Challenges create the opportunity for both increased awareness due to lessons learned when scrutinizing intellectually honest analysis and self-analysis is applied as well as the possibility for an increase in resilience. Research in psychological resilience began with studying children of schizophrenic parents – the realization being made that about 1/3 of the children actually became more able to cope with catastrophic situations; their Chapel Perilous being visited and conquered successfully. These trials of childhood helped shape their abilities in their formative years and unlocked the capacity to cope and even shine in situations that might otherwise lead to other collapse on the part of the individual stuck in said situation. Their ego-resiliency and ego-control was actually improved by their atmospheric conundrums.
This can be likened to Ilya Prigogine's dissipative structures which upon threshold-reaching perturbations cause the affected system to have to adapt - sink or swim.
The importance of putting your philosophy into action – otherwise what’s the point in developing it?
Individualism as a basis – think for yourself; act for yourself
The importance of self-motivation, and discipline – institutionalized education is not necessarily (especially in today’s world) going to give you a well-rounded, useful philosophy.
You are not born with purpose – you develop purpose. This is why it is so important to develop as informed a philosophical policy for living and decision making as possible.
On the one hand we do what we have to do to survive and reproduce – producing (and producing better products and ideas than others especially) enables us to survive and reproduce better (at least in a free-market society) for we can make a better living (and hence survive better – because the more financial means the easier it is to afford better food, shelter, protection, etc.), as well as find a better mate and hence, reproduce better.
Whereas surviving and reproducing better are both preferable in order to enjoy life whilst living it one must acquire the ability to appreciate (an art in itself).
Once you develop the ability to think for yourself and educate yourself with all the necessary knowledge (and start to develop ‘wisdom’) you can tackle (or at least begin to) the otherwise seemingly meaninglessness of life through balancing both the survival / reproduction aspects of life with the enjoyment / progress aspects (a further art in itself).
It is important to keep your ‘system of belief’ open-ended (Pancritical Rationalization) always allowing for new information to be applied if it fits in logically (i.e. it passes the rigorous analysis of reason and is found to be ‘true’). This is also why one must continue ones education both formally through actively seeking new knowledge through all forms of media as well as learning from experiences. This is why we must develop finely-tuned memetic filters both for traditional memes and experiential memes as experiences tend to affect our thinking via our subjective emotional responses to said experiences more so than the objective ‘intellectual’ responses we tend to have toward memes acquired through reading or conversation, although heated conversation tends to incur emotional responses for instance our bias toward being right for our own sake – what I call the ‘I want to be right all the time’ ego fallacy, or the Passionate Believer Fallacy.
Once we dogmatize our ideas and opinions we tend to lose conceptual validity and oftentimes validity of our actions as well.
The desire to control stems from fear. The more fear you can conquer the easier it is to enjoy life. This said, it is not always useful merely to conquer a fear, it is oftentimes useful to avoid that which causes the fear (or the object of fear more precisely) i.e. fear of death or painful injury. Conquest of fear should not lead to a subsequently haphazard lifestyle; it should not lend license to carelessness / recklessness.
I find it far more useful to first develop a system for thinking than a system of thinking. Once you have rules laid out for the gathering of knowledge, then you can go through knowledge only assimilating that which can be logically shown to be ‘true’. Next you must combine the ideas to conciliate a full, consistent philosophy which in itself is a framework for action in day-to-day life.
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