Know Thyself: /ˈnō / thī-ˈself/ v:
- the ability to precisely and concisely articulate what your Happy feels like.
- having thought, spent time with, and read enough that you understand what, how, and why you think the way YOU do.
The term Gnothi seauton or Know Thyself is often erroneously attributed to Socrates. It could have been Thales who said it first (considered the first philosopher), and it is believed to have been engraved at the Delphic Oracle. Who said it first doesn’t matter. What matters is that it was said. What I think is important, is for you to consider it.
‘He stood before the covered laundry tubs eating a chicken leg and half saucer of raspberry jelly, and grumbling over a clammy cold boiled potato.
He was thinking.
It was coming to him that perhaps all life as he knew it and vigorously practiced it was futile. That heavens portrayed by the Reverend Doctor John Jennison Drew was neither probable, nor very interesting. That he hadn’t had much pleasure out of making money. That it was of doubtful worth to rear children merely that they might rear children who would rear children.
What was it all about?
What did he want?
He blundered into the living room, lay on the davenport, hands behind his head. What did he want? Wealth? Social Position? Travel? Servants? Yes, but only incidentally.
Huh, I give it up, he sighed.
But he did know that he wanted the presence of Paul Riesling and from that he stumbled into the admission that he wanted the Fairy Girl, in the flesh. If there had been a woman whom he loved, he would have fled to her, humbled his forehead on her knees. He thought of his stenographer, Miss McGoun. He thought of the prettiest of the manicure girls at the Hotel Thornleigh Barber Shop. As he fell asleep on the davenport he felt that he had found something in life, and that he had made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal.’
-Babbit by Sinclair Lewis (Nobel Prize in Literature 1930)
Have you ever, or do you now feel like Babbit? Like you don’t know who you are or what you stand for? And if you did know, what would be the point, the world is as it is…
I think the world is terrible, but I’m here, now, and I mean to make some lemonade during my ride.
What could you get out of it?
Someone who knows what they think do not have to prove their thoughts to anyone else. People who are sure of their convictions do not purposely engage those that think differently so they may fell superior. People who know themselves do not require the validation of others.
Once you know you, when you ask someone what they think about a topic, it will because you actually care about what they think. You have no need to regurgitate someone else’s propaganda to feel accepted/smart/informed.
DoH believes the 1st step towards happiness is learning what you think, know, through Spending time with yourself, Quality Information, and knowing what your Happiness looks like.
SPENDING TIME WITH YOURSELF:
In college I had a final that involved spending 8 uninterrupted hours in nature by myself and write a paper about what I discovered. You could not bring electronics, anything to read or write, anything to sit on, eat, or drink. And you were not to be on any chemical substance. Finding unobscured nature was simple where I went to school, and soon I found myself seated in the most picturesque spot. Just me. On a blanket with a pillow, a notebook, two pens, walkman, book, mac and cheese, and drinks. And I was definitely on chemical substances. I looked about me and thought how perfect this spot was. I sat there perfectly still, listening to the wind through the trees and feeling the dappled sunlight on my face. It was a solid 45 seconds before I spotted an even more perfecter spot…just over there. There I will be able to discover the secrets of me.
So I shoved what I could in my backpack, slung the rest over and about various appendages, and started across the fallen tree to get to this oasis of contemplation and self reflection. That’s when I dropped everything in the small stream that was beneath the fallen tree. That sucks. Now… in my perfecter spot with my sogginess. I thought, ‘I carry around a lot of shit.’
Bingo.
I carry around a lot of shit.
I thought about it for 7 hours and wrote a kickass paper about it. I also found that I like me. I like how I think about things and I became very interested in, well, me.
Now, not all of us have the ability to spend a whole day by ourselves (with practice this IS pretty much step 2, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).
You CAN do little things each day. You will probably really like you too. What do you have to lose? The world will still be terrible if you do this, but maybe you will at least see YOU differently. That just might make you able to see the world differently, voila, the point.
Exercise:
DoH believes the world can be experienced in either 2D or 3D. Messages filtered in a 2 Dimensional realm, or by screens, come from unknown sources with unknown intents, often with profit in mind. The 3D world is the ‘real world’, the one you should be living in.
