The Second Mountain (book)

✒️ Note-Making

🔗Connect

⬆️Topic:: Existentialism (MOC)

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas

1. Hyper individualism is dangerous - after the communalism of the 20th century, comes the era of individual, focusing on material wealth, isolation, and personal gain which only brings emptiness and misery. We pursue "Instagram" life or workaholic life as a shallow replacement for true connection and meaning
2. We need a better moral ecology - societies are like ecological systems. By thinking systematically, focusing on societies as a social unit rather than just individuals, we can create communities where we all flourish morally, living in balance, symbiosis and harmony, supporting and being supported by our community
3. "We" preceded "me" - sociality is embedded within us. Our greatest joy, our deepest desires, our heart and soul yearns for relationships and is fueled by them. A life of commitment, of altruism, of thinking through "we" is a life where the "me" also prosper.

🗒️Relate

⛓ by following this method, what will happen? What is the goal of this book?

1. You will realize that you are most likely pursuing your first mountain, prioritizing empty, self centered goals over true shared joy.

🔍Critique

✅ relevant research, metaphors or examples that helps to convey the argument

1. The two mountains - two types of achievements and goals in life
   1. The ego mountain - A mountain of self achievements, of individuality. We claw our way up, focusing just on the destination.
   2. The moral mountain - A mountain of connections to others and to a profession. It is guided by our desire to help others, of our selflessness. Here the journey is what matters

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

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are... Since it tries to cover too much, it's hard to say that it's helpful in any particular area, although the mindset as a whole is beneficial

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style... The book starts at a 4 (perhaps even a 5), but then quickly drops to a 3 or even lower. The part about the two mountains is great, but then it diverges to specific topic life relationship and vocations, spending a few pages on each, as if you can talk about finding your work calling in 50 pages, when it can be a whole book. Same goes about relationships, and any other segment. It is unfortunately shallow without any insights.

It even begins to sidetrack, while the topic is relevant, how he presents it is not, and it is unclear how it is related to switching from the first to the second mountain.

This book related need a better editor.

🖼️Outline

📒 Notes

introduction

There are two mountains in life, that represents the goals we are pursuing:

1. The ego mountain - A mountain of self achievements, of individuality. We claw our way up, focusing just on the destination.
2. The moral mountain - A mountain of connections to others and to a profession. It is guided by our desire to help others, of our selflessness. Here the journey is what matters

Most of us start their lives by focusing on the first mountain, on achieving and upgrading our status Image vs core. However, when we get to the top, we notice how empty it feels Hedonic Treadmill. We feel burnout, hopeless, even depression as we fall or get pushed off the mountain into the valley of despair by the unfortunate events of life or by our own doing. We realize that by playing a Zero sum games, we will always lose.

Then, we see the second mountain. We realize that living is not about me, it is about others, that meaning is found in creating unity rather than Individualism. We realize that happiness is shared, that by connecting with others we find the answers to our own lives. The best thing about uniting with others, forgetting the self is that giving has a multiplier effect, we give in pennies yet get back in dollars.

The same applies for societies as well, we are currently stuck in an individualistic culture which only causes disappointment and suffering. When we will realize the error of our perceptions and switch to a more altruistic nature, the better off we will be.

The first mountain is the pursuit of happiness, which is very personal and fading. The second mountain is the pursuit of joy, which comes from our connection to others and to nature. There are several levels of joy, Each better than the other maslows pyramid:

1. Physical
2. Emotional
3. Spiritual
4. Moral

The first three are a type of momentary connection, a feeling of resonance with others, like a moment of awe with nature, or when dancing together in unison. But the highest level is moral, when we help one another, the feeling of joy lasts forever because it has a ripple effect of good deeds and reciprocity. Not only that it lives on through our initial giving, it also changes us and brings us closer to transcendence. It's creates a positive cycle of improving our soul, making us shine brighter, which in turns helps other shine brighter as well.

