How are we supposed to know what is right? We have societies views of what life should be like. We have our parents ideas of what we should live like and what kind of world is out there waiting for us. We have teachers trying to impact our futures through what they think life should be like. We have all this external information coming at us about how we are supposed to live, but when is it our own turn to think for ourselves, to create, imagine and live through our own eyes with our own wants and desires. College is a start to our journey I suppose- one foot in, one foot out kind of ordeal-where we are “babysat” in living quarters and being fed information but now it was our own choice to stay and continue to learn. 

Each person’s morals are all skewed towards their own likeness and bias-rightly so since it is their own conscience that they are dealing with. Their motives for doing such actions seem justified to them but to the outside world, it seems like the farthest thing from the norm. Walking down the street there is a fight between two gentlemen. A lot of yelling and fists are being thrown but there isn’t a lot of context to the why this happened. To most, it seems silly to be fighting and brutalizing each other for a victorious winner, but to them, it could be a settling an argument that couldn’t have waited. Some wild circumstances could have created a lot of unrest within one’s life and it may seem that there are only a limited amount of options to take.

An interview was with myself, it is only fair. Taking ideas from Plato and connecting it to my own.

So then how are we supposed to figure out what is right within this world? As I have gotten older I have begun to question things that seemed to be normal. I didn’t like how some of the things that people were so easy to roll over on sat with me. For example, it seemed weird to me how so many people went to church and praised a figure that didn’t exist in the now. All these people praying but what was going to hear them. It seemed like another vice in a way to cope with daily life. Instead of solving it or enduring the pain, one escapes to a church and asks for begs for help and understanding- just the same as someone running to their home to drown themselves within a bottle, just a much much healthier alternative. It seemed so far from the truth or the actuality of what was happening and people just saw it as normal. A change in awareness, actually caring about how your life might turn out can alter one’s thinking just enough to create new branches of thought that weren’t there before. The ideas for what is right is different for everyone since we each possess a slightly altered moral compass. These beliefs are no more than just trial and error for learning life lessons about oneself through each new venture. 

How to live a flourishing life according to Plato and Aristotle

Something that has struck me at a loss for an answer is what makes you happy? This is not brief happiness that is won over through physical gifts and momentary praise, the focus is upon life happiness.  To break down this loaded question, one could define what it means to be home.

Home in my mind, is not my hometown, it is not where my family still resides even though that is my home, it is not the one which I attach to. I have been taught rules, life lessons and emotional intelligence from my family and the members that filter throughout it, but it is just the skeleton for your life.

Home for some is where there friends are. Chico is my home, where I have met people that I want to remember forever and continue to stay in contact. This group of guys makes me want to share a home with them and experience the four years of this Chico experience together. But however hard it may be, this is still not the home for me. The love that reciprocates throughout our group is surprising but it shows how much we have gotten to like each other over the course of two months.

I catch myself in a daydream much too frequently throughout the day, I mostly long to be stuck in that daydream and never to return. I am at a home but I am not where I should be. Chico is my point in my life to take my potential and make it into something better than just average. If I have all this improved self-worth and contributing to society but that is just the bare minimum of life. There is someone who makes everything I do, give it a little more reason, even though I can’t describe the how, I feel a motivation that wasn’t there when she wasn’t there. The home that isn’t a home at all, but someone who is my home. The place I want to be with most is not any location whatsoever, it is a person. I believe that is where home should be.

https://www.homedepot.com/

“You are too concerned with what’s what and what will be. There is a saying, yesterday was history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift that is why it is called a present”

— Master Shi-Fu (Kung-Fu Panda)

Expectations are something that makes ordinary people into something godlike or could completely destroy a person. A decision holds so many life-altering moments within just a simple choice. Holding weak expectations is like being underused at a job, you are contributing something but “are you really?”, it is a waste of a person- in a sense one’s physical capital is being used but is one might not be truly happy-, a waste of intellectual power that one could be giving its all to an undiscovered passion. Unearthing purpose is funny because if you don’t know what you really want to do, how are you supposed to just find out. College is helpful since it tries to make branches of things people might find interesting. Finding one’s true passion where getting up every day would be full of excitement because that “dream job” is now just their normal job.

When my father would drive me home from our travel tournaments and our team would lose or something bad happened that day I would sulk and fume at myself in the car on the ride back to the hotel yelling about all the stupid decisions I made or a poor call by the referee. He would always wait for me to let it all out and say, “Now you know all the things you want to work on so next time will be better.” Quite simple wisdom but it is very applicable to most situations in life. Learning that what has happened already cannot be changed or altered providing direct insight and knowledge into one’s present life. More the reason to not fear the future and fret upon hypotheticals that do nothing except make things worse, like Po from Kung-Fu Panda for example when he lost faith in becoming a Dragon Ninja Warrior. The focus on present actions and life that is actually happening is what I, as well as, Master Shi-Fu are trying to stress. The number of beautiful interactions, that happen all at once all and all around you constantly, could be missed because you were just stuck in a Twitter trance.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441773/

As thoughtful beings who discovered free will, it is quite odd to realize how certain societies throughout the ages had to learn such a thing since we are thought of to be from a much higher caliber of intellectual conscience among the walks of life on Earth. When a decision is made, there is no pause to think about making a decision. There is no choice for us since they just pop up like thoughts throughout the day. You don’t have to think to make a thought, the same way you don’t decide to make a decision. Therefore, who is doing the choosing that we thought we created?

