May 20, 2009
- Fame, Wealth And Beauty Are Psychological Dead Ends -
Normally I’d post something like this over at The Links, but it seems to tie in with what I’ve been exploring lately, so I figured I might as well put it here:
Achieving Fame, Wealth And Beauty Are Psychological Dead Ends, Study Says
Some key points:
- “People understand that it’s important to pursue goals in their lives and they believe that attaining these goals will have positive consequences. (But) this study shows that this is not true for all goals,”
- The things that make your life happy are growing as an individual, having loving relationships, and contributing to your community
- As with earlier research, the study confirmed that the more committed an individual is to a goal, the greater the likelihood of success. But unlike previous findings, this analysis showed that getting what one wants is not always salubrious. “There is a strong tradition in psychology that says if you value goals and attain them, wellness will follow,” says Niemiec. “But these earlier studies did not consider the content of the goals.”
- What’s “striking and paradoxical” about this research, he says, is that it shows that reaching materialistic and image-related milestones actually contributes to ill-being; despite their accomplishments, individuals experience more negative emotions like shame and anger and more physical symptoms of anxiety such as headaches, stomachaches, and loss of energy. By contrast, individuals who value personal growth, close relationships, community involvement, and physical health are more satisfied as they meet success in those areas.
- The theory holds that well-being depends in large part on meeting one’s basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
- Striving for wealth and adulation, on the other hand, does little to satisfy these deep human requirements, at least within this early career stage of life.
So yeah, I am hoping I’m in the midst of a process of removing those non-productive goals “by the root of the weed”, and freeing up energy for more worthwhile, happiness-producing pursuits.
Also, I’m still at work on a large post on Transactional Analysis. I was planning on having it up Monday, but it turned into a bigger exploration than I had been anticipating. Need to let it ferment a little bit before attempting to wrap it up.
Yeah, I’m thinking I agree with this, more and more.
I think its why you see all these Hollywood Stars getting bad plastic surgery, and getting addicted to drugs, committing suicide etc.
But some do seem happy, and usually its the better actors that are more into the art of it and end up directing. John Favareau comes to mind. Jack Black, people working with the Coens.
At some point I should just let go of any hope of being rich and famous. Maybe if I do that I would finally finish writing one these novels I’ve started.
Or maybe other stuff. Good post.
I was reading that link on transactional analysis. I have been kind of working on that kind of thing. Childhood scripts etc. I have this contradictory programming or something. I’ve had this sense I am meant to be rich and famous from an early age and also have felt inadequate.
I am beginning to think its like a rut people get into. Maybe lots of people think that. Probably many do. So are they all meant to be rich and famous? It seems obvious that other people are mistaken but not me.
Comment by Ted — May 20, 2009 @ 2:08 pm
Ha Ha! You know what I mean?
Comment by Ted — May 20, 2009 @ 2:11 pm
We seem to have some similar issues. Does this sound familiar: I just realized I dissociate?
Not a lot but a little. When I am out in public, I often leave my body slightly. I am not present totally. It makes me feel spacey and awkward. So I have been making a conscious effort to be present in my body and its amazing! I feel like a kid again! Feelings I haven’t felt since I was a kid come flooding back. Like memories of what it is like to really connect with my environment. Tactile, smell, etc. I begin to see all the beauty around me.
So when I get insights like this, it reinforces this other revelation that I had a lot of spiritual ideas backwards.
Comment by Ted — May 20, 2009 @ 2:21 pm
Nice post!
Comment by speedbird — May 20, 2009 @ 2:55 pm
Yeah, sounds good to me Ted. You can be rich and famous, or you can write a book you’re really proud of. There’s no guarantee writing a book you’re happy with will make you rich, but it’s pretty much guaranteed by definition that it will make you happy. This is sort of what I meant before talking about the motives behind my actions. I want them aligned with my current values, which are something like what’s talked about in this article, and not with whatever values I might have accidentally absorbed as a kid.
And that “being in your body” thing is what all this Qi Gong and Yoga I’ve sort of fallen into seems to have been all about.
