living in the world as it is with people as they are

Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Noam Chomsky

RESPONDENT: At first glance that seems totally reasonable as [Noam Chomsky] has never offered any solution to what fundamentally is wrong in my life.

RICHARD: Indeed not … it is common-place to blame the politicians, the teachers, the clergy, the parents and so on, for the troubles that beset the community and the citizen alike. It is to no avail to blame the politician, for example, for the antics they get up to, because underneath the politician – under the role and the image – lies a ‘human’ heart. The politician is making the best job of it that he or she can do, considering the burden that they carry … which is the burden of being ‘human’. They have, like any other ‘human’, an ego and a soul nestled uncomfortably within them.

They have an identity, a psychological or psychic entity that exists inside of their bodies.

RESPONDENT: But is it not true that their entity causes my entity pain in making decisions that restrict my movement, my happiness?

RICHARD: It matters not whether it is true, that another identity causes you pain with their decisions, or not … the fact remains that any action, as proposed by Mr. Noam Chomsky for instance, within ‘humanity’ as it is, is doomed to failure. Unless this fact can be grasped with both hands and taken on board to such an extent that it hits home deeply, nothing will change, radically. There will be changes around the edges, variations upon a familiar theme, but nothing structurally new, nothing even approaching the mutation-like change which is essential for the human race to fully appreciate the fullness and prosperity of being alive on planet earth, in this era, as a flesh and blood body.

To remain ‘human’ is to remain a failure.

[..]

RESPONDENT: Okay so there is no point whatsoever in reading of how the world is organised?

RICHARD: No … all I said was that it is common-place to blame the politicians, the teachers, the clergy, the parents and so on, for the troubles that beset the community and the citizen alike and that it is to no avail to blame the politician, for example, for the antics they get up to, because underneath the politician – under the role and the image – lies a ‘human’ heart and that the politician is making the best job of it that he or she can do, considering the burden that they carry (which is the burden of being ‘human’) inasmuch they have, like any other ‘human’, an ego and a soul nestled uncomfortably within them … that they have an identity, a psychological or psychic entity that exists inside of their bodies.

[..]

RESPONDENT: Is my interest in such analysis therefore fraudulent and based on a stupid desire to work out the problem from the problem?

RICHARD: Indeed so … just as Mr. Noam Chomsky has been doing/currently does, for instance, all throughout human history peoples have been endeavouring to bring about communal peace and harmony through political change, social reform, economic reconstruction, cultural revisionism, and so on.

It is vital to comprehend that one of the fundamental understandings, if there is to be radical change, is that peace and harmony comes about by living happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are … and not by attempting to change people, things and events so as to have the world at large conform with whatever scheme or dream the identity within may come up with in order to perpetuate its existence.

In other words: global peace and harmony starts at home.

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  • Your own best friend

    One thing that played a major part in my increasingly liking people-as-they-are was the acknowledgement of my own malice and sorrow, that I recognized it as being due to the human condition and that I understood that everybody, through no fault of their own, is born into the same human condition. I then put this intellectual understanding into daily practice whenever I interacted directly with people, read or heard of other people or read or heard of other people’s views of other people.

  • Responsibility

    RICHARD: I laugh a lot … there is so much about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is, sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul, that I find irrepressibly ludicrous.

  • Procrastination

    RICHARD: For something like twenty five years I was an agnostic … and it is an apparently satisfying position to be in as it makes one feel both intellectually comfortable and intellectually superior at the same time (whilst appearing humble) until one day I realised just what I was doing to myself … and to others. I was cleverly shuffling all the ‘hard questions’ about consciousness under the rug and going around deftly cutting other people down to size (which is all so easy to do simply by saying ‘well that is your belief/truth/idea/philosophy/whatever’). But I had nothing to offer in its place – other than the smug ‘nobody knows’ agnosticism – and I puzzled as to why this was so. Finally, I ceased procrastinating and equivocating. I wanted to know. I wanted to find out – for myself – about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. I now know. In short: there is a third alternative to either agnosticism or fideism.

  • Boredom

    This resentment to being here, as this body, in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are, was what was responsible for my dull feelings, no-feelings, my listlessness, my boredom, my waiting for something else to happen, in short, it had permeated almost all experience of life in that it had cast a dulling shade over everything I experienced.

  • 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.

    VINEETO: When I applied the actualism method – being attentive to how I experience each moment of being alive with the intent of being happy and considerate towards others – one of the first obstacles I discovered was my basic resentment of being here as in ‘I wasn’t asked to be born’ and ‘the world is not how I want it to be’ and ‘people don’t behave as I want them to behave’*. This basic resentment was like a bad habit that continuously spoiled my enjoyment of whatever I was doing and interfered with my being in harmony with whomever I met and interacted with – both at work 🏢 and at home 🏠.