Monday 10 May 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 19

You may or may not be aware that intelligently frugal pleasures are the only legitimate expression of power.  Everything else is self-indulgent wastefulness.

Do you regard civility as an intelligently frugal pleasure? 

Perhaps you regard Frugality Cottage as rather twee or cutesy or kitsch or excessively sweet or cloyingly quaint.

When, if ever, does the picturesque bore you or annoy you with its sugary prettiness?

What have you already discovered here, and how?

What have you been learning through this noticeboard?

Who do you hope will guide you around this virtual cottage and its grounds today, and why?

You may possibly want to help in the gardens here, especially if your authentic self is happier outside than in a building. 

Do you often help to make pretty gardens?

Do you often help to make pretty buildings and/or pretty rooms?

Do you usually associate the pretty with ephemerality and/or sentimentality.

Do you usually associate beauty with an ideal?

When does simplicity bore you or otherwise annoy you, if ever?

How have you been comparing the year 2020 with the year 1920?

How have you been comparing this year with the year 1921?

Can you imagine what it may have been like to be your current age one hundred years ago?

Do you know how and where your family members were living at that time?

Can you imagine what it may be like to be your current age in one hundred years from now?

If you feel you are currently economically productive enough, what is the source?

If you feel you are not currently economically productive enough, what is the cause?

How do you imagine your ideal location, and why?

How do you imagine your ideal job, and why?

Industry is often associated with the expression of ambition.

Creativity is often associated with the acquisition of knowledge and skill.

Perhaps you do not associate economic productivity and societal problem-solving with your own creative preferences.

If you have missed the earlier parts in this series, please catch up quite soon.  There is much to experience through the episodes ahead.

All the background notes to assist you are here, of course:

 


What, if any, have been your experiences of an Australian idyll?

What, if any, have been your experiences of a global idyll?

 


 



What do you already know about the work of the International Training Centre for the Harmonious Interplay of Beauty, Understanding and Magnificence?

How do you usually evaluate your investments in terms of time, continuity and reasonableness?

 

 

How can you prove you know how to tell the difference between stimulating economies in good ways and bad ways?

How do you tell when the artificial takes the place of the real?

When entering Frugality Cottage each time, what do you usually first experience?

Is it a sight, a sound, a smell, a feeling or a combination of sensations?

Perhaps you are still experiencing your first impressions here.

What have you discovered about the cottage and quaintness? 

How have you already evaluated Frugality Cottage and your experiences here?

Perhaps you associate Frugality Cottage with pleasantly spending time and thoughtfully investing time.



Perhaps you have been discussing this series of episodes with quite a few people in quite a few places.

What, if anything, have you explored recently in the sitting room here in Frugality Cottage, and with whom?

What, if anything, have you experienced in the library here?

The virtual chimney in Frugality Cottage is of the clean air variety.  It is only used in hot weather.

Are you aware that many economic theories in the past, as well as government policies in the present, have had much in common with folk beliefs?

They are not adequately based on real evidence.

You may or may not have much experience at defining, redefining and refining the problematic aspects of cultures.


 

It has never been necessary for ordinary members of the ordinary public to register to receive essential information about Frugality Cottage, or the wider Adelaidezone, yet there are no public areas of the Adelaidezone.  

There are several communal areas in this digital district.  There are also many private areas.

Sometimes a communal area becomes temporarily private. 

Sometimes members of the public are permitted to enter a communal area, and possibly even one or more private areas, at least temporarily.

Frugality Cottage is private property.  You are apparently here mainly as a tourist.

All ordinary members of the ordinary public are regarded as tourists here.

To be regarded as an extraordinarily pleasant member of the public here is not particularly difficult for someone with a suitably consistent devotion to respecting nature and distinguishing clearly between it and artificiality.

What is a happy life, from your point of view?

What is a mindful life, from your point of view?

How do you judge the character of a person, a group, an organisation, a community, a society, and a place?

 

 

Are you a well-informed practitioner of intelligent frugality?

Do you know much about deliciously nutritious foods?

Do you appropriately support public interest journalism?

If you have a talent for appropriate leadership, have you already registered as a patron here?

All appropriate leadership is authentic leadership.

Perhaps you have not yet made a favourable impression with the volunteers here.

Perhaps the volunteers regard your interactions as cloying or somewhat stilted or somewhat rude.

Frugality Cottage is virtual a research establishment.  It is not a show home or a simulation of a fairy tale setting.

Do you know how to tell the difference between superstitions and reality or do you often absorb common misconceptions as though they are factual?

Do you believe you live authentically yet behave as though your life is a fairy tale?

Are you aware of the difference between common sense and counter-intuitive truth?

Are you aware of the difference between common knowledge and the curse of knowledge?

How have you formed impressions in your mind, and in your life, relating to the following words:

 

 

What have you discovered about an Australian idyll? 


An Australian idyll - Part One

An Australian idyll - Part Two

An Australian idyll - Part Three

An Australian idyll - Part Four

The doughnut economic model does not fit in with the ideological stance often projected from the right-wing of the political spectrum, or the left-wing for that matter.

What relevance, if any, does that economic model have in your own life?

How are you nourishing yourself through non-physical means?

Do you know much about the Big Bad Wolf?

Do you know much about kitchen witches and poppets?

Bad wolves and bad witches play with the stock market and financial markets and fiscal policy. 

Children continue to go hungry, or they grow fat on gingerbread and still remain malnourished through a lack of essential nutrients in their diets.

