Post: #1

The more you seek ease the more elusive it proves. The faster hardship creeps up on you and overwhelms you. For what is once easy becomes harder and the hard becomes even harder. Ease is easy in the short-term but it draws you in and suffocates you in the long run. Try to return to the womb and you end up in the grave.

The more you run towards hardship the greater the repulsion to hardship. The more ease is drawn towards you. The more one gets used to hardship the greater the ease. Such is the nature of man. The avoidance of suffering only increases it in the long term. Yet getting used to suffering eases it somewhat.

Of course old age ensures the hardship runs even faster and ease flees even faster if you stand still. But even then that means that one should stay the path of overcoming it for it slows down the inevitable decay.

The key to ease is hardship to a certain point. For reality in truth doesn't become easier but you become more able. And just as ease seems to make things harder its because you are weaker. The cushion hasn't ceased being comfortable after all.

"History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below." -Voltaire

Its easy to slip into silken slippers. Yet those silken slippers are hard rock to the weak. For the hobnail boot wearers its just as comfortable as the silken slippers in the beginning.

Hence man needs a certain degree of hardship in order to be comfortable. For if one doesn't know pain. How can he truly know comfort?

Post: #2

It's my experience that contentment and suffering is a mental construct with infrequent relevance to the situation.

Two men can work the same job. One will be miserable, suffering perpetual "hardship". The other will walk around lighter than air.

Could you say that the man who suffers is "tougher" than the man who does the same job without complaint? Or is he just sick in the head?

Post: #3

The trick is to never become too comfortable. Always have a hobby which is hard. Hiking, working out, manual hobbies (car/bike repair, etc...)

Go hungry once in a while. Get tired as a dog. Do things that are hard even if you don't have to.

Post: #4

You'd think mediocrity would be the natural predator of greatness, but I suspect it's actually convenience.

Whilst I'm damn glad I don't have to draw my own water or beat my clothes against rocks, the vast majority of our modern comforts just seem to encourage emotional stagnation and physical sloth.

Post: #5

(04-15-2016 06:03 AM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  You'd think mediocrity would be the natural predator of greatness, but I suspect it's actually convenience.

Whilst I'm damn glad I don't have to draw my own water or beat my clothes against rocks, the vast majority of our modern comforts just seem to encourage emotional stagnation and physical sloth.

Respecfully, I would make a distinction here, as I'm not sure they encourage it. To my mind they simply facilitate it in those who already have that instinct.

I think the majority of our modern comforts allow for unprecedented opportunities to fill our time with interesting and productive pursuits. We rightly decry the excesses of materialism, but all things in excess are undesirable, by definition.

The sheer amount of time we have to use well thanks to modern comforts is staggering, and I think it is something we all take for granted more than we should. The energy we have available to us during the day, that is spared by not having to perform grueling work simply to survive, allows for all sorts of wonderful sources of interest and engagement.

The amount of time we can spend awake and mentally engaged has been dramatically increased by these modern comforts. For men of intelligence there has never existed a better time with more opportunity to harness that potential. Because we require less recharging, due to the less arduous nature of our days, we can sleep less, learn more, and be more engaged in our projects and the world around us.

Technology means that our idle moments need never be absent constructive engagement. Just because many people choose to fill their hours with wasteful entertainment, does not mean that this is technology's ill. It is a short coming of the average person, of course, but if you don't aspire to that standard then it matters relatively little. The fact remains that if you are a man of ability, and motivated, a life where all your necessities of living are met with trivial ease allows for near constant, satisfying engagement with the wonders of the world.

A personal example would be that, thanks to technology, and the immediacy with which I can handle any matter pertaining to my business, I can afford to use a spare ten minutes reading and posting here. I have almost no 'waste' time during my day, because wherever I am and whatever I'm doing, I know that I will have a platform whereby I can read some interesting article/idea/opinion that one of the many wonderful posters here has shared. I am constantly being presented with new and engaging material which I could never hope to come across by myself.

