Eerily's Journal

One may spend his life looking for purpose, he shouldn't expect it to be easy and should be aware he may never find it. Some words on the subject may be helpful for one to not get hopelessly lost. If one looks for purpose in things that don't exist, then he will always fail. One must also understand that nothing comes out of nowhere, even thought, so one can only find his purpose, not create it out nowhere. One must understand that one's self is a manifestation of the past, but not just his own personal life, but of his family and ancestors. A person is born from a mother, he doesn't magically appear in the world, so when thinking of one's past, he may include what came before him through his ancestors. One must learn to know himself, but when one looks within one should look at oneself not just as an individual but as a product of his ancestors, of his past. His thoughts are his ancestors' thoughts, so their purpose is his. Though, it is more difficult for those with significantly divergent ancestors, where multiple purposes blend into one individual, who must sort them out. The process of finding purpose might take a lifetime, especially for one of significantly divergent ancestry, but nothing else is more important. Which is not to say one can't focus on other things as well, and only worry about finding purpose on occasion, but that's because it takes much internal conflict to search for his purpose and it requires much time in between to rest and do other things.

There is a certain form of irony I'll address. - There are subjects that are seemingly incomprehensible. The only reason that one even accepts that they are valid is because those one respects speaks of them. When one asks those people for clarification, they generally respond, but one is never satisfied. If one can't understand them, and rather than pressing for answers is willing to wait until some later time, or realize that one might never understand, then perhaps one is at least halfway towards that understanding.

I'm referring to the subjects related to nobility. One can never see a four dimensional being in three dimensional space, but only vaguely sense it or rationally deduce the probability of it's four dimensionality by observing the movement of the three dimensional figure which is the product of the four dimensional being weaving through three dimensional space. In the same way one can never know that another possesses a greater nobility with the same certainty that one may know one has equal or lesser nobility. One must vaguely sense or rationally deduce it's probability. Neither jealousy nor subjugation to greater nobility will help one become more ennobled. Perhaps the best option is a more simple quiet respect.

A man has needs not just to maintain, but to expand. Throughout his younger years, in his health, his mind is focused on such expansion. He dreams of it, contemplates it, and at times finds himself solely obsessed with it without any knowledge of how such obsession began. Consider a man who lived through his younger years into his older years maintaining his more basic needs just enough to keep him as whole as is needed to remain obsessed with those needs to expand, but with little success in fulfilling them. Such a man couldn't find the circumstances for a calm family life, nor the inner charge to make significant artistic and intellectual creations that he could have then pushed forward.

As this man found himself distanced from his prime, he saw his last chance for creation float out of view. He railed in agony, a renaissance of his prime, where his obsessions once fueled by vigor were then fueled by desperation. As he aged further, becoming barely able to maintain himself, his desires to expand began to fade.

This man's life was a common enough phenomenon, except he didn't use painkillers. He didn't drink his desires away every night, nor declare victories that weren't there. He remained as humble as was necessary to honestly reflect his circumstances. Because he always accepted his failures, and never hid them, his desires to expand faded away without confusion, leaving him without the need to maintain long held illusions of who he is and what he did. His desire to expand died, but his mind, as always, remained lucid.

He more calmly looks back on his life of agonizing desires, that were never met, and expecting only what he's used to, realizes his desires have left, and therefore so too has his pain. This tired, but lucid, man finds that as he reflects backwards on the agony of his life, a life he deemed a failure, that his pain of desire has not simply left him with nothing but the pain of regret. He begins to understand that his past suffering is what he loves the most. He feels gratitude towards the circumstances which allowed it. Momentarily, or from time to time in those latter years of his life, he experiences joy.

The purpose of philosophy is to explore oneself and reality and then create values. Most people being farsighted, soon come to the question of what is to come well beyond their own lives. One then finds that time ruins, and can either develop a heroic attitude as part of his creation of values or develop a defeatist attitude which inhibits his continued philosophizing relative to the strength of that attitude. The heroic attitude is the attitude which attempts to preserve all that one values, despite their inevitable ruin.

The basic definition of philosophy becomes convoluted when mixed in with other acts done under the same name. A charade that has nothing to do with philosophy, where due to varying motives one creates fantasies and calls them real.

