One of the most important lessons I have learned over the past few years is that the rules we make about the world to navigate it are all wrong. And they're right. And there are no rules.
A belief in a rational universe is the construction of one in our mind. It's an invention that we make up with varying levels and kinds of structure to understand what's going on around us. And it's all made up in our heads. Kind of.
The rules we "discover" through our everyday ramblings are unique and based on our own experiences and our ability to map and interpret the systems that we are encountering. But the rules that we make up from these experiences are nothing more than cloudy approximations of a falsely objective system for which we invent a rule.
One thing I have noticed lately is that rule breakers are almost all of our heroes. Superheroes defy physics, Harry Potter defies the rules of magic, and Captain Kirk always wins by reinventing the rules to be in his favor.
The rules we make for ourselves based on some imaginary sense of an objective truth or reality are limited to our own experiences or anecdotal experiences of others. The rule doesn't exist, it's just a foggy approximation of how we think we should deal with all other situations that appear similar in the future.
The problem with rules arises when our rules become self-imposed limitations. When systems change, cultures change, or the foggy thug we call "reality" shifts unbenounced to us, our rules no longer apply.
Rules drive our sense of "should." I think this word is overlooked. It is a word mystically rooted in our sense of making rules and living by them. Most importantly, "should" becomes the way we exert force on those around us based on the belief in the rules that we faithfully think exist in some objective way.
"You shouldn't do that or else you will __________." That's a rule being imposed on someone else based on our own experience. It is the seed of culture.
It's a fascinating way of living -- viewing the world through a lens of rules based on our own experiences. Then believing that the rules that we form for ourselves will work for other people.
Most interestingly, the rules that we believe exist and then live by would appear to be the mechanism by which classes are formed and our social behaviors are designed. The wealthy CEO views the world through a completely different set of rules than that of the minimum wage burger flipper. If they lived in the same reality, how could they possibly end up in such different places?
My sense of "should" shifted a few years ago. My sense of rules about the world started crumbling more recently. I no longer view the world as objectively as I once did and I no longer treat experiences as a way to form new absolutes. I no longer have the same fear-based method for making rules and I am far less sold on my world view than I ever was before. The effect has been freeing.
I no longer think there's a right way to live or a good income to have or a right answer. Many will add those up and come up with an answer that appears entirely irrational. Well, the world isn't rational. It never has been. Some try to impose rational structure, but with only the self-illusion of success.
Living in an RV was supposed to be a bad idea. It's not. For me, at least. I know that most would not choose to do it and for good reason. But those reasons don't resonate with me because I have a different set of drives, skills and experiences that make it possible. Even highly enjoyable.
But that's the way every situation, lifestyle, and experience is for every living being. Hot coals are a bad idea to walk on, yet some do it anyway. Fighting a Gorn is a bad idea, but James T. Kirk does it anyway. There are no rules; only limitations that we impose on ourselves through the cloudy experience of the flawed infancy of consciousness that the human race collectively enjoys.
Live lightly. Observe the experiment. Fear nothing. Accept what is.
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