Contentment & Complacency

I think in the states it’s something like 50000, that’s just going off the top of my head.

That’s median household income, which I think includes singles and couples.

There’s hardly a middle class anymore anyway, but that’s a topic for another thread, plenty of threads where people talk about the rich screwing the poor, and they are in some ways, but I’d rather talk about alternative values and asceticism, minimalism.

Yea it’s more a state of mind, I’m middle class, I have a job, a roof over my head and descent food on my table, I eat better than Warren Buffet, the guys a junk food junkie admittedly, I manage to cook every night, steak and potatoes, vegetables, and I make minimum wage.

Spirituality is secondary, what matters is survival and living comfortably, and that we’re content with that, and then spirituality and speculation come after, and we ought not to sacrifice our real needs on this earth for our spirituality very much, if at all.

a delusion … a Western propaganda stunt to hold up/protect Western superiority/exceptionalism/values.

the middle class all over the world is currently under enormous pressure … and it’s not a ‘survival’ issue … as Kriswest has reminded us several times … it’s a FEAR isuue … fear of falling down … or back down … into a lower social class.

Nominal poverty can’t hurt you … the fear of poverty can kill you … ergo: stress 24/7 weakens the body’s immune system … a weakened immune system is vulnerable to illness … all kinds of illness.

It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee … in fact it is way past such a time.

Spirituality is a frame of mind, of soul, of consciousness, not so much about paranormal, more about how one’s essence is of benefit not only to oneself but to others as well.

Yea and that can affect the rich too, that irrational fear, and that’s what causes the rich to screw each other and the poor over in the first place, this irrational fear that we’re going to starve, when we’re not, just go on welfare if absolutely necessary, but there’s still plenty of jobs.
Most Europeans live in apartments, North Americans don’t need homes, especially a big ones, you don’t need an SUV or a yacht or trips to the Caribbean.
We need to change our values, just get what you really need to survive and be relatively healthy, and then with the rest of your spare time, do whatever you really want, you can keep busy without much money, art, philosophy, inexpensive crafts, or just go meditate and be spiritual.
Humanity has to lose this irrational fear, or we’ll devour the earth.

Myself I don’t define spirituality that way, I define it as of spirits, ghosts, the incorporeal, the supernatural and so on.
For what you’re talking about I would use the word philosophy or perspective, attitude, metaphysics.
The way you feel about yourself and the world, being more harmonious.

Oh and I know that’s just an expression, but I don’t drink coffee, coffee is a real scourge, keeps the hamsters spinning on the wheels toiling.
We need to slow down, stop and smell the roses.

Hundreds of millions of people don’t have a pot to piss in, their ceiling is the stars, and their floor a dirt road, and they still get by.
That’s how much of the world lives.
Hundreds of millions more live in McMansions and drive SUVs and sports cars, so yea, I’m right, smack in the middle between those two large classes of folk, I’m middle class.

Really … when I walk outside to smell the roses … I smell shit … or it’s equivalent. :laughing:

About coffee … shame shame … coffee stimulates the brain … we need something to get billions of brains functioning properly … no?

Gloominary … you should consider changing your user name to Dreaminary … your entire attitude towards life may change … it will be like putting on rose coloured glasses.

As the song goes … que sera … sera. Whatever will be … will be.

The best we can do is attempt to see it coming. :smiley:

Yea sometimes life stinks… we should savor the sweet parts thou.

No coffee is a parasitic, poisonous bean which’s tricked the human race into growing more of itself to become the number two commodity in the world, right behind oil, and when you think about it, the two are very similar, oil, gasoline and coffee have gotten everyone in such a big hurry.
We need to cut back on or get rid of them altogether, I don’t know why everyone is in such a rush to destroy as many species as possible, but that’s what economic growth is ultimately, for the most part it is, the obliteration and/or subjugation of nature.
I would sooner ban coffee than alcohol, or at least regulate it, it’s very dangerous, it can cause severe anxiety, road rage or just rage in general, and it can impair ones driving and all sorts of things in sensitive individuals or when taken in medium-large doses.
It’s a serious drug, it can make you sick, or kill you.

I’m not dreaming, it’s the people who’re trying to make it rich who’re dreaming, especially in this piss poor economy, I’ve accepted myself and my life for what it is, and am making do.

The human mind is overstimulated, the quality of thinking needs to increase, but the quantity needs to decrease.
Coffee speeds things up but at the cost of accuracy, and necessity.
Coffee generates angst, it makes you think like there’s always a problem to solve.

People think about a lot of stuff that doesn’t need to be thought about, that’s what science is.
Science will ignite the atmosphere just to see what happens.
Its curiosity is insatiable, it doesn’t ask, do we really need to know this, to what benefit, at what cost?
It just consumes more and more info, it has grown so obese and cluttered with data that hardly any new data can penetrate it, new data just gets construed to support old ideas.

Science is a part of the of the sickness of society, this sickness can be summed up in a couple of words - avarice, and overconsumption.

I don’t want to assume so are you saying that the above is the way you see things? Survival is the only thing that matters to you?

