image: robditch

My inbox is constantly inundated with spam originating from Uraguay. If you’re anything to do with this, do me a favour, switch off your machines, it’s just a little tedious and serves no purpose whatsoever.

Thankyou.

 image: florian szillat

Subjective - that’s what we are. A man wins the lottery, he is happy, a woman loses her purse she is unhappy. We are influenced by things around us. We are like sheep herded by the dogs of cultural nuances. Whatever is happening in the world drives us, whatever the zeitgeist is colours what we think, feel and do.

Is this the totality of the human condition. Is this what we, as individuals, are obliged to engage with? Is this what you would choose to engage with?

The factors of this are simple enough. Yet they consume us as surely as though they were a monster. Let’s take a reality check here.

We are born. There is no choice in that, we are actuated by the actions of two people over whom we had no direct influence. We are born into a world that we had no part in creating, we enter it as an already up and running system. We did not create the Universe which upholds the planet we appear upon and we did not create the planet that sustains and supports our life. So we are born innocent, we are not culpable in any sense for where and how the world is or isn’t, what it may or may not be.

We grow and are educated by the world we find ourselves a part of against its criteria. We are given an education based upon cultural requirement. That education either ignores or does not deal with the most fundamental issues raised by our existence and, again like the sheep earlier, we are driven by the dogs of cultural imperative to the pens and enclosures that it wants us to occupy.

There is an old folk tale concerning the people of Hamelin in Germany who were plagued by a rat infestation. The legend tells that a man, a musician, turned up in the town claiming to have the ability to charm the rats and lead them away from the beleaguered town. He made a deal with the burghers of the town and cleared Hamelin of the rats. When the man claimed his payment the town’s leaders reneged upon the deal they had struck.

The man left the town and returned later whereupon he played his pipes and enchanted the children of the town, compelling them to follow him. He lead them into the mountains where the legend has it they entered a cave and were never seen again. Two children survived, one who was deaf and the other who was lame and unable to match the pace set by the piper.

The meaning and interpretation of this tale is fascinating in itself but the significant feature here is that the children became fascinated and enchanted by the tune that the piper played, they danced to his tune and followed him to a place of his choosing where he had them at his mercy.

Let’s shift the story and cast ourselves as the children and the world as the piper. Do you see how you dance to a tune that you never created? How you are fascinated and entranced by a world you never made? Is there anything wrong with this? No, of course not, but, the point here is that you are not in control of your own destiny.

 You become the marionette of something else that pulls your strings and makes you dance to its tune. The question here for you concerns the nature and intention of that which holds your strings in its thrall.

I say this simply because we are in the midst of, according to whose media stream you drink from, the most severe economic crisis ever, cataclysm, doom and gloom and all the rest of it. If you are in the west or a wealthy nation, let’s talk turkey for a moment, you own too much, eat too much and are absorbed by a false sense of entitlement. It’s OK, that’s what the world wanted you to become and it’s what you became. How do you solve the problems of the world? It’s simple, you go shopping! (Excuse me, did I hear that right? That is actually the advice being given by certain world leaders at the moment)

We could all do with slowing down, gross consumption has made us fat fools and lazy incompetents, do I exclude myself from this? Of course not, I’m in the same culture as everyone else and therefore not immune to what ails it.

The lifebelt is this: whatever the economic system does, however the markets react, whatever the situation regarding your personal equity, the Universe goes on. It really doesn’t matter - yes, it has immediate worldly ramifications, absolutely, and if it’s your livelihood that’s threatened then you have already decided I’m an idiot - but in the bigger picture it is of little consequence other than to the life you give it by thinking about it. This is a man made problem that doesn’t exist except in a conceptual universe of notional profits and losses.

The Universe has invested in you and implores you to be true to your birthright as a human being rather than a wage slave. What is the one poignant thing about the rat race? It has to end, there is no such thing as a race that never ends - remember our ancestor in Hamelin who lead the rats away, he actually charmed them into the river where they all drowned. The only thing about the rat race is - it is run on a carousel so you never see the finish line and usually it’s too late, by the time you realise it the moment has passed, you have given your life to a fickle master that probably never even knew you existed.

Make your truths permanent, base yourself upon foundations that do not shift like the sands in a desert, whatever anyone tells you about finances, derivatives and so on, it is all nonsense, if everyone cashed in their chips the system would be exposed for the house of cards that it is. Confidence is the key, your confidence is better invested in the Universe whose ways are timeless and true, unchanging and constant.

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Found this article from AP interesting, it’s all grist to the mill of happiness, background information, food for thought:

By Eric Gorski and Trevor Tompson, The Associated Press

An extensive survey by The Associated Press and MTV found that people aged 13 to 24 who describe themselves as very spiritual or religious tend to be happier than those who don’t.