I wouldn't dispute that it's never been easier to allow comfort to overcome us, and to simply vegetate. However, it has also never been easier to live a life of near constant stimulation, interest and satisfaction. It takes a conscious choice not to surrender to the very real evils of excessive comfort, but if you do make that choice then the modern world is a treasure chest laid open at your feet.

Post: #6

I've always believed that a little hardship keeps you keen. Ride the motorbike even if it's wet, rather than jump in the car. If you've not lifted, then it's a cold shower. Wait until 12 to eat breakfast, even if you're hungry. That sort of thing.

Post: #7

(04-15-2016 06:32 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  Respecfully, I would make a distinction here

No need for deference mate - you're allowed to disagree with me, and you've made a interesting, well-crafted rebuttal. I see your point. I think I'm more seeing convenience as a drug of addiction for weak minds, and I doubt any of the members here need the escape from reality.

Quote:I think the majority of our modern comforts allow for unprecedented opportunities to fill our time with interesting and productive pursuits.

For me personally, my limited downtime makes me both appreciate it more when I do get it, and encourages me to take full advantage of it whilst I have it, particularly as I age. (For example, I never really have the urge to play video games any more. It just seems like a pointless time sink, and they've largely-removed the fun and challenge from them as they aimed at a broader market).

Particularly this though: the jobs I've had over the years that involved hard physical labour or repetitive tasks - even time-intensive tasks personal like household upkeep, cleaning and garden maintenance - trained me to have the ability to think creatively whilst my body was otherwise-occupied. A couple of hours pruning trees and digging, or a hard 40 minute workout, and I can immediately sit down and vomit out a refined piece of writing that I was working on mentally the entire time. I used to do some of my best song arranging whilst running, at least before my knees started giving out. I could start with a little section of tune floating in my head, and have an entire song structure worked out by the time I'd run around the lake.

As such, my work time can very much be theoretical creative time, and the downtime is where I can choose to pull an abstract out of the air and realise it.

I don't think I'd have learnt this ability if I hadn't been standing out in the hot summer sun doing road signage work for shit wages as a teen, especially if I'd had access to modern conveniences like mobile phones. It was either learn to entertain yourself or go insane from boredom.

Being a teen in the seventies and eighties was great, because there was always the opportunity to simply be bored, to lie on your bed with nothing to do looking at the posters on your wall, wishing something would happen. Eventually, you were forced to find some way to entertain yourself, through creative thought, by going out, by socialising with other bored teens, by pooling your resources to make your own fun. (I remember being laid up in bed for a couple of weeks with mono in '88 and typing up a book, just to see if I could. At the end of two weeks, I had an 800-page 'ow the edge' zombie novel).

When I see older teenagers now, they always have a virtual distraction from boredom at hand, and their interaction with others is halting and awkward because of it. It's not so much introversion, as a complete disinterest in anything outside the private movie in which they're starring. I can't really imagine them initiating action.

I feel like something important has been lost.

I am observing a generational change taking place though. Under 15 or so, they're gathering into larger groups again and interacting. Whilst they have phones, they seem to have contempt for their older siblings and parents who spent half their childhood ignoring them the moment some social media notification beeped. Combined with the larger number of immigrant familes that mirror pre-feminism structures - 3 to 4 kids 1 or 2 years apart - something different is on the horizon.

Post: #8

I've always heard there are only two states in which something can exist; growth and decay. If you're not growing, you're dying. Complacency should be avoided at all costs. That's why I can't understand why people support socialism. It aims to make men weak and deprive them of their own self-reliance. People are so soft now, you look at old photos of the battled-hardened vets of World War II and compare them with "men" of our modern age and it's just pathetic.

Post: #9

The words that JFK said about the mission to the moon always struck a chord with me. 'We choose to do these things because they are hard'

Post: #10

If nothing else. A man needs purpose.