Comment by Ian — May 20, 2009 @ 4:30 pm
Guess who said this recently:
“Now, because insecurity is rampant in people and society, both individually and collectively, and on the level of governments and media and all the rest of it, are constantly getting people to feel insecure, most people do not get their sense of who they are from in-here. They get it from what they think is out-there. See? It’s in their heads…
…Therefore, if you are going to attract to you the recognition you want that you’re an OK person, to feed your insecurity, you have to succeed out-there on the basis of the symbols of success that out-there recognizes as success. And of course through the media and indoctrination from cradle to grave, it’s more money, bigger house, bigger car, fame, all this stuff, titles, and all this business…
…Yeah. So what you’ve got is, the insecurity itself is – to kind of feed some acknowledgment to lessen its insecurity – it’s chasing these symbols of success that society has decided is successful.
And we forget other symbols of success: Am I happy? Am I fulfilled? You know. Do I live in a society, a kind, loving society that I’d like to live in?
All this goes by the board because the other thing about needing to succeed on this manufactured basis, to feed this, is that you then have to compete with all the other people that are trying to succeed in the same way to feed their insecurity.
And that creates this “Dog eat dog / Top of the greasy pole” society, where everyone’s walking over everyone else — not everyone, but vast numbers of people are walking over everyone else so that they’re the ones on the top of the pile that get their insecurity fed most profoundly with the symbols of success.
This insecurity is why you find some of the most insecure people you’ll ever meet in places like Hollywood and in the entertainment industry because their insecurity is such… And they’re not all like this. There are very secure people who just play music and like to act, but there’s a lot of insecure people because they need that extra adulation to feed their insecurity.” ?
Comment by Ted — May 21, 2009 @ 6:19 pm
My cheating googling abilities say its David Icke. He’s a bit out there for my taste, but I don’t doubt he’s helpful for some people. What you’ve quoted here, for example, is a really good point, and as long as he’s helping others to come to that kind of understanding, he can rant all he wants to about reptilian overlords. :)
We just have to stop feeding ALL our insecurities and let them die. They’re just a mask over what we think is an inadequacy, but if we can bring ourselves to actually LOOK at them, we’ll see that they don’t REALLY exist that much anyway. They’re definitely no barrier to our being happy, as long as we can learn to work with them in mind.
And it’s funny that you mention “out-there” vs “in-here” cause that’s a key part of that Transactional Analysis piece I’m working on.
Comment by Ian — May 21, 2009 @ 7:02 pm
Well, the thing is He’s not really that out there. I mean he is, but if you listen to him talk for a half hour or so it starts make a lot of sense. First of all what we consider reality is composed of a really narrow band of energy. Its a holographic projection. That’s not his original whacko ideas that;s coming from quantum physicists and a lot of people connect it to Eastern philosophy.
So anyway, there really are Over Lords that control society. They just met in Greece last week to discuss what they want to do to us all next. They control humanity by controlling consensus reality. So they take this already narrow band and make the box even smaller.
The only way to break out out of this box is by realizing who you truly are.
As for the Overlord’s you could call them psychopaths, or aliens or artificially intelligent holographic projections, or shape shifting reptoids. It all amounts to the same thing. They rule us by mastering consensus reality and they have no empathy. There power is in deceiving us about our true nature.
Phillip K Dick in his gnostic Sci Fi writings came to very similar conclusions about the human condition.
Icke doesn’t really rant. He just knows how to say the same things in many levels of understanding. The conspiracy stuff is at the level of the five senses, meant to unlock the death grip most people have on perceiving reality only through left brain conditioning. In the most sophisticated level, he is on par with Gurdjieff, Jung, Campbell, Ken Wilbur, Robert Anton Wilson, Dick, all these people.
Comment by Ted — May 21, 2009 @ 7:59 pm
Yeah, well, like I said, he’s not to my tastes is all. Nothing against the guy. That’s just not the kind of chaff I prefer to dig through for wheat kernals. But it’s only a personal preference.
Yeah, that’s the only way. What the overlords do has nothing to do with it. If they’re human, they need to break out just as much as you do. As the Tao Te Ching says, “what is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?”
