The Wisdom of Insecurity (book)
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
The Wisdom of Insecurity is a book that explores the problems in today's society, which are caused by our search for stability and certainty. The author argues that happiness cannot be found by trying to escape reality, but by understanding it and living in the present. He suggests that we need to give up on the idea of a separate "self" in order to find inner peace, and that morality should come from being "one with the universe" rather than following strict rules. The book provides insight into how we can achieve true freedom and morality through self-awareness and understanding of our ever-changing world.
✒️ Note-Making
🔗Connect
🔼Topic:: Personal identity (MOC)
💡Clarify
🔈 Summary of main ideas
🗒️Relate
⛓ Life lessons, action items
- The quest for stability is futile - we live in an uncertain world, that constantly changes. Moreover, it is we who keep changing as well. To demand for stability is to demand to stay frozen in place, to stopping a melody or a river, once we do that, the thing we are trying to preserve withers and dies.
- To be aware is to experience - The duality of the thinking self and experiencing self only removes us from the world. We are stuck in imaginations, on expectations of how the future looks like and what it holds, only to be disappointed because we both miss the present, and it turns out not as we hopped for. And even when it does, it is not as exciting as we thought. Therefore there is no other answer than to be completely present all the time, to forget about the "self" and simply be.
- Life is about both extremes - life and death, pain and pleasure, are both sides of the same coin. We can't have one without the other.
🔍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... I empathize with the definition of the problem as the author sees it. But he assumes that every conscious activity creates a vicious cycle. The fact that I can't think and experience at the same time doesn't mean that there is no observer, but rather an observer that can look inwards, and that thinking is it's own type of observation. There is something cynical in saying that morality is always cold and disconnected, like an egoistic view that if donating makes you happy than you're doing it for yourself and not for others. Perhaps moral laws grew from the unity and our identity, like he says that love is the basis of our universe. By the same logic, its possible that the experiencing creature will be no more than an animal, does as he pleases since he's just living in the moment, without introspection, stealing and taking without a second thought. Its not clear how canceling the self necessarily makes us want to do good. Everything is a little bit forced to promote a Buddhistic world-view, if some partial connection to today's problems in our society.
🗨️Review
💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style...
🖼️Outline
📒 Notes
In my opinion the author has a problematic way of thinking that is expressed in various ways, but the common thread is that we all work as two separate entities. Planning and trying to "live in the future", and looking for stable and unchanging things in an ever changing world. The only way to solve the problem and find inner peace is living in the present, improve self awareness and give up on the "self".
Current Problems
We are creatures looking for stability in a world that is by definition unstable. Uncertainty. Happiness is not guaranteed, and all life ends and starts with death. Happiness is therefore either immediate pleasure, which quickly becomes a dependency in the next gratification, or believing in the afterlife, whether in the religious sense or in "leaving a legacy". Either way we "live in the future", where happiness is guaranteed, but chasing future happiness is like chasing a ghost that keeps on running away from you, whether its because the immediate pleasure is always sweeter in the future and fleeting faster, or because its harder for us to believe in the "afterlife". Expectations
These past few centuries we saw a total collapse of the ideological system that has brought us stability - family, religion... some of this is due to the rise of science, controlled by the forces of logic and reason. While science has brought us improvement to our quality of life, it doesn't provide stability or meaning, it doesn't give us the "why". The head is satisfied, but the heart still searches for tomorrow. Absurdity of existence
People need myths to have meaning. You can't believe in myths by "wanting" to believe them, you have to feel them. Leap Into Faith. The skepticism that science has brought shattered the ethos of religion, so we can't continue to believe as if nothing has happened. What's left is the pursue after temporary pleasure, which is short and unstable. The temporary pleasure is replace by the anxiety of getting the next pleasure, a sense of addiction, and on the other hand a sense of meaninglessness since what's the point of chasing pleasures when they all pass.
The Solution
That leaves us with either a new myth, or despair. There is a third way, a true belief, one that tracts the truth, and not distort the reality based on your desires. This is also the mistake of the big religions, they stick to a false pretense of the reality instead of seeing it as it. The solution won't come from trying to "escape reality", like believing in the "afterlife", but rather seeing the world as it is. This is the law of reversed effort, the less we cling to our perceptions, the more we understand reality. Reverse Thinking
To enjoy life, we will have to be able to suffer. For example the more you love someone, the more it will hurt when he'll die. To search for happiness while avoiding pain is death to your consciousness. The pain is intensified by the fact that we human are happy only by looking at both the past and the future. The past has to be "resolved" and the future full of promises, otherwise we will suffer in the present, even if at this very moment we are experiencing pleasure. We are giving us on our awareness for the "now", and the past and future become even more real than the present.