Honest men wish to gather to discuss philosophy, and for those who share values to create solidarity. Sharing blood is one aspect which leads honest men to share values, but even those among the human species with relatively highly divergent blood may share values, incidentally. It seems that heroic attitude is one that may be shared both due to blood or incidentally.

For one unable to philosophize, but wishes to, he must dedicate much of his time towards developing that ability. He must attempt to explore reality honestly, and fail, repeatedly, as part of developing this ability. To start he might want to not mislabel what he doing. Not philosophizing, he's developing an ability. Some honest knowledge will come in, but he can only guess how that would compare to the knowledge he'd gain with the ability to take a more complete honest approach. Furthermore, he must create and speak of values only as is necessary for his own continued and long term well being. But, this is a matter of self-improvement. Anyone seeking self improvement mustn't confuse the end result or intermediary stages, as a place to attempt to immediately be at. One must continue as one is, with slight progress in mind.

Despite most modern first world people being superstitious, there is still a common fear among many of them of seeming superstitious. This is where established science comes in. Established science is also highly superstitious in some areas, but it operates under the guise of its supposed original purpose, which is the stringent scientific method. Science that actually is reality oriented is generally science that produces verifiable results. For those working within a community involved with such development, having a mentality, or even using terminology, divergent from that community would be detrimental to its productions. Outside of that community, though, divergence would be irrelevant except for the fear of being seen as superstitious. A Modern, even one entirely unconnected with established scientific communities, will ask himself why he should take the time to observe reality directly and create his own mentality on it, when he may be ridiculed for sharing it to those who are well versed in published scientific works.

In any given conversation about reality that may remind many of established scientific findings, unless one is an actual scientist, the profuse use of established scientific terminology, and the overt concern for details that are mostly irrelevant to the conversation, is actually likely an indication of how little one understands the subject. For those who have learned much about established science, it may help for them to try thinking and speaking about various subjects, they think they understand in established scientific terms, using ordinary language, not scientific or religious (Eastern and Western) terminology and most importantly with a lack of concern for being seen as incorrect, and without including anything that they haven't personally verified through experience and observation.

The dryness, or lack of spirituality that seems to surround the scientific community is likely not so much an issue for those actually on the intellectual forefront of it. Those on the forefront cannot be binary thinkers; binary thinkers, just as basic lab assistants, are merely drones - those on the forefront are artistic minded and science likely fulfills there spiritual needs. This is so because they actually understand the science. So, what is dry and nonspiritual about science isn't that it's too close to reality, but that when largely taken through the societal wringer it develops a distance from reality. The only difference here from such dry science and Xt. is that the dry science is not made to make one feel good about oneself - which may explain its attraction to highly nihilistic people that have a negative mentality taken beyond the state of such easy comfort as Xt. offers.

In conclusion, being on the actual frontier of science, whether as an actual intellectual leader of a scientific community, or simply as one who recognizes the authority one obtains from taking nothing but what comes directly from his own perception, is actually a highly spiritual endeavor, perhaps the only thing worthy of being called spiritual.

For a Modern both what is called 'civilization' and what is called 'nature' is simply artificiality. Any difference is negligible concerning the way they use and perceive the two environments. For the more noble what the Moderns call 'civilization' is the most desolate hostile form of wilderness they can encounter. While 'nature' is generally a temporary place of relaxation. - Certainly, some of the remaining unsettled areas of the earth are about equally hostile as any 'civilization', but relatively very few people, Moderns or not, have anything to do with them.

A man thinks he's self-sufficient when he enables himself to survive in these less developed parts of the world. He practices where safety is always a helicopter away, and then maybe actually tests himself where they're not. But, he's not really self-sufficient. Being that natural environments are continually being encroached upon by artificiality, what he has accomplished, is the ability to live in a temporary sanctuary. Which is not a useless accomplishment, but even if he can live his whole life their and raise a family there, his children will be inept when the sanctuary is encroached upon.

To be more self-sufficient, to be a 'wild-man', as one may call it, is to be one who can best survive in the most common/imposing environments he and his children will have to face. These jungles are the worst kind. Not where the worst one can expect is death. These jungle prefers a slow, live form of consumption.

