1-2 Money
3- Sadomasochism
Money is a problem that we created ourselves. We also have problems inherited from our ancestors. Sadomasochism is one of them.
Do you remember running low on gas? You could have stopped at the next gas station but decided to take a chance and wait. You introduced in your life a chance to suffer. What was the motivation behind your decision to take a chance? Could that be masochism? Was it the first time? Did you create other opportunities to suffer?
Masochism is a motivation buried deep in our subconscious, waiting for an opportunity to manifest itself. It could be in the DNA of any race, color, or religion. You can see it at every level, from the daily life of individuals to the geopolitics of countries. We don’t talk about it because it’s not something to be proud of. It is part of our nature.
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How can you justify risking your life on the freeway to save a few seconds when you have nothing urgent to do?
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Casinos are rooted in sadomasochism. They calculated the probability of winning at many different games. The more you play, the closer you will get to the mathematical probabilities, and they are not in your favor. The gambler would rather focus on feelings. When he loses, he is a failure and should be ashamed. When he wins, he dominates everybody. He is the king, and everybody must pay him. In gambling, sadomasochism overrides any rational thinking.
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In some cities, you can find signs along the sidewalk with “No parking north of here”. If it is raining and you can’t tell where the north is, you can keep turning around the block waiting for a sunny day! Do we really need the north pole to park a car? Why not use “Parking on this side only”?
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To satisfy our need for sadomasochism, we even use the judicial system. We use the Law to impose our point of view on others. We pretend that nobody can be happy unless they follow our own religion, our own traditions, and our own way of relating to one another. To impose our ideas on others is stealing their freedom. Should we have a law to make such laws illegal!
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Even an idea such as “Love your neighbor,” mixed with human nature, can triggered a burst of sadomasochism like the Inquisition.
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Think of the countless wars in our history. Wars are an opportunity to suffer and inflict suffering on others. They’re not the best way to resolve conflicts, but we keep practicing. If we don’t like wars, why do we keep doing it? The answer is that, on Earth, feelings are more important than thinking. Sadomasochism prevails. Without it, most wars would look like a lack of maturity.
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Let’s go back a few centuries. People were waiting for somebody to make a mistake and used that as an excuse to torture him. They enjoyed making him suffer as much as possible for how long as possible. What could have motivated them, other than sadism? They boiled people in hot water, wrenched their tongues, and burned their eyes with hot iron. The most popular entertainment was watching them being burned at the stake. What we can say, for sure, is that their main concern was not the love of their neighbors. When people do not have enough stress in their life, they create some.
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We imprison those who don’t follow the way of thinking of the majority. We pretend that our morality is best for the public good. This is an excuse to steal other people’s freedom and satisfy our need for sadism.
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What we call ‘geopolitics’ is nothing more than sadomasochism at the government’s level. In a more civilized society, when there is a conflict, all the politicians responsible for the fighting would be accused of mismanagement and war crimes. They would be sent to The Hague. The judge would decide who can go back home and who will go to the battlefield to remove the mines.
Sadomasochism is part of human nature.
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We have lost sight of our real motivation. Our wars are making more victims than ever. Pressing a button does not satisfy a need for sadomasochism as much as watching people being eaten alive by lions.
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It seems that some countries are more prone to sadomasochism than others. Every detail of everyday life can become an opportunity to make rules, and those who do not follow the rules are chastised. Some countries use sport to satisfy a need for violence. In other countries the government may create rules that are not necessary and give people an opportunity to make everything complicated. They can also use religions, ideologies, and traditions.
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It can become tragic when sadomasochism makes people join a group and create a church that will take them to a foreign country to commit mass suicide.
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It would be interesting to investigate if sadomasochism did not play a role - unconsciously - when millions of people followed blindly a leader all the way to their demise.
It is true that we made some progress. We don’t torture as much as we used to. We don’t burn people at the stake anymore. We still have the Female Genital Mutilation and tortures in the jails. We still have a long way to go, but our need for sadomasochism may not be as intense as it was a few centuries ago. Someday, we may find a way to keep the tormentor genes inherited from our ancestors under some control.
Let’s imagine The News written by psychologists.
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“Today, our President satisfied his need for sadism by executing an inmate.”
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“In our conflict with our neighbor, it was decided that sadism was at the base of our motivation. Any attempt to solve such a problem using a war would take about 4 years before both sides have satisfied their need for sadomasochism. A better solution was to send the two presidents to The Hague. They are charged with major mismanagement and war crimes. Everybody else in uniform was sent home.