Giving up the Self
This is a disagreement between the "i" and the self. The side that thinks about the future and the side that acts without consequences. This is a disagreement between our consciousness to our own nature and the world. The "i" tries to cling to something stable, the same utopic vision of the future to avoid the uncertainty and cruelty of nature, while the "self" is often erased, or is perceived as against our "true desires" since its living in the "now". However these are not two opposite sides rather a different way of looking at the same reality. Destruction and change are a natural part of our lives, and being a human is to be an ever changing creature. Creative Destruction Trying to fight against change is like trying to stop a river, without an outward flow there would be no inward flow, and then it won't be a river anymore. Similarly, try to freeze a song we like in time, we lose the melody and stay we a constant note, which is nothing like the song, and what we loved would be gone. Fleetingness We must therefore have both sides to solve the human condition, of consciousness and an infinite heart in an uncertain world. With only one side - the religious and the hedonistic, we can't solve the human condition.
the problem of the religious man is that he tries to distort the ever changing reality such that it will fit to his eternal fix dogmas. It is based on the way words points on objects in the world. Words are just a representation, not the thing itself. Like money stores value, but its not value in itself (only what we buy with it). Science and religion tried in their ways to create a worldview that fits their beliefs, both giving stability for the future, but the only reality is the present where we live.
On Words and Representations
There's something that's beyond words or definitions, we call it god. its something that we know but can't describe. every attempt is bound to error, like trying to fill a paper cup with water. Using words is an attempt to fix what cannot be fix. That is because this type of knowledge is not intellectual but rather internal, natural, like "knowing" how to breath, the body does things automatically without our conscious awareness. The modern man has forgot this natural knowledge, he has forgotten about sleep, healthy diet, meaningful connections.
People are focusing on cheap imitations Platos Cave, they pursue glory, wealth, sex, success. We chase pleasures because the brain is in charge, trying to have infinite pleasure in a finite world full of uncertainty, Even if the body is full, even if we are already addicted and the drug doesn't provide more pleasure, its the thought about it that does. That's the essence of capitalist consumerism, trying to fill the void with cheap imitations. we have stopped listening to ourselves.
Chasing security is a contradiction, because security is the stability of the "self", keeping him free from change, but life is change itself life is change. To separate the self means to detach oneself from life. Another issue is that you can't separate the self because the self doesn't exist. To experience something is be aware of it, and there is no external observer. Like you can't "hear hearing". To be aware to who "is thinking right now" is its own experience, and you can't do that while doing something else. To listen to music is to listen to music, not saying "I'm listening to music". To be aware is to experience mindfulness, and they are both temporal. self doesn't exist
On Feeling Vs Knowing
Same as we're happy in moments of joy, and not because we told ourselves "I'm happy", happiness is being in the moment, and actually thinking about it might hurt it. Like asking yourself constantly "am i happy?". Similarly, pain can't be solved by trying to get rid of it. Running away is what makes it stronger. The way to avoid it is like Judo, you have to absorb it, feel it, take its power away. Notice it, and let it move on.
The meaning of life is not at it's end, like good music is not the final note, but rather the melody along the way. The meaning of life is experiences, by understanding that the self can't keep on forever.
On Morality
morality is problematic, no matter what the content is. whether Utilitarianism, or virtue theory, since they are all connect a result or an action to a self (the one who act). these theories only increase the gap between the experiencing mind and the thinking mind, increasing pain and frustration. For example, if I try to be generous and fail, I will feel bad with myself and start a nasty circle of pain. Even if I succeeded, then there's something "cold" about it, because I'm generous to be generous, to act according to a rule, and not for the benefit of others. In such morality there is no freedom to the individual, since he is bent to the rules. True freedom and morality comes from being "one with the universe" Life as Flow, from understanding that the self doesn't exist and that there's unity, since unity is love. So a person that is a "one" is a loving, honest, free person. Not because he tries to, but because he is "present", aware that the self doesn't exist.