- Look at your phone and see how much time you spent on it yesterday. Add to this how much time you think you spent in front of other screens yesterday.
- Spend less time today.
- Spend less time than that tomorrow.
For part of this ‘time off’ go into the 3D world without any 2D appliances. Go outside. Look at the sky. Take your shoes off and walk around. Turn off the voices telling you what you need to do, what you didn’t do today, and what has to be done tomorrow. Observe and notice real things happening right now, in front of you. Pay attention to the world physically about you. Wait to see something beautiful.
Think about yourself with no accoutrements. Learn who YOU are. I have blog posts that may help you get started, and/or help you continue. They ask you to ask yourself questions like: what does your name mean? What do your eyes look like? What do you like? What do you dislike? What is your favorite color and why? They ask you to try things like: listening to a record all the way through, from beginning to end, the way it was meant to be heard. Listen with the liner notes in front of you, look at the pictures of the band and read the lyrics alongside the music. Look and think about the art in your house. What would you take with you if you only had three minutes to take it? What are three words you would use to describe you. What do you hate?
DoH believes, YOU can only really be explored by YOU through consideration, and this takes effort. Is it easier to binge on the couch for hours or scroll mindlessly? Yes. Are you any better or did you learn anything while doing these activities? Probably not. It will require effort you are out of practice putting forth, but aren’t you worth it?
QUALITY INFORMATION:
The second piece of the triumvirate we have coined ‘Knowing Thyself’ is QUALITY INFORMATION, and should be gathered in parallel with Spending Time With Yourself:
‘Three things are missing; number 1:, do you know why books, such as this, are so important? Because they have Quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture, this book has pores, it has features, this book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper the more literary you are. That’s my definition anyway. Telling detail, fresh detail. The good writers touch life often, the mediocre ones run a quick hand over her, and the bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax-moon faces, pore-less, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks for all their prettiness come from the chemistry of the Earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks without completing the cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the Earth? But when he was held rootless in midair by Hercules, he perished easily. If there isn’t something in that legend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I’m completely insane. Well there we have the first thing I said we needed. Quality, texture of information.’
-Ray Bradbury, Fahreinheit 451
So where is this Quality Information?
In my opinion, here are some rules to go by in the 72 years since Fahreinheit 451 was written:
Quality Information is NOT/does NOT:
- Scam you
- Indiscernible from advertisements
- Communicated in single sentences requiring clicking on Read More or Continue Reading dozens of times
- Have recaps, reviews, previews, or after shows
- A list ‘____ of all time’ or ‘Best/Worst _____ in history’ with no background, by non-experts with no links to facts
- Feel like advertising with brief interruptions of entertainment
- Promote opinions of its billionaire owner
- Tell you what you think
- Regurgitate other people’s propaganda
- Say it’s ‘news’ when it is really editorial
- Have likes, dislikes nor can only be read further if subscribed to
That eliminates a LOT huh?
So what shows the pores of the world?…..
Seems this leaves The BBC, PBS, a few newspapers, Wikipedia and books.
Glorious books.
In Fahreinheit 451 Faber, the wise old man, has this to say about books:
‘Books were one type of receptacle where we kept the things we didn’t want to forget.’
and Socrates said:
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”
Books can be like a mirror. They show you who you want to be. They shine spotlights on bad guys. They reveal roadmaps for how heroes and heroines combat evil. They don’t tell you what to think, they show you how you COULD. They are not discovered on someone else’s timeframe. You can start, stop, rewind, fast forward, rinse and repeat forever…for free. You do not have to subscribe, like, dislike, nor give credit card information.
Books cannot scam you.
You are not force fed what anyone looks like, sounds like, nor influence you on who to like/dislike. They will not be interrupted by someone trying to take some of your money or steal eyeball time. There are no rotten tomato reviews, recaps, previews, post-views, side-views or inverted-time-sliding-views to influence what you think of something you haven’t encountered yet. There are no laugh tracks, reunions, follow up shows, nor have they produced worthless, terrible rich people you don’t wish to be like. We aren’t talking about the physical books themselves, although the smell and feel so real. When I was on an Anne Rice kick, the subway smelled like vampires. It is what YOU take from books that matters.