Post: #11

Men sentimentalize hardship and inconvenience because they sentimentalize their youth and adolescence. They think with fondness of the time when they feel (often rightly) that their spirit was best and freest; because of the relentless technological progress of the world at large this is also the time which in retrospect seems harsher, simpler, and less full of distractions -- a time in which the child or the youth could roam the world like a free little savage, neither encumbered by adult cares nor coddled by adult comforts.

As Wordsworth wrote in his great Intimations ode:

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

"The things which I have seen I now can see no more." -- this has been the lament of men throughout the ages (Wordsworth's poem is from 1804 and the theme was certainly not new then) when they sense the supposed -- and real -- freedoms and glories of their youth depart. And so they blame the world which in its increasing complexity and "distraction" has taken the Arcadia of their childhood away.

The sentiment is understandable; but it should not be given excessive credence. In the first place, a man must not mistake the path of his own life with the path of the world. All the glories and intensities of youth still exist -- for those who are young now; they are, as another poet -- Philip Larkin -- said, "for others undiminished somewhere". All life is not your life; the cycle repeats for someone else now, who in thirty years will whine about trading all the comforts and conveniences of that time for the "primitive" freedoms of 2016, as full of hardship as this time was.

But the even more important realization is this: our time is, in fact, full of hardship. Yes, it has more ease, convenience and comfort than any time before; but in absolute terms? We have just barely started to make our lives easier. We still have endless hassles at all times, the hassles of disease, of injury, of aging, of the infelicity of our objects of use. We can still stumble on the street and sprain an ankle and be in pain; our clothes still don't clean themselves, our dishes do not wash themselves perfectly, expensive shoes can still be uncomfortable, our computers and smartphones are clunky, slow, their memory and bandwidth still limited, their form still not well-suited to the human body and posture. We still have diarrhea or constipation, we still can't gorge ourselves on depraved or delicious foods without suffering the consequences, we can't give ourselves the pleasures of drinking or designer drugs without hangovers, "lows" and worse, we can't always take meth and FUCK for hours and hours with endless screaming orgasms. We can't watch every movie that was ever made on a beautiful giant screen bigger than any drive-in. Our plastic surgeries still suck and are botched as often as not. We still can't edit our children's genomes to remove errors or infelicities, CRISPR and related technologies are in their merest infancy.

I look at this and say, you call this "comfort"? FUCK THAT. Yes, we've come a long way; but realize that we are just barely getting started, if you can even call it that. Any one of the hardships above is infuriating and only excusable because in our enslaved condition we have no choice but to excuse it. The human being is still like the Viet Cong guerrilla who has lived for ages and ages in narrow, constraining and dark subterranean tunnels, always scheming, plotting and planning for the day he will defeat the hated enemy; then and only then he will come up for air, look at the nasty sky and smell the rice paddies, now his to do as he pleases with. We are still in the tunnel and we are still digging, and plotting; the tunnel has just gotten a little wider, that's about it. We still live the life which is recognizably the life of the old human being; a life that chafes under all imaginable constraints imposed by the material garbage that enslaves us.

That's the reality. I laugh when I hear anyone say life is "easy". Don't you want to taste real power, real pleasure, real freedom? Don't you want to always win, to win, win, win until all your horrified pals are tired of winning but you never give them an inch because you aren't finished, because you want to win with more pleasure, more power, more luxury? And if you don't, what the hell is wrong with you? Do you think we are meant to remain slaves to all these garbage limitations forever? No; the guerrilla knows what his destiny is, he knows that if not he then his children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren will walk in the world at their ease. Until then all we can do is just chew on some betel -- or better yet spit it out -- and keep digging.

Post: #12

(04-15-2016 06:32 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  

(04-15-2016 06:03 AM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  You'd think mediocrity would be the natural predator of greatness, but I suspect it's actually convenience.

Whilst I'm damn glad I don't have to draw my own water or beat my clothes against rocks, the vast majority of our modern comforts just seem to encourage emotional stagnation and physical sloth.

