Do you usually associate ethical living with being clean in morals and emotions and motives and manners and environmental practices?
Do you usually associate ethical living with moderation, especially to ensure cleanliness and other intentions do not become unreasonable obsessions or irrational compulsions?
Do you usually associate ethical living with the careful assessment of motivation, intentions and expectations?
Welcome to part two in this series, and to the questions associated with it.
How have you responded to part one, and what motivated you to do so?
Why are you here now?
What is your current age and how much time do you think you are willing to devote to ethical living, and thinking about the subject carefully, today, tomorrow and for however long you may be expected to live?
How much time did you devote last year towards thinking about, and expressing, ethical living, and did you do so with consistent authenticity?
It is always important to begin thinking about ethics in terms of authenticity.
This year, there are likely to be no more than twelve updates in total on this noticeboard.
How many updates did you experience here last year, and why did you do so?
Most of the updates here last year were described as episodes rather than parts, in keeping with the assessment requirements of the Council of Enlightenment.
You have apparently not yet begun to provide episodes of your authenticity for the council to examine.
If you are unsure how to start. Perhaps you will provide an overview of the first thirty years of your life.
If you have not yet experienced thirty years of life, that is likely to indicate that you are not yet qualified to be assessed.
Young people are often either overly enthusiastic and overly confident or they are overly anxious and overly depressed. They may even change from enthusiasm to depression and back again from moment to moment. The same applies to many older persons lacking psychological maturity, emotional intelligence, moral intelligence and insight.
Young people and other immature persons may be regarded as quite entertaining at times, at least to some people. They may even have the ability to teach knowledge and skills in some contexts, even quite competently. However, they are not particularly capable of teaching ethical living. They may, instead, encourage people to follow fads and fashions and whatever other latest craze arises.
Immature persons often base their assessments of the truth on popularity, not integrity.
Despite its relatively cute and somewhat kitsch appearance in the minds of ordinary persons, Frugality Cottage is not a popular venue. Immature persons tend to feel uncomfortable here and do not stay long. They are easily distracted. They are frightened by true enlightenment, especially when the Spirit of Enlightenment or one of her ethereal associates suddenly appears in the sitting room or on the stairs in ghost-like form.
The minds of immature persons tend to be cluttered with biases and superstitions and the remnants of earlier influences and false assumptions.
Your experiences of authentic living will continue to be judged by the Council of Enlightenment in terms of ethics, epistemology, aesthetics and metaphysics.
Please ensure your updated response to episode one is no longer than one minute.
You will only be invited to provide an updated response to episode two if the council unanimously approves of your updated response to episode one.
Where did you present your responses to the episodes last year, and who assessed them?
Did you ensure your response to episode one was no longer than one minute?
Did you ensure your response to episode two was no longer than two minutes?
Did you ensure your response to episode three was no longer than three minutes?
Did you ensure your response to episode four was no longer than four minutes?
Did you ensure your response to episode five was no longer than five minutes?
Did you ensure your response to episode six was no longer than six minutes?
Did you ensure your response to episode seven was no longer than seven minutes?
Did you ensure your response to episode eight was no longer than eight minutes?
Did you ensure your response to episode nine was no longer than nine minutes?
Did you ensure your response to episode ten was no longer than ten minutes?
Did you ensure your response to episode eleven was no longer than eleven minutes?
Did you ensure your response to episode twelve was no longer than twelve minutes?
As you will have noticed, at least if you are capable of doing so, an important educational pattern has been established in relation to the episodes, and in relation to interpersonal practices.
Do you have a habit of overwhelming people with too much information?
Do you have a habit of underwhelming people with not enough information?
Do you have a habit of annoying people with irrelevant information in terms of their own needs and interests?
Do you have a habit of upsetting people by ridiculing their ignorance of your knowledge?
Do you have a habit of angering people by disregarding their needs, concerns and values?
Perhaps you lack insight into your habits.
Perhaps you believe your ethics are a matter of habit.
What do you know about your ethics in terms of privacy?