When it comes to spirituality, American young people also are remarkably tolerant - nearly 7 in 10 say that while they follow their own religious or spiritual beliefs, others might be true as well.

On the whole, the poll found religion is a vital part of the lives of many American young people, although with significant pockets that attach little or no importance to faith.

Forty-four percent say religion and spirituality is at least very important to them, 21 percent responded it is somewhat important, 20 percent say it plays a small part in their lives and 14 percent say it doesn’t play any role.

Among races, African-Americans are most likely to describe religion as being the single most important thing in their lives. Females are slightly more religious than males, and the South is the most religious region, the survey said.

The poll’s mission was to figure out what makes young people happy. And it appears religion helps.

Eighty percent of those who call religion or spirituality the most important thing in their lives say they’re happy, while 60 percent of those who say faith isn’t important to them consider themselves happy.

“If you believe God is helping you, then everything else isn’t as important and you can trust that there’s somebody there for you no matter what,” said Molly Luksik, a 21-year-old ballet dancer in Chicago and a Roman Catholic who attends Mass weekly. “Just going to church and everything … it’s very calming, and everyone is nice.”

Sociologists have long drawn a connection between happiness and the sense of community inherent to most religious practice. Lisa Pearce, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, said religion can indeed contribute to happiness, but she cautioned that the converse also can hold true.

“It’s easier for kids who are happy and have things going well in their life to find the time and energy to participate in religion,” said Pearce, co-principal investigator for the National Study of Youth and Religion. “It could be kids who have bad experiences in church end up leaving and being unhappy with religion.”

The poll also asked young people to choose between two statements about their views of other faiths.

Sixty-eight percent agree with the statement, “I follow my own religious and spiritual beliefs, but I think that other religious beliefs could be true as well.” Thirty-one percent choose, “I strongly believe that my religious beliefs are true and universal, and that other religious beliefs are not right.”

The latter statement is more likely to be the position of young teens 13 to 17 and those who attend religious services weekly.

However, tolerance is the rule overall. That doesn’t surprise the Rev. Paul Raushenbush, associate dean for religious life at Princeton University and author of “Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths.”

Young people eat lunch and play soccer with peers from other belief backgrounds, while adults tend to self-segregate with others of like mind, he said. Sweeping immigration reform in 1965 transformed America into the world’s most religiously diverse nation, and young people grew up with the second generation of the immigrant wave, he noted.

“This shows that it doesn’t require a lack of conviction in your own faith tradition to think someone else might have a similar type of conviction in their own,” Raushenbush said. “There is no sense of, ‘This diminishes my faith.’”

Traci Laichter, 14, went to Jewish preschool. Her grandparents are Holocaust survivors. Her family keeps kosher and displays a mezuzah - a little box holding verses from the Torah - on the door of their suburban Las Vegas home.

Her faith is strong and she believes it will last, but that doesn’t mean she thinks other faiths are devoid of truth.

“I believe whatever you believe is true to you and it really shouldn’t matter what other people think,” she said.

About 75 percent of those surveyed say God or a higher power has some impact on their happiness. At the same time, 90 percent believe happiness is at least partly under their own control.

“I think you do have control over how you are going to feel on a particular day,” said David Mueller of Lockport, N.Y., a 20-year-old college student who attends an evangelical Christian megachurch called The Chapel.

“When it comes to events in your whole life, it’s already somewhat laid out for you,” he said. “You can stray off to another path. But where God wants you to go, you are going to get there.”

–

The AP-MTV poll was conducted by Knowledge Networks Inc. from April 16 to 23, and involved online interviews with 1,280 people aged 13 to 24. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

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How does it go? We stand in our own patch of diamonds but see it not…

Ever watch a dog chase its own tail? It’s great and the dog is usually oblivious to what it is doing, it gets so lost in the thrill or the passion of the chase.

Today I went for a walk with the head honcho, she who must be obeyed, the little woman, ‘er indoors. You know the person I mean, right? Well, we have a route that we take, down along the waterfront, along the jetty and out into the sea, it’s just under five miles there and back and we can crack along at some pace when we need to, it’s a real cobweb blaster, the negative ions of breaking waves, particularly when there’s a swell as there was today, and the salty breeze have a healing effect.

A huge ship was leaving the mouth of the river and heading out to sea, it looked modern as it had a very ‘of the moment’ feel to it, almost a stealth cargo ship, obviously designed to cut gracefully through the waves and weather whatever seas it might encounter. We sat on a bench on the breakwater and looked at the ship beginning its voyage. I don’t know if it was a coaster or about to cross an ocean but I fancied the thoughts of the seamen as they left the haven of the river and moved away from the land. I have ridden out storms at sea and know the joy of placing your feet back on firm ground, so I wondered about their collective experience, the combined encounters of the crew with the elements.

