"Everything in Moderation", the Boastful Average

The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least three characters.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

If gendanken posts, how long does it take before someone pretends to care what she says?

No, too acidic.

If gendanken posts, and invert's not online, who's left to not comprehend?

How many times can you miss the point before gendanken starts name calling?
Hmmm, too numerical for a good riddle.

I never was one for riddles.

How is moderation average? Extremism ends up being average, and moderation can involve temporary extremes.

Everything in moderation. Even moderation.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I see it every single day in that bland puree you call "thinking"
You can't even insult me, Oh my brother.

...see?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Bingo.

Where they have fire, others have milk for blood.

 

Twain wrote that the only person who was happy all the time was an idiot. Idiot in the IQ<70 sense of the term (or whatever).

 

I see the problem of moderation thus: Moderation is often understood and promoted in terms of a statistical average, a statistical balance -- all meant for maintaning the status quo. Normalcy.

One can't be moderate unless one knows both extremes. One can live moderately by either going into both extremes, or remaining in the middle and avidly keeping those both extremes in mind as navigation points which are to be avoided. Either way, a person who is thus moderate has those extremes always present, be it as their everyday reality (the regular binging and purging, of all kinds), or their everyday mindset.

Be a good worker in your cubicle and have a reckless night-life. Love your pwetty wife but have a mistress or two on the side or spend hours watching internet porn. Smoke and drink alcohol, but use the best health products. Fear your boss but go sky diving each weekend. Then become an old, worn out cynic. Everything in moderation ...

Or be ultra-proper and live a life of silent despair that breaks your heart and makes you die of a heart attack on a proper, neat Sunday afternoon while mowing the lawn in front of your wonderful middleclass house, as you were pondering for the millionth time how bad your life could have been, and how great as well. Everything in moderation ...

It's like always feeding yourself a dose of poison, and then quickly after that a dose of the antidote. And so on for a whole life. Either way, that kind of moderation wears you out and leaves you miserable.


I think this estranged acting on the need for moderation is because we are out of touch with our natural sense for order. Since long ago, humans imitate nature, wish to re-create it, or at least wish to know how it works. Billions go into exploration of nature -- for what? Why on earth do we need to know the reproduction cycle of some deep sea squid?! Why do we need to know how old the Universe is?! So that man could satiate his desire to think himself in control. In control of what? Of the Universe that brought him to life? The chicken wants to teach the hen?

We do have a natural sense of order. It's just that that one didn't seem good enough, plain and simple as it is -- it didn't make us feel special.

I wonder why we want to feel special. Do you know?

 

I had a classmate in college. A bleached, ultraproper, middle-class, slim, long-fingered, pill-taking, everything your perfect middle-class bourgeous man wants, bitch. Who praised herself for her normalcy even in playing volleyball. "I'm not all that bad, but I don't play like the pros either, perfectly normal."
I could strangle her.

 

Exceptionally well said, water.

I suppose we want to feel special because we are accutely ware of our mortality and relative insignificance.

 

Is our relative insignificance real, or perceived?

 

Depends on the scope.

 

My objection to this is that your mind can still be moderate when doing extreme stuff. In fact, the things you mentioned aren't extreme at all. They are moderate. Millions of people go skydiving. Boring mindless drones go sky diving. Drinking, smoking is done by moderates in excess, fucking around also.

I think Gendanken was making a distinction here, or at least I would have, between the moderate mind and the moderate life.

You know almost instantly when you meet a moderate mind. They are easy to pick out. Almost all of them. And a mind that is not moderate gives you a funny feeling. The nature of the funny feeling is different for everybody. For the few it is recognition, for the most it is estrangement or ackwardness.

 

It's the *motivation* why someone does something that makes the difference, not the action itself.

It is the person who on one hand, smokes and drinks alcohol and eats badly, and on the other, uses health products, fancy cremes and goes to a spa regularly, that while having an immoderate life, may still have a "moderate" mind.

Then, there are those who live moderate lives, with "moderate" minds.

But the two, albeit externally different, are still the same, but are striving to attain normalcy via their own idea of rational control. Both have "milk in their veins, not fire".

 

And what of that scope?

 

Hey endanken...noone praised your essay......IF that essay was done moderately, shit...what can ya do when you are in ecstatica...? lov ed it. like a shower of recognition

have any here read Steppenwolf? thats all about mediocrity, and love the way Hesse explores the urge to break out of it

anyone heard of tepoet George Eliiot? bet i might hve thename wrong, but she was a fascianting poet living in the most drab middle class lifestyle....Glenda Jackson portrayed her in the a film about her life. the actual character actually committed suicide.....of corse

heard of Doherty? forgot his first name, but he was in the Libertines--an Indie band in UK, ad is now singing wit his band Babyshambles....he SEEMSthe epitome of the oppoiste of mediocrity. so much so it almost makes you puke to see how fukin outta control he is...hehe.

