Surviving and Thriving

[BlackDog]

I think the real reason you would learn to read and write Ancient Greek is to change yourself.

But unless you have an appetite to change yourself, it is better to remain as you are.

Changing yourself is a step into the unknown and is dangerous. So unless you have the appetite it is better not to take a bite. Look what happened to Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Describe for me what these changes might be like.

 

[Mole]

Describe for me what these changes might be like.

The process of personal change moves from the familiar to the unfamilar. Or we might say from the family to the outer world.

Or we might say personal change is moving from our face to our heart. We all maintain a false face to survive in society. For some it is not a good fit, for others it is jolted by trauma.

Normally we take our face for granted, so it becomes invisible to us, but if it becomes visible, it may become problematic and even unreal, so we look for something real in our heart.

The time of transition from our face to our heart is a time of danger. We can easily get lost. Or we can become dependent on a guru or an ideology. It may exacerbate a neurosis, or even precipitate a psychosis.

So to succeed in our quest for our heart, or we might say, to find our holy grail, we need independent motivation. And our motivation needs to be more than intellectual, it needs to be visceral.

So it is best not to embark on such a momentus change without an appetite for personal change. We need to be hungry for personal change.

So first we need an appetite, then we need courage, and good luck doesn't go astray.

 

[Mole]

No, if I'm little quiet on it, it's because I don't see the point (of discussing my OE) (by the way I got tired of this kind of "mensans" (and others gifted groups) shit, masturbating their brains about how-special-I-am-and-not-able-to-fit, how-I-was-lazy-at-school-but-had-a-so-brilliant(-and-still-unused)-potential blablabla instead of contributing significantly to improve society, CQFD).

And if I seemed to be hesitating, it's just that, in the meantine, I forgot to answer (and you're not the only victim of my negligence lol)

I didn't want to prove anything and don't take it personnally but:

1) When I'm discussing ideas, I don't necessarily want them to be brought down to a personal level

2) If I were an old man, I probably wouldn't sound "impressive" nor be suspected to try to impress someone => ask yourself why, not me

3) And most important, I'm european so I know what are the issues of this debate and why we've let Greece sink in the name of financial speculation (WTF ?!) and Europe has no future: there are so many people who are brain-washed, unaware of the importance of their common past and historical origins because of the social engineering which wants us to be rootless, politically disengaged, nihilists, apathetic consumers and exploitable workers, only living for instant gratification and our own little egotistical outlook...

4) I would also like to add that, in that perspective, most of those on thriving mode aren't like the ancient greeks or others leisure classes: they're no longer interested by inner quest or intellectual interests nor involved in civic life, but are spending their entire life on entertainments and consumption.
THAT is the essential difference.

Thank you for your interesting reply.

And I think you are going to make a wonderful contribution to Typology Central.

I love ideas and the history of ideas.

And although you are sensitive on this issue, Typology Central is about psychology. And psychology is combination of ideas and the personal. And some of us here want to revel in ideas and make personal contact.

However I am quite happy to revel with you in ideas, leaving the personal to its own devices.

 

[BlackDog]

The process of personal change moves from the familiar to the unfamilar. Or we might say from the family to the outer world.

Or we might say personal change is moving from our face to our heart. We all maintain a false face to survive in society. For some it is not a good fit, for others it is jolted by trauma.

Normally we take our face for granted, so it becomes invisible to us, but if it becomes visible, it may become problematic and even unreal, so we look for something real in our heart.

The time of transition from our face to our heart is a time of danger. We can easily get lost. Or we can become dependent on a guru or an ideology. It may exacerbate a neurosis, or even precipitate a psychosis.

So to succeed in our quest for our heart, or we might say, to find our holy grail, we need independent motivation. And our motivation needs to be more than intellectual, it needs to be visceral.

So it is best not to embark on such a momentus change without an appetite for personal change. We need to be hungry for personal change.

So first we need an appetite, then we need courage, and good luck doesn't go astray.

Thanks for your take on it.

BTW, your posting style is distinct; as a reader who notices styles, I have to say yours is one of the best. Do you, or have you in the past, written a great deal of poetry? Or possibly music? I may have told you this a long time ago, or that may just be a sense of deja vu on my part.

You say a lot, but your larger point is cloaked, or perhaps there isn't always one. It reminds me of INTJs and INTPs who will say something, and then leave it at that. It's an observation not necessarily connnected to an overarching point of philosophy or ideology they are trying to drive home. Honestly, to me it sometimes has a guru-like appearance, until I realize I am extrapolating out beyond where the thought ends.

Anyway,the closest I can come is to say that you sound like Tolkien if he was a Chinese philosopher. You have good consistency with what words you choose; for example, "So first we need an appetite, then we need courage, and good luck doesn't go astray."

In that sentence, you purposely or instinctively picked words that go together. The nouns (appetite, courage, good luck, astray) all first appear in Middle English, and three of them are either Anglo-French or straight out of Old French. Good luck isn't quite in place, as it arrived via Middle Dutch, (although not good, I think that's Old English) but it fits well because the emphasis of the sentence, although not the subject, is on astray.