We were discussing the financial repercussions of the current economic situation, and how it might start to affect people’s habits and their spending patterns. We were considering how much sympathy members of the public might have for city high fliers who had for years traded the markets with other people’s money and paid themselves huge bonuses - we thought: not much. I explained that for every winner in the markets there has to be a loser, profit taking and successful trades by their nature mean someone else has taken a hit.

The markets are at once a complicated but also very simple place. The difficulty arises, as we are experiencing now, when all that hypothetical intrinsic value is suddenly exposed as worthless. Paper money, figures on computers but not ‘real’ in the tangible sense that a gold ingot is real or a treasure chest is real. This is when confidence wavers and the single most important element of the fiscal and commercial system that we currently enjoy/endure is confidence. Without confidence people will not invest, there is no speculation and the capital markets run dry. People become uneasy, they worry and they hold on to what they think they’ve got. The irrigation that cash flow provides to the economy is directly analogous to the need for water in agriculture.

So we looked at the ship and my best beloved said, “The ship of the financial markets, sailing on an ocean of misery.”

I couldn’t top that so I wont try to. 

..if you meet him, beware. He is concerned with fulfilment, development, growth and well being. Do not fall for his shtick about doom and gloom, it’s a ploy to catch you off guard and leave you feeling happier without your even knowing it’s happened. He will try every low down, s.o.b. trick to lift your spirits and demonstrate the upside; you need a guy like this like you need… well you know what I mean. He will also use humour. Ruthlessly.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Are you happy now?

PS He is happier than a Nobel Prize winner

PPS He is not a Nobel Prize winner

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 image: shapeshift

Tell me something: what will you be remembered for?

Let me surround this question with irresistible reasoning. The Mayans, now they are remembered for stepped pyramids in what are presently jungles, complicated mathematics and also for disappearing from the face of the earth without a trace. The Spanish at the time of Phillip II as dogmatic hysteria prone bigots, if you feel that’s harsh read some of the works of Sepulveda, their spin doctor at the time, to have your eyes opened. The Romans at the collapse of the Empire as feeble, weak and unworthy of their heritage. The British at the height of their Empire as ruthless power brokers. The Germans of the 1920s and 30s as somewhat gullible and susceptible to fanaticism.

Whether we like the idea or not, and yes there are exceptions to every rule, history views events, places and people with a very precise sextant that dismisses the grey areas mercilessly.

It begs the question, how will our age be viewed by those who look back on it? Will we be seen as responsible, enlightened or developed? Are we to be the Generation Xers, the Me Generation, the post war baby boom first trans-global community emancipated from the tedium of national boundaries? Or will we be seen by history as something else? Americans call the generation of men and women who rallied to the call of resistance to fascism in the 1940s and who paid, in many instances, the ultimate sacrifice, the Great Generation. What will we be?

Narrow this down to the personal, how will you be seen when you have gone? Shift the temporal aspect and ask yourself, how are you seen now? How would you want to be seen? What would you like the abiding view others have of you to be?

Where do you see yourself to be limited in your expression of the hopes and ambitions that you would wish to fulfil? Here is the killer blow, history views that which is passed, the defining characteristic of history is that it is a done deal, it’s gone, events that have graced the stage of human affairs have taken their bow and been relegated to the already as opposed to the yet to be. You are still here, if you’re reading this, you are not yet history but very much in the here and now with the ability to define the as yet unappeared.

History will view you perhaps as a big noise, perhaps not. The ace in your hand is that you are here now and still have the option to choose. Exercise your option well.

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Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.  ~Albert Einstein

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Ikigai is culturally defined in Japanese society as a comprehensive concept describing subjective well-being. It is considered to be related to life satisfaction, self-esteem, morale, happiness as well as evaluation towards the meaning of one’s life.

image: netsrot

Study: Happiness Key To Healthy Life

Submitted by Piyush Diwan on Tue, 09/02/2008 - 04:58.

Yes, happiness is the key to healthy life. In a study, U.S. researchers found that people living happy and satisfied life make their future life healthier. Researchers analyzed the data collected in Australian surveys conducted in 2001 and 2004.

In these surveys, nearly 10,000 adults were asked various questions regarding satisfaction with life, happiness, presence of long-term, limiting health conditions and physical health. Researchers found that level of happiness and life satisfaction determined excellent, good or very good health.

Lead author Mohammad Siahpush of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha said, “Everything being equal, if you are happy and satisfied with your life now, you are more likely to be healthy in the future.”

Articles like this are fascinating to me, they appear regularly but never actually address what the mythic quality of happiness is or, more significantly, how to achieve it. Is this not the question you are looking for the answer to? It’s not about being told what you need but about finding out how to get it for yourself, surely?