And if they’re not human? If they’re some kind of hologram or reptile? Well then fuck ‘em. Only humans can get enlightened. Buddha says so, and he’s the one who invented the damn thing so he oughta know… :P
Besides, didn’t you mention some kind of predator and prey analogy for this kind of relationship before? The way I look at it is that there’s something important about having that box there. There’s a reason for it, and there’s a reason we have to break ourselves out of it. Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son comes to mind here as well…
Comment by Ian — May 21, 2009 @ 9:19 pm
Great discussion. Big nexus of good stuff here.
I was watching a TV programme last night about gender-pay-differences. This daft bloke kept asking the question ‘why aren’t women as successful as men?’. Obviously, that depends on your definition of ‘success’. By the end, I was thinking the answer to his question might be ‘Because they’ve got more sense!’.
I’ve got a soft spot for David Icke, and even the concept of reptilian overlords :) but I do find his writing style a bit OTT. As a Brit I remember him when he was an ordinary run-of-the-mill TV sports presenter, and then one day he turned up on a TV chat show wearing only turquoise and talking about Annunaki lizards from the lower seventh dimension. Brilliant! Jon Ronson’s ‘Them’ book has a bit about him negotiating entry to the US one time when he was stopped and questioned whether his ‘lizards’ were a cover for antisemitism. ‘No,’ quips one guy, ‘I think he really does mean lizards’. Clearly something significant happened to this dude.
I wrote a book I liked once, it was an edifying experience, but I’d warn that a certain amount of shadow-confrontation appeared to be a necessary part of the process. Anyone know any publishers? :)
It seems to me those who serve the Darkness find themselves drained of … something (a bit like that bit in the Dark Crystal); and to fill that void they in turn find subordinates to drain. A kind of pyramid scheme for whatever-it-is.
Comment by speedbird — May 22, 2009 @ 5:32 am
So you saw the Wogan show? From what I understand, Icke now says that that interview happened right in the middle of the dissolution of his old personality prior to his spiritual awakening.
He likened it to a dam bursting causing chaos before it reaches its new equilibrium. But its all good. He got so severely ridiculed that he got to the point of not caring what anyone thought and thus being able to share his revelations with 100% TOTAL honesty.
As far as shape shifting goes, some native American shamans were believed to have had the ability, Vikings were reported to have had it. European and British Nobility are descended from Vikings. Its known that Viking kings, Like Rollo of Normandy, practiced human sacrifice. Rollo had officially converted to Catholicism but on his death bed orderd a bunch of sacrifices to his Old Norse Gods.
So, all Icke is exposing is that the original magic of European Nobility went underground and exists to this day. If you think about natural selection between tribes of Dark magicians competing for control of Europe, it would make sense that the most ruthless and powerful magicians would eventually become dominant.
You talk about a shadow. I have been struggling with this my whole life. There is a genetic component to this. When I was 20, I was meditating in order to shapeshift and a presence came into the room and asked me to swear allegiance to Satan and this power would be given to me. I became freaked out and got up and turned all the lights on and began to seriously distance myself from that type of stuff. Soon after I converted to Christianity.
So that’s hearsay. I don’t expect to convince anyone of anything. But in light of my own personal experiences Icke makes sense to me.
Comment by Ted — May 22, 2009 @ 6:42 pm
As far as I understand it, both the American and Australian native cultures speak of a time when men and animals were all the same; only later did men get separated from the animals. I tried my best to soak some of this up when I was in Vancouver. When the dancer dons the Raven headdress, he’s not /just/ putting on a mask. The last relic of this in my neck of the woods is the Green Man who still lurks in the wild places. Now, people may dress up as the Green Man, but that doesn’t stop me knowing people who straight-sober claim to have seen the /real/ Green Man out in the woods.
I dunno about shape-shifting lizards, but Dawn Cook’s ‘First Truth’ series (4) of fantasy novels is good reading if you like that kind of thing.
How’d we get onto this again? :-)
Comment by speedbird — May 23, 2009 @ 8:49 am
David Icke.
He agrees with Ian that seeking fame and fortune is a dead end.