INTRODUCTION

• down in the substrate, flowing from all the tender places, there is a fundamental ability to care, a yearning to transcend the self and care for others. (Location 112)
• The people who have been made larger by suffering are brave enough to let parts of their old self die. Down in the valley, their motivations changed. They’ve gone from self-centered to other-centered. (Location 127)
• On the first mountain you tend to be ambitious, strategic, and independent. On the second mountain you tend to be relational, intimate, and relentless. (Location 166)
• A commitment is making a promise to something without expecting a reward. A commitment is falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when love falters. (Location 204)
• good character is a by-product of giving yourself away. You love things that are worthy of love. You surrender to a community or cause, make promises to other people, build a thick jungle of loving attachments, (Location 224)
• Joy tends to involve some transcendence of self. It’s when the skin barrier between you and some other person or entity fades away and you feel fused together. (Location 294)
• the people who have the most incandescent souls have taken on the heaviest burdens. (Location 422)

the two mountains

moral ecologies

Each person shapes and being shaped by the culture around them interpersonal identity. Such moral ecology is the sum of cultures and norms that govern a certain period. Each culture is an answer to the problems of that time, which means that with time that culture becomes less relevant as the problems change, which eventually leads to the creation of an anti culture that becomes the new culture dialectic approach.

Over the past century, in America especially, we see how we switched from a more communal culture of "we are all in this together" that focused on fulfilling your duties and being a good citizen, to a more individualistic culture of "I'm free to be me".

Moral Ecologies

• We all create microcultures around us by the way we lead our lives and the vibes we send out to those around us. One of the greatest legacies a person can leave is a moral ecology—a system of belief and behavior that lives on after they die. (Location 470)
• People create a moral ecology that helps them solve the problems of their moment. (Location 531)

the Instagram life

The problem with the individualistic culture is that it has nothing to say Post-Modernism. We tell our young ones that are still searching for who they are, that the only truth out there is made by them. They are the only ones capable of choosing their own path, because they have both endless possibilities to choose from, and the autonomy and freedom to make up their mind. That the very nature of morality is up to them. No wonders that they get lost in the infinite and even fall to depression.

With such a heavy burden, we are too stressed from making a commitment. We are plagued with fomo and can't make up our mind. We try everything yet commit to nothing. Enriching our Instagram feed yet leaving our life's empty.

We seek escapism because we are afraid of deciding who we are, of answering the big questions.

freedom should be a tool, that helps us get to where we want to go, but it can't be our final destination - floating in a see of nothingness, of endless possibilities forever.

The Instagram Life

• The problem is that the person in the aesthetic phase sees life as possibilities to be experienced and not projects to be fulfilled or ideals to be lived out. He will hover above everything but never land. (Location 689)
• One of the reasons you are rushing about is because you are running away from yourself. (Location 719)
• freedom isn’t an ocean you want to spend your life in. Freedom is a river you want to get across so you can plant yourself on the other side—and fully commit to something. (Location 726)

the insecure overachiever

While some escape the question of meaning by trying to do it all, others replace the question with a pragmatist equivalent answer of achievement. The are lost in the finite, the choose a job and surrender themselves completely into it, replacing questions of quality of live with those of quantity, "how much do I have", "how high is my status", "how much do I earn", etc. Because they act from a rational standpoint without being connected with their emotions, they become econs, they feel alienation from what they do, which leaves them indeffirent to the world. morality is both rational and emotional. They focus on the how without having the why core values.

The Insecure Overachiever

• “Character” is no longer a moral quality oriented around love, service, and care, but a set of workplace traits organized around grit, productivity, and self-discipline. (Location 759)
• Acedia is the quieting of passion. It is a lack of care. It is living a life that doesn’t arouse your strong passions and therefore instills a sluggishness of the soul, like an oven set on warm. The person living in acedia may have a job and a family, but he is not entirely grabbed by his own life. His heart is over there, but his life is over here. (Location 778)

the valley

Once we fall from the first mountain, we fall into the valley. There we are either walking, which means we are just going through life without any pleasure or energy, or worse we are sleeping, detaching ourselves from life all together, watching TV and staying all day in bed helplessness.