Highlights
the path of self-examination is the only one a person of conscience can reasonably follow. Otherwise, we will only numb ourselves to the meaninglessness of life, seizing present pleasure to avoid pain, a futile strategy—here — location: 86 ^ref-49437
insecurity is the result of trying to be secure, and that, contrariwise, salvation and sanity consist in the most radical recognition that we have no way of saving ourselves. — location: 126 ^ref-14253
If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o’-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death. — location: 172 ^ref-37790
We do not, and in all probability cannot, know whether God exists. Nothing that we do know suggests that he does, and all the arguments which claim to prove his existence are found to be without logical meaning. — location: 200 ^ref-43002
These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort, in which he loses something of his own emptiness and loneliness. — location: 208 ^ref-60494
When belief in the eternal becomes impossible, and there is only the poor substitute of belief in believing, men seek their happiness in the joys of time. However much they may try to bury it in the depths of their minds, they are well aware that these joys are both uncertain and brief. — location: 226 ^ref-51360
To “have” running water you must let go of it and let it run. The same is true of life and of God. — location: 268 ^ref-35520
we discover the “infinite” and the “absolute,” not by straining to escape from the finite and relative world, but by the most complete acceptance of its limitations. — location: 296 ^ref-45694
The hard-bitten kind of person is always, as it were, a partial suicide; some of himself is already dead. — location: 330 ^ref-32141
The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been “cleared up” and the future is bright with promise. — location: 357 ^ref-64515
life, change, movement, and insecurity are so many names for the same thing. Here, if anywhere, truth is beauty, for movement and rhythm are of the essence of all things lovable. — location: 427 ^ref-65322
When man can name and define himself, he feels that he has an identity. Thus he begins to feel, like the word, separate and static, as over against the real, fluid world of nature. — location: 481 ^ref-26339
in the process of symbolizing the universe in this way or that for this purpose or that we seem to have lost the actual joy and meaning of life itself. All the various definitions of the universe have had ulterior motives, being concerned with the future rather than the present. Religion wants to assure the future beyond death, and science wants to assure it until death, and to postpone death. But tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. — location: 535 ^ref-2901
when all philosophy has dissolved in relativism, and can make fixed sense of the universe no longer, isolated “I” feels miserably insecure and panicky, finding the real world a flat contradiction of its whole being. — location: 548 ^ref-1914
More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means of external gadgets, and attempt to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious “know-how.” This is much less to our advantage than we like to suppose. — location: 587 ^ref-52898
the civilized man does not know what he wants. He works for success, fame, a happy marriage, fun, to help other people, or to be a “real person.” But these are not real wants because they are not actual things. They are the by-products, the flavors and atmospheres of real things—shadows which have no existence apart from some substance. — location: 647 ^ref-14003
They spend their days in activities which largely boil down to counting and measuring, living in a world of rationalized abstraction which has little relation to or harmony with the great biological rhythms and processes. — location: 703 ^ref-24027
for those who see clearly that it is a circle and why it is a circle, there is no alternative but to stop circling. For as soon as you see the whole circle, the illusion that the head is separate from the tail disappears. And then, when experience stops oscillating and writhing, it can again become sensitive to the wisdom of the body, to the hidden depths of its own substance. — location: 725 ^ref-36914
if we can really understand what we are looking for—that safety is isolation, and what we do to ourselves when we look for it—we shall see that we do not want it at all. — location: 817 ^ref-50044
this moment is always dying, or becoming past, and always being born, or coming out of the unknown, is to say the same thing of experience. The experience you have just had has vanished irretrievably, and all that remains of it is a sort of wake or track in the present, which we call memory. — location: 851 ^ref-52604
To be aware, then, is to be aware of thoughts, feelings, sensations, desires, and all other forms of experience. Never at any time are you aware of anything which is not experience, not a thought or feeling, but instead an experiencer, thinker, or feeler. — location: 867 ^ref-62931
To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening. To understand joy or fear, you must be wholly and undividedly aware of it. So long as you are calling it names and saying, “I am happy,” or “I am afraid,” you are not being aware of it. — location: 899 ^ref-13050
As soon as it becomes clear that “I” cannot possibly escape from the reality of the present, since “I” is nothing other than what I know now, this inner turmoil must stop. No possibility remains but to be aware of pain, fear, boredom, or grief in the same complete way that one is aware of pleasure. — location: 919 ^ref-27370
The more we accustom ourselves to understanding the present in terms of memory, the unknown by the known, the living by the dead, the more desiccated and embalmed, the more joyless and frustrated life becomes. — location: 959 ^ref-33779
to name is to interpret experience by the past, to translate it into terms of memory, to bind the unknown into the system of the known. — location: 1025 ^ref-47240
this “external” world of theoretical objects is, apparently, just as much a unity as the “internal” world of experience. From experience I infer that it exists. And because experience is a unity—I am my sensations—I must likewise infer that this theoretical universe is a unity, that my body and the world form a single process. — location: 1118 ^ref-9458
When each moment becomes an expectation life is deprived of fulfillment, and death is dreaded for it seems that here expectation must come to an end. While there is life there is hope—and if one lives on hope, death is indeed the end. But to the undivided mind, death is another moment, complete like every moment, and cannot yield its secret unless lived to the full— — location: 1210 ^ref-48827
So long as there is the motive to become something, so long as the mind believes in the possibility of escape from what it is at this moment, there can be no freedom. — location: 1338 ^ref-10193
The further truth that the undivided mind is aware of experience as a unity, of the world as itself, and that the whole nature of mind and awareness is to be one with what it knows, suggests a state that would usually be called love. For the love that expresses itself in creative action is something much more than an emotion. It is not something which you can “feel” and “know,” remember and define. Love is the organizing and unifying principle which makes the world a universe and the disintegrated mass a community. It is the very essence and character of mind, and becomes manifest in action when the mind is whole. — location: 1348 ^ref-4613