Yes, I continue to dwell on the “Is all fun profitable?” idea. It occurs to me that part of the reason I have difficulty with responses like Brad Spangler’s is that it’s based on something that may be ineffable for as long as humans exist: a way to objectively define, quantify, and calculate relationships among concepts including “profit”, “fun”, “cost”, “risk”, and “happiness”. I could go off on many tangents from that observation—and I may still, in future ramblings—but for today, I will simply say that I am unconvinced that an economics-based analysis is always the best course.
And that is particularly true when considering deeper issues, such as the purpose of life. Does adopting a dry, profit–and–loss perspective mean an implicit acceptance (to some degree) of the fallacious idea that work and play can never overlap? It seems so to me. And I reject that idea, simply because time and again my experience has shown it not to be true. I enjoyed teaching so much—and was rewarded for my efforts so richly—that it was a continual surprise to me that people were willing to pay me money for it. Same with making my candy now. Why shouldn’t life be like that, as much as possible? Why must we separate fun from serious endeavors? Why should work be an endured drudge? I know of no rulebook that says it must be so; and if there were such a book I would reject it anyway as propaganda intended to sap much of the possible enjoyment from life.
I’ve been thinking about these things a lot lately, for a variety of reasons. Today, someone I have known and respected for a long time summarized what I consider to be the healthiest approach to living. I aspire to it, but don’t always succeed; thus, I asked her for permission to reproduce her ideas here, to serve as handy inspiration for me. She agreed, so here they are, slightly modified to focus on the ideas:
[L]ife is romantic, in the best sense of the word. More than twenty years ago, a chap asked me to define life, and I wrote back that “Life is awareness making love with existence”.
I have not changed my mind one bit on that. We get to fashion our lives to be as we want them to be, all controlling propaganda and power-based paradigms to the contrary being only just that: thinking patterns taught to us to keep us “in our place” ~ taught by those who would control us. Forget them, and have fun. Have entirely too much fun. Enjoy every minute.
My life is wonderfully and beautifully romantic, lovely and happy, and ignoring government, and refusing to fear its threats, really adds a lot to the quality of my life every day.
Walk in beauty.
You may know of the author of those inspiring words from her work at the Fully Informed Jury Association. Iloilo Marguerite Jones is also involved in many other delightfully subversive projects, most notably Means of Inquiry. I’ve known her for many years, and hope to make her acquaintance in person soon.
“Life is awareness making
“Life is awareness making love with existence.”
I think this is what Thoreau was saying at Walden Pond – and throughout his life.
In “Letters To A Spiritual Seeker” he wrote (Letter # 30), “O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it – for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.”
He also said, “Cowards suffer, heroes enjoy.”
This is why Thoreau himself may be the most important hero we have: he lived his words far more than any hero we have devised.
If we stopped suffering and began to enjoy, we might embrace life more freely – and be freer for it.
Vague indefinite riches!
What a great phrase!
It’s been far too long since I’ve read Thoreau—and you’ve convinced me I’ve read much too little as well. Thank you, Pagan. (Oh, and I hope you don’t mind that I made your link active.)
You're welcome.
And I'm glad you've linked to it.
The more I read of Thoreau, the more _aware_ I become.
The economics of fun
I have stayed out of this conversation because the whole idea of "an economics based analysis" is foreign to me. Life can't be reduced to a formula, not even "The love you take is equal to the love you make." Ms. Jones seems to have found an insight much closer to reality.
Trying to puzzle out whether fun is profitable seems to me a bit too much like trying to squeeze life into a cubbyhole. I'm with you -- the goal should be to make your means of earning profits as much fun as possible. It shouldn't be an either/or.
Funny Prophet
"Fun" is perhaps entirely a subjective phenomena: our perception of it is certainly highly subjective, and it is difficult to point to an objective standard that our perception reflects. One who acquires sufficient self-control can have "fun" doing anything (even profitable things!). Because of the ease with which we can bend our perception of fun, and the difficulty in keeping this feeling aligned with anything outside ourselves, "fun" is generally a terrible star by which to steer. Those who attempt it often seem to end up chasing their tails: and I have fun watching them.
"Profit", on the other hand, is an objective standard, so it is possible to keep our perceptions of it aligned with reality. It is not quite as easy as, say, temperature: where we can stay calibrated by hauling a simple instrument around. It is often more difficult to predict the outcome of a particular transaction: building up the fire is a reliable way to increase the temperature in our house, but investing our resources so as to reliably make a profit is more difficult. There is a lot of random noise to obscure the issue: "I won the lottery! See, lottery tickets were a great investment after all!". The timescale upon which profit operates can be longer than we can perceive. To further confuse the issue, humans have dual natures, and what can profit one side will often cause a loss for the other: necessitating some hard choices at times. Still, despite these difficulties, over the long haul "profit" is a star that will guide us consistently if we mind it.