Survival is the most important matter.
Other things can matter even if they have little or no bearing on survival, but they don’t matter nearly as much, which becomes evident when someone takes your food away, and you begin to starve.
You can be surrounded by all manner of extravagance and luxury, but if you’re starving, you’d gladly sell it all just to get a bit of food.

I mean sure, people commit suicide, but only when they’re completely and utterly hopelessly miserable, in despair, so long as they’re not, and often even if they are, people will go on living.
Usually people commit suicide cause they feel totally isolated from and useless to everyone else’s survival and happiness.

Yes survival is primary, you can’t pursue whatever else makes you happy besides just living if you’re dead, or in imminent danger, and arguably life itself does, or ought to make us happy, just living, especially if you’re healthy, enjoying the simple things like good food or company we take for granted, we don’t need or really even want extravagance and luxury when we examine these things carefully.

I would never significantly risk my life or health for a luxury or an extravagance, or I would only take a really very small risk, would you?
I think if you would there’s something wrong with you, in my view.
But then people do this all the time, whether it’s gangsters and gamblers gambling in casinos or on the stock market risking life and limb or bankruptcy for riches, or food, drug and sex addicts, workaholics, materialist consumerists.
People risk their lives, compromise their health and families for their addictions, but is this not sickness?
To risk and compromise the essential, for the inessential, the ephemeral, frivolous and more fleeting?
A poor assessment of value and importance on their parts?
Is it not what’s responsible for humanities doom: this rat race we’re on, this consumerist hell, leading us down a highway of destruction, erosion of the very environment on which we’re dependent?
I say it is, sickness.

Yea I rent an apartment, and take the bus, but I’m middle class, cause half the world doesn’t have that much, I’m actually rich.

1.6 billion people lack adequate housing.

I was smelling the evening air on a river yesterday, and it was a very particular kind of smell that I’ve experienced before, on another side of the world, at another time, and only at dawn, the smell of cool water, earth and trees, as if the local earth and water were releasing their essence into the air. The signature smell of that place. I wonder, do people even pay attention to these things anymore? Probably not, as we don’t spend that much time outdoors anymore and are too preoccupied with distractions that are getting more and more consuming. I know, people in the past may not have had computers or gadgets, or other luxuries, but surely they also experienced these same things and maybe even had names for these experiences. These things are free, watching the mist envelop the mountains, or feeling a drizzling rain in the early morning, or watching the sunset, or feeling a morning breeze. At times like these I feel connected and content/ fulfilled, like I’m where I’m supposed to be, and that there is nothing really more that I need from life, only to have experienced these things, and maybe have them flash before me once again right before my lights go out for good. Maybe a little melodramatic, I know, but at times I feel that humans don’t really need that much to be content, and overlook a lot of things that could do that for them, and this winding spiral of civilization is like a black hole that just keeps sucking in where enough is never enough, making man perpetually restless and dissatisfied with his own being. The man is disconnected with his own being/ place and looks like he will be even more so in the future; he will be chasing shadow puppets thinking the next one will fulfill him once and for all. The future man will be a like a wandering vagabond looking for self in all the wrong places. And some will feed on that need to temporarily satisfy their own, like cannibals feeding off each other in an attempt to fulfill themselves. This is the world we built to live in, false needs and false drives, and false ambitions. Like a dog chasing its own tail, or goslings flying after an airplane thinking it’s their mother. And in Fantasia land, where you are detached from nature and your own place, anything is possible because the link is gone. The man already misuses technology by putting too much trust into it. It is technology that will accelerate the mans isolation from his self. The man will have to come to terms with his mortality, his place in nature and in natural order of things, to find himself. If he doesn’t, he will always be isolated from himself, and will be always dissatisfied…and restless, no matter how advanced his techology becomes. I think, in the end, it will be a full circle, the man will realize his true place, but by then it may be too late, as he may be too dependent on technology. And he might have only two options left, to terminate himself or to keep going as he is, eternally restless, and homeless.

Well put.

Real needs as the proper physical nourishment?

Why can’t those needs be in harmony with our spiritual needs? Why can’t they both flow in the same river at the same time?
I kind of intuit that if our so-called spiritual needs are not met, if we do not meet them, then your so-called real needs are just about existing - a mundane existence.
If I can’t walk in the park, in the rain, appreciate the elements, admire the birds and the squirrels and other animals, worship the stars to the point that I cannot take my eyes away from them, post in ILP, listen to what I consider to be good music, read what i consider to be good books, share intimately (not necessarily sexually) et cetera ~~

THOSE ARE REAL SPIRITUAL NEEDS~ THOSE ARE REAL NEEDS ~~then I would not be a happy camper.
My tummy would be filled. I would have money in the bank. But in a way, I might be starving.

Your real needs and mine don’t have to be at odds with one another. They are both real and just as nourishing and nurturing.
Even a plant enjoys the sound of a melodic human voice and good music. :mrgreen:

Civilization is a vehicle of constant distraction wrapped up in endless fixated ideologies.

The reason we think about stuff that doesnt need to be thought about is because we have that capability so think in abstract terms

Science investigates observable phenomena and nothing else and so has nothing to say about the practicality of such investigation