Jonism

by Jon Sullivan - 2024-07-26 - Jonism

<<<<< previous blog            album containing this post's photo

---

I spend a lot of time staring into the abyss and trying to form meaning from the chaos there.

One might hope that after enough years of experience and learning, a person would have accumulated a measure of philosophical sophistication to have many important lessons to pass on. One might hope. I doubt any of the old-age, hippie, Stoic, K-Pop, video game wisdom I've come to embrace rises to the level of "important", but here it is anyway. Be warned, my unrelenting ego and selfishness means that even a philosophy of love and peace will be centered on my own needs and comfort. I love you all, but solitude will usually demand while association will tempt. Below is the philosophical answer to the conundrum of living as a socialized hermit, and thus may have a proper audience of one. There is also the decades of continual serious brain traumas. So factor that in.

Jonism in a nutshell -

Kindness - I have no idea where I picked up the idea that simple kindness is enough to make the world, collectively and individually, a better place. 100%, full stop, guaranteed. And I don't mean just mindless kindness where you are a sponge for meanness and derision. Boundaries are important. But lead with kindness, be creative with kindness, choose kindness over silence and piousness. Refuse to see kindness as a weakness. Keep it authentic. Really care about the humans you meet, even the ones you disagree with. Make kindness more important, day by day, hour by hour, than us vs them. Don't make it transactional. If people you are kind to turn out to be assholes, it doesn't matter, you lose nothing by trying, and now you know to not go back. Still a win-win.

Gratitude - I remember the day I realized the power of gratitude. I wept. Before I had thought of life as just a swirling, sucking whirlpool of despair, filled with brief flashes of false hope, in an ever-blackening universe. I saw myself as a powerless victim of every fantasized boogeyman imaginable. I lived with the opposite of gratitude, which is resentment. My life changed when I stopped being a victim of voices and ghosts, and started being the recipient of life's wonders. Gratitude is another virtue we are culturally trained to see as weakness. We see it as desperately trying to cope, as denial of the shitty reality we find ourselves in. Don't do that. It comes down to what you focus on, where your mind dwells. You can have gratitude for the few simple comforts you have while still working on cleaning up the shit. Choose to live in joy rather than wallowing in envy. How can you be happy if you can't be thankful? Make being thankful a habit rather than a day in November.

Community - Social anxiety, autism, self loathing, ego all make it easy to crawl into a hole and not come out. It's easier and more happy-making to just accept being truly alone. But it's a happiness so limiting and fragile that it becomes more of a trap than a solution. Make the context of your life larger than just you. Let the virtue and love and learning of others feed your happiness. And seek out communities that foster virtues like peace, light, love, joy. Rather than those who lead with ideology and dogma. Be with people who can make you better. Be with better people, and let them make you better. Give to them and they will give to you. Love them and they will love you. You are not a rock or an island. You are human and need community.

Courage - Not the courage to confront others, but rather the courage to confront yourself. For me this is the Stoic thing. The courage to always live a deliberate and thoughtful life. The courage to take ownership of your choices and responses. The courage to ignore the voices rather than argue. The courage to turn off the auto pilot. The courage to not waste cycles on things you can't control. The courage to ignore the instincts telling you to be mad or judgmental or vindictive, none of which will benefit you in any way. It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. And you can't benefit from that unless you are mindful of choices that lead you to try and control things you can't control.

Wisdom - This is science, logic, math, physics. Wisdom drives your choices and opinions. Wisdom connects us to reality. Be a student of the real, and seek out teachers of the real. Learn how to distinguish facts from bullshit, peer review from agenda. In a post truth world, without wisdom we become sheep. As AI takes over art and journalism, wisdom becomes more vital. But also see what you can learn from those with a different brand of wisdom. While my wisdom starts and ends with science, for many it derives from religion. Try to figure out how this cosmology works so well for them. I can't help with that sort of wisdom. Maybe Jesus died for my sins, but I wish he hadn't.

Equality - This is morality, justice, humanity, fairness, tolerance. I still believe in the long dead principle the USA was founded on - We are all equal, we all share rights equally, and no leader or aristocrat can be above the law. Bigotry and opinion should always give way to equality. Where "freedom" means being able to hate on people who are different from you, freedom has died. Where "freedom" means having the space and acceptance to be who you really are, freedom is real.

Moderation - Do nothing in excess. Do the right thing in the right amount in the right way. The virtue, however, is nothing to excess, not to live frugally and never enjoy life. Of course, enjoy life. American culture has always been about excess, and it has not gone well. It has trained us to not even consider moderation as a virtue. Every now and then, try to go without. Learn how far from excess you can still be happy. If I live in my car for a few days and don't eat and turn off the Internet and sit alone with only my thoughts, I am happy.

The idea of being happy ALL THE TIME seems a bit worrisome, even to me. But I am. It comes from virtues curated over the last few years. Lessons learned from the ancient Greeks. Hippies out in the woods, leading by example. A lifetime as a socialist, as an atheist, deriving virtue from logic and economics. Making virtue active and purposeful. I'll never be a teacher, so don't take any of this as anything more than one nerd's copium. It's just Jonism. And Jon has had a lot of brain trauma.

<<<<< previous blog    

---