what contributes to happiness
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Why so much fear about death?
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For the overwhelmingly secular society we live in, one assumes that it is not connected to any metaphysical concern about the possibility of an afterlife and the need for redemption.
If anything, Western societies seem to have a death instinct hanging over us, especially evident in late empire USA which has turned itself into a fantastic killing machine.
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When one thinks about the opposite of Thanatos, Eros, some interesting thoughts are triggered. Simple linear logic might suggest that a strong Thanatos would be consistent with a weak level of Eros. If true, how might this weak love of life be evident? Where would one look to see a robust sensuality not being expressed in a society’s everyday life? Using C. S. Lewis’ formulation of the four aspects of gift love as a useful structure to start to survey the landscape, – a less than hopeful picture emerges of the state of itsWestern cultural expression.
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In vicious caricature:
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Motherhood/fatherhood/affection – contracted to for profit ‘child care’ and limited to dogs.
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Friendship – degenerated to social media collections.
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Eros in loving relationships – overwhelmed by pornography.
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Charity/Compassion – Blame the victim.
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How has this come about one might ask.
Some have said that it started in the Eurocentric world with the death of God and its replacement with failed humanism. However, the death of that God was not the death of the Cosmic Mind-like mystery sitting behind everything and usually talked about in the philosophical stream called Personal Idealism. Nor by some readings of the personal nature of that mystery; embedded in human consciousness and expressed most powerfully in Mark’s Gospel of the ‘Western Religion’.
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However, all of that is irrelevant if the mindset of Eurocentric Peoples cannot be prized loose from Philosophical Materialism and the failed experiment with Humanism.
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Until a new solid rock is found to tether a new Western Mythos, the idea and experience of happiness will continue to experience head winds.
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Vladimir Putin’s thoughts in an interview he recently gave to the Financial Times and accessed via the link below, are thought provoking. One can understand the intense hatred expressed not only by US citizens but also by other Eurocentric people who have hitched their wagon to the failed humanism post. Here he is telling the West that Liberalism (humanism) has become obsolete. More than that, in a similar way to the message of the 2001 catastrophe in New York sent by Usama Bin Ladean, he is in effect asking “who are you dude”? You have no rock to stand on, in fact it is becoming obvious to peoples around the world that the West is sinking in quick sand. Shining the light on someone’s failure is most likely to call for destruction if that someone is asleep to their own condition! – The Soviet Union has already experienced it, resulting in its demise. Peoples of the Russian Federation have had to look inward to start to come out of the catastrophe.
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Can we?