A better life.

It's funny. When I sit down and actually think about it, I've spent much of my life struggling from one hurdle to the next. Some times you can get so raped up in that blind pursuit that you forget to ask your self why. For the most part it has been in the pursuit of finding answers, though I seem to have lost sight of the questions. There was a time when I could be objective and clear about my decision making, but as time has pasted my determination seems to have been reduced to going along to get along. What happened to self determination? Like most, it spends much of it's time watching reality TV. *Sighs*

i feel that if you want to have a perfectly docile population who won't get up in arms about injustice then you feed them a diet of pap ... soap operas ... royal weddings ... gossip ... celebrity ... reality tv ... magazines ... it is human nature to care about stuff and people will care about whatever is in front of their noses ... so if that is all inconsequential nonsense then nobody much will actually be bothering about anything potentially troubling to those "in charge" ... if you are worrying about getting perfect pecs ... or showing your belly without shame ... or whether charles marries camilla ... or which celeb wanked off a pig ... then you won't be thinking about other things ... this is why they give prisoners tellies ... it keeps them docile and gives them something to talk about ...

Sartre sometimes got it right. Jasper I am scared to click on that very long beetroot url in case it takes me so deep into cyberspace that I'll never find the way back.

Abstinence Simplicity Silence

bootiful

another sparklingly intellectual debate brought to you by users of abc tales dot com ...

it's shocking ain't it?

oooh...missed this fab thread ! Oddly, I see a better life as the life I had when I was younger. A bit like in this story book I had as a kid about a goose who goes wandering from her farmyard because the grass looks greener and tastier in the field. Each field looks greener and she goes further and further encoutering all sorts of nasty dangers. She then flees back to her farmyard where she discovers the grass is the best she has ever tasted! When I was a kid, simple things made me happy; abseiling at guide camp, singing hymns in school assembly, Church activities, staying in retreat houses and field centres which contained jaded 1970's mismatched furniture. Only thing is, I didn't realise how happy I was until it had gone. I want to reclaim this! Am I being naieve in thinking I can ? Is what we think we want, what we really need? In my case that the pleasures of childhood will make for a happy adult life? Answers on the back of the postcard to Sr Judith, c/o, St Mary's Dominican Convent...

Its all happening hear isn't it. Never seen the forum so active.. Don't all put you're view forward at one's folks, I can only respond to one at a time ;-

I subscribe to the notion that the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence because they spray paint it to look that way. In my case there is no golden era to which I would want to return--certainly not childhood, which I recall as very confusing, unsettling, and depressing. Compared to that, I'm already living a better life. Though I do recall one very happy experience: it was an extremely hot and humid summer day in about 1963. No one had airconditioning in those days, so some of the neighborhood kids took matters into our own hands and had a water fight with water pumped by hand from my granny's well. She lived next door, so I didn't have to go far. There were about 4-5 of us, as I recall, and we each found a bucket and chased each other around the yard soaking the next guy with cold well water. The best part was that when my mother came outside to see what the noise was all about, she laughed instead of screaming. I can only guess that the valium had kicked in by then as laughing was not her usual reaction to such things.

<> Wonderful! I think you need to look carefully at your desire to revisit or recreate your childhood Jude, it's the here and now that matters and now is very different from then. I do have some sympathy - I had a lovely childhood overall, until we moved abroad when I had just turned 13. I think I have only very recently realised the true legacy of our childhood years and how best to use the truths contained within it. It is not about recreating circumstances/surroundings but about connecting with that unique thing that is your inner self, your true sense of self at an instinctual and unconscious level - a place you can be where you know for certain that what you are doing is right, that it is true in the deepest sense. We wander away in varying degrees from the truths we once knew and lived instinctively; the sense of belonging for example, a sense of the right place for ourselves in relation to all our experiences. The wandering can take so many different forms and can contort us so much against our inner truths, sometimes blinding us to them completely, and the resulting struggle and searching is huge and painful. Sometimes only miracles can bring us home. Some people never come home because they are too lost and nothing happens to trigger the chain of events that can lead them back. Just in the last few days someone came along and lifted me up from the landscape that my journey had taken me into. I watched as the view receded behind me, letting go of everthing that I had clung to to maintain functionality; letting go completely of all the pain that the journey had put me through. It's the ability to let go and finally come to rest that tells you that you are finally there. x

I keep getting told off for not thinking and planning for the future. The thing is! I have tried this before but life gets in the way! So, I tend to live in the now. If I have the cash I spend it, if I don't I don't. I hate credit. Very heavy stuff credit you know. I try to make each day as good as I can get it. I want it all now, here, not some time in the future that may never come. Bollocks to that!lol. Mind you I am also considered immature! Which personally I don't mind at all. It does seem to annoy other more responsible, mature, hardworking, miserable individuals though, which when you think about it, is a bonus. Smiling Tai

yes

"Is what we think we want, what we really need?" The instinct to 'better oneself' is surely a good thing. "With to days cultural phenomena of reality TV and Celebrity over kill, is this not just another form of distracting and diminishing our attention from who we really are." I think reality TV on the whole has been very beneficial to society. I particularly think the programmes that pitted quite different peoples (eg Master/Servant, Wife swap, lifestyle swop and a whole host of challenge programs) were very educational for participants and audience alike. I certainly was humbled on many occasions, to see quite different peoples reaching some sort of human accomodation, when they were forced together. Previously, they had just demonised and skirted around each other. These forums are an example of a 'reality' show at times. Where would you get such a mixed bunch talking to each other... we may not always like each other yet we still talk, and that is a good thing. I think it is important to keep on talking to people you don't like, when they behave in a neutral/positive manner. And who we really are is always defined in relation to others. Just make these 'others' as more inclusive a group as you can, that is the secret to happiness. "And if you are told that their is nothing to achieve in life beyond material success, is this not just reinforcing a narrow, cliché picture of what a good life is. " Real material success is when you surround yourself with objects that have had care, love, attention and thought poured into them (and with people who understand enough, that that is what they ought to try and do to everything they touch). Things that have had much human time spent on them tend to (but not always) be more expensive. It is no surprise we are attracted to material things, in my view, they can envelope spirituality. What nees to be redefined is our relationship to things... not to automatically assume that materialism is 'bad'. "In other words, if to days youth are constantly bombarded with 'celebrity' as the ultimate model of what a better life might be, are we not just being sold a very basic and unrealistic distraction from reality? " Celebrities are perceived as people who have greater control over their lives i.e. they tend to have more financial freedom, and a greater ability to do the things that 'they' want to do without recourse to others. It is why I think people are attracted to them, want to be like them. If they are celebrities just for being that, they are however slaves to the process (and not free at all), and really not to be envied at all. What say you.

? Smarmy ******!

John, Sod Celebrity. What we need is Cerebrity. Won't find much of that here, though.