Dreams often reflect on pressing present matters, but dreams may also be considered a form of better reliving past experiences. To dream of anything shows that the matter is on the dreamer's mind, here the difference is just the immediacy.

Every common route that one traveled and significant relationship one had will be relived in dreams. Should one have developed a higher cognition over time, a greater awareness, understanding, then the reliving of those dreams will reflect that. Routines one had may be relived in dreams with one's current mentality, but dreams may have more subtle ways of imprinting one's present mentality on one's past. Here I emphasize the route and the relationship, as opposed to the routine or event. Which is not to leave the latter as entirely irrelevant.

Literal or figurative routes one has worn through with travel are retrodden during sleep. They develop new aspects, become seemingly more than they were or other than they were. Seemingly, though, may be all. The past is a fullness, it has no reality outside the fluctuating present. Our memories lose ground when they reflect a merely retroacted present.

The dynamic memory - not to be confused with the dishonest, selective, compartmentalized, or as often called, 'rationalized', memory - becomes a situation as it needs be for those who not only biologically press onwards, but consciously do so as well. The past never changes, as it always reflects the present as it is, in the conceptual moment, which is as it is, and couldn't be otherwise. But, one's understanding of the past changes constantly. One being so used to keeping memories in terms of static images, dreams must keep up with the past's lack of reinterpretations.

All the many places we've been and people we know, spiral before us in an endless parade, ever making slight alterations to reflect our needs, while still maintaining an illusion of timelessness - not as static images, scientific events, but as a personal history, a personal legend, even. In the this sense the timelessness is actually more fully engrained as our dreams of once common things become more vast, shimmering, etherworldly.

In these dreams, there's a juxtapositions of the person one is, reliving the times that are no longer, and the person one is, reliving the person one was. People and places one knew as a something new to oneself, one dreams of knowing outside of temporal restraints. In our more melancholy of states one may reflect on such reoccurring dreams throughout one's life as one often reflects on past events in their more common state of reflection. In this dream based nostalgia - the spiraling years of intermittent nostalgia itself, which constitute some of the more profound substances of one's life - one sees the parade of people one knew pass across one's past fields of travel. In our most melancholy moods, reflecting as if for by chance the last time, everyone, even the most solemn, wave as they pass by.

Simple animals

Concerning a simple animal that has external and internal nerve endings and muscles: When its nerve endings are stimulated the muscles move in a preset way based on the exact nerves and force of the stimulation. A more advanced animal has a central nervous system, which is useful in that it can coordinate various sensations from all over its body to better determine what movements the muscles make. Concerning an animal advanced enough to have a brain encompassing or working alongside the central nervous system: Its brain contains memory, as an added element, which allows it to add another dimension to the way the central nervous system coordinates movement, but among the less advanced animals this memory is very short. The sophistication in various species varies regarding their coordination of memory and sensory input to determine muscle movement.

Advanced animals and conscious thought

There are animals for which we can say have the distinction between being conscious and unconscious. Those with such distinction can be contrasted between a state of sleep or resembling sleep, and an active state fully responsive to their environment. This distinction shouldn't be confused with the distinction between animals capable of conscious thought and those not. Animals with the former distinction are not necessarily capable of conscious thought.

The purpose of conscious thought is for advanced coordination involving both short and long term memory. The following is the process of conscious thought: The brain of an animal sends a signal to various muscles, internal and external, to move, generally in a slight manner, for no reason directly pertaining to the animal's environment. The sensation of the movement is sent back to the brain. This process repeats in various ways. Eventually, and often repeatedly, this process results in the brain sending signals to muscles to move in various ways for reasons pertaining to the animal's environment. This is a process similar to the aforementioned coordination done by the brain/central nervous system in simple interactions, but there's this extra element of the feedback between body and brain. This feedback is how thought can be in a way one would associate with the notion of experience.

The evolved brain versus the conception of a created brain

If one is misled by the idea of the brain being fundamentally an object for computation, one may be confused as to why this feedback system evolved. Keep in mind that the central nervous system, and in more advanced animals, the brain in general, evolved so closely to the animal's interactions with its environment that a computational brain, that can simply take data from its body/environment and then process it for any length of time before finally sending data back to the body, would not have had much of a chance to evolve. Furthermore, one may better understand the implausibility of such a type of brain when one considers how an animal relies on the fundamental sensations of pain/discomfort to help it decide how to react. Pain/discomfort being the ordering entity's sensation of disordering, where the ordering entity's fundamental goal is to order, one can see how all sensations of pain/discomfort are the fundamental criteria for deciding what actions to make.

