Armchair philosophising/ psychologising

• [Respondent]: ‘There is also confusion as to what should be done as soon as I find myself feeling less than good. Sometimes I read that I should get back to feeling good quickly before investigating the feeling, other times I read that I should track back and investigate first in order to feel good.

• [Richard]: ‘The latter advice relates to consciously experiencing whatever it is which is preventing happiness and harmlessness (less it all be but a detached/ disassociated intellectual exercise) … for example: [Richard]: ‘It is impossible for one to intelligently observe what is going on within if one does not at the same time acknowledge the occurrence of one’s various feeling-tones with attentiveness. This is especially true with the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful). In order to observe one’s own fear, for instance, one must admit to the fact that one is afraid. Nor can one examine one’s own depression, for another example, without acknowledging it fully. The same is true for irritation and agitation and frustration and all those other uncomfortable emotional and passionate moods. One cannot examine something fully if one is busy denying its existence’

http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-method6.htm

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  • On-the-job real-time experiencing

    In short: armchair philosophising/psychologising will get you nowhere … and fast.

    RICHARD: The most effective way to investigate all the beliefs, ideas, theories, concepts, maxims, dictums, truths, factoids, philosophies, values, principles, ideals, standards, credos, doctrines, tenets, canons, morals, ethics, customs, traditions, psittacisms, superstitions, myths, legends, folklores, imaginations, divinations, visions, fantasies, chimeras, illusions, delusions, hallucinations, phantasmagoria and any other of the schemes and dreams and mores which constitute social conditioning is the hands-on moment-to-moment approach – the on-the-job real-time experiencing where all the real-life people, things and events are currently occurring in a real-world context – rather than armchair philosophising.

  • Modern Rationality

    Being artful often takes the form of armchair sophistry* (“gish gallop” for instance) in rationalists. Like anyone with an identity, native intelligence does not always operate and function cleanly and clearly on the movement’s members, despite well-meaning efforts and intentions.

  • Basic Resentment

    Furthermore, for such a sensitive, affective and cognitive human being who is also at all thoughtful about life, the universe and what it is to be living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are, any such idea of ‘feeling-good-for-its-own-sake’ ̶ let alone enjoying and appreciating being able to experience that general feeling of well-being (as in, an engaged relishing of feeling good and, thus, intimately approving being alive/ being here, by virtue of that personal delectation of ‘feeling good’ per se) as well – is a betrayal of all what they fervently hold intellectually dear, about the world in general and the human race in particular, as for them life itself is, essentially, a bum rap (an unjust punishment) when all is said and done.