Of course, a person can always chose to ignore the objective nature of profit, and warp their perception of "profit" in any way they please. If they blow their day playing in the sun, they can tell themselves that really this was quite profitable in some way perceptible only to them. They might even convince themselves that their naval lint was as valuable as gold, and start hoarding it in jars.
I'm not sure that warping our perceptions is really a wise thing to do: but it seems a lot safer to convince oneself that what is profitable is fun, than the other way around.
As a final note: the fact that we can quote people we have never met, like Jones; and people long dead, like Thoreau: suggests strongly that they were guided by the star of profit.
Rationalizing?
As long as said day didn’t involve shirking obligations to another, what other perception matters than theirs?
Also, it seems to me that you’re suggesting a sort of rationalizing goes on after the fact; the day progresses, then is gone, and only then does the person make an accounting of it in that objective profit-loss book. Why wouldn’t an individual attend to that balance sheet throughout the day, and if it started slipping into loss-land, make a change then? That seems closer to how I have lived many days ... but then, I think mostly in terms of framing/reframing and reflecting, rather than rationalizing; that term has negative connotations that I don’t think are usually justified.
I don’t see the need to call in the “dual natures” concept here, nor the utility of doing so. Is it not sufficient for your objective model to say that we have complex natures, which makes trying to calculate profit a very challenging endeavor? We can have competing/interfering goals and desires or fears, and quite often do. I posit that only those individuals who are trying to live partly for themselves and for some other(s) truly have a dual nature—and the nearly-universal unhappy results serve as a testament to the wisdom of that course.
Outside of the monetary realm, what is an objective standard by which one can compute profit? To be as clear as I can, I mean “objective” in the “unbiased, impersonal, fact-based” sense of the term.
Re: Rationalizing?
Well, at the end of the day, when our hypothetical shirker goes to cash-in their pocket-full of moonbeams for their dinner, they will discover that it does matter what others think of their profits....
I don't see what difference the tallying interval makes. There is some sense in not counting one's chickens before they are hatched: and there are many investments that take a lot longer to mature than an egg.
I think perhaps the "dual natures" you are thinking of are different than what I had in mind. A human gets to play host to two sets of replicators: genes and memes. They are each after their own kind of profit, and are often at cross-purposes to achieve it. This muddies the waters considerably when attempting to tally up our score: especially if one isn't mindful of this dual nature.
In the short-term we could look at whether our share of the worlds resources has increased or declined. For a young person we might look at whether they have become better positioned to capture a good share of those resources; or less so. In the long run we are all dead: and profit comes down to whether our genes and/or memes are increasing their share of their respective pools, or not. In the shorter long-run, we might look at how well positioned we have left our descendants to profit.
These factors all exist in reality, whether or not we are able to calculate them; therefor they qualify as objective standards.
Smells like more economic reductionism to me ...
Paying someone else for food isn't the only way to get a dinner. The person who in your opinion has “blown his day playing in the sun” may have been foraging or some similar thing. We can each envision whatever scenario we want ... doesn’t make it the only way it could play out.
I thought my example made it clear the difference varying tallying intervals can make.
Well, since you didn’t provide any illumination into what was in your mind I had no effing idea what you were thinking. I certainly wasn’t thinking memes and genes—that phrase often refers to “mind–body” dualities in psychology and that context made absolutely no sense here.
Thank you for the helpful examples. They are indeed objective ... but they also seem to assume a perspective I don’t share.
That seems to me to be a very narrow and unfulfilling way of defining profit.
I see that The Shadow’s comment was up when you posted the one to which I am currently replying; have you nothing to say in response to his thoughts?
Paying someone else for food
Yes ... as I indicated, the waters are muddy. It is easy to fool ourselves into thinking we are on a profitable track when we are not -- especially if we are well-fed. Frequent tallying isn't a bad idea....
I take this to mean that your are guided by a different star. Tell me, can you see this star clearly? Is it in the same place in the heavens that it was yesterday?
His words don't really make it through my parser. Does he have some magic beans for sale?
To your hammer, everything is a nail
There's nothing mystical or irrational about my claim that economics cannot replace philosophy, and that monetary gain is merely one form of profit.
In fact, the man (Aristotle) who first presented the concept of eudaimonic (non-monetary) profit also happens to have been the inventor of formal logic.
Hardly a peddler of magic beans...
Economic reductionism...
...seems to be all too common in the freedom community these days, probably as an over-reaction to our culture's incessant attacks on capitalism and the free market.
But economics is only one piece of the puzzle, and cannot be forced into duties it was never intended to perform. Economics can't replace philosophy; a solely economic worldview is barren and lacks the sustenance required to satisfy the totality of man's nature.
A comprehensive philosophy of liberty and human flourishing will both sustain us and attract others to join us in our pursuit of happiness. There is certainly a time and place for economic arguments and analysis, but it is detrimental to be economically-minded to the degree that the concept of non-monetary profit seems strange.
May I offer a new paradigm?