Just one last comment. These elites themselves think they are lizards. David Icke didn’t make it up. He just dug it up. They thing they are descended from dragons and sea serpents. I can trace my geneology back to Charlemagne, which means I can trace it back to a sea Serpent and also Jesus. So you can say its not accurate, but the point is people in high places believe it about themselves. But I think from my Plantation owning ancestors in Ireland to Charlemane is accurate at least.
Now there is an occult ritual black magic aspect to this where the shapeshifting is believed to take place. It involves “purgative violence” against children, blood drinking and all kinds of horrible stuff. In light of that its not far fetched to me that a lot of these royals shape shift. It could be a mass hallucination, from all the severe violence and mass hypnotism, drugs, shock etc.
There are all kinds of explanations. If you want a sophisticated insight with lots of primary source research check this out:
Dutroux Affair
If a Network of trillionaires that control 50% of the World economy, Worship Lucifer, and think they are setting the stage for the Anti-Christ, whose to say they aren’t?
Anyway, I believe these ancestral demons have been stalking me at various points in my life. That would make sense if a 1000+ years worth of my ancestors participated in this crap. Its probably affected my morphogenetic field.
Comment by Ted — May 23, 2009 @ 3:24 pm
Geez, I go away from the nets for a few days, and you guys are talking to each other already! Quite the conversation.
The key things for me (besides the fact that Ted didn’t sell his soul to Satan in order to shapeshift, good for you Ted!) are these two comments:
It seems to me those who serve the Darkness find themselves drained of … something (a bit like that bit in the Dark Crystal); and to fill that void they in turn find subordinates to drain. A kind of pyramid scheme for whatever-it-is.
and
If a Network of trillionaires that control 50% of the World economy, Worship Lucifer, and think they are setting the stage for the Anti-Christ, whose to say they aren’t?
That right there is the problem, whether you see it purely metaphorically or on a more personally real level. But who’s to say they aren’t? We’re to say they aren’t. We’re to recontextualize the debate so that they can’t anymore. Find and embody the source of that thing that they drain themselves of.
As I was typing this, I decided to look up a certain rap album a friend of mine recommended. On amazon, in the “people also bought” section, I see a link to Public Enemy’s new album, which is exactly what I think we’re all trying to figure out here: “How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?”. We need to figure out a better way of doing things, so that people stop letting themselves get drained in this way. Options…people need options…
Well, options that WORK, anyway.
Comment by Ian — May 25, 2009 @ 11:46 am
Well, it starts I think, with having the courage to bring really weird things to light. Things that seem really weird, but are actually true, that cancel out other things that seem really mundane and normal, but are actually lies. Being a Child rapist in a position of Power is whats creepy, not the act of pointing it out.
Lying is black magic. The entire edifice of this Power structure is built on lies. By believing these lies people can be made to serve it. By exposing the lies the edifice automatically begins to disintegrate. The Vampire tales are a metaphor for truth. They may have super human abilities but they can’t survive the light of day.
The life force these vampires feed on might be nothing more than consciousness itself in the form of misplaced faith and trust.
But to feed on us, they need our permission. As strange as it sounds, it takes free will to believe a lie. How this works is that they lie to our left brain and tell the truth to our right. They put symbolic messages out in plain view. They leave clues. They leak stories. Not resolving the cognitive dissonance this creates is our fault.
Comment by Ted — May 25, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
I guess I’m just more about waking people up than I am about investigating the lies.
Although to be fair, I never actually said that the act of pointing out “child rapists in positions of power” was creepy.
Comment by Ian — May 25, 2009 @ 1:36 pm
I’m not really arguing with YOU.
But I am just saying exposing lies melts peoples delusions and wakes them up. If people are “asleep” or hypnotized, how did they get that way? From knowing the truth?
But that is the main criticism of exposing high level criminal conspiracies (not “coming up with “conspiracy theories”)
That its “too negative” harping on the negative etc. Then from that its shifts from that “its all about talk” and not about action. But really all its about, is about seeing clearly.
Shouldn’t clear thinking lead to better decisions?
Comment by Ted — May 25, 2009 @ 2:20 pm
Yeah, I don’t want to argue with you either.
