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[onemeinmyself]

Your parents aren’t proud of you

Because you want them to like you. Because you want them to hate you.

Because you are what they want you to be. Because you became what they (actively or passively) brought you up to be.

You became another version of them. 

You did not become an individual. You did not do you. You did what your parents, society, friends, influencers, the media told you to be. Who would be proud of that?

Break out of that cycle. Be dangerous. Do what your parents do not want you to do. But don’t do it because you hate your parents.

Do not fall into this trap. Beware. If you do something because it’s the opposite of what someone wants you to do, they’re still controlling you. Just in a negative instead of a positive way. That’s equally as bad.

Follow your heart. Listen to yourself and to yourself only. If your heart tells you to do something that people close to you approve of, do it! If your heart tells you to do something that people close to you do not approve of, do it!

If you become a true individual that lives a fulfilled life, then your parents will be proud of you. And not just your parents, but everyone will appreciate you.

“If you don’t know what your path is, if you don’t know what feels good, if you don’t have inspiration dragging you down a path, then you must EXPERIMENT. “ - Elliott Hulse 

[onemeinmyself]

A Story about Greener Grass

The man who owned the greenest patch of land was deeply unhappy. He had seen a very green patch if grass a few years ago and in his memory it got more saturated and greener every day. Also, he had seen a multitude of (edited) photos showing grass so green that he couldn't dream if having such nice grass. But he kept looking at these images because he wanted to find their secret. He wanted to learn and improve and make his field grow even greener. But while his grass stayed as green and beautiful as always, in his mind it looked pale and inadequate.

In the end he killed himself because no matter what he did he couldn't get his grass to grow as green as the images in his mind & memories. His death was described as a tragedy and nobody understood it. Wasn't he the man with the greenest grass, wasn't he the happiest and most fulfilled person? Soon they forgot about him.

[onemeinmyself]

Exploration vs Catastrophe: Responses when meeting the Unknown

In everyones lives there will be multiple occasions where you will be faced with the unexplored, with chaos, with the unknoiwn. Many avoid it because it naturally is scary and dangerous, but it is impossible to avoid it foerever, especially if you want to expand your knowledge, skills, and confidence.

So how will you reacto when you’re forced to face the Unknown?

There are two major ways of looking at this unavoidable meeting:

Exploration and Catastrophe.  If you are not prepared to face the Unknown, you’ll most likely feel like you’re about to undergo a catastrophe. Everything you know becomes useless, you’re in an entirely new environment where anything may happen, your beliefs and habits may prove to be of no help anymore. Your body reacts to this by focusing on one single goal: Survival. You stop caring about anything that is not related to getting oyu out of this experience. By this you will most likely avoid any real dangers and safe yourself. You will learn that there are dangers outside your comfort zone that you’d rather avoid and you’ll get much better at spotting them and avoiding them in the future. That must have proven very effective in our early evolution, as it prevented us from doing anything stopid that could get us killed. However, there are two problems with that: Firstly, when the unknown hits you, you will be quite unprepared and won’t know how to deal with that situation. Secondly, you will not learn anything really useful from overcoming these challenges because your entire body and brain focusses on survival, not on learning.

This is different when you approach the Unknown as an explorer. An explorer VOLUNTARILY faces danger and the Unknown, step by step, constantly stepping out of their comfort zone. When you’re in a exploration state of mind, your body and brain focus on learning rather than survival. You’ll get the chance to consciously put your skills to the test and only face obstacles big enough for you to overcome, or even if you don’t overcome them you will learn from it. This different way of approaching the inevitably approaching unknown is a lot harder, because it requires the conscious decision to leave your comfort zone and face danger voluntarily. This, however, means that you’ll be able to prepare yourself before going out into the wild and test the waters before diving in. And knowing that sooner or later everybody WILL have to face the unknown, your attitude allows you to learn, rather than run away from it.

It will not be easy to convince yourself that going out of your comfort zone, where you’re safe and everything is easy, will be the right decision and a large part of yourself will try to prevent you from doing it, but if you can get yourself to do it, you’ve just taken the first step towards growth, learning, and becoming a more confident person, as you’ve conquered one of your fears and integrated it instead of constantly running away from it.

As Alan Watts said, running away from fear is fear. Facing your fear is really fucking uncomfortable but you will be eternally grateful to yourself for doing it.

So do it, even if it’s an incredibly small thing. It could be as simple as thinking objectively about something you avoid, it could be trying out something new, it could be taking on a new responsibility. There are many different levels where you can start exploring the Unknown, like physical, intellectual, social, emotional, sexual, spiritual. Is there a conversation you should be having? Do you wish to be better at public speaking? Are you having nightmares? Is there something you’d want to know more about?  All these are examples of things you could start exploring, one tiny step at a time. Do not make the mistake of thinking that you need to take on EVERYTHING at once, you can go as small or as big as you’d like! Scared of talking to people you know at parties? Start by simply saying hi to one new person. Don’t even start a conversation yet. Just one second of eye contact and one word. That’s all. Next time say hi to two people. Next time hold eye contact for two seconds. Next time also introduce yourself... You see where I’m going with this. Conquer the Unknown one tiny step at a time, or it will conquer you when you least expect it.