I don’t know. We have everything we need to be happy but we aren’t happy. Something is missing. I looked around, the only thing I positively knew was gone were the books I burned in 10 or 12 years…so, I thought…books might help.’
‘You’re a hopeless romantic’ said Faber, ‘It would be funny if it were not serious. It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the Parlor Families today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it’s not books at all you’re looking for. Take it where you can find it; in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature, and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.
-Ray Bradbury, Fahreinheit 451
‘The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are, they’re Ceasar’s Praetorianguard whispering as the parade roars down the avenue: (Faber whispers) “Remember Ceasar, thou art mortal.” Most of us can’t rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven’t time, money, or that many friends, what you are looking for Montag are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see 99% of them is in a book.’-Ray Bradbury, Fahreinheit 451
Books are portals to the world, full of visionary gems by genius’ before us who had nuggets to pass on to those listening. What you can learn about you from them…
Now of course, there are a lot of books out there. How can you find the good ones? Where do you start? Luckily, these lists exist and here are some good rules to follow, and a list of my own:
- Read anything that was censored/banned/frowned upon at any time by anyone. This dangerous book OBVIOUSLY is such a menace to free thought, that you must read it. While reading, ask yourself; ‘What is in here that the bad guys don’t want me to think about?
- Recommended Reading List for Colleges and Universities: tried and true list made up by smart people who are preparing you for life and want you to think.
If this isn’t a lifetime’s worth of reading for you, don’t fret, the books will begot other books and authors. Reading is a good addiction.
Know this, reading is hard, but it is worth it:
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
– Margaret Fuller
Unless you read every day, you are going to have to work on this. You, most likely, are not used to reading, or focusing on one, and only one thing, for an extended period of time. Think of it like this; a lion must focus on a single prey from slouch to pounce, ONE, if attention is diverted or goal altered midstream, most likely the hunt will be unsuccessful. Zebras are striped. Among other things this helps them get away from predators. The stripes, when moving and in pacts, make it so the predator can’t focus on one thing and is less likely to be successful.
Now switch the lion with yourself and the Zebra with the data put before you to process in the 2D world. I believe this confusion and lack of focus is the intent of the 3D systems from which we get our information. How can you get good at ONE THING if you don’t practice, if you don’t focus? How can you really learn about ONE THING if you don’t focus? How can you study and research ONE THING, if you don’t focus? We need people in this world to focus on ONE THING. We need someone studying plankton, and someone else studying plastic, we need someone obsessed with worms, headaches, armchairs, and frisbees. We need inventors. You are probably used to having your attention divided so much that putting it all in one place may feel uncomfortable. You’re been led to believe that Multi-tasking is a good thing. Multi-tasking is not a good thing in DoH’s opinion, and should NOT be listed as a positive character trait. Isn’t it better to do one thing well, than a bunch of things shitty? You may yearn for the commercial breaks or the brevity of that which you are used to, but that is all noise. Once you get interested in finding out stuff and finding out stuff about you, until you get a high off of learning, this will remain difficult. You probably had it once, you can have it again.
Books require full attention. This will prove difficult if you have not given full attention to anything in a long time. So take your time. If possible give yourself a place(s) to read in. If possible give yourself time(s) to read in. Pad the places with items to make yourself comfortable. Pad the time so you can ‘go over’ if you feel like it. Don’t have a clock nearby if possible. Don’t do chores at the same time. Close a door if you can. Go outside if you can. Try to make it ritualistic, a bonus, a reward, something to look forward to. Think of it as the time where you find out who you are without listening to ‘them’. Try to read a bit more each day than the day before. If you dig something, learn about the author or who inspired the author, and read more. Your brain is an entity of one, you control it and you evolve it. It’s you, go introduce yourself.