But I really don’t think this kind of exploration leads to clearer thinking. I think it’s like trying to clear mud out of the water by trying to push it to the bottom. The more you do it, the more it just circulates.
Let’s say all these conspiracies are true. I haven’t done any research on them, I don’t know either way. But assuming they are, the questions that comes to my mind are, “what made these people so evil?” and “why did such evil people rise to power?” Weren’t there other options, both for them and for the people they now wield power over?
Why aren’t we, as a society, in a place where people like that can be laughed at, or better yet, helped? What’s the reason any of this is even here in the first place?
Comment by Ian — May 25, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
So, I’m confused. Its good to ask these types of questions or bad? To me those look like really good questions.
Comment by Ted — May 25, 2009 @ 4:56 pm
Oh, crap! I didn’t man to make it that big!
Comment by Ted — May 25, 2009 @ 5:22 pm
Hell, I don’t know. I meant them as alternatives to looking into the evil itself, to pointing it out and getting worked up about it. Yeah its there, so what? Looking at it doesn’t make it go away, ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.
Time spent researching evil doesn’t make evil go away.
Then again, maybe it does, given enough time. I just think it can be a dangerous thing to get caught up in, that’s all.
Comment by Ian — May 25, 2009 @ 6:08 pm
Well, it actually does make it go away. exposing lies makes deception go away. but i won’t badger you about this…
Comment by Ted — May 25, 2009 @ 6:25 pm
Oh, and I deleted that other comment cause it was way too big.
Comment by Ian — May 25, 2009 @ 6:28 pm
Hi, been away for a while, good to be back.
Been thinking about this a lot. I’m thinking my ‘energy sucking’ analogy isn’t quite right; there’s more a tangible presence to the ‘darkness’. Like the pursuit of fame and wealth is more about letting something in, some false idea of value.
Awareness is one thing. The only tools I’ve ever had to combat the ‘darkness’ I received from the field of transactional analysis. In short (very!!), assertiveness comes from talking about only what you think and see in neutral objective terms, and also what you feel (and intuit). Simple criticism almost always fails. But anger and frustration tend to lead us down that path.
As for the shape-changing lizards, I still can’t quite dismiss that one :-)
Comment by speedbird — June 8, 2009 @ 3:38 am
Speedbird, welcome back.
Yeah, that’s timely. Check out this, from Ran Prieur last week:
“The seduction of evil is precisely in that it involves us in trying to eliminate it. When your consciousness is open, any action you take in reference to evil has no more significance than digging a ditch to channel floodwaters away from a house.”
It’s from here, apparently.
The zen sensei at my temple described it in his talk on Sunday as simply “being dark to things”.
Also, I have been working on that TA post for nearly a month now, but I think I’m finally wrapping it up. It’s becoming a rather critical look at some of the core assumptions of psycho-analysis in general, using comparisons between Freud and TA as pointers. The conclusion I seem to be coming to is, I think, similar to what I quoted from you above, and what you’re saying here as well:
But I want to come out and say ahead of time that I am not at all criticizing TA as a tool or method of developing tools, just trying to explore if there are ways to better understand what we can do with those tools. Plus, it’s mainly based on the wikipedia TA article as well, as that’s what got my mind going in that direction in the first place. Which perhaps means that I might be missing some of the finer subtleties of the disciple. ;)
Anyway, hoping to have that up by Wednesday night, NYC time…
Comment by Ian — June 8, 2009 @ 8:47 am
> to better understand what we can do with those tools
Indeed.
‘Being dark to things’ is a very interesting way of putting it. It ties into a thought I had a while back about technology (lit. ‘ways of doing things’, I guess): good technology reveals; poor technology conceals. I don’t like using the words ‘good’ and ‘evil’, but this seems to fit. What I think I mean is, a ‘good’ technology reveals something about the way the world is; it extends our preception and understanding. A ‘poor’ technology exists to hide or simplify or encapsulate some aspect of the world. I can immediately think of examples of each which fit my own intuition of ‘good’ and ‘poor’. This is what I think I mean about a darkness which we can ‘let in’: a poor ‘way of seeing’ which is actually more of a bushel for the Light. My head is still not quite clear, tho, on /why/ we do this to ourselves.
