Early Retirement Extreme Forums

The title is provocative as is Adam Curtis here when he says (in the context of how individualism has been harnessed by the capitalist system manufacturing off the shelf acts of expressing individualism)

The most radical thing you could do today is to do something extraordinary and not tell anyone you've done it. Not write a book about it, not put it on Instagram, not tell your friends. Just do something really really extraordinary, and not let anyone know you've done it.

Pretty sure some of the people here do this, though 'extraordinary' can be vague. Little acts of kindness from positive psych spring to my mind as little extraordinaries.

Thoughts?

Weeeellll ... it would be rather radical to do something today and NOT post about it on instafacetweet. Doing anything for internal reasons and not external validation would be unusual. Doing anything outside mass consumerism would be unusual.

Lots of thoughts of course.

Makes me think about why writers used to publish under pen names, and if it was truly incognito publishing or people in 'the right circles' knew anyway.

Somewhere on the forum I might have read a though experiment, something along the lines 'what would you choose: saving the world but nobody would ever found out it was you' or 'some fantastic achievement and you would get the credit for it'. Suppose one of those choices where the declared and the executed often don't match these days.

That was good.

A little further along in the interview he talks about risk and how everyone feels anxiety. Spot on.
https://youtu.be/HhqRgKWyT38?t=1445

Well, the notion of risk has probably been around for quite a bit longer than since 1992 (actuarial profession?), but I think the crux of what he is saying is that there is no vision for a better state of affairs.

Like in life, prepare for the worst and hope for the best; he seems to be saying there is lack hope these days.

Back to the OP: one could ask what other than recognition (and other obvious needs) motivates efforts, and I think the spiral dynamics and vector carrots threads strive to do just that (ETA: in addition to spotting the more standard motives for particular groups and calling the motives out).

And it really makes me hold on for a sec and contemplate when I try to imagine doing something for no reason other than to do it. No recognition, no novelty seeking, not curiosity, no physiology, no karma coming back to me at some point. I am not sure if I can imagine it (I seem to remember some philosophers from fin de siecle where thinking about it too, but I know this only from talking to philosophy students rather than reading source materials).

Perhaps it would presuppose some form of idealism, carrying out the world that ougths to be, but then this would also imply some sort of satisfaction.

I find thinking about it enriching. There is one book I wanted to read on the topic of motivation that I'd been putting aside for over 10 years so maybe will finally read it.

Curtis gives a strong example: where he mentions Luther who went against the very inflated morals of the official church in those days. And started a movement to bring morals back.
Guitarplayer (thanks for the OP) brings it in connection with the ideas of spiral dynamics and vector carrots! I think thats a very good illumination and therefore helpful to bring us from stagnation/fear to sparkling again. That it is now also again about morals and leaving the hyper-situation (fake) of the nation/world governments/organisations die.

I try to avoid to see everything with an economic lens. I am (more biased to) bringing myself back to quietness, to a healthy and fit way of living. I do not fear covid, I avoid to become swept away with "news" bombs and general doom, I do not fear inflation, I do not fear climate change.
I accept that those exist.

And I think and behave as best as possible for me to have my own body-immune system at par, to use very sparingly media,
and together with DW look for ways to avoid waste in the broad way as it can be seen. I love working part-time as volunteer. And I try to find out ways how to use SD (and vector carrots) to help other people to be at ease and to live without avoidable pain.

Nowadays when people compose even a couplet or a poem, they take credit for it, sometimes the copypasta becomes so extreme that people even take credit for others' work. The issue with Puranic literature is the opposite. Vyāsa the Compiler is attributed with classifying the Vedas into four, composing not only the Mahābhārata but also the 18 Purāṇa-s and 18 Upapurāṇa (sub-purāṇa-s.)

guitarplayer wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:03 pm

Thoughts?

Ha ha.