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"ON THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS" Happiness is not the goal. Happiness is a byproduct. Honesty is the goal. The pursuit of mere happiness, without honesty being at the base of it, quickly leads to self-deception, self-indulgence, self-righteousness, narcissism, authoritarianism and ultimately, self-destruction. Why? Because in the modern era, there is this prevalent notion that “to be happy” means to live without suffering, without sacrifice, without discomfort. Yet, life is all these things. By avoiding them, we are avoiding the most crucial work that our souls, minds and bodies need. This is the aforementioned self-deception in its essence. And if we are incapable of being honest with ourselves, then most definitely we are incapable of being honest with others, and this is where all the troubles begin. Honesty begins with introspection, with letting go of your image and your ego, looking deep inside of yourself, and finding out what really speaks to you, interests you, or bothers you. If you can do that, then you can also start being more honest with others, and more importantly, you can start taking action on those things. (May 28, 2024) There can be no life without love. There can be no love without trust. There can be no trust without truth. Discard the pursuit of happiness. Engage in the pursuit of truth. For in truth, there is meaning and in meaning, there is beauty. (July 13, 2024) "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." ― John Keats “Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky “The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche “Seeking the truth in this empire of lies is the greatest challenge for us in the moral bankruptcy in which we live.” ― Ron Paul

Replies (4)

Been thinking about some of this a lot lately. *To be honest with yourself (and others) you must drop the ego.* I don’t know if social media can be incorporated into this equation without causing some level of harm. It’s just too tempting to portray a dishonest image of ourselves, whether it’s to trick others or ourselves…Most probably don’t even know which. Who is it for?
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↩ replying to Thomas
Yeah that's a tough one... we're social creatures and part of that is the craving for validation & attention. Social media can offer that to an extent, but it's also heavily geared towards glorifying the exterior, the successes, the celebrations. And it is ripe for exaggerations, for portraying and magnifying only the bright side. It's dangerously easy to present yourself as someone who you're not. On the other hand, someone battling with their demons? Going through the dark night of the soul? Trying to work through their existential doubts and angst? Most don't want to see that or even think about that, so that gets glossed over, or even discouraged. Now I'm not entirely sure if the latter is due to how social media works as a concept or, I would rather think that it's due to a general unwillingness of society at large to take radical responsibility for themselves, which includes accepting and working with the dark side, the shadow. I think it's the lack of "strength of the person's spirit," as Nietzsche put it. BTW, I was looking at some of your latest notes and saw this one: Which is funny cause I wrote a short piece on this exact topic a couple of years ago :) Maybe it's a sign that I should finally put it out there.
Thomas 's avatar Thomas
The opposite of love is self-love.
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↩ replying to Kontext
Yes I agree with all that. I think to protect myself from myself I need to concentrate much more on creating than the fruits of my creation on nostr (having only 10 followers really helps with this). You should publish it, I’d give it a read! Self love in the modern sense is just ego stroking and feeding the passions. It’s like you said, pursuit of happiness without putting in the prerequisites which doesn’t do anybody any good.