[onemeinmyself]

I need someone to complete me because I am not whole myself.

I need someone to accept my authentic, true self because I don't accept myself.

I need someone to love me because I don't love myself.

[onemeinmyself]

Truth

Probably the most important question one could ask is “What is truth?”

Now it seems like there is no need to ask this question, it seems like we already know what truth is. But the more you start thinking about it, the less obvious the definition of truth becomes.

One might say “Truth is whatever I see”, but if you see something the large majority of humans doesn’t see, you’ll start to believe you’re hallucinating.

One might say “Truth is whatever the large majority of humans see”, but what if the large majority of humans was color blind? Everybody would agree on the fact that leaves have a certain color and they’d all be wrong.

One might say “Truth is what can be mathematically / scientifically proven”, but how do you scientifically prove the existence of anything? Sure, you might touch something and believe it is actually there, but what if you’re in a big simulation? What if all the data you receive is flawed? What if you’re dreaming this all up? There is nothing to prove whether reality is real.

And this brings us to the following realisation: There is subjective and objective truth.

Objective truth is what truly is. However, we humans can only ever see glimpses of it, or possibly nothing at all. There is a chance we can discover parts of the truth (like laws of physics), but even then there is no reason to believe that these are actually true. As stated above, we could just live in a simulation where all our laws of physics are simulated and thus our truth actually is an illusion. Also, we as humans can only process the tiniest bit of information. We can only see the tiniest part of the color spectrum. We can only hear the tiniest part of all frequencies. We are bound to a form and this restricts us tremendously. We are even bound to 3 dimensions and are not only unable to perceive, but also unable to comprehend any other dimension. What if truth hides in the 4th dimension? We could never access it.

In the end we can only admit to ourselves that we as humans will never ever know objective truth, not even a part of it.

Subjective truth is whatever seems true to you. If you touch a hot stove and burn your hand and feel pain, this seems real. You could be very convinced that this is not objective truth, but in the moment the pain sets in you’re gonna forget about objective truth really quickly because it hurts like fuck. Subjective reality includes our perception of this world, including colors, shapes, relations and basically anything. What is important to notice is that subjective truth actually is subjective to everyone. In reaction to being shown the exact same apple, two people would react totally differently. One might feel a want to eat this red, beautiful apple, his body would react by producing saliva for example, and his perception of the apple would be quite positive. Another person might have had unpleasant memories connected to eating apples and could feel disgust, her perception of this apple might be entirely unpleasant.  You see, everybody has their own subjective reality. Some parts of subjective reality overlap, some really don’t.

I’d suggest a third category of truth: Societal truth. This is everything that the majority of a society agrees upon. Like the color of an apple (a colorblind society would agree on a different truth for example), or morality, or what beauty is. Societal truth and Subjective truth are deeply connected, there is some sort of interaction between them, because 1. Societal truth is simply formed out of the majority of Subjective truths, and 2. Most people derive their own subjective truth largely from societal truth (especially if one doesn’t reflect or contemplate on what reality means to them).

Now an interesting little twist: As we can never ever know objective truth, we might just consider it to not exist at all. Because even if it does we can never reach it. No matter how close we think we’ve come to it, there is always an infinite possibility we are wrong. Ergo, objective truth doesn’t exist. Also, as subjective truth is objectively wrong and basically changes from moment to moment (we all have changed our believes = our subjective truth multiple times) there also is an infinite possibility that our subjective truth is wrong. Ergo, subjective truth doesn’t exist.

We’ve reached another paradox. This seems to be an ongoing motive in my pursuit of understanding existence.

The nice thing is: If truth doesn’t exist, we are free to choose a truth for ourselves. We won’t be right, but we can just act as if we are. Suddenly reality doesn’t control us anymore, but we control reality. How cool is that?

[onemeinmyself]

What a life

I am sitting in front of my PC with all my basic needs taken care of, browsing the web and having quite a substantial amount of tabs open on many topics including:

The Pantone Color of the Year 2018 (Ultraviolet)

The Moral Case for Vegan Utopia, an article

A job description for an internship at Telecom

My CV and cover letter

A list of festivals this summer

A Google Doc with my Weekly Review

Explanations about tasks, challenges, opportunities, responsibilities for pursuing a career in Human Resources

My Cryptocurrencies portfolio

An Article about the death of Kurt Cobain, written by Neil Strauss

Several articles and videos about proper posture while working, plus how to set up your desk in the least straining way

A couple of videos and articles about predictions for the stock market in 2018

Websites of 5 cannabis companies that I am thinking about investing in, due to the coming legalisation in Canada

A wikipedia article on the Avogadro Constant

My only wish is to have a few more hours of time.