How carefully have you considered ethical matters in your presentation of episodes on authentic living?
Only enlightened beings are suitably qualified to be considered as genuine world leaders. The Council of Enlightenment is seeking to assess you in that regard.
Do please subscribe to the most relevant YouTube channel if you wish to learn more about enlightened being, authentic living and ethical living. Also do your best, if possible, to encourage other people to do likewise. That would indicate you have at least a small amount of potential as an enlightened being, and as a real world leader, even if you are not yet thirty years of age.
Enlightened being is a necessary prerequisite for the development and implementation of quality constitutions, quality policies and quality governments. Such practices of quality are obviously associated with ethical living and enlightened leadership.
How are you currently leading the world towards the second Age of Enlightenment?
Immature persons, regardless of age, tend to live through images, dreams and habits rather than reality. They may even present their images, dreams and habits as reality online, through various forms of editing and other manipulation. They may even do so competitively.
Ethical living is authentically in touch with reality.
But what is reality in terms of ethics rather than ontology?
Does digital reality exist at all or is it an illusion, interpreted by the imagination to distort perceptions, like all media?
Is unmediated reality even possible, given the limitations of human perceptions and the prevalence of human biases?
How have you attempted to inform yourself about the harmonious interplay of beauty, understanding and magnificence, through your perceptions and through your imagination?
How much of that experience is associated with nature?
How much of that experience is associated with politics?
How much of that experience is associated with love?
Many people express themselves as individuals, or as couples, or as parents, or as members of small groups, or as employees, but rarely as part of nature.
How aware are you of the nature within yourself, and around you, and from which you have been made over billions of years, and even over the past few centuries?
How aware are you of the way culture has developed within you, and around you, and how it influences your views about everything, including nature, from its origins many centuries ago?
How aware are you of the ways in which mental difficulties, in yourself, and in other people, and between you and other people, have shaped your attitudes and beliefs and your choices in life?
What are your current feelings and how are you attempting to acknowledge them?
What do you prefer to share with other people and what do you prefer to keep to yourself, and why?
When, if ever, do you prefer to spend time alone, and why?
If you cannot cope with spending time alone, what makes you feel that way?
- Authentic Living - Episode 1
- Authentic Living - Episode 2
- Authentic Living - Episode 3
- Authentic Living - Episode 4
- Authentic Living - Episode 5
- Authentic Living - Episode 6
- Authentic Living - Episode 7
- Authentic Living - Episode 8
- Authentic Living - Episode 9
- Authentic Living - Episode 10
- Authentic Living - Episode 11
- Authentic Living - Episode 12
In various areas of Frugality Cottage, and in many other areas of the entirely digital Adelaidezone, much work has been conducted, over many years, to help you experience life both authentically and ethically, wherever you may exist in geographical terms at any particular moment.
This is obviously an unusual sort of cottage.
How do you imagine it to be?
How does it look through your imagination?
How has it been constructed?
Which sounds and smells and textures do you associate with this location?
What is your awareness of its current temperature, its size and its shape?
How do you imagine its garden?
How do you imagine your future?
If you think you have a suitable key to the future, have you found a suitable door to unlock?
Perhaps the door you require does not require a key, at least for the moment.
- Authentic Living - Episode 14
- Authentic Living - Episode 15
- Authentic Living - Episode 16
- Authentic Living - Episode 17
What have you discovered so far in this entrance about ethical living?
What did you discover about ethical living before your arrival here?
How useful or otherwise is your imagination when seeking to answer such questions honestly?
Of course, honesty is very important here.
What are your plans for your education in the days and weeks ahead, and why?
You may or may not currently have access to the resources and activities presented in the sitting room here, or in the attic or cellar or kitchens, even if you are one of the patrons.
Only patrons with sufficient experience of the workshops and projects here and of volunteering with frugality and authenticity and other expressions of suitability will have access to further possibilities and opportunities beyond those currently available to them.
How have you already been volunteering in relation to authentic living and ethical living, and where?
