Maxed Out Living-- Chapter 1

25/8/2009 2:15 PM

MAXED OUT LIVING by FRANKLIN MUKAKANGA

Part 1 First things first: Why are you here? Most people die without ever having lived. They mimic, they fulfill roles, they work hard, pay bills, raise a family, leave an inheritance, but get to the end of their lives without ever satisfactorily dealing with the question of purpose, which takes many different forms for different individuals, e.g. Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? What does my life mean? Is this all there is to life? They die as ignorant about the reason for their existence as they were the day they entered the world. The question of purpose lies at the core of our self-awareness, whether we consciously perceive it or not. The fact that we are endowed with reason makes us seek the reason for our being here, unlike the brute creature, which is content only to satisfy its instinctive urges and follow the course of its pre-historic programming, without questioning, without needing a why, what or how. We need a why, we need a what, and we need a how, in order for our time here to mean anything at all. Purpose drives us, in whatever dosage it is administered, whatever shape or form it takes. It lies at the root of a satisfactory human experience, of realization of one’s true potential. There is a purpose for which we are individually here and a purpose for which we are severally here. A failure to come to an awareness of that purpose is a dereliction of our duty as creatures of reason, the consequences of which are the impoverishment of the human spirit, the limiting of the scope of our experience, and the living out of a most colorless, tasteless, passionless existence. Owing to a failure to address the question of purpose, many who would be able captains of their own and the world’s destiny float along, shipwrecked on the sea of mediocrity, going with the flow, following the masses, and leaving the shaping of humanity to the tastes, opinions and values of others,

with whom they may not necessarily agree, but to whom they have ceded their will, their power, their individuality. They play roles written out for them by some unseen scripter, being only as loud or as soft as the part dictates, doing only as much or as little as the norms dictate and becoming no more than they are allowed to be by the unseen directors of the show, who dutifully enforce the strictest adherence to the script for the ‘good of all’. They believe they are living ‘the good life’ by yielding their individuality and becoming alike as they gather in groups, acceding to limiting creeds and giving up any right to themselves or their ‘souls’, surrendering even their right to choose or adjust their beliefs to a council or board. In their well-ordered and structured life, they fail to find themselves, and consequently, consume their days in an existence devoid of any sense of purpose. They live as hypocrites, they die hypocrites, in the purest sense of the word: play-actors, who have lived in falsehood; pretending to believe or feel what they do not; living, breathing contradictions; one thing by definition and another in conduct; role players who do not have the conviction of bone-deep belief to back up their profession. Hypocrisy is not confined to the morally offensive position of trying to get the speck out of another’s eye while having a plank in one’s own. It is not just the act of doing what one tells others not to do or of saying one thing and doing another. Hypocrisy is, in its most basic sense, incongruence, and it takes on a plethora of forms. It includes conforming, in the absence of conviction, or even in direct violation of one’s own beliefs, to an arbitrary standard for the sake of fitting in with a norm; another form includes assuming, wearing or ‘putting on’ a persona that is not one’s own, becoming who or what one is not. It is the deliberate and willful abandonment of one’s individuality and its replacement with another’s, whether that other is a religious, moral, intellectual, real or even imaginary or fictitious role model.

Hypocrisy is also assuming or usurping someone else’s role, piggy-backing someone else’s purpose, copycatting another’s lifestyle and by this means leaving one’s own role unattended, one’s purpose undiscovered, one’s own life unlived. For as long as one is playing a role and acting out a purpose that is not his or her own, one is presenting a false self to the world. For as long as he or she tries to pass off this false self as the genuine article, one lives a life of play-acting or hypocrisy. And as long as one is play-acting, he or she cannot maximize their potential and get the most out of life. Hypocrisy happens in at least two ways: Actively or passively. Hypocrisy isn’t just about doing. It’s also about neglecting to do. Thus, while it may mean actively play-acting or purposely assuming a character and role in life that isn’t one’s own, it just as fully means neglecting to be one’s authentic self. Hypocrisy is addictive, as it is usually while practicing it that one receives adoration and applause from, and finds acceptance in, our largely conformist world. Adoration, applause and acceptance lead to a feeling of well being, satisfaction and accomplishment because it feels good to feel good. It feels good to be wanted, to be accepted, to be loved, no matter what the reasons for it or the degree to which these reasons line up with our own perceived virtues or overlook our well-hidden vices. It even gets to where it ceases to matter whether the applause is directed towards our true or hypocritical selves. We literally can become addicted to being liked. The acceptance of the world is usually a superficial acceptance of a façade, making it doubly hollow. It is not an acceptance of a person’s true self, but one of a projected, house-trained, sterilized version of the self. The world most readily accepts what it understands and can control. In fact, the person that is most truly himself frequently finds himself most unpopular in ‘polite, normal society’, or finds him- or her-self excluded from the circles of the resigned, content-to-perpetuate-what-has-gone-before, movers and shakers to whom belong societies, churches and various other social structures, and through the approbation of whom ‘members’ are admitted to their cliques.