What a life.

[onemeinmyself]

Values (our operating system)

principles or standards of behaviour; one's judgement of what is important in life.

Values let us know how to act in situations where we may be confused or don't really know what to do. Values end inner conflicts, as they are rules that are so true to yourself that you wouldn't want to brake them. Most inner conflicts, and arguably all action we regret comes from not knowing ones values.

Values basically are the rules to your game of life. What's good: You can consciously chose your values. What's bad: if you don't consciously chose your values, you'll unconsciously form values anyways. These unconscious values come from situations you've experienced. If you are lucky and have had good experiences, your values aka your operating system will be positive. However, if you've had bad experiences (like everybody does), you'll have a number of values that are formed not from love, but from fear. Values that stem from fear hold you back. They make you act untrue to yourself, be inauthentic and make your life a lot less enjoyable and free than it could be.

The only way to not fall prey to these unconscious, fearful values is by consciously choosing new values.

Chose your values carefully and open-heartedly and say to yourself:

"I shall always act according to my values. Staying true to my values is more important and greater than being true to some social norm or old believes. As long as I stay true to my values, I win."

Here are a couple of my values:

Be positive, have an optimistic outlook on life, on people, on events

The world is complex, do not look at anything from a black/white perspective

Question things, don't accept only one way if looking at things. Empathise with others people's opinion and never stop questioning and educating yourself

Failing is not bad. It makes you learn. Appreciate your failures and think about what they taught you.

Believe in your greatness

You can even use your new-found values as affirmations and repeat them every morning, if there is still some part in you questioning these values. The more you think about your values, the more you act according to them, the more they'll become part of your personality.

[onemeinmyself]

We need a shift in our thinking

" We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein

     This little quote appears to be a lot more important than we think. How? Let’s start with just some random topic.

So many people are arguing about whether capitalism or some sort of more social system is the way to go. Is it good to pay taxes? How much taxes should we pay?

There are two extremes here, and both make sense:

1. One person works a lot harder than all the others. He invents products that make his and his fellow’s lives a lot easier. People come to him to buy his products, which results in an overall increase of well-being among his people. He becomes an entrepreneur, creates a company and becomes richer and richer and soon is worth as much as 10,000 “regular” people. He uses all this money to conduct research and solve problems nobody before him dared to solve. In short, he is on the verge of freeing his people from their suffering through his inventions. Then, however, the state notices that he has not been paying any taxes. They send someone to get their money from him. Because he is so rich he has to give away more than half of his earnings. The projects he is involved in have to be cancelled or take way longer. The money the state has taken from him gets spend in a highly ineffective and inefficient way, pays for bureaucratic systems that have a negative effect on the productivity of people, it pays for the police hunting down people consuming healthy, non-addictive substances that had been deemed illegal because of some misinformation, it pays for infrastructure, buildings etc that are being build in a very inefficient way and cost ten times of what it is worth, it pays for bored politicians and misinformed government agents that do not seek the well-being of their people but are addicted to power or are too used to their job to look for a job that actually would fulfill them. The entrepreneur sees that his money is being wasted and tries everything he can to avoid paying taxes, because he knows that the only efficient way to increase the well-being of his fellow humans is through his investments and inventions. He concludes paying taxes is bad and unethical even.

2. There are some big companies that control a large quantity of some asset. There is a divide of wealth, the leaders of these companies are very rich and most of the profits stay with them. The rest of the people are very poor and depend on someone providing them with jobs and food and healthcare, et cetera. Said leaders of these big companies decide to increase profits by minimizing expenses and cut down their worker’s wages. They start to exploit their fellow humans. The workers wish to have a better future, but they need to keep working to cover for their expenses, as healthcare for example is extremely expensive and only affordable for the rich. Same with many other things: The poorer you are, the more expensive life becomes. The poorer you are, the cheaper the products you buy, most of the poor’s possessions have to be replaced after a short period of time because they are low quality and tend to break. If they want to get loans, they have to pay a lot higher interest rate. Nobody cares for them, or even about them. Besides some politicians who vowed to make the lives of the unfavoured better. The way they do it is by demanding these rich people who keep all of their profits to themselves and exploit their workers to pay quite a substantial amount back to the public. This money is used to create cheap healthcare, free education and to build places and facilities the poor can use to live a better life. The poorest of the poor even get accommodation and food so that they don’t have to suffer and die. If this tax-system wasn’t in place the overall well-being of people would be drastically lower, people would live in fear to lose the little income they have and would constantly be exploited. Luckily taxes are being used to distribute the wealth and reduce unfair inequalities. The general consensus is that taxes are good, and the facts show that taxes do improve the quality of life of an overwhelmingly large majority of people.

