The Art of Being (book)

🔗Connect

🔼Topic:: Existentialism (MOC)

✒️ Note-Making

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas

1. A culture of having - we live in a culture of having, one that forces us to see the world through the lens of possession, to treat ourselves and others as objects, competing in a zero sum game
2. From having to being - To transform our life from one of having to being, we first need self awareness, then courage to act by our will
3. Our will must be protected - not all wants are created equal. There are wants that are harmful for the self and should be avoided. With awareness, we can see which wants are the cause of external or internal forces that drives us away from hardship, which is the one source for growth

🗒️Relate

⛓ Life lessons, action items

🔍Critique

✅ by following this method, what will happen?

❌ the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong...

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are...

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style... The book is disorganized to say the least, chapters include paragraphs on unrelated content, some highly influenced by the time such that without context it's difficult to understand. Seems more like a manifest vs new age philosophy and support of "good old fashion" psychotherapy

📒 Notes

Introduction

• The person who is oriented toward having always makes use of crutches rather than his or her own two feet. That person uses an external object in order to exist, in order to be oneself as he or she wishes. He or she is himself or herself only insofar as that person has something. The individual determines being as a subject according to the having of an object. He or she is possessed by objects, and thus by the object of having them. (Location 73)
• Love, reason, and productive activity are one’s own psychic forces that arise and grow only to the extent that they are practiced; they cannot be consumed, bought, or possessed like objects of having, but can only be practiced, exercised, ventured upon, performed. (Location 81)
• Orientation toward being always means that one’s purpose in life is oriented toward one’s own psychic forces. (Location 84)

Part 1

The Art of Being

We all want to live, to enjoy being alive, but what is the purpose, what are we living for? The basic answer seems to revolve around happiness. Therefore the question becomes what gives us happiness. And the result of that is to fulfill a need, but are all needs equal?

There are two basic answers:

1. Needs are subjective - no matter what the need is, whether it is listening to music or taking drugs, the sole judge is the individual, and fulfilling them is what will bring them happiness 
2. Some needs are worth more - there are some needs that we should want and others we should avoid, and only answering those needs is what will give us happiness.

We want to believe the second type, but it requires an objective norm of what counts a good need and what doesn't. This involves questions of science and human nature. It seems philosophers throughout the ages have supported that the "good needs" are to overcome hardships and promote the development of good capabilities such as love, wisdom, courage. (Related :: virtue theory) Since we don't have a problem claiming such an objective metric over the health of the body (such as avoiding sweets and doing exercises), why not have a similar claim on the mind?

The reason some of our needs for happiness requires avoiding things is because those things can override our ability to reason, thus turning us into their slaves instead of the other way around. Escapism

These effects can be:

1. Internal - such as the desire for greed, for lust, all forms of temptations
2. External - influence from society which tries to enforce it's view on us, causing us to believe we are free while in reality we are simply it's tools. We lack Positive freedom

While no prescription can be given to the meaning of life, know this:

There's little chance that you will figure out on your own that objective metric of being, that philosophers have searched and developed their theories based on one another in an evolutionary process for thousands of years. So read what they think, form your own opinion, and continue from there Effort Storing

On the Art of Being

• Therein lies the reason that all great teachers of man have arrived at essentially the same norms for living, the essence of these norms being that the overcoming of greed, illusions, and hate, and the attainment of love and compassion, are the conditions for attaining optimal being. (Location 166)
• Our reason functions only to the degree to which it is not flooded by greed. The person who is the prisoner of his irrational passions loses the capacity for objectivity and is necessarily at the mercy of his passions; he rationalizes when he believes he is expressing the truth. (Location 196)
• man can at least be aware of outer chains but be unaware of inner chains, carrying them with the illusion that he is free. He can try to overthrow the outer chains, but how can he rid himself of chains of whose existence he is unaware? (Location 211)
• Read the writings of Masters of Living, learn to understand the true meaning of their words, form your own conviction of what you want to do with your life; and get over the naïve idea that you need no master, no guide, no model, that you can find out in a lifetime what the greatest minds of the human species have discovered in many thousands of years—and each one of them building with the stones and sketches their predecessors left them. (Location 234)

Part 2

Great Shams

One of the obstacles is as been said to be free of illusion. This requires Self-awareness, to be able to detect the "great shams", all the forces who tries to sell us quick and easy happiness. Essentially, these are forces of escapism wrapped with capitalistic marketing to make it approachable, tempting, and popular. 

We must realize the we can't allow ourselves to be deceived, that we mustn't ignore the complexity and difficulties of the world, that happiness isn't something we can just get without effort, that if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

We must be aware of salespersons, especially those who we tend to believe just because of their Halo effect.