anyone find Buddha borin with his Middle Way? dont know if 'he' was, but tat mediocrity seems refelcted wirth his followers' medicore sittings still or ever and ever. to they wouod claim they were just lookin like that and were in Diamond Sutra Land ...i know i know. but i dont want to divert tis fine-wine thread wit buddha talk

we have all forgotten the Dance

 

1. Steppenwolf.

We discussed the text at class. All sorts of comments come, really smart students and teacher and all.
Then Water asks, "What does he (the protagonist) actually want?" And it was like I had thrown in just the wrongest question ever possible. (That bitch asking bitchy questions again ...)
And the teacher glossed over it, "That, he himself doesn't know." Duh.
The mediocre don't actually know what they want, even though they may talk a lot; not knowing what they really want is their distinguishing characteristic.


2. The Middle Way.

I avoided mentioning this so far. To think of Buddhism and to apply the statistical notion of moderation to it, leads to thoughts and behaviours incompatible with Buddhism. For example, to strive to be moderate in having compassion, e.g. "Don't have compassion for all sentient beings, but just for some, and to some degree, moderately" -- this is not Buddhist.

The way I understand it, one of the important aspects of the middle way is about neither being lax nor being forceful in how we attend to our spiritual and material tasks. In this sense, the middle way is subjective to each individual, each one has his own middle way.

For example, my middle way regarding drinking alcohol may be forceful restraint to my father, who used to be an alcoholic, but still drinks occasionally; while my father's middle way regarding drinking alchol may to me be laxness, but to a chronic alcoholic it may be life-threatening (because they need far more alcohol).

The Buddhist Middle Way and the Western idea of normalcy are, in my opinion, superficially similar to an extent, but fundamentally different.

The motivation for the middle way is to be healthy and progress spiritually; the motivation for normalcy is to fit in the society that sets the standards for what is normal. With the middle way, one is one's own standard-setter; with normalcy, the standard-setter is someone else.

 

Oh man, this thread is right up my alley. The question being asked is something I've been pondering for years. This is an excellent topic.

Although I'm not sure if the parent poster is suggesting a course of action, or just posing the observation he made in order to pick it apart and study it with other chatters.
By course of action, I mean- to pursue an ideal -IE- is there a correct ratio of 'routine frequency' to 'unusual spikes' that the masses nullify by subscribing to moderation?

I haven't really found an any answers to this question myself.

 

I confess i didnt read whole of what you wrote(got lost about half way down) but i think i have a rough undertanding of what your going on about. Correct me if i go of the track a bit.

I think your understanding of the thrase ("everything in moderation") migh be your main problem. Isnt everyones understanding of average different?? i think we just work on the average of what everyone thinks is average...errr understand??

In moderation it means not too much of it, which doesnt mean you go for average of everything. It allows for the extremes aslong as you dont do too much of it, which also applys to being average, dont be average too much push yourself to each ends of the pendulum but make sure you dont swing over, i think the key word i would use is balance.

life and death, balance. light and darkness, balance. War and peace, balance. If you have one then you would need to balance it off with the other. If you just stay average then it just stays average, cant think of anything to balance avarage with.

Am i on the right track in understanding what this thread is on about???

 

In the matter of making a difference in the way individuals in your immediate sphere of influence think, for example, you can have a direct and immediate impact.
Your impact, however, on how the people of the world think, is genrally not as significant (though, of course, like anything else, there are exceptions).
One indivudual has little effect on world hunger, stemming human suffering, combating widespread violence and wars, stopping the locusts from devouring crops in Africa etc.
Your influence over an asteroid on a collision course with earth is even less significant.

Take another perspective, for example...
100,000 people are killed by a nuclear bomb and on the same day one person is killed by a heart attack.
The 100,000 people are likely to have a greater impact on the world and humanity in general.

The greater the scope the lesser your significance.

 

hey there are lots of crazy people around my area, always talking to themselves singing, bieng drunk and drugged up (mostly homeless people on the streets) and i think to myself hey they look pretty happy, let them do what they are doing and i try not to judge them as "crazy" they seem crazy and wierd, different, excentric etc, but to me there just like little kids bieng happy about everything,

i dont personally celebrate my birthday, christmas, or new years ona big level, im a happy person nearly all of the year around, im not really that sucked up into this type of thing, but yeah i do have parties on my bdays, and go out with my friends on new years eve to clubs etc, but i do that normally, and i only have parties for my bday because people throw them for me etc, i dont ask for anything, no presents/gifts/surprises or anything atall i would be perfectly happy with nothing from anybody all year round every year,


some peopel have called me crazy before and ment it, like when reffering to how i deal with stressful and dangerous situations, like when i saved my 5 friends from a burning building, i cope well under pressure and in bad situations i just act norma; and calm, people call me crazy for these type of things but i dont think im crazy, and alot of my friends do "crazy things" but i dont consider them insane or crazy, just extreamly violent and they dont react nicely when dissrespected in any way.


peace,