Valid points. My own orientations are a little different. And I think that’s fine. I’ll still express my own orientations, however; since this is a journal, and it seems like a good place to do it.
Precisely.
This ‘better’ and ‘worse’ are inherently mutable and unstable. They’re worth fighting for, but not worth fighting over.
Envy, in the moment, as a subjective sensation is fine. At any rate, it’s going to arise, and is not a bad thing if harnessed. Like a northwesterly wind. It’s not going to last. And it’s not somehow the ‘true’ or ‘fundamental’ direction of wind. Yet, while it’s here, you are wise to deal with it. And if you’re not solid, it may blow you right over.
Envy as an ontological proposition—a statement of reality—is false. Full of (genuine) sound and fury; (yet) signifying nothing. It is simply not what it seems to be.
But I believe that there is a definition of ‘better’ or at least of ‘good’ that could be defined with something approaching objectivity. It would be the existential equivalent of a concept like ‘Fitness’ or ‘Thriving Health’. And my point is that envy often purports to have some relationship to that; but it does not. (Or at least it does not do it very well.)
We define overall health and wellbeing on the basis of evolutionarily determined heuristics and imperatives. For example, when judging the health of a mating partner, we look at the skin and ignore the kidneys. And, again, this often works reasonably well. But it’s illusive (based on misleading perceptions).
If you know that you are consciousness, the path to a life of wellbeing and thriving looks one way. If you don’t quite realize that you are consciousness; it can look another.
For me, I say not ‘Consciousness over matter’, but ‘consciousness AS matter’.
I imagine so-called ‘matter’ as a phase of consciousness; similar to how ice is a phase of water.
One is not before the other.They ARE one another.
We’re living in a world in which we have not yet realized that the iceberg and the ocean around it are the same thing.