Without purpose, we are much more prone to feeling loneliness, distrust, and find refuge in a group, which unfortunately leads to a us vs them mentality more than genuine connection.

However there can be also a positive in suffering, which no one can avoid regardless. The important thing is that we can choose how to respond to it freedom of choice. While suffering shatters our subjective reality by giving us a harsh encounter with the truth, it also pushes us closer to one another relationships. We can't avoid suffering with meaningless pleasure, only by true support from close ones and having deep conversations. vulnerability

The Valley

• Sometimes you experience your first taste of nobility in the way you respond to suffering. (Location 969)
• Suffering calls for a response. None of us can avoid suffering, but we can all choose how we respond to it. And, (Location 975)

the wilderness

The only way out of suffering is through. It means that we should first seek solitude in order to quiet our mind so that we will be able to hear ourselves. This is the moment for Self Reflection, for truly listening to ourselves active listening, trying to piece together our thoughts, emotions and values, understanding who we are and want to do want out of life.

Once we go deep enough and we shed the ego and it's preferences, we find a deep core, one that yearns for truth and connections.

The Wilderness

• The right thing to do when you are in moments of suffering is to stand erect in the suffering. Wait. See what it has to teach you. (Location 990)
• On the surface of our lives most of us build the hard shell. It is built to cover fear and insecurity and win approval and success. When you get down to the core of yourself, you find a different, more primeval country, and in it a deep yearning to care and connect. (Location 1059)

heart and soul

Deep inside of us, constantly pounding, is our true core, our heart and soul. Once we remove the ego, we can finally hear it. It takes the removal of the old to make room for the "new" creative destruction. With skills learned in the first mountain, and with truths discovered in the valley, the preparation time is over, it is time to take the leap, to start following your heart and soul.

Heart and Soul

• The ultimate heart’s desire—the love behind all the other loves—is the desire to lose yourself in something or someone. (Location 1099)
• the things we had thought were most important—achievement, affirmation, intelligence—are actually less important, and the things we had undervalued—heart and soul—are actually most important. (Location 1194)

The committed life

Switching from the first to the second mountain is a switch from personal happiness to shared joy, from transactional thinking to giving, from freedom to shared interdependence, from empty status symbols to moral behavior.

The second mountain is a mountain of commitments. These are promises we set in place when we are deeply in love with something, in order to preserve the important rituals of that love even when it weakens path dependence. Like how marriage is something that should hold through thick and thin, sickness and in health, not just when times are good. That makes them more than just a transaction that can be canceled when one party doesn't profit as much, but rather it becomes an act of unity, a shared being that holds the two of us together and that we should nurture, like a child.

Commitments transform who we are, it supports our feelings of morality, the creation of our identity, they provide meaning in our lives and transform our thinking from Negative freedom to Positive freedom

The Committed Life

• commitment is this: falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when love falters. (Location 1273)
• moral formation is not individual; it is relational. Character is not something you build sitting in a room thinking about the difference between right and wrong and about your own willpower. Character emerges from our commitments. (Location 1318)

the second mountain

Only relationships have the power to change our lives. From being down in the valley after our first mountain, being struck by lives cruelty, we can begin a new, and this is by being more connected to the people around us, from cultivating a giving mindset, a "we" mindset.

The key to unity with others is the unity of the self. By bringing all the different pieces of ourselves together to a unified goal, it will become much more evident and easy to see ourselves as connected to others. It comes with vulnerability , with opening ourselves to others. Only then we could rise from the basic desires of material and status to the level of transcendence.

The Second Mountain

• Only relationships turn around lives.” (Location 1351)
• loving care is not on the fringe of society. It’s the foundation of society. (Location 1445)
• One task in life is synthesis. It is to collect all the fragmented pieces of a self and bring them to a state of unity, so that you move coherently toward a single vision. (Location 1678)
• Vocation (Location 1695)

vocation

what vocation looks like

A vocation is more than a career, it is a calling, something that echoes deep inside of us.

the annunciation moment

The annunciation moment is when we are struck by awe and curiosity. When we are completed captured by something. Usually we don't even realize that this was our moment, only in retrospect.

