Monday 6 September 2021

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.