I see that there has been some discussion here of the grasshopper and ant fable, and all its wonderful applications. Nice.
But have we humans not evolved a bit beyond seeing existence for ourselves as being limited to either the life of the irresponsible, thoughtless, present-oriented grasshopper or the responsible, slavish, future-oriented, ant?
Is there not more that we humans can create than these two forms of existence for ourselves?
I am probably far closer to the ant - or a bee - than a grasshopper, yet I can admire a grasshopper. That does not mean I have to feed one: it just means that I can leave the grasshopper free to do as it wishes.
Each of us is exactly free to do as we wish: it is the training we receive from a very young age that compels us to accept the worker paradigm as our lot in life. Why not be a creator instead? I know, I know: government and all of consumer-oriented materialistic society tells us we must work, share, provide and pay. And if that is what you want to do, and all you want to do, then fine, have at it.
But I would ask you each to consider a paradigm in which you live through and by the best expression of your talents, where you live as much as possible through voluntary exchanges, and you judge a bit less and learn a bit more.
I see that what I wrote in another place has been some discussed here, and yet, the primary point I was hoping you would see: that life is the highest expression of individual awareness interacting with - on as many levels as possible - this existence in which we find ourselves at present.
The awareness of this concept, and its appreciation and enjoyment as we wake and walk through each day of time and space, is what makes life worth living.
Imagine yourself deprived not only of your senses, but your awareness of those senses, and see consider then much you enjoy and savor life.
For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of making love with all your senses, and enjoying each of those senses separately and as a synthesis of your place in existence, then I hope you will try it will all of creation, because it is a heady and wonderful experience.
Try this: Wake up early, go out, sit in the grass, feel the grass, smell the earth and the air, watch the sun, listen to the birds, and taste the dew from the leaves. That is your awareness making love with existence. Do you understand this?
You can go to work later and make a lot of money and run your life on the profit principle, if that is your desire. But try living with this existence and directing yourself as an independent, individual living organism to experience it all, just once. Then step back mentally and see what your Observer thinks of this.
We are each a unique individual with much to offer and much to enjoy. Is it not possible that we are all correct in our thinking, each for ourselves?
I am all for profits. I am also all for being present in this life. I do not see a conflict between the two.
HaveFunBeFree.com is coming to you soon. Stay tuned.
Have Fun. Be Free.
ilo, who occasionally aspires to be a pine marten
I'm with you...
Guess I'm just unusual or something... But even in the days when I worked the hardest and endured conditions that were almost intolerable, I chose to continue because I perceived a real benefit to myself, as well as to others. When I could no longer see benefit to myself, I changed what I was doing. Since moving to Wyoming, everything is different and I can't imagine going back to that kind of work again.
It does not seem to me to be possible for people, especially free people, to choose to do anything that does not benefit them in some way directly, whether it is money, status or anything else.
Those benefits, almost always more than one, must be defined by each one for themselves. No benefit is, of itself, either bad or good - except perhaps to that individual.
Right now I'm going to go out and sit in the grass for a while. Great idea. :) Then I'll get back to work.
Of shining stars and birds
Thank you so much, Ilo, for yet again expressing what was in my thoughts and feelings much better than I’ve been able to here thus far. I will confess that reading Frank Russell’s classic story And Then There Were None with the great line I was recently reminded of: Freedom—I won’t! led me to pushing back when I felt pushed, rather than focusing on more substantive matters.
If Ilo’s comments don’t help you better understand my perspective, perhaps this will. I do not find this metaphor of much value, because my life has never been guided by a single star. A better one is that it is guided by a constellation ... and some stars shine more brightly at times, while under differing circumstances, others will come to the fore. One is monetary profit, another is more broadly-based economically-centered profit; but not surprisingly, others focus on eudaimonia and related profits. As Ilo said, I do not see a necessary conflict between profit and being present in living. Do you?
In closing, along the lines of Ilo’s closing words, I am on record as feeling deeply conflicted about whether it would be more pleasurable to experience the majestic glide of a hawk, or the undulating flight of a goldfinch.
And now, back to seeking both kinds of profit in the remainder of this beautiful day.
More about birds...
“In closing, along the lines of Ilo’s closing words, I am on record as feeling deeply conflicted about whether it would be more pleasurable to experience the majestic glide of a hawk, or the undulating flight of a goldfinch.” --
The hawk soars high above and farther afield and is able to take in the bigger picture from a distance, “registering” what he sees from many sources, while the goldfinch moves from place to place in a smaller, more immediate area limited to (and by) his microcosm.
Blake said, “No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.” Not so much a _conflict_ between hawk and goldfinch as it is perspective... not which would be _more pleasurable_ but which is more pertinent and reachable from one’s viewpoint.
On any given day, we might play hawk AND goldfinch simultaneously, drawing pleasure and anticipation from the larger panoramic view, while enjoying and benefitting from one’s lesser, but no less important, environment.