Versailles
Enlightened
- Oct 1, 2020
- 1,642
Useful, what a small but powerful word at the same time a word that unfortunately dominates the way many
People value their own life. Thanks to this fixation, with effectiveness and productivity, something so diffuse and difficult to understand how human experience, experience and intelligence is flattened, transformed and measured in
simple numbers.
Being a useful person sounds like being someone of benefit to society, history and oneself, but that is false, the very idea of usefulness implies that there is someone, a power, a politician, an ideology or need that tells us who is useful and who is not: a young prodigy for scientific reasoning would be useless just for the simple fact of having been born into one of the many isolated sects that exist in the USA, an intelligent creative girl with all the The ability to master abstract mathematics would be completely useless simply because you were born into some of the world's groups where women are only useful for having children.
Before thinking if we have done something useful in our lives, we must understand that utility is not an objective thing of reality but something decided by someone or a few with the power to do it, sometimes based on a very real need, other times based on their beliefs in their ideas of how they would like the world to be. Reflecting on this, we can see ourselves in the mirror, we can question those things that we have been told that we must do to fit into society and we can also ask ourselves, why do we feel that some things about us are not valid for society and others are? and thus through such a simple exercise we will be able to understand who or who have decided what is useful and who we are useful within society.
It is sad to know that the fantasy of many university students, fathers and mothers of professional families and other people of being machines that can work non-stop, hardly needing to eat, hardly needing to be distracted or entertained, machines that are always in a constant state of productivity. Rest, reflection, our psychology, our body itself, we have to find a way to focus more and more on productivity and consumerism, full of pain relievers, energy drinks, stress management therapies, administration courses. of time and emotions, miraculous diets to lose weight... still working always sitting in an office, mountains and mountains of books and pages that give you self-help phrases that, like substances of dubious origin, help you stay focused always being more and more useful, more and more productive is that the exercise of passive meditation is now transformed into something we do to be more productive and enduring.
You know he talked about mindfulness is that if we only value our life through the ideas of productivity and usefulness, our happiness, health, dignity, ideals and all our values not only cease to matter but sometimes become obstacles to destroy or to manipulate to produce a lot and work a lot are two things that are not bad, but we must understand that these two little things are not an end, they are a means to get somewhere.
Unfortunately it is clear that we do not understand it that way, we see high school students trapped in university careers that they hate to please their parents or for fear that society will brand them as useless and we also have people trapped in jobs that they hate to be able to buy things that you don't need but are likely to impress a bunch of strangers who don't really care about you, quite unlike what people who have embraced utility as the ultimate value might think. The offices of psychologists and psychiatrists are full of the richest famous and successful people in the world, people who get to live serious anxiety problems because they can't help but feel that they still could and should try to do more and more and more and more, it is that in this society they try to turn us into incredible machines that can perform very well with any task, something that the truth is, well
yes it is great to do several things, the problem is that after we become very productive there is nothing else, just a vicious circle where we are more productive so that we can be more productive and then when we are already very productive we can try to be even more productive than before.
As you may be imagining, all of this collides with the fact that our meat is still meat, we age, we die... and it is just that several decades ago the social problem appeared that people not only don't want to grow old, they completely hate the idea, It terrifies them, it bores them of slowing down, needing breaks as something grotesque, something that takes away our life, all its value, all its dignity for this. Many people of this and future generations have a self-destructive fantasy, a fantasy in which they hope to live with all their energy, all the consumption, all the success, all the work in the world, practically burn themselves alive so they can die young because they believe that all the other years that follow after that point of maximum productivity are no longer worth it, they no longer make sense. They have not realized that the social image we had of the full and successful person went from being a measured and serene person and sometimes of a middle age, to the image of a worker in a suit who seems trapped between 20 and 40 years old whose desire and taste for work is so intense that he is working and no matter how exhausted he is, he never stops smiling.
It is that we moved to a society that previously expected us to be considered useful because it was that we had a family and we were orderly and obedient people, we moved from that to a society where it doesn't matter if we are disobedient or individualistic or disorderly, the only thing what matters is that as if we were batteries we use all our energy until we are completely dry. Don't get me wrong, this whole situation that I just told you about also brings good things, not everything is bad. However, there is a phenomenon that I think is very important to talk about because it is a phenomenon that many people do not realize until it is too late. and it is that there are people who live an empty and purposeless life, however sometimes this not only to themselves but also to society and even their family does not seem important to them since for the simple fact that they are people who have a job or study in some prestigious place are already useful, they are productive, so even if every night they feel empty and alone, their family and society will repeat a cheap self-help sermon as a great solution to all their problems and you should not feel bad , your life is going very well no matter that you doubt or that your mind makes you feel bad about it, no, you are producing and consuming, that is what is good so then what you have to do is focus more on being more pr oductive because that way your life will be better and obviously you will feel better.
