Fundamental Insights

The writings and ideas contained in this blog mostly came about out of massive frustration. I had tried for years to follow the ideas, advice and teachings of various philosophers, psychologists and self-help gurus but with very little success at permanently removing my problems. I only ever seemed to get temporary relief from my personal mental and emotional struggles and I became increasingly immobilized and despairing of ever turning things around permanently.

Fortunately I did have one or two small success in permanently changing my behavior and, coming from an engineering background, I knew that working on the symptom of a problem only ever offered temporary relief as the root cause of the symptom still remained and would keep causing problems until either removed, curtailed or contained by a better working solution.

The breakthrough for me came when I realized that the emotions that I seemed to spend 80% or more of my life responding to and attempting to deal with were not the true cause of my problems but the symptoms of a deeper root cause. I didn’t know at the time what the cause was but through some introspection, careful observation and analysis I found the root cause. Through elimination of the causes, where possible, or else careful management of them the emotions that used to leave me in a near constant state of reaction largely vanished.

This was quite amazing. After years of struggle I had my solution and it didn’t require change, strong character, drugs, therapy or any of the other remedies normally relied upon. It simply required a logical understanding of the cause and effect mechanisms at work. Once I clearly understood the cause and changed it (either by removal or management) the effect also changed (either disappearing completely or else reducing to an easy level of management).

Foundation of the Mind

The tag line for this blog is “Fundamental insights into better living” and I chose the word “Fundamental” because it means “foundation of the mind” and if the thinking and mental constructs that we have for understanding and interpreting events in the world is clear, logical and robust then everything that we build upon this foundation will have a sound basis and will create lasting structures.

I currently live in Berlin and although reunification happened back in 1989 they are still rebuilding much of the city. I have noticed that construction seems to take a very long time and that here they take great care to build very stable and strong foundations. It can take up to a year to build the foundations of a tall building and it seems like very little is happening for a very long time. However, once the foundation is finished the buildings go up remarkably quickly.

This effort into creating excellent foundations is entirely necessary. A structure built on unstable ground with little or no foundation will place high loads on the underlying ground that quickly cause that ground to subside and the walls to buckle and the structure to collapse. A structure can be built on unstable ground if the design of the foundations takes the instability into account and makes allowance for it. Once the foundation is solid and stable, then great structures can be built on top of it. These structures can be built quickly and they can be long lasting.

Our thinking processes have a similar nature to the foundations of a building. If we have robust thinking based upon practical, real world logic and knowledge of cause and effect then we can engage on courses of action that will likely have good results with a minimum of unnecessary struggle and worthless effort. If we have weak thinking that doesn’t understand or make allowance for real world cause and effect then our actions will struggle and have a poor ratio of successes to failures.

The Purpose of this Blog

This blog aims to remove the fog, vagueness, stumbling around in the dark and especially the superstition that currently affects many people’s thinking. It aims to find the solutions that get to the root cause of the problem and hence to change perceptions or implement methods that remove the root cause or curtail and control it with much greater ease than you have ever experienced. This then creates harmonious living where struggle is removed primarily through understanding what truly causes problems in the first place. This then frees up personal thinking, time and energy from reacting to emotions or struggling to overcome them

With fundamental insights, change becomes easier than ever before because you come to clearly understand what ails you and how to deal with it precisely. This doesn’t require brain ache, hard discipline, or incredibly strong character. Personal frustrations are not due to personal deficiencies of character but due to lack of knowledge and attempting to get things done in highly ineffective ways. Once the path to your desires is clearly marked out and prepared, following that path is easy.

This link takes you to part 2 of this series: fundamental survival

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