Great Shams

• The basis for any approach to self-transformation is an ever-increasing awareness of reality and the shedding of illusions. (Location 366)
• Faith in life, in oneself, in others must be built on the hard rock of realism; that is to say, on the capacity to see evil where it is, to see swindle, destructiveness, and selfishness not only when they are obvious but in their many disguises and rationalizations. (Location 379)

Trivial Talk

One more thing we should avoid is idle talk. Any conversation without true and meaningful content. Most likely this will come in the form of people who talk about themselves only to brush their ego.

We should also avoid bad company, people who seek friendship only to gain something from us

No Effort no Pain

We feel as if Friction is a problem, and Hardship are something that we need to get rid of. As if life is meant to be easy, simple, effortless. However, we have failed to acknowledge that it is through difficulties that we grow, live, rise Adversarial Growth.

Anti Authority

We wish to see ourselves free of chains, no matter if those chains are useful or not. We think through the prism of "why not", doing whatever comes to mind just to get rid of Boredom instead of asking ourselves "why". We have become slaves to our whims, passively following every random thought instead of being active and acting in accordance with our will

“Antiauthoritarianism”

• The general criterion of a whim is that it responds to the question “Why not?” and not to the question “Why?” (Location 519)
• Following a whim is, in fact, the result of deep inner passivity blended with a wish to avoid boredom. Will is based on activity, whim on passivity. (Location 523)

Part 3

To Will One Thing

(Jump:: Multitasking doesnt exist, it only reduces our focus on whatever we are doing, therefore we must narrow it down to just one thing, one goal at a time

To Be Awake

We might be physically awake, but that doesn't mean we give enough attention Focus to what we're doing. We have to be mindful, to quiet the external and internal noise and just focus on the experience, or on the person in front of us

To Be Aware

Self awareness is key to all our endeavors free will is knowledge, without knowing what our current emotional state is, what are the main causes for that, which forces influence our behavior and even just to be aware what we are doing and what we are focusing on in every single moment, we would be slaves to ourselves and others, incapable of acting in accordance with our will.

To Be Aware

• the most important step in the art of being is everything that leads to and enhances our capacity for heightened awareness and, as far as the mind is concerned, for critical, questioning thinking. (Location 727)

To Concentrate

One must learn to focus, to be able to provide their complete attention to something. While we think that to concentrate is exhausting, the opposite is true. To lose concentration is to get bored, and that's tiring, as opposed to moments of complete concentration which provides a sense of Flow

To Concentrate

• Lack of concentration makes one tired, while concentration wakes one up. (Location 765)
• it does not help to try to force out tangential thoughts, to treat them as if they were enemies, and hence to feel defeated if one has not won the battle. They need to be treated gently, and that means one must be patient with oneself. (Location 788)

To Meditate

Meditation is crucial for emotional resilience, to learn to disconnect yourself from your thoughts, creating cognitive distancing.

Part 4

Psychoanalysis and Self Awareness

Psychoanalysis can be a sham, trying to give answers to people to justify their current mental state, without pushing them to solve it.

Psychoanalysis and Self-Awareness

• Without effort and willingness to experience pain and anxiety, nobody grows, in fact nobody achieves anything worth achieving. (Location 1020)

Self Analysis

Self analysis introspection can be difficult but very rewarding.

Methods of Self Analysis

There are several methods for self analysis, all are related in uncovering the reasons behind our thoughts and feelings, we can do it through focusing on:

1. Day to day feelings
2. Big events in our lives 
3. Goals and meaning of life
4. Dreams 
5. Connection to others

It is through self reflection that we are not only capable of better understanding ourselves, but also others, meaning that reflection connects us to the shared reason of humanity. It's never about your individuality for the sake of uniqueness, but rather be a better member of humanity 

Part 5

On the Culture of Having

We have transferred our ability to think from ourselves to machines, i.e converted the idea of doing, to a matter of having. Those who have useful machines are powerful, and those who don't are weak.

On the Culture of Having

• modern man can be said to live in a symbiotic relationship with the world of machines. Inasmuch as he is a part of them, he is—or appears to be—powerful. Without them, standing by himself, using his own resources, he is as powerless as a little child. (Location 1541)

On the Philosophy of Having

To have usually means to be in complete control of something, which you are free to use, and that serves you only so much as it is useful 

On the Psychology of Having

People who work from the mindset of having have a distorted view of reality. They treat others as objectas to manipulate and control. They measure themselves only by the amount of "things" that they have or consume, therefore turning themselves to objects as well. They treat all human interaction as transactional, and see the world as a Zero sum game.

Part 6

From Having to well Being

To overcome our narcissist tendencies, first we need self awareness. Only then, we could feel our true will expanding outwards, and together with the courage to follow it, we can transcend ourselves.