One may consider that since memories are supposedly solely stored in memory cells in the brain, that when an animal is utilizing thought pertaining to longer term memories, it may not need such a feedback system between the body and brain. The issue relates to exactly what is contained in memory. Memory is of experience, first and foremost, and only in a secondary manner should be thought of as memory of things such as knowledge or facts. Even though experience may be measured simply in terms of nerve ending stimulation, the brain simply hasn't room nor energy to store an entire experience as pure cellular data. In recalling memories, which is a large part of thought, it must use data stored in the form of keys, and then use the interaction with the body, which is conscious thought, to do the actual recollection. And of course, the more accurately it does what it can too reenact the past sensations (such as play the part as best it can even without the other environmental actors) the more accurate the recollection. But as said, the muscles are not provoked to move pertaining to the animal's environment, that would be too costly, and also misses the purpose of the recollection. The purpose being to reinterpret data, to coordinate it, to better decide on future actions.

Implications

It's useful to understand since in thinking the brain uses the body more than may have been previously clear, that the exact condition of the body is relevant to the ability of the brain to think. It's not just a matter of health, but in a more hypothetical sense, it's a matter of being. If two brains were to be switched among two bodies, body A and B, and then one were to rename the bodies to reflect the origin of their new brains, then neither A nor B would likely feel even close to at home, and this would be true even if the bodies were of the same dimensions, health, age, and neither person had a chance to interact with others or look in a mirror after the transplant. The intricate details of the internal form of the body based both on normal development (more closely relating to gene-type) and based on unique experiences (phenotype) would likely be different enough to make the experience of simple thought very different, if not making thought incoherent.

Exertions, and over exertions, that take place overtly in our environment leave a lasting trace on our muscle throughout our lives, as manifested by their performance. Likely, the less obvious (from an external standpoint) exertions, and over exertions, of our muscles when thinking leave a lasting trace, as manifested through our performance when thinking. But, not just in a matter of sheer ability, such as speed, strength and durability. They certainly contain their fundamental form (gene-type) as the brain has always drawn on when interacting with it, but they may also actually contain memories in a sense. As the memories in our brains are individual keys, so to might are our muscles be individual corresponding locks for those keys.

The Myth of Near Indefinite Sustained Joy

Firstly, a word on need. As living beings we are in a near perpetual state of need. We aren't like a stone statute that can remain relatively unaffected by its environment and be relatively unaffecting to its environment. We constantly take and give to our environment, as the continual process of obtaining what satiates our need to fulfill lack, and giving away the excess we need to dispel.

Secondly, it's necessary to understand what sensation, whether pleasant/joyful, or some degree of pain/discomfort, is based on. Sensation is based on internal and external things interacting with our body-nervous system. Perhaps sensation that is stored by our brain-body, but not consciously experienced, may just be done so in terms of the collection of internal/external data, but when consciously experienced, it's always felt in the form of need or the temporary cessation of need.

The sensation of need can be described using words anywhere from minor discomfort to agonizing pain.

Pleasure is the sensation that comes when our body feels we should be aware of the temporary cessation of need. Pleasure can't be self-sustaining.

Thirdly, it's important to understand, that while need or the temporary cessation of need is what conscious sensation is based on, that doesn't mean that we always feel our needs or cessations of needs.

Just because we feel pleasure at the temporary cessation of a need, doesn't mean that we had previously felt the need that has now temporarily ceased. For example, we may feel pleasure when receiving a shoulder massage. This pleasure is due to the sensation of the cessation of tension in our shoulders. But, it doesn't mean that we had ever noticed that tension. Whether we did or didn't doesn't necessarily have a correlation between the pleasure we feel.

Then just because a need has been temporarily fulfilled doesn't mean we feel pleasure because of this. This is true whether we had previously felt that need or not. For example, if we feel hungry and eat, we will feel pleasure at the temporary cessation of that need. The reason is to keep us eating, because without the pleasure we may not bother. But, we can possibly be given food through a tube, and fill no pleasure in the process of becoming full.