I’m reading a book at the mo which describes the original meaning (i.e. etymology) of the word ‘idiot’: someone who is self-absorbed (idio-) to the extent that they’re not really paying attention to the world in front of them. The author then goes on to describe any number of car mechanics he’s known… :-)
*
In my own crash-course in TA, I think we went a little ways beyond the Wikipedia page, in that we talked about six (or possibly seven) ego states: three ‘blue’ states of Nurturing Parent, Adult and Free Child, and three ‘red’ states of Critical Parent, Rebellious Child and Compliant Child. Parent will ‘hook’ child, and vice-versa; but also a red state will hook a red state, and a blue state will hook a blue state. Theory goes, /only ‘blue’ states are productive/.
Comment by speedbird — June 8, 2009 @ 10:22 am
Give me a couple of days, I’m attempting an explanation. ;)
A brief summery though, would be that you’re about 75% right. Poor technology is only evil if we forget that we’ve encapsulated the world. It’s a dividing line or a screen that we create, but then think of as inherently real when it isn’t. Hence all the problems.
I like that idiot definition, makes me think of the “Fool” card in the tarot. In the deck I use, the fool’s playing with a little puppet on his hand that looks exactly like him (but smaller)…
And about these 6 or 7 “red” and “blue” states, would you happen to have any books to recommend on the subject? I would like to look into this a bit more, or at least add it to my Amazon list to be looked into eventually.
Also, for the record, I’d like to point out that I am completely avoiding any attempt at (US) political humor here, regarding different color states and which ones are productive.
Comment by Ian — June 8, 2009 @ 11:35 am
> I’m attempting an explanation.
Looking forward to that! ;-D
> if we forget that we’ve encapsulated the world
Possibly. But I think forgetting is in the nature of this particular beast.
> exactly like him (but smaller)
Cool, didn’t know that (tarot’s always scared the crap out of me, so I’ve never looked into it).
> political humor
No, none intended, but I did notice that potential. That’s just how I was taught it! (These colours have yet more symbolism in my own mind, too; and I think they did to the Alchemists, including Jung.) This was a three day course that advertised itself as ‘assertiveness training’. ‘Assertiveness’ wasn’t mentioned at all until the end of the last day, when they guy just threw in the line that ‘Assertiveness is simply trying to stay in the blue states.’
I notice I forgot to really mention the mythical ‘seventh’ ego state. The story I was told goes like this: if you look at the six, five are concerned with feelings; there’s only one in which information about the world can enter the body: the dispassionate, cold, analytical, objective Mr. Spock of the Adult. The kind of science that measures and counts and measures and counts.
Many of us surely realise that this is not how things like intuition, insight and understanding operate. To explain these, TA proposes a function of the Child. When we are at play, seeing with a child’s eye, (or perhaps a beginner’s mind?), we can enter this ego state where impressions of the world can enter /not from the world/. (This relates to your reading-around-the-subject post; I’ll see you there in a mo.)
I’m told (tho I still do not quite believe it, it might have been a kind of hypnosis) that the name given to this seventh ego state is the Little Professor.
*
I wish I did have a book on it but I’m afraid I can’t help you there. Y’know, the whole experience was more like an initiation than I realised at the time.
Comment by speedbird — June 9, 2009 @ 3:00 am
No worries, and thanks for the breakdown. That little professor thing is interesting. But who’s to say that “intuition, insight and understanding” don’t enter the body (and mind) from the world? Maybe they just use a different gate…
Comment by Ian — June 9, 2009 @ 9:14 am
> Maybe they just use a different gate…
Well, yeah. I think you’re right there. What I wrote doesn’t really make sense! I guess it’s that old chestnut of ‘what is objective reality?’ rearing its ugly head again. I suppose the implication I’m trying to get at is that ‘objective reality’ is a poor substitute for the whole of ‘reality’. The Adult is objective, but incomplete.
Comment by speedbird — June 9, 2009 @ 10:06 am
EXACTLY.
Stay tuned…
Comment by Ian — June 9, 2009 @ 10:40 am