Here are some of my favorite books for those that need to relearn/practice reading. The following I have reread multiple times (that’s how you know they are good). They are short, surprisingly political and on many lists as the best books ever written. In no particular order:
- Fahrenheit 451
- Animal Farm
- A Christmas Carol
- The Lorax
- Catcher in the Rye
Remember, you care not a shit about anyone else’s opinions so do not read up, read reviews, ask opinions, or watch the movie. Just read. Compare the movie AFTER you read the book, the book is almost always better. By the way… 4 of the 5 of the books above have been censored; including the one by Dr. Seuss.
If you need a focus when reading the above CENSORED books, ask yourself: ‘Why is/was it dangerous for me/anyone to think about this?’ or ‘What current status quo aspect of life could these pages make me question the legitimacy of?’ or ‘Who do I like/dislike and why?’ or ‘Where do I see me?’
Now Read. Read. Read. Read.
KNOWING WHAT YOUR HAPPINESS LOOKS LIKE:
Knowing Thyself is never really over. The painting is never finished. But move onto Wouldn’t It Be Cool If once you’ve begun this final piece of Stage 1:
The final step in Stage 1 is to articulate what your Happy looks like. Mine took years to complete, and it might even continue to change as I learn. In other words, this is not a task you can complete today. And like everything In Knowing Thyself, it will evolve.
What is your happiness? This is the big question. If DoH believes the Meaning of Life is the pursuit of Happiness. Than that means that happiness is subjective.
Happiness needs to be clear:
Goals are much easier to reach the clearer they are. This takes time and reflection. Think about the happiest times in your life and look at what factors were there and what weren’t. The more obtuse/vague/all encompassing your Happiness is, the more room for error in reaching the goal. For example: I want to be rich. Rich from whose perspective? How rich is rich? At any cost rich? What if the means were illegal or immoral?
Happiness needs to be concise:
My first pass was a beefy, Hugo sized paragraph. It needed trimming. I decided that it needed to be Hemingway’d down to the least amount of words possible to get my point across. I also discovered that it required me to define words for myself, what I mean by them.
Happiness is not material:
Here is what I’ve decided my happiness looks like:
Having enough within a community that encourages me to fail.
Took me a long time to be able to write that. It HAD to be Hemingway’d quite a bit.
But, after much thought, and often as good words put in good order do; there is far more meaning than first meets the mind.
As you weren’t in my head whilst I finalized it, I’m sharing the assumptions I gave/give weight to, of the words I thoughtfully chose.
Here are definitions of those words:
Having: / hæ / vɪŋ / v:
Webster’s: to hold or maintain as a possession, privilege, or entitlement
DoH, Inc. assumption: that which was not taken
- Ex: Savings = yes. Owning a home = yes. Off shore bank account = no.
Enough: / ɪˈ / nəf / n:
Webster’s: in or to a degree or quantity that satisfies or that is sufficient or necessary for satisfaction
DoH, Inc. assumption: within a human lifetime and doing Better for the Most with surplus
- Giving the charities = yes. Paying taxes on all your assets = yes. Trust funds for the next worthless generations of narcissists = no.
Community: / kəˈ / mjun / ə / ti / n:
Webster’s: a unified body of individuals
DoH, Inc. assumption: that mutually respect one another’s pursuit(s) of happiness and from which Teams can be formed
- Neighborhood = yes. Friends = yes. Any group whose main theme is hate, greed, or profit = no.
Encourages: / ɪnˈ / kɜ˞ɹ / ɪd / ʒəz / v:
Webster’s: to inspire with courage, spirit, or hope
DoH, Inc. assumption: does NOT mean: to detract, interfere, or distract from, unless the act(s) inhibit the pursuit of happiness of other(s)
- Cheer on = yes. Leave alone = yes.
Complain aboutJudge on FB = no.
To Fail: / tuː / feɪl / v:
Webster’s: to be unsuccessful
Doh, Inc. assumption: Failures, when encouraged, lead to great things. Failures produce focus. Failures make you tougher, stronger and better. Failures equal learning, and LEARNING is what it is all about, isn’t it?
If you find a bit of yourself here in anything written here, WIBCI awaits.
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