Authentic Living - Episode 39

In this series, you have been invited to answer many important questions with honesty and sensitivity.

Perhaps your authentic self is not particularly honest.

Perhaps your authentic self is not particularly sensitive.

Who sets the time limits associated with your activities, and why?

Why do some people feel rejected by society?

Perhaps you do not spend much time thinking about such questions.

How do you decide whether expressions of fun are appropriate or not?

Are you sure you know the difference between well-informed kindness and predatory activities? 

What do you value?

What are you seeking to change?

What are you seeking to protect and conserve and restore?

How do you intend to change the situations you are hoping to change?

How do you think about patterns of conservation in relation to patterns of consumption?

What do you feel it is your duty to conserve, and why?

How do you think about freedom in relation to such matters?

How do you respond when you perceive wastefulness?

Corruption causes cruelty.

A dead world is a cruel world.

Corruption kills.

What do you know about corruption in relation to conservation and its absence?

How do you know you are not investing in corruption?

How do you know you are investing in conservation as reasonably as possible? 

Do you usually associate consequentialism with corruption and/or conservation?

How much of your own decision-making has been consequentialist over the past twenty years, and how do you know?

Addressing ignorance helps to prevent the four biggest dangers in the world, namely infection, contamination, pollution and corruption.

Those four dangers are often related.

Solving a problem at its source is always necessary.

Ignorance is the first problem to solve.  When people become aware of their ignorance, they also tend to become aware of their arrogance. 

Arrogant people are always the most ignorant of all.  They are particularly ignorant of the causes and consequences of suffering.

What do you believe to be an authentically good business?

You may already know that good business practices are always associated with mutually beneficial pleasantness of the non-corrupt variety.

Mutually beneficial pleasantness is an end in itself.  It benefits everyone except the corrupt and otherwise cruel.

Helping a culture of well-informed kindness to arise must begin by counteracting destructive cultural influences as appropriately as possible.  

How do you tell the difference between real freedom and fake freedom?

How do you tell the difference between real security and fake security?

How do you tell the difference between real certainty and fake certainty?

What have been your experiences in relation to homesteading, smallholdings and crofts?

Authentic Living - Episode 38

Perhaps you think investing in simple living mainly involves sitting in front of a screen watching a soap opera or game show or computer game or sporting competition or action film or music video.

But how is it possible to combine simple living or complicated living with sustainable living?

What have you discovered about sustainability?

Perhaps you associate simple living with retreating from the state, and society. 

Authentic Living - Episode 37

What makes art relevant if not authenticity?

Are you able to distinguish clearly between ordinary experiences and luxury experiences? 

Have you ever been treated as though you are undeserving of necessities?

Do you think art is necessary?

Do you think art is ordinary?

Perhaps you think art is a luxury.

How much do you value non-corrupt cultures?  

How do you define corruption and its absence?

How do you prevent yourself from being corrupted?

Perhaps you mainly measure value in terms of money.

How do you attempt to tell whether people are devout or deluded?

When is one form of devotion any better or worse than another?

Perhaps you prefer to express authenticity by avoiding all individuals and organisations and media outlets encouraging unreasonable beliefs.

How do you know when someone is deluded?

How do you know you are not one of them?

How do you attempt to help people to become more reasonable?

If you do not associate simple living, intelligent kindness and importantly useful information with nation-states, or even societies, that is understandable.  States tend to be corrupt.  Societies tend to be overly complicated. 

There is no point in attempting to live simply, calmly and authentically with aggressive neighbours, whether on a local scale or an international scale.  To do so would be complacently dismissive of appropriate responsibilities.

If you believe yourself to be relatively reasonable, you may assume other people are either equally as reasonable as yourself or not reasonable at all.

How do you know whether a person is more reasonable than yourself in a particular situation?

What is reasonable about opinions?

What is reasonable about perceptions?

What is reasonable about authenticity?

What is reasonable about investing in social research?

Perhaps you would rather not answer questions about your experiences of authentic living.

How have you been responding to earlier episodes in this series, and other opportunities to learn in and from Frugality Cottage?

Authentic Living - Episode 36

Do you usually associate authentic living with your lower needs or your higher needs, or both?

Perhaps you have spent most of your life wondering what your higher needs might be.

Or perhaps you have been so involved in meeting your lower needs that you have forgotten you have higher needs.

Genuine friendships and authentic patronages can both involve investments in simple living, suitable independence and appropriate interdependence.  Both involve a shared history and possibly even the shared exploration of history.

What have been your questions about Frugality Cottage and how well have the volunteers answered those questions? 

Good friends support the continuity of a valued private relationship.

Good patrons support the continuity of a valued cultural practice.

As a friend, a patron, a volunteer, and through your other social relationships and roles, how do you know you are adequately open, honest and clean?

When people are desperate for money and/or attention, they are more likely to behave immorally.

When people are bored, they are more likely to behave immorally.  That is especially the case when they have more money than sense.

Both poverty and fame make people vulnerable, but so does surplus wealth, or any wealth at all for that matter.

When people are vulnerable, they are less able to express themselves authentically.  They are also less able to meet their needs satisfactorily, whether at the basic level or the higher level.

How often have salespeople treated you as a means to an end?

When, if ever, is it possible to be ethical as a salesperson?

If you have ever sold anything, possibly including your labour, how did you prevent yourself from being exploitative and exploited?

How do you usually identify means and ends?

How do you know you have invested your time well over the past twelve years, and especially over the past twelve months?  

Are you an experienced practitioner in the art and science of thoughtful reciprocity? 

Are you sure you are not particularly ordinary and therefore not particularly arrogant and ignorant? 

If you have only just joined this series of episodes, welcome.  This is probably a good time for you to go to the beginning and start again from there.

If you have been following this series but have missed a few, this may be a good time to go back to the beginning, too, to refresh yourself and catch up in your own time.

 

• Authentic Living - Episode 1
• Authentic Living - Episode 2
• Authentic Living - Episode 3
• Authentic Living - Episode 4
• Authentic Living - Episode 5