[baron_harkonnen]

> Almost no one thinks about actively retraining the way they think. In fact, I don’t think this last idea even crosses most of our minds.

Really? I'm pretty sure there are thousands of years of philosophical and religious traditions that teach something along the lines of "looking for happiness in the external world is a bad idea, instead try working on yourself".

I mean the four noble truths of Buddhism, a religion with roughly 0.5 billion followers, are (paraphrased):

1. There is suffering

2. That suffering is caused by attachment to worldly things

3. The way to get rid of that suffering is to work on not being attached to those things

4. The best way to work on not being attached to those things is, surprise surprise, Buddhism.

But this idea seems pretty prevalent in pop-psychology as well. So I'm not sure who the we in "our minds" is, but I think even most instagram celebrates of realized that maybe "self work" is a good idea.

Unfortunately there are some philosophers that, in the last 300 years, have started to question whether there is such a clear divide between the external and internal world... but I don't expect most people to spend their time reading a lot of philosophy.

[leoh]

A preponderance of religions and philosophies that advocate changing the way one thinks does not mean that most people subscribe to them. Most people are insanely dogmatic including self-described Buddhists (such as those on Myanmar that are cruel to Rohingya), Jews (that abuse Palestinians), Christians (I don't need to describe their flaws), and Muslims. There are tenets of each faith that advocate viewing the world in a more open and relaxed manner. Almost all adherents of these religions and philosophies ignore those parts.

[whatshisface]

>Jews (that abuse Palestinians)

I'm not 100% sure that the Jewish religion can be associated with Israeli foreign policy. Israel would be fighting with Palestine whether any Jewish believers lived there or not.

[throw975]

I agree that the claim that All Jews are necessarily Pro-Israel is false. But I don't think that was what the author meant. His claim seemed more like "Israel is a Jewish state, and does misdeeds under that banner", which I don't think anyone would disagree with.

https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-n...

[leoh]

Correct. Many Jews disagree with Israel's current relationships — and many early zionists like Herzl would likely disagree too.

[d0mine]

If the default state were to be open and relaxed, then all these religions wouldn't need to mention it.

[agumonkey]

suffering can be deeper, but that's also probably stepping into psychiatry territory.. my point is you cannot reason or meditate everything away

[programmertote]

> you cannot reason or meditate everything away

100% agree. I was born a Buddhist and was a devout Buddhist until I was 13-14 years old (then I became an atheist). I went to monasteries for weeks on end to meditate. But what I found was that meditation is not for me. I cannot get rid of my recurring mental sufferings (anger, fear/anxiety, jealousy/envy, self-/guilt) just by spending more and more time in meditation.

One thing that I found extremely useful is stoicism (at least in the way I interpret it). I simply learned to accept that these bad feelings come and go, and that is the nature of being a human. There's nothing wrong with having such bad feelings, which I personally call as 'bad karma'. I just need to be aware of them (which meditation supposedly helps detect, but I find myself being able to do without meditating equally well) and be at peace with the fact that they come and go in my life as a human.

What is in my control is how long I dwell on these moments of bad karma. For that, I always try to get myself out of these bad-karmic situations by trying to see things in a bigger picture or in longer term (e.g., 'Well, I am not making as much money as I want to now, but that's okay because even if I don't earn more than what I do now, I can still retire pretty comfortably by living a minimalistic life. Alternatively, I just need to work maybe 2-3 more years with the current income to save up to the level of savings at which I want to retire. In the worst case scenario in which I get sick/disabled, I will just learn to adapt as human beings and other living beings are observed to do in adversity.') Trying to see things from such larger perspective makes me feel pretty content and thus, releases me from a lot of anxiety issues.

[pdimitar]

What did you expect to find in meditation at 13-14 years old though? Hardly any real conflict or hardship in anyone's life at that age.

Honest question, not looking to berate you.

[programmertote]

You made a good point. I didn't have any particular motive for meditating at that time except that I did it because a lot of people in my native Theravada Buddhist country encourages everyone to do that (to attain Nirvana).