Respecfully, I would make a distinction here, as I'm not sure they encourage it. To my mind they simply facilitate it in those who already have that instinct.

I think the majority of our modern comforts allow for unprecedented opportunities to fill our time with interesting and productive pursuits. We rightly decry the excesses of materialism, but all things in excess are undesirable, by definition.

The sheer amount of time we have to use well thanks to modern comforts is staggering, and I think it is something we all take for granted more than we should. The energy we have available to us during the day, that is spared by not having to perform grueling work simply to survive, allows for all sorts of wonderful sources of interest and engagement.

The amount of time we can spend awake and mentally engaged has been dramatically increased by these modern comforts. For men of intelligence there has never existed a better time with more opportunity to harness that potential. Because we require less recharging, due to the less arduous nature of our days, we can sleep less, learn more, and be more engaged in our projects and the world around us.

Technology means that our idle moments need never be absent constructive engagement. Just because many people choose to fill their hours with wasteful entertainment, does not mean that this is technology's ill. It is a short coming of the average person, of course, but if you don't aspire to that standard then it matters relatively little. The fact remains that if you are a man of ability, and motivated, a life where all your necessities of living are met with trivial ease allows for near constant, satisfying engagement with the wonders of the world.

A personal example would be that, thanks to technology, and the immediacy with which I can handle any matter pertaining to my business, I can afford to use a spare ten minutes reading and posting here. I have almost no 'waste' time during my day, because wherever I am and whatever I'm doing, I know that I will have a platform whereby I can read some interesting article/idea/opinion that one of the many wonderful posters here has shared. I am constantly being presented with new and engaging material which I could never hope to come across by myself.

I wouldn't dispute that it's never been easier to allow comfort to overcome us, and to simply vegetate. However, it has also never been easier to live a life of near constant stimulation, interest and satisfaction. It takes a conscious choice not to surrender to the very real evils of excessive comfort, but if you do make that choice then the modern world is a treasure chest laid open at your feet.

Interesting thought. Life is all about choices but its a rare man that is able to take advantage of it all.

I think this problem of ease especially plagues the upper classes especially the heirs of the rich.

They most populate the ranks of the SJW and having never known true hardship. Their experience of ease is actually pain. They live in practically the modern equivalent of Eden yet they are miserable.

Its the combination of that along with shallowness that ensures that they are surrounded only with shallow people. Which makes them in truth alone. With no true friend to set them on the straight and narrow.

Too much hardship however also ensures the nothing much can be done. Its in the context of leisure that men can be creative and innovative. Its in the context of leisure that they can be the patron or Author of the Arts.

People born with a silver spoon in their mouths especially need to know what true suffering is like so that they do not take their situation for granted and thereby take advantage of the wealth and status that they inherit from their ancestors.

Although my post is true to a certain extent. Given our humanity we have limits to what we can endure and thereby improve just as humans can only exercise to a certain point before they can do no more in the gym. For beyond that limit injury results. And then after recovery the natural limit becomes higher as the person becomes stronger and the cycle continues.

Post: #13

One of my Maxims for life!

Stop ameliorating discomfort

I see people jump through hoops to avoid discomfort. They don’t want to be too hot, too cold, work too hard, sweat, carry heavy things or confront painful truths. The problem is when you go through life avoiding discomfort, your threshold to tolerate pain and discomfort narrows, creating a constant feedback loop of trying to avoid but then still feeling discomfort.

“Grasp the nettle” - embrace pain, discomfort and hard work. It makes you tougher, makes comfortable times more pleasurable and gives you back the energy you would have spent dodging discomfort at all costs to do more noble things. Otherwise known as “take a spoonful of cement and harden up princess” in my native tongue. Or as one of my favourite sayings goes “On a dark, rainy, windy night… Enter that darkness”

Post: #14

Quote:“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

No one appreciates anything that is given to them. It will soon become something expected and taken for granted.

When you have to work for what you want, only then do you truly appreciate it. If the task is easy, it will be completed and forgotten.