Fourthly, we may look at the myth of near indefinite sustained joy itself. The idea is that one can keep experiencing one pleasure after another or the same pleasure continuously without significant pain or discomfort ever interrupting. But, with the above in mind we may see how this dynamic would be essentially impossible. Pleasure/joy is what follows need, therefore the only way that pleasure can be continuous is for us to not consciously experience our needs, while often consciously experience those needs' temporarily cessations. I don't know if that system is even hypothetically possible, and doubt it is, but let's look at what the cost would be should one manage to maintain it:

If our needs are not consciously experience, but simply always taken care of without our conscious attention until upon their temporary cessations are conscious awakens just for the short time that cessation lasts, then the part of our brain-body responsible for conscious thinking would atrophy. We might experience nothing but pleasure, but we may ask what we'd make of make of it, or how such pleasure would feel; basically like if an ameba was awakened every time it fed, we wouldn't know what to do with our pleasure. And that cost/pitfall, isn't even the most relevant when one looks at the useless sheltered life that would result from that system.

No, our pleasure gains meaning and intensity because we consciously experience the need for which's temporary fulfillment the pleasure represents. Great pains leads to great pleasures, but let's look at it a slightly different way: Great needs if regularly temporary fulfilled lead to great pleasures, but those great needs must generally be felt; felt as great pain.

Lastly, I'll mention two things. First, it's worth mentioning that while over time our degree of pleasure can rarely exceed our degree of pain, we can maintain an approximate balance, which I call contentment. I'll discuss that further in the other essay just below this one. Second, while pleasure can't be self sustaining, pain can. If we reverse the system described earlier in this essay and avoid consciousness during pleasure, or more realistically simply always have new needs impede on the short times we can experience pleasure, then pleasure may essentially never be felt.

Being that most of our development before we're fully grown is done unconsciously, once grown we already exist in side of complex beings, that may have a long way to go in losing-complexity/decaying before death. We may experience this spiral downwards, while I'm skeptical of the reverse. During a downward spiral our conscious minds have already reached a state of complexity that knows what to do with this pain - knows how to feel it or in other words; simply can feel it. During a spiral upwards, which is mostly commonly in living beings as the time from conception up to being full grown, one starts with an undeveloped consciousness as one starts with an undeveloped body, and therefore this great process of health, which is the years in which the development of the body takes place, can hardly be characterized as being experienced with an excess of pleasure.


The Myth of Near Indefinite Sustained Personal Peace

The above essay covered most of what would be in this. Here I just want to explore an aspect of the more broad idea of happiness as opposed to the more simple idea of joy. That aspect of the idea of happiness, as opposed to others which are generally covered in the above essay, is that of personal peace, for which's fullest conceptualization is that of achieving a state where the majority of one's worries will be gone, and one will have accomplished virtually all that one has sought to accomplish, and have all that one has sought to have, and live in a state of near bliss, only occasionally interrupted by minor discomforts.

To see through that myth we must look at human nature. It's not to seek a certain degree of comfort and then settle, but to continually grow when possible. If we feel deprived of something, then if we manage to satiate that deprivation, we'll feel happy for a while. But then we'll begin to want more. Historical examples are numerous of this, but are there are few, if any examples of the reverse. People can settle, they can meet a long lasting state of contentment, but that contentment does not equate to happiness, it's a state between happiness and sadness. Generally a highly compromised existence, tending more towards what people commonly would be more likely to call a sad existence than a happy one.

Think about the joy one experience after working very hard for very long then going on a quality vacation. In this case what has happened is that the need to rest has grown and grown, and once on vacation that need is being satiated. But once we have rested all that we need, then we can rest no more. To sit in one place on the beach all day and stare at the ocean stops being an act of rest from hard work and becomes a test of endurance in itself. It becomes a test to maintain self control amidst mounting pressure to begin activity again.

We have many over-arching needs in our lives, that we can spend years trying to relieve, and there's not necessarily any reason we shouldn't try. But, it's helpful to understand that once the needs are fulfilled, other needs will come.

Noble Self-Value as Part of the Path Towards Authentic Power, Addressed to the Alienated Westerner.