The Annunciation Moment

• the tricky part of an annunciation moment is not having it, but realizing you’re having it. The world is full of beautiful things and moments of wonder. But sometimes they pass by without us realizing their importance. (Location 1870)

what mentors do

mentors are much more valuable than books (or any other form of non-personal teaching, because:

1. They can teach you practical knowledge that is hard to teach in a non personal method
2. They teach you humility, to accept your failures and don't focus too much on yourself, but rather the task

vampire problems

The hard problems in life are problematic because they are filled with uncertainty. There is no data that we could collect that will help us solve them. This is because they are both transformative - they change who we are, and personal - what to choose depends on our personality. That's why reason based decision methods are useless, and intuition can only lead us astray.

The best chance for us to find the right answer is first exploration, we need to :

1. Say yes - say yes to many experiences so that we could have a feel to how this kind of life really is.
2. Open heart and soul - we need to be attentive to the subconscious voices of our heart and soul, what are they pulling us towards?
3. Desire and fit - what has life been preparing us for? What is the combination of both our desire to do, and our capacity to do it well?

Vampire Problems

• If you really want to make a wise vocation decision, you have to lead the kind of life that keeps your heart and soul awake every day. (Location 2140)
• What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Fear is a pretty good GPS system; it tells you where you true desires are, even if they are on the far side of social disapproval. (Location 2203)

mastery

Achieving mastery is only through deliberate practice. You have to work hard on perfecting your output before you brains trigger a habit formation process, such that when things are automized they are already perfect, otherwise it will be very hard to change them afterwards.

Mastery

• If you want to achieve the level of mastery, you have to learn the skill so deliberately that when the knowledge is stored down below, it is perfect. (Location 2281)

marriage

the maximum marriage

Marriage was once a safe base, a shared identity filled with gratitude, kindness, acts of service and words of encouragement. It was a commitment that supports both side equality, through thick and thin. That has changed when individualism took over. It has become a transaction, each side hoping that the marriage would be beneficial for themselves, which often ends up as a disappointment when it starts demanding their time and energy and divert it from personal goals to shared (like having children). Marriage has become something of a truce, of a cold agreement to not hurt each other for the sake of the children, without anything to hold them together.

We need to return to the days of the maximum marriage, where the goal is to put our selfishness aside and focus on what we can create together, on who we can be together.

the stages of intimacy 1

A relationship has several stages:

1. Glance - a moment where you first see each other, a spark of interest, something "new" while everything else is just noise
2. Curiosity - where you want to find out everything about them, share moments together
3. Dialog - when you open up and slowly share more of who you are, your hopes, dreams, preferences, your quirks and your flaws. This is a stage where most relationships stuck or fall in, because people have a fear of intimacy, of brining people too close, of exposing themselves because they are afraid of getting hurt.

the stages of intimacy 2

4. combustion - The "honeymoon phase" of the relationship, you are excited from having someone you can trust, that truly knows you. Everything is new and wonderful.
5. The leap - You decide that this is it, that this is worth a commitment, that you are willing to face the danger of being close to someone else.
6. Fusion - When two become one.

the marriage decision

Marriage is an important decision to make, one that requires head, heart and soul. We need to take a step back and think beyond how we feel right now, and consider things like:

1. Do i enjoy talking to them?
2. Do we have shared interest?
3. do we have a secure attachment?
4. Will they be good role models for our children?
5. Are you excited to see them? to spend time with them?
6. Do they complete you? Nourish your soul?

marriage: the school you build together

Marriage starts as an act of love, but it becomes an act of growth. To be a better partner we need to be a better person, to be more caring, considerate, kind, to truly see and understand. Whether we grow or decay during a marriage depends on the quality of our conversations. If they are mostly about blaming and attacking each other, this will lead to a disaster. Alternatively, if you always result to understanding and kindness, you will do well.