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A decision was made concerning the accents in many languages. “Starting next year, the keyboards of the new computers and cell phones will not have accents. It was decided that if you can write without accents in capital letters, you should also be able to manage without them in minimal cases. Our language is part of our national patrimony. It we should keep it free from the unnecessary burden of accentuation. Schoolchildren and keyboard manufacturers welcome the new law.
Let us try some empathy.
Pain and pleasure are processed in the same part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. It releases dopamine when experiencing pleasure. It is the same part of the brain that gets activated when experiencing pain.
If masochism has been with us for so long, there may be a reason. Pain was associated with many aspects of our lives. The predators would not survive without their preys. Our ancestors had to fight to survive. The first pain they experienced was starvation. They also had to fight extreme temperatures and fight predators. They did not learn to use fire without some blisters. After more than 200 000 years of fighting for survival, we learned that pain is a natural part of human life. Before we had vaccines (not long ago) we considered smallpox, measles, chickenpox, and mumps to be a natural part of children’s life. We learn to walk by falling. Children learn to use their bodies by getting bruises. Getting hurt is part of the feedback Nature is giving us in our learning process. There is a price to pay for what is good in life. No pain - no gain!
QUESTION6.com
We,The People, are not happy
An Alien looking at planet Earth through his telescope would see 8 billion individuals moving around like ants. He may be wondering what the cause of all this animation could be. We need food and shelter. That does not explain everything. A couple of centuries ago, approximately 85% of the population was comprised of farmers. Today, they represent less than 5% of the population. We should be free from basic needs 80% of the time. What keeps us so busy?
We have long-term and short-term motivations.
The human body is high maintenance. It must be fed three times a day. It must be kept at the right temperature at all times. It doesn’t smell good unless we keep washing it regularly. We don’t know what happens during our 8 hours of sleep. Even if you spend one hour a day keeping your body in working order, you should have more than 14 hours of leisure per day. Something is missing somewhere.
Behind the short-term motivation of the individual lies the long-term motivation of a society. Civilizations appear and fade away like flowers bloom and wither. We are familiar with the Egyptian civilization, followed by the Greek and Roman cultures. More recently, in the 15th century, Portugal was the leader of Europe. In the 16th century, Spain was the leading power, followed by the Netherlands, France, and England. All those countries seemed to follow the same process. The individuals who lived at the time were not conscious that they served the same purpose. We are not separate individuals. We are a flow of people like a river running across the centuries. We serve a purpose, consciously or not. Something is missing in our understanding of life. Sooner or later, we stop what we are doing and ask ourselves:” What is the purpose of all this? What am I doing here? Is it worth it?” Earth may not be hell, but it is not a paradise either. It looks more like purgatory.
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To answer the question of “What are we doing on Earth?”, some people use religion. Others decided that they will be happy when they have enough money or become famous. We are all looking for love. The problem is that we don’t know where to look. Looking for love cannot be a daily activity.
How is motivation implemented in Nature?
Let’s take a labyrinth.
At first, we sent water to fill the labyrinth. It filled all the dead ends and found its way to the exit. Water is driven by gravity.
The next step is to replace the water with slime mold. It is this gluey thing spreading on dead trees in the forest. It has no head and no brain. However, it is used to improve our computers because it can solve problems faster than we can. The slime mold will fill all the dead ends of the labyrinth. It will also reach the exit. After reaching its goal, the slime mold will remove what is filling the dead ends and could be put to better use elsewhere. Slime mold is motivated by the search for food.
Now, let’s place humans at the entrance of the labyrinth. They are not driven by gravity. They are not looking for food. They lack real motivation. They may not find the exit. Motivation could be the key to success. It lacks shape, color, or weight. You will not find it in the material world. The key to success is in our souls.
Love could be the leading motivation in our lives. Unfortunately, we don’t have the necessary sense organs to guide our search. All we know is that we will not find it in money or in the material world. The answer will come from our soul and our motivation.
That does not mean that we should go to the extreme and create pain on purpose. For instance, every law is replacing some freedom with a rule. Laws should be used in moderation. Politicians should keep in mind to “Use but don’t abuse” the laws.
We live in a world driven by money, wars, oppression, crime, geopolitics, and fanaticism…
We should think of them as a compost to be recycled. We should use them the way flowers use dirt.
Even the most beautiful flower needs manure.
Could we even be proud of some sadomasochism? The souls you meet on Earth may want to speed up their improvement. They understand that it won’t be easy, and they accept the challenge. They may be willing to pay the price to improve faster. That could explain why planet Earth is attracting so many sadomasochists.