There are those who are shameless, who see no problem living as livestock, a pet, or a zoo animal. Such people hold onto one value fiercely, which is the value of no-values, and attempt to get rid of all others. Chances are many who consider themselves to be such people, are not. They may actually still greatly value pride despite themselves. As well as fiercely attempting to eliminate values, they are fiercely egotistical. They trip themselves up in this. They refuse to accept that they value themselves so they never explore what exactly it is they value about themselves. They leave themselves floating in the wind so that when they're ego is most in crisis they end up following, like a cow, whoever appeals to their ego with flattering lies.

Even the most rejected of men may as well embrace having values and admit to having values. They may think about what it is they're really turning away from; not values in themselves, but certain values that have been partially imposed on them, and have not worked well for them. They may ask themselves what it is that they reject and what they do value in life and which of those values are missing.

But, it's poor planning to focus entirely on what one is most deprived of leaving no room for other deprived needs to become more substantial at later times. It's better to use cautious planning concerning one's latent needs, and attempt to fulfill them in an order that doesn't just take under advisement the intensities of the needs, but the practicality of the needs. One may also predict how the mitigation of some needs may best lead to the mitigation of others, and factor that into the order one attempts to fulfill them in.

As well as providing for baser, simpler needs, one may seek a higher respectability, that which comes from an authentic, meaning noble, sense of self-value. Authentic self-valuing is the only way towards authentic power. Many base their self-value on individuals, or abstract institutions, anywhere from the state to political groups. But, authentic self-valuing must be from and for oneself and one's kind, and mustn't be based on falsities, even those that might not actually be derived from others. For those lacking knowledge or access to their own kind, if they believe they've been deprived and set adrift by society then the innocuousness of the concerns or evaluations of Modern's should be more transparent than otherwise.

If one has an employer one may best work towards giving him the perception that one's his kind of worker - probably meaning stupider than he and altogether a pushover. Concerning one's friends it may be best to simply make oneself tolerable company as far as they keep themselves tolerable company. Concerning family, and heritage in general, see the essay, On the Alienated Westerner Developing the Pagan Mindset.

As for political concerns. Why reject the common political notions just to be sucked into more unusual ones? Does one's slavishness to an unpopular unachievable ideal for the human species make one better than those who are slave to the more popular? Those harboring resentment are those standing inline for recommunion. Their harsh stares and angry bared teeth turning into wide eyed smiles as soon as they're tossed a compliment or other scraps to gnaw on.

Chances are one's not even remotely self-sufficient, nor robust, but at the height of vulnerability. One may be an insect in the world at large, pathetic, near powerless, but what's most despicable and inept, and what's most likely a certain sign that one will continue as such, is one's reliance on the thoughts of other insects.

The best but hardest approach to authentic self valuing is likely to excruciatingly slowly let one's self-value dissipate near completely so that it can possibly later be renewed without corruption. For one unable yet to take such an approach, or perhaps what would best be considered an early step in that approach; on may simply let the self-value one derives from others be slowly replaced by self-value for not having as much self-value derived from others.

Some refer to various forms of Paganism as practiced around the earth and throughout history as religions; I don't. For me, for a particular system of beliefs to be a religion it must follow a world denouncing theme. Any belief system that rejects what is real in favor of something yet-to-be, or hidden-behind-the-scenes, is a religion. Christianity, Judaism, and many of the Eastern belief systems are religions.

An atheist, I guess, is simply one who doesn't believe in a god, or gods. Most modern Westerners who considers themselves atheists share common traits. Most Western atheists have either personally rejected what they understand to be Christianity or where raised by those who did.

There's a common misunderstanding for such people. Just because they rejected the gospel and its god, doesn't mean they rejected the world denying mindset. In the more extreme form they replace the idea of heaven on Earth with utopia. But, even those who're more moderate, still betray themselves in their world denunciation. The very idea that one should expect the world to be other than it is, or to change to an idealized form to better suit one, is world denouncing.

Even to claim that one wishes to take part in changing the world personally, hints at world denunciation. It's true that everyone has some effect on the world in their life time, and that with effort such effect increases, but its common for the modern Westerner to exaggerate the degree of this effect.