Now which side is right?

Both. Obviously. They only show a different spectrum of the truth. They are complete opposites but BOTH TRUE. How can this be?

It is actually quite normal. However, when you don’t step out to see the bigger picture you won’t realise how normal this is. Take the above image as an example. If you got closer to the wall until you could ONLY see the projections and not the source anymore, you would - from your perspective - rightly believe that the square and the circle are completely different and completely incompatible. From your perspective the truth seems obvious, there seems to be a clear distinction between one thing and another, there seems to be a clearly right and a clearly wrong answer.

But this is all an illusion.

Life as we know it is literally a projection. Light waves hit objects, bounce back, hit your eyes, are bundled and projected on some nerves that work together with your brain to create an image. Where does this image exist?

It exists in your head. It is the only place possible for it to exist. It cannot exist outside of your head, because then you couldn’t perceive of it anymore. 

This image in your head is not truth. It seems like it is from your perspective, but only because you’re too close to this projection. Actually, you could hardly be closer to it: It is in your head and you, well, seem to be in your head, too. (At least most of the time. But that’s another story.)

So, how does this all relate to paying taxes?

Both stories are true. Paying taxes is both bad and good. We have thought about this problem so much that we have confused ourselves and were not able to come to a meaningful conclusion. We searched for an answer and found one that is not of any help. In short: We lost.

We lost. We defeated ourselves. We realized that this is an unsolvable problem. We lost everything and gained nothing.

Or did we?

Did we really not find an answer, did we really lose everything, did we really gain nothing?

Shift your thinking, change your perspective and suddenly the truth appears. The truth looks paradoxical when viewed from your old perspective, when thought about in your old state of mind.

We found a non-answer, we lost trust in our old believe-system and gained the insight that we cannot solve this problem with our current way of thinking. We came to the realization that we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

We realized we need to switch our thinking.

We lost everything and gained everything!

Going back to the tax problem, we can now look at it with the knowledge that we need to think fundamentally different about it. That all our believes are most likely false. 

We believe that we live in an everyone-vs-everyone world, in a dog-eat-dog society. We believe in competition and for a long time, rightly so. There has been nothing more effective in urging humanity to invent and improve and become more efficient than competition. Wars have been times of immense invention, because wars are the ultimate competition.

We try to improve and improve, but... why? From a very narrow perspective it is easy to answer this question. We are improving our weapons because we need to win the war. We need to improve the speed of our cars because we need to reach some other place faster. We need to improve our mobile networks because we need to have a better connection to the internet. Makes sense.

But we have forgot to ask ourselves the most important question: “What is the end goal?” 

I’ve thought about this question for a very long time and this is my answer: 

We strive for existence as a whole being worth it, ergo every single life being 100% deeply enjoyable. (= Complete enlightenment for everyone)

This leads to another set of interesting questions we as humanity have consistently failed to think about: When is the point where we can stop improving? When have we solved all our problems? Why are we solving them in the first place?  And we realise that with our old thinking there will never be an end to improvements. With our old thinking there will always be problems. With our old thinking we will never reach our end goal. Because we just don’t know what it is.

You can’t arrive at your destination if you don’t know what it looks like. You’d go into the wrong direction or even if you reached it, you’d walk past because you couldn’t recognize it. Without knowing our end goal we will never reach it. We will never live the lives we want.

However, once you do know your destination, suddenly every decision becomes clear. Suddenly you do know where to go and where to stop. You also know where to not go. You realise that many of the things you once thought were important actually aren’t and many things you believed to be unimportant actually are. Suddenly, instead of asking how to improve weaponry to win the war, you realise that war is not making lives more enjoyable but instead increasing suffering. You realise that something you thought was important is actually dragging you backwards. From this perspective, it actually is an un-improvement: This new weapon you thought was an improvement actually doesn’t solve the real problem. 

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Ergo, in order to arrive at our end goal we have to switch our thinking.

In terms of taxes or no taxes, we would have to switch from a competitive world trying to solve the very problems this competitive world creates to a philanthropic world where everyone shares the same goal and everyone tries to help humanity as a whole and not just themselves. Suddenly there is no need to think about this problem of taxes anymore because there is no problem. In a world where everybody wants to help each other nobody needs to be forced to do so. The very idea of taxes would seem ridiculous, because the problem taxes try to solve wouldn’t exist.

It is easy to say that our thinking can’t change, that there is no way we all can become 100% philanthropic and 0% malevolently egocentric.

But there are some rare individuals who have achieved exactly that. 

And if one person has achieved this, there is no logical reason to believe that it is not possible for everyone else.

[onemeinmyself]

Meditate for a while on this empty Tumblr.