People value their own life. Thanks to this fixation, with effectiveness and productivity, something so diffuse and difficult to understand how human experience, experience and intelligence is flattened, transformed and measured in
simple numbers.
Being a useful person sounds like being someone of benefit to society, history and oneself, but that is false, the very idea of usefulness implies that there is someone, a power, a politician, an ideology or need that tells us who is useful and who is not: a young prodigy for scientific reasoning would be useless just for the simple fact of having been born into one of the many isolated sects that exist in the USA, an intelligent creative girl with all the The ability to master abstract mathematics would be completely useless simply because you were born into some of the world's groups where women are only useful for having children.
Before thinking if we have done something useful in our lives, we must understand that utility is not an objective thing of reality but something decided by someone or a few with the power to do it, sometimes based on a very real need, other times based on their beliefs in their ideas of how they would like the world to be. Reflecting on this, we can see ourselves in the mirror, we can question those things that we have been told that we must do to fit into society and we can also ask ourselves, why do we feel that some things about us are not valid for society and others are? and thus through such a simple exercise we will be able to understand who or who have decided what is useful and who we are useful within society.
It is sad to know that the fantasy of many university students, fathers and mothers of professional families and other people of being machines that can work non-stop, hardly needing to eat, hardly needing to be distracted or entertained, machines that are always in a constant state of productivity. Rest, reflection, our psychology, our body itself, we have to find a way to focus more and more on productivity and consumerism, full of pain relievers, energy drinks, stress management therapies, administration courses. of time and emotions, miraculous diets to lose weight... still working always sitting in an office, mountains and mountains of books and pages that give you self-help phrases that, like substances of dubious origin, help you stay focused always being more and more useful, more and more productive is that the exercise of passive meditation is now transformed into something we do to be more productive and enduring.
You know he talked about mindfulness is that if we only value our life through the ideas of productivity and usefulness, our happiness, health, dignity, ideals and all our values not only cease to matter but sometimes become obstacles to destroy or to manipulate to produce a lot and work a lot are two things that are not bad, but we must understand that these two little things are not an end, they are a means to get somewhere.
Unfortunately it is clear that we do not understand it that way, we see high school students trapped in university careers that they hate to please their parents or for fear that society will brand them as useless and we also have people trapped in jobs that they hate to be able to buy things that you don't need but are likely to impress a bunch of strangers who don't really care about you, quite unlike what people who have embraced utility as the ultimate value might think. The offices of psychologists and psychiatrists are full of the richest famous and successful people in the world, people who get to live serious anxiety problems because they can't help but feel that they still could and should try to do more and more and more and more, it is that in this society they try to turn us into incredible machines that can perform very well with any task, something that the truth is, well
yes it is great to do several things, the problem is that after we become very productive there is nothing else, just a vicious circle where we are more productive so that we can be more productive and then when we are already very productive we can try to be even more productive than before.
As you may be imagining, all of this collides with the fact that our meat is still meat, we age, we die... and it is just that several decades ago the social problem appeared that people not only don't want to grow old, they completely hate the idea, It terrifies them, it bores them of slowing down, needing breaks as something grotesque, something that takes away our life, all its value, all its dignity for this. Many people of this and future generations have a self-destructive fantasy, a fantasy in which they hope to live with all their energy, all the consumption, all the success, all the work in the world, practically burn themselves alive so they can die young because they believe that all the other years that follow after that point of maximum productivity are no longer worth it, they no longer make sense. They have not realized that the social image we had of the full and successful person went from being a measured and serene person and sometimes of a middle age, to the image of a worker in a suit who seems trapped between 20 and 40 years old whose desire and taste for work is so intense that he is working and no matter how exhausted he is, he never stops smiling.
It is that we moved to a society that previously expected us to be considered useful because it was that we had a family and we were orderly and obedient people, we moved from that to a society where it doesn't matter if we are disobedient or individualistic or disorderly, the only thing what matters is that as if we were batteries we use all our energy until we are completely dry. Don't get me wrong, this whole situation that I just told you about also brings good things, not everything is bad. However, there is a phenomenon that I think is very important to talk about because it is a phenomenon that many people do not realize until it is too late. and it is that there are people who live an empty and purposeless life, however sometimes this not only to themselves but also to society and even their family does not seem important to them since for the simple fact that they are people who have a job or study in some prestigious place are already useful, they are productive, so even if every night they feel empty and alone, their family and society will repeat a cheap self-help sermon as a great solution to all their problems and you should not feel bad , your life is going very well no matter that you doubt or that your mind makes you feel bad about it, no, you are producing and consuming, that is what is good so then what you have to do is focus more on being more pr oductive because that way your life will be better and obviously you will feel better.