Some empathy may be good…. if we don’t abuse it.
We appreciate your comments
14 From Helena to Robert Check the NDE
What was the reaction of your friends when you told them about love? Keep in mind that your friends are in a dark cave, and you don’t even know, yourself, how you got out of that cave.
Fortunately, there is a way out of our predicament. Our consciousness may be limited, but it can be amplified. We have been working on that problem for a long time already. To love people is to be conscious of them. It is more than being mindful of their presence. It is being conscious of their state of mind. You find this between a mother and her baby. She knows why the baby is crying. No need for words and reasoning. She is conscious of what needs to be done. Between adults, you may not know the details of their past, but you are conscious of the influence that their past had on their soul.
You can get some idea of what an increased consciousness is like by talking to people who have gone through a near-death experience. Many of them have new abilities that they kept after this experience. The most common one is that they know what people around them are thinking. Be careful of what you are thinking if you go to one of their meetings. (There is one every month in most big cities.) If you see a big nose, try to think, “What beautiful hair”. You are swimming in increased consciousness. They may be aware of something about you that you forgot. Search ‘Near Death Experience’ and you will find hundreds of people of all ages who have surprising stories. Most of the time, it happened during surgery. This is not something I would recommend! We say that they lost consciousness. I would rather say that they were not conscious of their physical body. Do we need a physical body to be conscious? This is not on my list of sense organs.
What happened to both of us is that we became conscious of one another. After a big hug, there is not much more to talk about. This is what could help your friends.
15- From Robert to Helena – Critical mass
Helena, I keep thinking of what transformed our relationship. The only explanation I could find comes from the atomic bomb! No mathematics. I promise!
Take a small sphere of radioactive material. The energy generated varies with the volume of the sphere (4/3π R³). The energy lost varies with the surface area (4πr²). As you increase the size of the sphere, the volume increases faster than the surface area. You reach a point where there is more energy generated than energy lost. You have an explosion. This is called “the critical mass.”
Are you still there? Something similar could happen to people. As long as they are separated, nothing much happens. It is only when they get together that they can reach a certain “human critical mass”. The problem is that there may not be enough energy between the two of them to reach that point.
The idea is simple but difficult to believe. Look at the people around you. Each one can generate some love, but not enough to elevate himself to another level. Take two of them at random, and most of the time, their total energy is too small to reach the ‘critical mass’.
Let’s see what could be missing in many people. One possibility is that they are still attached to the material world. They cannot detach themselves from their own body. Most people struggle to make the transition from being a separate individual to becoming half of a couple.
Another possibility is a lack of freedom. Love and freedom come together. When I was a teenager, I was saving my money to buy a record player. Thanks to inflation, the price of the record player increased faster than my savings. It was a race I could not win. Soon after I abandoned any hope, a neighbor bought himself a new record player and gave me the old one. It seemed to me that renouncing reaching a goal in a specific way opens the possibility that it can be reached another way. By detaching myself from using my savings, I introduced freedom into the system. That opened new possibilities.
The general idea is that many people are still prisoners in Plato’s cave. The more knowledge they acquire in the material world, the more they become prisoners of that knowledge. It is more difficult for a surgeon to change professions than it is for a blue-collar worker.
Before you dismiss my critical mass as a crazy idea, let me tell you how it can also be found in human history. The homo sapiens have been on Planet Earth for more than 300,000 years. How come nothing much has happened until the last two centuries? How come the steam engine, the planes, GPS, the computers, and AI did not appear 100 000 years ago? The answer could be that humans were dispersed on the surface of the Earth. There was too much distance between them. The invention of agriculture allowed people to move to cities. Over the past 200 years, the population of cities has continued to increase. A computer is composed of millions of simple ideas contributed by millions of different people. The computer made the internet possible, which further enhanced communication between individuals. More and more brains are becoming increasingly interconnected. That should lead to human beings achieving their critical mass and a higher level of consciousness.
Helena, I predict that more and more people will find their puberty of the soul together.
I would go even further. We will become conscious that Homo sapiens is the seventh stage of human evolution. It is not a question of selecting one race or one religion. Dividing the world’s population into countries fighting one another does not make sense. Either the seventh attempt of Homo sapiens will succeed, or they will disappear from the Earth’s surface like the dinosaurs.
Instead of fighting one another, we’d better unite and look for a way to get out of Plato’s cave. The love between two human beings is pointing in the right direction.