Firstly, we mustn't confuse the world with the Earth, or the Earth with humans. When I say the world I refer to all of reality, including all of outer space, for which humans, far from being the center are just one relatively insignificant part. When I say the Earth, I mean just that, the planet Earth, a giant rock of multiple elements which cares nothing for humans, nor for anything else.

The Earth, as I mean it, while a highly chemically active rock, is not a rock to care about the degree of it's chemical reactions. So even if humans have the power, collectively, to destroy all life on Earth, the Earth itself has no preference. In other words, even if humans were to destroy all life, they wouldn't be drastically effecting the course of events on the Earth, in general, and will be far from drastically effecting the world itself.

So one can't change the world in any significant way whatsoever, but neither can one change the course of human events easily. Even if something one does happens to start a chain reactions of events that has a large impact on humans, it must be based on understanding of reality, followed by a willed course of action. Otherwise, one is only a pawn, not anything close to what may be considered a source of the change.

When a person has developed an understanding of the world, through experience, perception, and honest evaluation, one can better develop values that aren't world denouncing, and implement those values though actions, which while trying to make some impact on one's surrounding environment, have no intention on trying to drastically change humans in general, the Earth, or the world.

Most modern Westerners who claim to have surpassed Christianity are still basically Christians, with a world denouncing mindset. They haven't freed themselves from superstition, but are still mired in it. They aren't rational minded, but let their emotions cloud their logic. It's true they believe in science and they usually believe in the rational higher quality forms of it, rather than quackery. And, it's true they don't believe in ghosts, or other supernatural forces like that. But, they still have supernatural values.

To understand what I mean by supernatural values, one must look at what natural values may be. Natural values, are what humans have naturally created for most of their existence. Whatever details their beliefs may have contained, such as myths and gods, they've generally been metaphors for the reality of their existence. Whatever particular system of beliefs most cultures of man have held throughout out the vast majority of their existence, they've generally had a consistent mindset, what I call the Pagan mindset.

They honor their ancestors, their kin, and the environment in which they lived. They have a love for the world, as it is, with no wish for anything to have been other than it was, and no wish for change other than that which furthers their traditions. As their environment changes, they adapt to it, rather than trying to change it or wishing to change it.

They are natural, therefore, naturally non-superstitious, or those who don't believe in the super-natural. Loving the world, as it is, they have no desire to try to find what is non-existent, hidden, or outside of the world.

So one may ask about the modern Westerner, who has been disconnected from his past, and ancestral lands. Some, far from having an intimate understanding of their ancestors and their traditions, are descended from relatively recently mixed ancestry. Even if they put all the pieces together through years research of family trees, anthropological studies and historical documents, they'd still have no basis for reestablishing or joining, when possible, their ancestors' Pagan traditions, because they would have more than one to choose from, often drastically different.

No, a modern disconnected Westerener, may wish to wait under a much latter date, if ever, to concern himself with the less intimate, often banal, details of his past. His past, which includes his ancestors, and the world in which they lived, is manifested in himself. An honest glance in the mirror - an honest look at his reflection, without guilt, fear, vanity, or any other emotion clouding his view, will provide more valuable information that a year of research.

He has no intimate understanding of a culture beyond the modernized mixed culture he was raised in. No family unity, rarely even knowledge of his family. He finds identity in shallow things. Such as the demarcated boundaries and power structures that developed through multiple motives into what's now called the state, or country in which he lives. Or by the political groups within. Or as an atheist, a minority, a woman among men, or a man among women. He finds identity based on the profession he's in even if it serves him poorly, and he can't even explain coherently why he chose it, or that he even finds it suits him.

No modern state values its citizens, it uses them, and the best case scenario with those states leaning towards some degree of democracy, is that they ask for nothing more than to be used in turn. If one is an American, be proud to be part of that exclusive club, and pay your necessary dues, but don't create your identity around that fact. Furthermore, to create an identity among a political group within is even more ill-advised. One casts one's vote, if its no problem to do so, but then forgets about it. The alienated Westerner I'm speaking of wasn't born to be a statesman. He needs not take the burden of the state onto his shoulders by identify with one of the internal competing interests for power. If he must choose sides, and be active in his support for it, then he'd likely choose based on safety alone. If he's from a country such as America, Canada, Australia, or most, if not all, of western Europe, then he has no need of that.