I meditated to find Nirvana back then. But as I grew older, I realize that Nirvana is interpreted very differently even among Buddhist scholars, and thus is a relative/personal term. Nowadays, my definition for Nirvana is just to have a day without a lot of bad karma (hate, jealousy, anger, fear, anxiety) in my head. If I don't meet that daily goal, that's okay as well. For that, I find myself not needing to meditate and just need to be aware to distract my mind if I catch it in a state of bad karma. Maybe meditation will help some people catch their mind of dealing with bad karma, and maybe that approach might yield better results than me simply trying to be more self-aware and be more stoic. :)

[travisjungroth]

You and I had a very different 13-14.

[pdimitar]

Certainly. Question is, now that you are at your current age, don't you feel that if you practice meditation now, it would you bring more benefits compared to back then?

[travisjungroth]

That seems like a very different question than the point of the comment that I replied to. In my short reply, I made it about you and me, but my point was that lots of kids have real "conflict or hardship". If I told you about the stuff that was going on in my house at that age and replaced "family" with "roommates" and "school" with "work", you'd probably think of it as pretty rough. My life is much easier now at 31.

But enough about me. About 1 in 7 US children are food insecure [1] and will go hungry at some point this year. One in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult.[2] There is a lot of pain experienced by the world, and there's no age cutoff.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States#Ch... [2]David Finkelhor, Anne Shattuck, Heather A. Turner, & Sherry L. Hamby, The Lifetime Prevalence of Child Sexual Abuse and Sexual Assault Assessed in Late Adolescence, 55 Journal of Adolescent Health 329, 329-333 (2014)

[slothtrop]

Why should it?

[baron_harkonnen]

I absolutely agree with this and tend to fall much more on the pessimist side regarding any solution to suffering.

My point is that the author claiming "I don’t think this last idea even crosses most of our minds" seems off given that "change yourself not the world" is arguably the dominant theme regarding suffering for most philosophies throughout human history, from religions to pop-psychology self-help books (even the idea of "self-help" implies working on yourself to solve your problems).

Even deeper, the clear divide between the "external" and "internal" is pretty suspect in nearly all Western philosophical traditions in at least the last 200 years. This is something I would expect a PhD in Philosophy at Oxford to at least be passingly familiar with.

[microtherion]

> you cannot reason or meditate everything away

Yes, there are external events that are beyond one's control, but often one's reaction to those events is amenable to reason and/or meditation.

(A thought expressed, e.g., by Epictetus: "ταράσσει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ πράγματα, ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων δόγματα" — people are disturbed not by events, but by their opinions about events).

[agumonkey]

The things I was thinking of are below the conscious layer, flashes and bodily pain popping randomly (PTSD like if you want a simpler picture).

[microtherion]

That's an interesting question. I'd say that it's at least conceivable that meditation may help mitigate some of these phenomena.

[agumonkey]

I cannot conclude but so far my experience with meditation, except for one powerful instant where my mind rose to some light, 99% of it was not significant. It did help smooth some things but for short times and not deep.

[mtgp1000]

>Really? I'm pretty sure there are thousands of years of philosophical and religious traditions that teach something along the lines of "looking for happiness in the external world is a bad idea, instead try working on yourself"

The author is referring to the common man, whom we in the west have been conditioned to think much more highly of than is evidently deserved.

It should not be controversial to say that people by and large are ignorant.

[heavenlyblue]

If you tell yourself that the real world is irrelevant, it makes you more irrelevant in the real world.

[asdff]

Do you need to be relevant?

[Toine]

Exactly, most people I know don't want to ask themselves this kind of questions

[pojzon]

Because they feel inner need to be relevant or other way around ?

[coldtea]

That doesn't equate to unhappy though... Could be the exact opposite...

[ImaCake]

> I think even most instagram celebrates of realized that maybe "self work" is a good idea.

There is an entire community within instagram that is focused on this. I think they call themselves the "positivity movement". I have a cousin who is heavily involved in it. They mean well but as a skeptical outsider I always find it a bit dogmatic; they tend to focus to much on improving point of view without the concomitant work on the material self.