How clearly do you distinguish between your voluntary activities and your paid activities, and how do you ascertain the value to you, and to other people, of each?
How clearly do you ascertain the value of your various activities to other species?
How clearly do you prevent yourself from having conflicts of interest?
What have your experiences in the library here taught you about patronage options, and about expressions of philanthropy, particularly those made possible through good investments?
How do you usually acquire the knowledge and skills with which to help dismantle corrupt practices, including those associated with politics-as-usual and bureaucracy-as-usual and policing-as-usual and business-as-usual?
What do you already know about political philosophy?
What do you already know about political science and political sociology and political psychology, and how did you acquire that knowledge?
Perhaps you arrived here mainly for escapist reasons, thinking you could learn a few recipes and crafts as a way to comfort yourself when feeling stressed.
But how are you attempting to address the sources of the stress?
While the healthy management of situational stress and chronic stress is important, it is much the same as taking a medication to relieve a physical pain if the underlying cause(s) are ignored.
As with physical pain, sometimes the best way to treat psychological stress is with rest.
But what is healthy restfulness and what is not?
When, in fact, is restlessness quite healthy?
You may have noticed that the style of communication from Frugality Cottage takes several forms, some of which, as on this noticeboard, are presented very cautiously indeed. This is obviously most necessary when interacting with strangers, possibly including those with no interest whatsoever in living in a truly ethical way.
The world is dangerous, both online and offline, primarily as a consequence of decisions and impulses associated with unethical persons.
Even non-strangers may be uninterested in living ethically, including family members. They may even attempt to prevent you from living ethically, through various forms of psychological manipulations, including guilt trips.
How have you responded to the investment notes left for you in the library here over the past two years?
How have you responded to the additional educational notes there, and towards the various publications on display?
If you have not responded, what has prevented you from doing so?
Perhaps you have been feeling unwell.
Perhaps you have been feeling overwhelmed.
Perhaps you have been having difficulty finding the right words.
Perhaps you have been grieving.
Perhaps you have been absorbed within the competitiveness of the unenlightened world.
Perhaps you do not know how to relate to the harmonious interplay of beauty, understanding and magnificence.
Investments take many forms but so do gambles.
How do you tell whether a particular risk is an investment or a gamble?
How do you ethics inform your approach to disharmony and other forms of conflict?
Perhaps you are feeling powerless, exhausted, confused, depressed and angry, or maybe your time is spent mainly in helping other people to overcome feelings of powerlessness, exhaustion, confusion, depression and anger.
Attempting to respond to other people's negative feelings is often unhealthy, even when providing therapeutic services for their benefit.
Attempting to respond to other people's seemingly positive feelings can also be unhealthy, especially when their enthusiasms are emotionally draining and excessive.
Perhaps you try to accommodate 'fans' in your life.
Perhaps you try to accommodate abusive family members in your life.
Perhaps you try to accommodate manipulative 'friends' in your life.
Perhaps you try to accommodate the demands of ruthless 'colleagues'.
Yet a truly ethical life cannot accommodate deliberate harmfulness. It is a courageous response to injustices. It values truth appropriately. It values lives appropriately. It attempts to shape a secure future by improving reality, not by ignoring unpleasant experiences but by facing up to the facts of unpleasantness and addressing the causes peacefully.
Without first becoming aware of your own, authentic self, it is impossible to live in a truly ethical way.
Perhaps you feel as though your authentic self disappears when you are unwell or otherwise stressed, yet your instinctive responses to ill health and other stressful situations are much more likely to reveal the real you than the person you pretend to be when feeling confident and contented.
Whether you like the real you or not is another matter entirely.
How do you usually think about ethics in relation to affection and self-esteem?
There is so much resentment, vindictiveness and spite expressed by cruel people. If you have never been a victim of their horribleness, you are very fortunate indeed. But what have you done to support victims and how are you helping to prevent future cruelty?
If you believe yourself to be a person of integrity, which principles do you always follow, and why?
Part Three in this series will appear here on Monday 7 March 2022, but will you have access?