and once a species of intelligent life reaches the point of making precious discoveries, as I’m sure mass surveillance is inevitable. It wouldn’t be infeasible to play with the idea that they possessed the technological ability to see through our eyes, and could then use our own surveillance to minimize the manpower it would take to monitor our population and the discoveries we made, at this point in time, likely hoping for interstellar space travel or time travel.
Beyond that, perhaps we’re an experiment gone wrong. Perhaps at the time before the Big Bang, everything was one central place, rather than being separated far and wide into planets and galaxies. All matter and energy needed to converge into a very tiny space for the Big Bang to happen, so it would make sense if everything was already there, rather than what we see and understand today. Perhaps in a world not limited by the resources and space limitations of a planet, they could advance society beyond what we could even fathom possible, giving way to their original experiment. Only, humans there were just as fixated on weapon related technologies as we are, and someone didn’t want their grand society to be the only society. So they worked with others and formulated a plan to give life a chance, far enough away from each other that it would allow for a diversity of cultures and systems of power that was lacking in their society. So they ended everything they knew, and gave their lives, so life could begin anew without the system of oppression that couldn’t develop in time on such a small space as a planet with a limited amount of resources, crowding problems, and environmental concerns that would ultimately leave advancement a double edged sword for any society that utilized what was available.”