The Devil's Guide To Ethics

Flying or Falling

Here's a point i have been making for years when it comes to psychology. Rhetorical language barriers are a thing. This exercise is prevalent most when you go section to section in any book store. Look at the different sections and what do each types of literary genres try to teach you? Perspective. But each section is tailored to different lifestyles and belief systems. The average person looks through these books until a title looks to be within their rhetorical window. Aka match their belief system. However, if you were to take a book thats the polar opposite of your belief system and let go of your disagreements to see the words laid out, you'll see similarities in messages over all but you'll see they're delivered differently in semantics. Interesting examples of this would be the difference between the business, spiritual, psychology, philosophy, fiction, science, and self help sections. A smaller scale getting more specific... let's think of depression as an example of something that someone's looking to read about and get help for. Now the business and economic section would have books around cultivating and building outwardly through positive talk and building confidence through inching away at your goals that you set. These books also express the importance of community and building solid understandings with other people. Translated to something in the spiritual section you would see practicing mindfulness, self control, restraint, and self acceptance. A lot of these parallel in message but they are delivered very differently from completely different rhetorical backgrounds and belief systems. They both set goals in different ways and both involve cultivation of how we approach ourselves before we are able to approach the outward world. But something else to examine here is that these sections are also tailored to the different mentalities that cause people to go to these sections. Tying in psychology, psychology books break down based on examples of other people's deeds or writings. This is then analyzed and reflected on by the reader. The big question comes "how does this example manifest in my own life?". Through these examples we're also looking deeper within ourselves to see the connection. This overall message of looking within and building outward carries on in psychology too. Philosophy, history, and current events have a similar approach as well but they usually either glorify, condemn, or expand information upon things that happened in the world. Inadvertently, this gets a person to examine these events on how we can grow to either create or avert the things we read about. To cultivate the greatness that inspires us and to look to history as an example to understand what works and what doesn't work in life from a systematic and statistical standpoint, given whats already happened. Philosophy specifically sets a precedence of different perspectives in general but ultimately even these genres leave a person in reflection as most reading does. The most common genre that the average person consumes is fiction. These are all tales with overtones that the average person overlooks. We grow close to characters we resonate with and we want to see what they do and how they act. Why is this? Because we resonate with this person that doesn't even exist. They teach us and inspire us in their own way much like a close friend that we respect would. In those characters that inspire us or even piss us off, we look inward to see that example in ourselves. So at points of depression we think "what would my favorite character do? ". Maybe not consciously but that consideration is there from a point of respect in the back of our minds. Same can be said for any other media from movies to music to art. People create to put these perspectives out into the world in the best language that they know how to speak. The way is infinite in possibilities saying very similar things through different eyes, different wordings, and different rhetorical delivery. I mean... even go to science for a minute and look at that as a genre. The essential part of science is that desire to understand the world around us. Now why do we ultimately want to understand? Because we wish to understand who and what we are. We want to know how to live and coexist in the world around us. We wouldn't be able to function as well as we do without Mathematics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, history, etc. All these fields of logic create that universal understanding of self that is infinitely evolving and transcended as more critical minds are put to the task. We all want to understand our existence and how to live. Then we have the self help which takes the emotional rhetoric. These teach very similar things that the spiritual sections and business sections do but just in a more directed way. Put in terms of an instruction manual almost. "You have a problem?...try this". Ultimately we're still trying to understand ourselves and the world around us. That's the common goal here. We're chasing a happiness that doesn't feel empty. How we get there is laid out in infinite perspectives all around us. We can see these many things as wrotting our brain or we can see them as a piece to this puzzle. You have the choice to pick out what resonates with your rhetorical language (which is what 90 percent of people do) or you can look to a belief system that you claim to hate most in this world and try to understand why on all levels. Why do you hate this person and their belief system? Why does this person say what they say and do what they do? How can i act within my life knowing that anyone around me can have these views without burning