“Faces in the crowd” by Elvert Barnes, CC-BY 2.0

In my experience thinking has been a nuisance. Ever since I wanted to know the meaning of life, my thinking was a hindrance to me so much that I wanted to get rid of it.

This is why meditation is so popular: it is a try to get rid of thinking. I always thought that the truth is beyond thinking, that thinking is just preventing me from realizing the truth.

But everything changed when I started to shift my underlying convictions. What I found out is this: that the thinking can never come to a rest when there is no stable foundation.

And the only solution then is to turn against thinking: this is what many teachers advice, because they themselves have not found any other solution.

In my opinion the reason for this is that their worldview is not right. When the worldview is not right the thinking cannot find something to hold on to, it is confused and goes in circles, never being able make any sense.

When one's views are aligned with the truth, then the thinking supports those views. It deepens one's understanding and the insight into the truth.

So if you want to know if you're on the right the track, just ask yourself, “does my thinking make any sense or is it more like a problem I would like to get rid of?”

#philosophy #thinking #worldview #meditation

Recently it became clear to me why it is so hard for most of us to suffer injustice: if we get mistreated we immediately feel the need for retribution. We demand justice. We think that only when the perpetrator has been punished, we will be able to find peace.

This happens because we do not believe that there is any justice apart from us. We think that if we don't do it justice ourselves, there will be no justice at all – and that's why we cannot suffer injustice.

It all hinges on our belief in the accidental nature of life. This belief is deeply rooted in our soul, we have been brought up with it. Charles Darwin prepared the way for this ideology and more and more people started sucking it in with their mother's milk.

It means that we are probably not as independent and clever as we might think, because our fundamental views are not our own, but we have adopted them from the people around us. Just like 500 years ago we would probably have adopted the Christian views as personal truth.

This is the same argument some atheists bring up to discredit religion. They say e.g.:

If you would have been brought up in Iran you would be a Muslim now

This could very well be true, but they forget that their own view, that is atheism, is the product of our own culture – and not much different from religion in this regard. Instead of relying on your surroundings you should strip yourself from all that culture has put into you. That is the only way to find truth – if there is such a thing at all.

But now back to the problem of injustice. My current conviction is, that this view, that life is accidental and that there is no justice, is wrong. In my opinion the correct view is, that even the smallest violation of the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, brings retribution in some form.

But it is hard to recognize what it is. It usually comes in the form of what we call bad luck. If you are often “unlucky” this is a pretty good indicator that you're not following the golden rule, that's what I think.

Another aspect of how I understand this principle is, that bad luck does not always hit every person in the same way. My guess is that bad luck can also be kind of a message or warning to the individual saying:

Hey now! Watch out and better your life!

But with some people there is not even the slightest chance that they will do this and therefore they don't experience as much bad luck but it is withhold. The retribution will then come suddenly after many years of seeming “success”, it can even be sudden death in a car accident or something like that.

I know that this view is quite controversial and it is not at all like what believe in the West nowadays. But to me it's not important what the majority believes, but only what is true. And if it is the case that what I'm saying, that there is justice and that everyone gets what he deserves: wouldn't that be a wonderful thing?

Then we would finally be able to suffer injustice, knowing that retribution will come and we don't have to do anything about it.

#retribution #justice #materialism #philosophy