There is an idea that represents this illusion. In a video game, there is an option where one must choose between three doors to go through to claim a prize. Everything is unknown, but once you choose you could be getting something good, where you pride yourself or something bad, where you are disappointed with your decision and outcome. But it is all a trick since whatever door someone picks, the prize one may receive is always randomly generated. The hope and want that is instilled within a person all make it seem so real like you actually had a chance.

A common understanding people hold is that one cannot escape their own fate. It seems that the “ideal” way ones life must go is already predetermined and figured out. It seems that the surprises in life are merely the twists and turns throughout one’s life. Why think of the surprises and unexpected adventure as a negative thing, they are the definitive moments within in someone’s life, the same moments that shape a person into what they ought to be. The other half of the puzzle is transforming the “ought” into the real deal. Another step in life, without a how-to guide.

“We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without a decision. But if a decision itself were voluntary every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide – An infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide” ~Alan Watts

https://aeon.co/essays/do-i-have-free-will-in-zen-the-question-makes-no-sense

When you are walking down the street and something jumps out of a bush in front of you, your body reacts. The body reacts due to sensations that you just went through. These sensations are processed and what the outcome of these “things” are emotions or feelings. Emotions provide the human with life through each sensation of the day something new could arise and take heed of that opportunity. The word emotion, in its root form, means “to move” in Latin. Emotion in my eyes is a sensation that prompts the person with impulses to act upon. As with all life, you must act, and acting is a key essence to live. Only in civilized adults are we able to see emotions being stopped halfway with no further action. This can be the biggest burden of someone’s life who is too scared to act and march forward on his life quest. It could also be quite a good gift when known how to properly wield it. People regret their foolish impulses when they say something they know they shouldn’t have. In some sense to save a child from getting hit by a car is an act of pure passion over thought and reason. Most people would think about themselves, but in that moment of pure helplessness a sense of paternal instinct has kicked in for someone else and then the hero is born.

Fight or flight is built into all of us as homo sapiens or “thinking man,”  but it is the emotional aspect that makes us act this way.  In a situation, we are faced with an option to fight. When angered our body unconsciously pumps blood into the hands to be prepared for a fight. When faced with a flight option, the fear component is prepping the legs with blood in case of a near dash decision while your body is releasing adrenaline to increase the success rate. Humans also suffer a “deer in the headlights” effects where we have a pause in the action to whether decide if storing all this energy is worth it and hiding is a better case. Emotions are the life to our bodies and learning how these feelings work is as important as learning oneself.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Emotional_Intelligence.html?id=OgXxhmGiRB0C&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false

To me and what I have learned this past week, obedience is a condition of the human to carry out desired “tasks” in order to receive a reward in the form of satisfaction. In the case of Milgram and his experiment, his outcome of obedience was satisfaction in the idea of doing a good job, completing the task and pleasing the scientist with the outcome. Since the task was of a rather uncomfortable nature for most people, inflicting pain upon another sole, the people’s reactions are guarded be a facade of empathetic reactions and willingness to comply with the authority. It seems peculiar how people get caught up within the act of the experiment, the loss of free will is given to the scientist letting him dictate your actions that affect another human’s well-being all in the name to “help” science.

As human beings, we try to please one another because the satisfaction one receives is a great thing. That is perhaps when kids get to a certain age, Christmas because of something a little more magical than getting new Legos. Obedience is a great tool in every sector of the world, how else would most people, followers, do their thing without being told what to do. From a very young age, we have been taught to listen to our parents and follow rules, most likely for good measure. In school we are taught to respect teachers, we are taught usually to respect government type sanctions like police and firemen. We follow television personnel and government tweets like its the Bible, everyone likes to have some form of obedience because the idea that satisfaction will come ones way is overpowering and people, believe it or not, like to be liked. Obedience is a tool that can be wielded and used for good like we have seen many times before or for evil doings like we have seen much too many times before. There is much too much sadness in the world so if people know when to be obedient and seek proper and just satisfaction, we might be just a little better off.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html

If you want to explore the depths of your brain, going on a “what if …” journey can be a very enlightening game.

What if there wasn’t a god in the world, all the people going to churches praying to someone, are people asking to be saved from their current life or it could just be a social congregation that eases stressors of daily life.

What if no one person or thing assigned a meaning to our construction. What if the purpose of this life is nothing because it does not matter what we do on this planet or throughout the duration of our existence. Who is going to scold the whole human race for slowly destroying the world?

