"Life - Death - Time"
The Human Condition
1. Life is suffering.
2. We create our own tragedies
3. It is really selfishness that is at the heart of what we label “evil”
4. Many life problems are due to an inability to take responsibility. Can all this ultimately be boiled down to impatience? (Kafka)
5. "We are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours." (Freud)
6. "We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other." (Freud from Civilization and Its Discontents, chapter 2, 1930)
7. What we don’t know about ourselves, we do – to the other. (Walter Davis)
8. No one knows the true “meaning” of life or the “purpose” of the universe. Anyone who claims to is lying, mistaken or deluded.
9. Our own self-awareness dooms and condemns us.
10. Every single one of us is flawed to the core.
11. In the evolution of human consciousness, death is the root fear - the lowest common denominator driving human pretensions to happiness and causing most all suffering.
12. This fear of death is actually the ego’s fear of annihilation, and desire to transcend the boundaries of reality. (Ernest Becker)
13. The ego’s fear of annihilation leads to immortality projects that promise to sustain it. The ego does this by creating the illusion that there is a “self” that can sustain itself, become “permanent,” and control reality.
14. Most objects, goals, pursuits in life are ultimately a “fetish.” In other words, a distraction from reality.
15. Each individual must find for him or herself their own "sweet spot" - the perfect balance of undistorted awareness of reality, and (mature) defense mechanisms that allow the individual to function in a healthy way and derive an acceptable level of enjoyment from life.
1. Life is suffering.
2. We create our own tragedies
3. It is really selfishness that is at the heart of what we label “evil”
4. Many life problems are due to an inability to take responsibility. Can all this ultimately be boiled down to impatience? (Kafka)
5. "We are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours." (Freud)
6. "We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other." (Freud from Civilization and Its Discontents, chapter 2, 1930)
7. What we don’t know about ourselves, we do – to the other. (Walter Davis)
8. No one knows the true “meaning” of life or the “purpose” of the universe. Anyone who claims to is lying, mistaken or deluded.
9. Our own self-awareness dooms and condemns us.
10. Every single one of us is flawed to the core.
11. In the evolution of human consciousness, death is the root fear - the lowest common denominator driving human pretensions to happiness and causing most all suffering.
12. This fear of death is actually the ego’s fear of annihilation, and desire to transcend the boundaries of reality. (Ernest Becker)
13. The ego’s fear of annihilation leads to immortality projects that promise to sustain it. The ego does this by creating the illusion that there is a “self” that can sustain itself, become “permanent,” and control reality.
14. Most objects, goals, pursuits in life are ultimately a “fetish.” In other words, a distraction from reality.
15. Each individual must find for him or herself their own "sweet spot" - the perfect balance of undistorted awareness of reality, and (mature) defense mechanisms that allow the individual to function in a healthy way and derive an acceptable level of enjoyment from life.
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