the whole world to the ground in a b***h fit, cancel culture, childish temper tantrum? How? If you disagree with something, that is the one thing you should consume most. Why? Not because you support it but because it's the only thing not coddling you to sit and waste away. Even if this person is an enemy to you, shouldn't you fully know why rather than trusting a single source or some heresay? A lot of people find that reality can go a lot deeper than some superficial gossip. That beneath the skin of how a situation is presented, we see why. Rather than just sitting there and saying "f**k this person and everything they believe" you actually look to the root cause of why they do what they do. You then advocate for positive causes like raising awareness to victims of "xyz", or neglected social or political issues, maybe even a scandal with an overlying message that makes the world think on how such a thing could happen. Creating this cycle of people seeking an understanding of why. Creating a systematic mentality that objectively identifies how to actually solve a social issue on a systematic level rather than crucifying one public figure after another. I'm sure y'all have fun with that cancel culture s**t but objectively it doesn't fix anything on a real level. As soon as you discard that person, another will take their place. There's millions of people hell bent on their own ego and letting their adversity destroy them and everyone around them. Guess what? When you indulge in that hatred, you're doing the same thing. Bringing this back to my point on books, ironically a very hated public figure one said "don't throw away a whole book because you disagree with one thing" - Jordan Peterson. Yes he's a douche who said and did some very shitty things but thats why those who hate this man should read his books. Maybe borrow it, don't buy it since you don't agree with it... but you're looking inward at how you're challenging an opposing view. When it comes to Jordan Peterson, he's a very intelligent man but he lacks in emotional and social intelligence. He is terrible at talking to people or following the things he speaks of. He also preaches darwinistic values in his work. Now we can choose to set the boundary within ourselves before reading this perspective by going in with the consideration of his actions. Or we can completely dismiss everything without reading a word and continue trying to force the world to be different without understanding how these negative parts of the world got there or how they function on a daily basis. if we objectively buy these materials for ouselves, we can either objectively see it as we're supporting a cause we disagree with or we could see it as we're investing in understanding a perspective we disagree with to cultivate real social change. Fight them as an enemy, you'll breed more to their cause. Understand them as a lost friend at arms length, you'll actually spread the idea of kindness that you're both trying to push in your own way. You'll find you're both 2 people doing what you think is right but people have consideration for friends, not enemies. So they will think about how the things they do and say impact you, and you will think the same. You'll find that many of the illusions you created around those ideals before even knowing them are false. I'm not saying to go be bffs with Jordan Peterson, jk Rowling, Donald Trump, Andrew tate, and amber heard... all sitting in a starbucks like a bunch of besties... I'm saying to confront what you disagree with, understand it, and recognize where you are alike and different. If you really want to be different from these people, should you not examine yourself and how you act around any discussion about them. Shouldn't you reflect on how you embody the very thing you're opposing so you can challenge those very things out of yourself and the world. Gahndi once said "be the change you want to see in the world" but i see so many people fighting and becoming the very people they claim to be against. You have the right conservatives becoming emotional train wrecks when it comes to politics just venting away like a pissed off snowflake (using their terms against them). Meanwhile when they go unchallenged, they're advocating for issues with a clear unbiased head. the right wants the world to be considerate of them and their views when they openly lack such consideration for literally everyone around them. simply because their value systems put a middle finger to the idea of walking on eggshells around anyone. Then you have the left going around labeling half the world as nazi's based on brief conversations and the way people look and carry themselves. But they claim to be oppressed, judged, and ostracized when the only thing that creates this is their actions and not the fact that they're a minority. They often breed the judgments against them because they continue the abusive cycles of the judgments they claim to stand against. You go around acting like a judgmental asshole of course there's gonna be consequences.

When all these people are reading and consuming media, they act like it's enlightening but they simply only take the perspective that nourishes their rhetorical language and belief system. They don't take in anything that challenges that because they're so used to deferring their ethics that they don't want the groundlessness of looking at something they disagree with and seeing a statement that resonates. That can get you to question your whole life when someone you hate connects with you. But you see the world for what it is. It's not black and white, it's not absolute... its grey and we're all groundless. We can fly or we can fall, its all in how we choose to see it.