Most things that make us civilized are also things that eliminate feedback from the natural world. For people who are making a regular income and have a roof over their head, most of their day is spent inside a bubble of comfort and delight. The only cues they need to respond to are social cues and the phony cues of the financial world. They spend their time seeking social status or seek distraction from that rat race. Their food, warmth, and comfort are provided by a clean, pretty efficient system. The only time we're unintentionally exposed to real world cues is by illness or injury, or by a breakdown of the systems that keep us warm and fed as a result to natural catastrophes or simple decay and deterioration of something like a roof on a house. The other times we're exposed to real world cues is via hobbies like hiking or backpacking.
The phony cues of the financial and consumer world are like stimuli in a
rat maze. These stimuli get amped up by advertising and media that consciously target our
primal sensory filter networks. The people who create these phony cues and games inhabit an even more fake world, where they believe the highest form of consciousness is
grifting.
The practice of virtue is really a return to nature, or to seeking guidance from natural cues, and to seeking out the voice of the gods of nature. In the world of lies, this is actually a very difficult undertaking, and the task is at odds with the present civil and social order.
I wonder if ascetic orders or spiritual/philosophical traditions like Stoicism take off in rotting Empire times as spiritual life boats.
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