And laissez-faire policies encourage the adulteration of foods for profit.  Greed also encourages the production of weapons for profit.

Do you usually associated quaint cottages with woodlands and fairy tales and witches in gingerbread houses?

Do you usually associate stock markets, gingerbread and witches with crafts?

Do you know much about witchcraft in fairy tales and the origins of those stories?

Even people working from home are often trapped in a rat race when they are expected to work at inappropriate moments.

But many people trap themselves through excessive debts, excessive ambitions and other unreasonable decisions.

Do you know much about the history of witchcraft?

Are you capable of distinguishing between one type of witch's broom and another?

Do you know the difference between idle gossip and idolatry?

You may associate authentic living with the expression of ceremonial magic, particularly through a talent for entertainment, if that is your preference.

Do you regard real characters to be eccentric?

How have you formed impressions in your mind, and in your life, relating to the following words:

 

 

How do you think about, and express, authentic living in relation to those words?

Have you ever deeply studied relationships between religiosity and intelligence? 

Do you mainly have a scientific approach to understanding why this virtual cottage exists, and where it exists?

Whether you do or not, are you adequately knowledgeable about the historic relationship between religious beliefs and scientific practices?

The idyllic sits in the centre between the various extremes of novelty, grandiosity and folly.

This virtual cottage sits on a plain and a plane and a cloud and as part of a plan.

It sits liminally between fact and fiction, as does the surrounding virtual neighbourhood.

Yet this is where Truth resides.

Do you usually regard truth as a liminal experience?

 

 

Here in Frugality Cottage, preparations are made every day for the best possible circumstances as well as the worst possible circumstances, and for everything in between.

In the fourth wall of this quite amazing entrance is the doorway you unconsciously passed through to enter this virtual, internal space.

That imperceptible doorway provides access between the imagined indoors and the imagined outdoors, the internal world and the external world, the private and the public, the known and the unknown, the past and the future.  It also leads the way, liminally, between your imagination and your perceptions of reality.

The online residents of this digital district are building an enlightened community within and between its buildings and gardens, and along its pathways and through its gateways and doorways, with appropriate respect for privacy.

Civility is obviously an expression of enlightenment in itself.

What are the distinguishing characteristics of a country person rather than a town person, in your view, in any society?

Which sort are you?

Perhaps you are both, or neither, or someone from the margins in between, or at the margins of society. 

How do you establish the boundaries between liminality and non-liminality in your own life and thoughts?

How do you establish other boundaries?

How have you formed impressions in your mind, and in your life, relating to the following words:

 

 

What do you already know about the relationship between intelligent frugality and conscious liminality, and how do you know it? 

Do you consider liminality to include the transition between not knowing a meaning and knowing it? 

Are you still attempting to understand the meaning of authentic living in the context of your own existence?

Do you consider interactions between people with different beliefs to be liminal?

Do you consider interactions between cultures to be liminal?  

Do you consider interactions between different age groups to be liminal?

Do you consider interactions between people of different gender identities to be liminal?

Do you consider the transition between the public and the private to be liminal?

Do you consider the transition between urban and rural environments to be liminal?

How do you tell the difference between a mat, a visitor and an investment?

What have you already discovered about the relationship between the cottage and visitors?

There are many deluded people who do not know the difference between reasonableness and magical thinking.  They believe they are behaving authentically by believing in something unprovable.

How do you know you are not egocentric? 

Perhaps you mistake the egocentric for the eccentric.

How does your imagination usually help you to explore possibilities?

How do you distinguish between quality knowledge and deliberate falsehoods?

How have you really and truly responded to the first eight parts of this series, and where is your proof?

 

 

How can you prove you have a suitably adequate grasp of reality in relation to your expression of authenticity? 

How do you distinguish between reasonable aspects of identity and delusional ones?

Perhaps you already provide insights into your experiences of authentic living online.

If you made a video series in relation to authentic living, with the first episode of approximately one minute, the second episode of approximately two minutes, etc, etc, in keeping with the questions and themes of each episode as outlined here, how easy or difficult would you find that process?

And who would be your audience?

So many people make videos of aspects of their interests, selecting a particular image of themselves to present to an audience, or they present themselves in much the same way as fictional characters.

Since the beginning of this year, you have had the chance, each week, to experience the questions and themes associated with a new episode.  This episode, for example, is meant to be presented in video form for approximately nineteen minutes.

How have you responded to episodes nine to twelve?

 


How carefully do you distinguish between public access and public ownership?

How carefully do you distinguish between private access and private ownership?

How carefully do you distinguish between community access and community ownership?

How do you usually make comparisons between people, and why?

How do you usually make comparisons between places, and why?

How do you usually make comparisons between ideas, and why?

Keeping all human activities as clean as necessary should not be particularly difficult, at least with the best available quaternary training and the best available leadership.

Yet the ordinary public often has no understanding of, or appreciation of, quality cleaning practices, whether physically or politically.

Distinguishing clearly between problems and dangers is always necessary.

There is often a superficial affinity between people with similar interests and/or beliefs.

How do you tell the different between a craft and an art in terms of usefulness?

How do you tell the difference between simply following instructions and deeply gaining knowledge of crafts, arts and various other skills?

How do you think about the idea of progress?

What is the difference between a cottage and other types of dwellings?

What is the difference between a permanent residence and a temporary residence?

How have you responded to episodes 13-17 in this series?

 

 

How have you responded to the previous episode in this series?

If you have spend any time at all in the magical library here, what have you discovered through that experience about authentic living?