Conformity is the ticket price for admission into the safety net of contemporary human society, singularity, more often than not, being frowned upon, and oftentimes even being actively discouraged by threat of excommunication of detractors (read ‘heretics’), and the suppression of free and independent thought within the confines of its structures. The applause of the world is as fleeting and meaningless as the applause given an actor on stage at the end of an act or scene. It is a gift, an offering, an acknowledgment that one has adequately entertained one’s audience; it is a stamp of approval on the portrayals of character, on form and on style. It is an appeasement; encouragement to the performer to keep at their vocation; an opiate to keep his spirit stupefied, to keep his mind from inquiring, from searching, from awakening. The applauded one does not realize that applause-dependency is an admission of subjugation to a ‘higher’ rationale; that, by needing the world’s applause he is in effect saying he is beneath his audience and needs their approval to ‘prop up’ his fragile ego, to give his self definition. That he does not know who he is and can only have his existence validated by others who recognize his ‘unique talents’ and thus define him. He cannot stand on his own. Others must hold him up. Applause, like the performance it venerates, is forgotten soon enough. Another actor takes to the stage; another play must have its day. This is why many who have basked in the sunshine of popular applause are shocked at the ambivalent indifference that meets them when they lose whatever rank or station won them that applause, often finding that behind many of the smiles in the once-friendly audience lies a resentment or even hatred. And the applause goes to a new performer. It is then that they realize that the ‘respect’ they enjoyed, the ‘adoration’ the reveled in was all an act for their act, valueless in and of itself; meaningless and vacuous. Thus, so many people that could have done great things in the world have been crippled by hypocrisy, rendered ineffectual, neutered into conformity.

They settle instead for mediocrity in conformity in exchange for popularity and the affirmation of the world. There are even weightier reasons for conformity. The most basic and influential of these is security. Basically, ‘advancement’ in the world, as defined by the world, i.e. access to greater and greater quantities of what should be pool resources, and the amassing of a great collection of the best of the world’s trinkets and toys, comes most readily to those who ‘play by the rules’. That usually translates to those who are willing to cede their right to individuality in exchange for these benefits, those with whom conformity is a small price to pay for comfort. These individuals get given ’the keys of the kingdom’. They get benefits for not ‘rocking the boat’ and for keeping others from rocking the boat. They get entrusted with positions of leadership and are vouchsafed the responsibility to keep the established structures in good working order: All this in exchange for their own opinions, thoughts and, sometimes, personhood. So, a more basic reason why conformity is so ‘in’ is that the non-conformist cannot, will not, be given the benefit of the economies of scale generated by a superficial homogeny. The non-conformist will not enjoy the goodwill of the system or ‘establishment’. Acting, or ‘going along with’ the crowd seems to make more sense for the person for whom ‘success’ is important; and another hypocrite is eulogized. I’ll say it again: It feels good to be wanted, loved, accepted, understood, even when the wanting, love, acceptance and understanding are illusions. Conformity makes comfortable. But conformity also, invariably, leads to hypocrisy as it’s based on arbitrary ‘norms’ that determine the standard by which ‘normalcy’ will be measured. This standard does not take the individual’s proclivities, idiosyncrasies, preferences or hereditary make-up into consideration. It assumes all men to be alike, to have the same purpose and mission, and therefore to need the same beliefs. It ventures to circumscribe their lives so as to achieve the same result—to create clones and generate homogeny.

One of the most negative effects of hypocrisy is the effect it has on the person living in it. A hypocrite may have some people fooled most of the time, but the discerning eye can see right through the act; and that discerning eye is, in most cases, his own. He feigns happiness, contentment and success, when he is, in fact, sad, restless and lost. The hypocrite daily lives with discontent, constantly wishing his life were other than it is; that he was free to be himself. The act gets tired, the acting tiring, the applause less and less satisfying. A second effect of hypocrisy is that it invariably leads to internal conflict: thinking one thing, saying another and doing yet a third. The hypocrite lives in a constant state of tension, brought on by this tripartite incongruence. This state of being is hazardous to his or her being, as it causes confusion in self-identification, hinders self-acceptance and promotes self-deception. Unbeknown to most, many a psychosomatic condition or illness could well be triggered or propagated by this lack of ‘rest’—this restlessness—within one’s being. External stressors are a part of life, and under normal circumstances should promote the growth of the individual and challenge him or her to master new life skills. They cannot, or at least should not be the cause of illness or poor health. They are a part of life. Linking decision-making and problem solving to poor health or illness is like linking a puncture to the fact that a vehicle moves. The wheel is meant to go around and around as the vehicle moves. That is what makes the vehicle move. The movement does not cause the puncture. The puncture happens because—possibly—the tire rolled over something it should not have rolled over. The fact that you are equipped with reason means that you were meant to think about things and make decisions. Making decisions is part of your natural function. Making decisions and solving problems shouldn’t make you sick; unless you are dealing with lots of irreconcilable inputs. In which case, I venture to assert, your psyche and body will collude to slow you down, and you will ail. Should a natural function of living make you sick? I say no. Can external stressors and bad dietary habits be the only reasons for the increase in the