Marriage: The School You Build Together

• The only way to thrive in marriage is to become a better person—more patient, wise, compassionate, persevering, communicative, and humble. (Location 3024)
• The quality of the conversation is the quality of the marriage. (Location 3075)

philosophy and faith

intellectual commitments

Education should be about teaching us to see, to go beyond our biases and stereotypes and see ideas at their best, even when we don't initially agree with them. To explore the world of different ideologies and let us choose. To expand our horizons and giving us the ability to think critically, while also to be awed by something beautiful.

Intellectual Commitments

• Seeing well is not natural. It is an act of humility. It means getting your own self—your own needs and wishes—out of the way, (Location 3327)

religious commitment

People in their darkest hour can suddenly have an awakening, a sense of oneness with god, nature, the universe, one that gives them a new, more connected perception of life and what's important in it

a most unexpected turn of events

We are shaped by the narratives we grow up in, and tell ourselves.

ramps and walls

Religion is not perfect, it has walls separating it from the secular culture, yet also ramps that bring about elevated experience and thought. Like our will, the goal in religion is not to eliminate it, rather tame it.

Ramps and Walls

• God doesn’t seem to want the elimination of the will; He seems to want the training and transformation of it. (Location 4227)

community

the stages of community building 1

We have to realize that we are at war, between forces that try to divide us and unite us. Community used to be a place where people take care of each other, now we fear our neighbors. To fix society and bring back the social capital of a tight, supportive community, we first must realize that helping individuals, seeing them as the source for change is not enough, it's like putting clean water in a rotting pool. We must treat the community as a whole, fix the source of the pollution so that we could start seeing it grow.

Neighborhoods close to each other can have very different lives for it's inhabitants. It depends on the way the neighborhood is run, it's resources, level of agency, it's social cohesion and spirit of togetherness and volunteering.

The Stages of Community Building I

• Rebuilding community involves seeing that the neighborhood, not the individual, is the essential unit of social change. (Location 4493)

the stages of community building 2

Building a community means building a shared narrative, being united by shared history, shared hopes and dreams for the future, increasing accountability, kindness, compassion and proactiveness amongst it's members.

conclusion the relationalist manifesto

The current culture is one of hyper-individualism, where the individual is the only thing that matters morally and personal happiness is the only way to be happy. This has pushed us to see the world transactionally, prioritizing quantitative measures of success over relationships, it has pushed us further away from one another. At best, it creates tribes of us vs them which are just as harmful.

In contrast, we have relationalism, the claim that a person can only be perceived through its connections to others. We are not a lonely animal. The quality of our lives is the quality of our relationships and the service we provide for one another. That a good life is a life of commitments, of giving, of responsibility and care. Not "what's in it for me", but "how can I increase joy". By giving, we get more back, by bringing others joy, we bring happiness for ourselves. We are connected to the world around us, benefiting it is benefiting ourselves, a sense of unity.

What's true for the individual is true for society as a whole. Societies are not kept by top-down management, they live through bottom up communities that are strong, tight and caring. We have to view society through the lens of systems, and which relationships it supports. We want to create a world where being good is the easy and enjoyable option.

Creating a new moral ecology, where each one has it's place in a state of harmony and bliss is the only way forward, and it is built through daily choices and interactions. By being altruistic we support creating a better community, which in turns not only helps us, but also makes it easy to be more altruistic. We build the environment around us while also being affected by it. It's a two way street of moral development.

Once, we have achieved a positive moral ecology, we can be are our best selves within the best community.

Conclusion: The Relationalist Manifesto

• we have overdone it with the individualist worldview. By conceiving of ourselves mostly as autonomous selves, we’ve torn our society to shreds, opened up division and tribalism, come to worship individual status and self-sufficiency, and covered over what is most beautiful in each human heart and soul. (Location 4877)
• There is another way to find belonging. There is another way to find meaning and purpose. There is another vision of a healthy society. It is through relationalism. It is by going deep into ourselves and finding there our illimitable ability to care, and then spreading outward in commitment to others. (Location 4885)
• Life is not a solitary journey. It is building a home together. It is a process of being formed by attachments and then forming attachments in turn. (Location 4934)