Contentment & Complacency

Gloominary,

How are you open to spirituality?

at the risk of sounding ‘pesky’ … perhaps your intuition telling you man has got it backwards points to the better way.

Spirituality being at the top of the hierarchy … primary … all else subordinates to spirit.

Some wealth and status is needed, tenable, and enjoyable, but some is superfluous, and not at all worth risking life and limb over.
It’s not that any particular thing that people pursue is worthless, just the excess of things, the excess needs to be trimmed, or relegated to its proper place.

Is working 60 hours a week so you can afford to live in a mansion you’re mostly away from not a kind of sickness?
Does an individual or a small family really need dozens of rooms?
Will they even enjoy having them all that much?
Will they use them?
Statistics suggest while the middle class is somewhat happier than the dirt poor, averagely, the upper class isn’t any happier, or healthier for that matter than the middle class, so why’re some people always trying to be richer, then, sometimes at the expense of society, the environment, or their own well being?
Envy?
A distortion of values?
Furthermore, while the middle classes of wealthy countries like Canada or Norway may be somewhat happier than poor classes of wealthy countries, studies seem to suggest the middle classes of most countries, rich ones like the aforementioned and relatively poor ones like India and China, tend to differ little in terms of happiness.

So the middle class is where it’s at or at least to regard yourself as middle class which a lot of poor people do.

What’s the median income for the middle class these days and is that based on a partnership, a couple?

Sometimes I research stuff on the paranormal, I’m open to the possibility of such things, for me everything is possible, but I have yet to come to any definite conclusions about them, and it’s most important to figure out how we ought to live in this world, and deal with the everyday, the things which’re more consistent, predictable, and within our power to affect.

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?