occurrence of High Blood Pressure, peptic ulcers, diabetes and other psychosomatic conditions? I think not. I am not a medical professional, but I believe that the answer to these questions may lie closer to home than most people think. The real stress that causes psychosomatic conditions could well be the internal stress of a system in conflict, rather than the external ‘stressors’ which are meant for our growth and well being. Challenges were meant to help us grow, not to cause peptic ulcers. My conclusion: Internal systemic conflict predisposes the human system to illness. This because the conflicted system loses the capacity to properly administer the use and supply of the various inputs and focus all of its resources on solving the problems of being. It strives to meet conflicting demands. It tries to achieve results that are at variance with the blueprint of which it is aware, or in some cases may be ignorant of. It sends resources to non-critical areas and leaves critical areas deficient. It cannot handle its inputs—physical, mental, spiritual—as well as a healthy, harmonized system does. A conflicted system trying to live a ‘normal’ life can do more damage to the entire being, mind and body, than can, for example, the pressure of meeting an important deadline. The latter may seem more demanding, but fulfilling it is an application of resources to living as we were meant to apply them. You were built to solve problems, and you have adrenaline to prove it. Solving problems should not throw your system off balance. the former is trying to . It’s like having three conflicting maps and expecting to get to one happy destination. Impossible. We live in a world where compromise has been deified. For the sake of the elusive and misunderstood ideal we call peace, voices have been silenced, opinions surrendered, individuality sacrificed on the altar of compromise. Peace is believed to be attainable only in homogeny. And so people are made to conform to an arbitrary standard for the sake of this peace. After all, in order for peace to prevail, everyone must think and act alike. They are taught what to think, what to say, what to do. Their lives are circumscribed. And whatever they don’t fully believe in of what they can’t accept they are told to take ‘by faith’. Incongruence ensues and the people are encouraged

to accept it as a part of normal, everyday life. They are told that it’s OK to navigate with three maps. In our world, it’s considered normal to have reservations about something and yet do it or pretend to believe it anyway; it’s considered normal to believe one thing and yet do another for the sake of ‘the greater good’; to say one thing and do another, to think or believe one thing and yet act like we believe or think something else, just so that everyone can be comfortable with everyone else. Compromise is the god of 21st Century man, and he has billions of devotees all around the world. The only thing they have in common is that they are invertebrates. The biggest problem with compromise is the question of the benchmark. If everyone is to compromise, then what is the standard to which they are to conform, and who has the right to set that arbitrary benchmark? Considering that every person is created equal and unique, and for a purpose all his or her own, it stands to reason that any arbitrary benchmark is pre-destined to meet with failure. Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, religions one and all, present the newborn human being with pre-cast molds, into which the spirits of men are poured, their individuality suppressed, and clones are created. Compromise is reached by consensus and enforced by dogma. The benchmark is set by council and ratified by creed. Were the aim of these religions to aid the individual in coming to an understanding of her unique purpose and to encourage her differentiation and self-actualization, they would prove more useful in healing the soul and the world than they are in their current forms; as they are they encourage schism, division and separation into the artificial classes of believer/unbeliever, faithful/infidel, the pursuit of mass- or group-driven purpose, and narrow-minded, myopic homogeny. Religion is useful as an aid in seeking higher truth, where it is used to launch one into the realm of the unknown, but is not and should not be treated as an absolute measure or standard in itself. The absolute measure for the man

is the purpose for which he was created. And that cannot be determined by vote, by proxy, by baptism, by creed or by religious affiliation. It was determined by the Creator and can only be discovered in connection with our Source. Another human being cannot tell you the purpose for which you are here. Don’t take someone else’s interpretation of the meaning of life as true or their word about life’s meaning for it. The reason they’re here is not necessarily the reason you’re here; The ‘why’ of their life may have been revealed to them. That is their own revelation, and they have no right to impose it on anyone nor are you under any obligation to adopt it. You are obliged, though, to seek out and live your own purpose, by virtue of your exalted, rational nature. You cannot be here for no reason. You cannot be an individual self to no end. If a simple creature (by comparison) like a bee has a purpose, and a reason for its design, then you must have a purpose and reason for being here, and as surely as you have been endowed with free will and reason, your purpose and raison d’etre are as unique as your fingerprint. And as long as you don’t figure out why you’re here and live it, you’ll live a conflicted, hypocritical life. There’s more to you than your function, than the position you occupy in the hierarchy of the organization in whose employ you are. Stripped of your honors, your titles, your function, your job, and all the external trinkets and badges and toys, who are you? What are you? Answer these questions successfully, truthfully and honestly and you will set your feet squarely on the path of self-discovery. The joy and relief you will feel at dropping the act, the liberation you will get from reconciling with and embracing your self and its purpose, will open doors to a future you could not have previously thought possible. You will begin to live your life, break free of hypocrisy and fulfill your destiny.

“… For man to be truly happy, he must be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in 'belief' or 'unbelief'; it consists of saying you believe something that you really don't believe." "When a man has gone so far as to corrupt the personal integrity of his mind, so that he will publicly profess things he does not actually believe, he is no better than a common criminal. That type of man will become a pastor for the sake of money or power; and it all starts with a lie. Can you think of anything more destructive to good morals than this?" Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason.