Manifesto for Living
Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 11:04AM Preamble
This Manifesto for Living begins with the question “Why do we want to go on living?”
Think deeply about it. The answers will be profound. At the core of all of our answers will be a lust for life itself. This lust for life is experienced both quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative experience of this lust is expressed as a yearning for immortality, which drives us toward the need to reproduce and to examine the spiritual nature of our existence. The qualitative experience of the lust for life is expressed as a yearning for joy and continual growth.
There is a polarity to life. At one end of the spectrum lie pain and death, which are synonymous. At the other end lie joy and life, which are synonymous. The goal is to choose for joy and life, and to wage battle against pain and death. Since we live in an inimical universe, we cannot avoid this battle. We can only determine the degree to which we will win or lose.
However, this choice is often ambiguous. We choose between life and death and between joy and pain in an intellectual environment of imperfect knowledge and a psychological environment of fear. Both environments will adversely impact the quality of our choices. Ignorance clouds the mind, and fear paralyzes it.
Thus, greater knowledge and less fear will move us toward better choices, and therefore toward optimized joy and life. These choices are inescapable. They occur thousands of time each day. In between every stimulus and response lies the gap in which we decide the path of our lives. Between every stimulus and response we wrestle, consciously or unconsciously, with the fundamental choice between joy and pain and between life and death. These choices are binary. They are either/or. With each choice we make, we are either moving closer to joy and life, or closer to pain and death. This is why the fog of ignorance can be catastrophic, and why the paralysis of fear can be debilitating. Knowledge is the only effective weapon that we as humans possess. Fear is the opposite of everything good. It is the opposite of love, growth, esteem, relationship, joy, peace, and thus life. Understanding this is extremely important.
The purpose of life is joy, since joy is synonymous with life. Every living organism, no matter how great or small, seeks to move toward that which enhances joy and life, and away from that which gives rise to pain and death. It is an instinctive and existentially fundamental movement which conforms to nature’s law of identity (nothing can behave in contradiction to it’s nature). Joy and life are indistinguishable, as are pain and death. Joy requires growth, since optimizing life is a process of continuous improvement. Our condition is either improving or decaying, and there is zero probability that where we are at now is ideal. Growth requires change, which is often experienced as a temporary, uncomfortable disequilibrium. Since this disequilibrium is unavoidable and difficult to confront, change requires vision, conviction, courage, audacity, and a JFDI attitude.
This preamble only scratches the surface of a lifetime of observation and thought. To get a deeper perspective, read the following books in the order listed below:
“Catch-22”, by Joseph Heller
“Anthem”, by Ayn Rand
“The Fountainhead”, by Ayn Rand
“The Six Pillars of Self Esteem”, by Nathaniel Branden
“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, by Stephen Covey
"River Out of Eden", by Richard Dawkins
"The Science of Good and Evil", by Michael Shermer
“The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success”, by Deepak Chopra
"Total Freedom", by Jiddu Krishnamurti
And now, the Manifesto for Living.....
Life is infinitely precious.
Life is infinitely precious because of it’s scarcity and it’s potential.
Life is scarce because it is the most finite element of existence in the universe. It is so finite because it is temporary, irreplaceable, and irreproducible, and therefore it is the one thing that violates the law of conservation in the universe. It is the only element of existence that is volitionally extropic.
Life has enormous potential, because it can be anything a free will is determined to make it. Existence is an unprogrammed field of infinite possibilities, and we alone as cognitive, volitional, living beings have the ability to transform the unmanifest into the manifest.
The purpose of life is non-contradictory joy. The preconditions for non-contradictory joy are Self Esteem, Connectedness, and an Unmortgaged Spirit.
Self Esteem requires:
-Proactively expressing and pursuing your intentions and desires
-Recognizing that you get what you deserve (Law of Karma or Cause and Effect)
-An unyielding belief in yourself and your unique value
-A sense of accomplishment through achievement (doing)
-Continual growth toward wisdom and completeness
-Rational thinking and principle-centered decision making
-Self Referral (i.e., Self as the standard for all meaning, or Independence)
Connectedness requires:
-Evolving a life mission and vision that begins with the end in mind
-Recognizing that relationships (interdependencies) are the most rewarding manifestations of individualism (independence).
-Loving and being loved, without conditions
-Giving and receiving, without conditions
-Seeking first to understand, then to be understood
-Nurturing a “mind/body/spirit” partner as a mirror to your soul
-Practicing non-judgment and acceptance
-Playing a meaningful role in the human community
-Having a sense of place, family, and home
-Win/win thinking
Unmortgaged Spirit requires:
-Considering your past only as a learning experience, considering your future only to plan, and living your life in the present with complete awareness and focus.
-Freedom of action and thought
-A will to live, which manifests itself as a lust for joy
-No fear, which manifests itself as risk-taking and boldness
-A child’s world view (seeing the world as fun, humorous, and curious)
-Uninhibited expression of self
-Detachment from superficial status symbols and outcomes
-Embracing uncertainty, because security is a prison for the soul
-Becoming aware of your paradigms and challenging them
The conclusion to the Manifesto for Living is provided by Gautama Buddha: “This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain.”
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