It exposes a profound dissatisfaction with the world to identify as an atheist. It's an identification, not of what one is, but of what one's not. So there are those who foolishly believe in the Judeo-Christian god, and if a person is not one of them, it doesn't mean he must identify as not being one of them. If one is intelligent and values intelligence more than any other trait, one doesn't call himself an anti-moron.

It's no different identifying as a woman among men, a man among women, a disabled person among the more healthy, or a part of a minority ethnicity among the majority ethnicity, or any other type of minority, or person in a group of those with supposed lesser power than those in another group. It's identifying as what one is not, as if what one is not is either something one should be spiteful not to be, or spiteful of.

A self-labeled feminists identifies not as a human of the female gender, but as a person whose not a supposedly oppressive male. She forgets her father was a male and her child may be a male. And those who identify as of a minority ethnicity, they don't take themselves as what they are for what worth they can find, but look to those who are not them - the majority ethnicity, and say I'm not that, as if they would prefer to be other than they are or would shame those who are different to give them what they couldn't take for themselves otherwise.

Using shame so-called oppressed groups have carved out a shallow existence of comfort for themselves for years, in American, I believe, specifically since the 1950s. If one is a healthy rich white woman then how can she identify as a victim just because she's not a man? If one is a healthy rich black man, how can he identify as a victim because he's not white. If one is a health white man, how can he identify as a victim because he's not rich? These labels, I use as examples among many; black/white, rich/poor, healthy/disabled, woman/man, are not all encompassing descriptions, but just factors that some people can make claim to. If one wishes to level all humans - make them all equal, one may as well work towards doing so directly, with courage, not indirectly and indecisively as is shown.

But, these those various groups claiming to be oppressed are not to be opposed. An alienated modern Westerner, let's say an American, need not make claim to having anything to do with any of them. There is no substantial consequence should he not do so.

If one is a healthy, rich white man, who's one of these alienated Westerners I speak of, he doesn't need to be resentful that he's meeting all the criteria as an oppressor by the so-called oppressed groups. He neither need feel anger at any disadvantage they give that he would otherwise not have, nor any shame for any advantage he does has. Nor does he need to take part in the activism, in either of the two supposedly diametrically opposed directions. If he has the Pagan mindset, he'll simply observe what is real, then adapt accordingly.

Of one is a disabled, poor back woman, who's one of these alienated Westerns, she doesn't need to be resentful that she meets all the criteria as an oppressed person by the so-called oppressed groups. She neither need feel anger at any disadvantage the supposed oppressing groups gave her, that she would otherwise not have, nor shame for any advantage the so-called oppressed groups may have gave her. She too, may avoid activism, and if she has the Pagan mindset, observe and adapt.

No, to have the Pagan mindset one doesn't identify with what one isn't, or doesn't have, or can't do. One identifies with what one is, what one does have and what one can do. One with the Pagan mindset doesn't act like a victim to the circumstance of the world. One loves them as that which made one what one is. One takes responsibility for everything. One would not change anything in the past, and would only change the present as first an adaptation, then creation, procreation, as one is reasonably able. If one must put on masks to better adapt, then fine. A person in the jungle may where animal skins to better be protected and blend in. A person in modern America may play the victim to get the protection and resources that pretense provides. But he'll be of the Pagan mindset in his own mind and as he speaks of himself outside his sphere of influence, such as anonymously online, he never speaks as a victim.

It takes courage to take responsibility and to strive to know oneself as one actually is, not as one may have fooled oneself, or have been fooled, into thinking one is. Courage can only be developed gradually. Awareness only found slowly. Responsibility only taken piece by piece. Self-love only comes after one has shed all delusional self-infatuation and had to deal with oneself in all one's humility and vulnerability.

The term Paganism has been abused by modern Westerners. The Pagan rituals of peoples' not one's own, or only with a thread of attachment are just further delusion. One may not know what to do, where to go, how to live, what to value, but one doesn't need to choose based on seemingly random convenience or choose what is offered from those with their own motives. One may attempt to obtain an excruciating degree of honesty about himself and the world. One may start from scratch with one's reflection and go from there.