Absurdity is a relative word to describe that state of feeling, being completely lost in a world that you have known your whole life. It is daunting to look at the world as a clean slate, getting to choose your own path, decide your outcomes and decisions to get there. It all can be too much because we humans are prone to much emotional struggle. The amazing thing about all this is that you can then call yourself the almighty God and do what you want to do. It’s a power shift even if you have never thought about it, as you do your thinking changes because then you change your perception of what this God fellow might do. Designing a roadmap of life in a world who possess no real objective or goal seems as realistic as trying to push a cow onto its back. The funny thing is, instead of trying to push the cow over, you could just go around it. In a much more realistic idea with, we don’t need to give the world purpose, we just need to find out what our purpose is. That’s the beautiful thing about living in an absurd world, everything you encounter is nothing, but nothing is everything.

 

https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/07/24/albert-camus-interview-absurd/

Suppose one day there are three old wise men sitting around a table the three of them decide to take a swig of vinegar. The first wise man, Confucious, takes a sip and says it tastes sour. As with the sour taste of the vinegar, he also holds a sour content for the way the Earth operates with the people inside it. We are a species that is morally flawed, having no consequences for the disruption of his idea of what the world should look like. The second wise man, Buddha, said the vinegar tastes bitter. Before the “Buddha” was born, Siddhartha Gautama was prophesized to either become the ruler of India or to be a very Holy man. His father determined to ensure his son’s rightful place as ruler, kept Gautama in captivity for 29 years of his life. He received all the luxuries that could keep a person entertained, but one day he snuck out of the confines into the common world. He walked the streets and saw a starving boy, an ill man, and a dying woman. He was filled with a great deal of sadness in what he saw and what seemed to be so “normal” to everyone else. He also encountered a Holy man who was living within peace among all the bitterness that He encountered. Amazed by this mans way of life, he set out for his own. The basis of Buddha’s beliefs consists within the constraint of “nirvana” which means “blowing out flames and desires”. Buddha believed that through the desires that create suffering, we can eliminate the need for such things through the 4-fold process to reach Nirvana. The third wise man, Lau Tzu, takes a sip of the vinegar and states how sweet it tastes. Lau Tzu saw life as rows of underlying harmonies call the Dao, or “the path”. Through his optimistic view of life, a main keystone of Daoism is Wu-Wei which translates to “flowing; effortless action”. The way of life needs to be taken less seriously, where he stresses the importance of stillness, in not doing and absorbing the life that is happening around oneself. Tao Tzu wrote, “Nature does not hurry but everything gets accomplished.” He believed that distractions take away from the experiences that shape your life, in our day and age technology is a killer on life experiences. Lau Tzu also preaches about instead of being who we ought to become, embrace who we are. Loving oneself for ones true self can open up a new perspective on the current world that one might have been blinded from.

View at Medium.com

You know when you’re in a dream but you realize your environment has turned into the plot of Inception. The ability to realize and recognize you are in a dream and take control of your subconsciousness to meld your nighttime slumber into something unexplainable. Lucid dreaming is the awakening to the world your subconscious has created. In this dream world which you are now aware of, your conscious mind begins to change and create the world you would see fit. Socrates, a founder of philosophy some may argue, lived in Greece during mid-300BC, developed a theory for the outcomes of death. He said that there are two scenarios that could happen after death; 1. There is a painless sleep for eternity,  2. There is an actual afterlife. If there is a God in this world, in a Christian sense, one would try to spend their whole life trying to impress That Someone. The sole motivation behind your current existence is to better prepare yourself for an undetermined and unknown world. If one chooses to live life, the same way described as a dream, making all decisions to better your life and happiness in the current life. This life could be the one that counts, if the afterlife isn’t what it is cracked up to, our choices now decide all our future outcomes, so as an intelligent species we are primed to overanalyze and calculate our fate. Completely accepting the current world and that this could be “heaven,” alters thinking in my mind because I believe that it unearths a new kind of beauty that wasn’t there before, an unearthed kind of appreciation for life. Every choice we make, there is a development in our story, there is a twist an unexpected factor that could not be calculated, but it happens in that it ensures that life doesn’t fall short of an occasional surprise.

My name is Owen Kneafsey and you can follow me on any social media platform if you feel like seeing how “living like Larry” turns out. I love to draw and skateboard in my free time and explore the realms of my mind and thoughts. The main idea behind this blog is a place for me to be able to turn my ideas and what I’ve learned into words and share them. I don’t know how well they will turn out but I love topics that will be contemplated on here. My goal is to unearth things most people don’t usually think about that are truly worth a ponder. Questioning your purpose and asking general questions about life should be things to take in consideration as you move through life. I want to learn and relate these thoughts back to the reader in a way that is simpler and relatable, than some obscurities that pop up in older writings. I hope these are an interesting read, this blog is like chicken soup for the soul except it’s more fascinating.