Note to Reader: Please note this piece features Explicit language, Life philosophy discussion, Ideologies dismantled and questioned, Biblical/Judaism/Islamic Abrahamic religious References, Artificial Intelligence contrarian views, Wisdom and Ideation on deep life values. Please consider above to mitigate by distancing and/or self regulation for wellbeing in light of noted discussion topics. Please refer to website disclaimer for more information.
We all gather beliefs in day to day life like hoodies and fridge magnets through this beautiful journey called life. Something that is deeply linked to our sense of importance, freedom and belonging or community. I was reflecting that belief on its own is not enough. Your beliefs itself are contingent on you surviving and preaching that said belief through practicing it. For instance, you can’t eat a belief or continue your day to day life and economies of existence solely on it.
My view is that your belief is hamstrung to your life philosophy. The life philosophy that shapes your daily values, use of intellect and purpose in life. That’s where fun kicks in; our default life philosophy is usually crowdsourced from personal, cultural and geographical conditioning. My understanding is that the default religion of the world and probably the most common religion in today’s world is pursuit of happiness, acquiring external things for status and minimisation of pain i.e. capitalism and consumerism.
In common words, capitalism means an economic system in which features private ownership instead of state owned ownership. Also it is generally a for profit business model which includes investment of capital and free markets i.e. demand supply being a measure of value. A related philosophy, consumerism refers to a social system where people live in a capitalist economy to engage in a lifestyle of materialism that revolves around acquiring material things, more than usual features wasteful, or overconsumption. For simplicity and gestalt assessment I am going to club these sister ideologies (economic & social ones) such as consumerism and materialism into my definition of modern capitalism (Referred as Life philosophy here onwards).
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion — Voltaire
My take on modern and mango people capitalism is:
The life approach of enslaving existence to acquire external things for self worth, meaning and purpose – Adnan
I am not an anti-capitalist, I just like asking deep questions which usually makes people uncomfortable as they have to think about it. As my closest friend tells me frequently, that Adnan, the only thing hated more than the truth is the person who speaks it. I dare say, we have an inherited life philosophy before we can consciously bring any belief to it.
Don’t get me wrong, the original purpose of capitalism was quite amazing, for example to give synthetic livers and prosthetic limbs to people at a cheaper price by enabling innovation and free market competition (demand & supply of stuff). I am speaking of the modern one which sells startups, raising companies & kids together seamlessly, gambling apps, chasing women as default time pass and po*n to the same people. The one which sells shopping with freedom tags, be nice and agreeable feminine, hate objectification but love midriffs and only fans, handbags and travels for a decade to sell egg freezing facilities & social housing programs later to same people. The one which sells all of us a hundred flavors of toothpastes in the name of freedom – who cares about hygiene and shades of pearl white, we want your f*cking toothpaste to taste like ice cream.
I love how we conveniently also come up with buzz words for the dark side these commercial functions generate like ethical capitalism, neoclassical capitalism and other terms which keep the original life philosophy intact (innovation, more choices, demand & supply and profit through selling to society) but covers one hundredth of the negative shadow it casts.
We often forget that no matter what the product, service or technology, it ultimately is designed to appeal to the DNA ingrained physiological and psychological traits of humans. One of them which is used like a treadmill for this life philosophy is, Grass is greener. God’s gift to humanity to ensure we grow out of comfort zones, become better each day and we evolve rather than perish.
One of the oldest recorded examples can be found in the religious scriptures, in the story of Exodus from Egypt (Old Testament) or Story of Bani Israel (Quran):
Chosen by God (Allah) to bring the Hebrews/Bani Israel (Children of Israel) to the promised land, Moses led them into wilderness, where they would wander for forty years. The Bani Israel were liberated from generations of slavery, tyranny and torture of Pharoah through divine intervention of Moses (Alayhi As Salaam “AS”). Moses parted the Red sea to save them and drowned Pharaoh’s army while they watched with their own eyes. They were slaves, liberated through miracles but Bani Israel started growing nostalgic about their past life.
Facing starvation, God provided them with Manna from heaven, but they could only compare it unfavourably to delicious melons, cucumbers and meats they have known in Egypt. Not being excited by miracles and splitting the ocean they decided to forge and worship a Golden calf; but once Moses punished them they dropped the shiny idol quickly. Nevertheless, they constantly complained, created new and endless headaches like lusting after foreign women and kept looking for some new cult to follow. God was so irritated by their endless discontent that he barred the entire generation including their Prophet [(Moses (AS)] from ever entering the promised land.
So the grass was greener irrespective of whatever they had, they dreamed of something better over the horizon…Why would they though, they were the chosen ones, weren’t they…aren’t we all…as we are told by every religion, culture, country, colour and parent…
I am sure while you were reading this you would have realised how this still happens in your daily life – the shopping cart to Instagram scroll, tinder swipe, next beach house, private school and holiday or as I call it Avocado lifestyle and Pursuit of happiness tax by trading living years routine. It’s all the beauty of being human, our flawed, strenuous and beautiful existence…our human virtue and madness.
Grass is greener is a very useful human trait for imagination, innovation and survival. Having said that, the modern fuel of capitalism based grass is greener: bombardment of advertisement to attack everyone’s senses for clickbait, is an addiction. It normalises misusing resources, people and the planet for feeling less shit about one’s own existence and normalises excessive self aggrandisement (narcissism) as self expression, purpose or contribution.
You must be thinking what a sanctimonious prick, trust me, I have written for over 5 years to become conscious of this phenomena’s proliferation; day in and day out of my life.
We live in a strange times: When we are pretty;
We want to be rich;
When we are rich…We want to be adored by one;
When we’re loved by one…then we feel the need to be loved and acknowledged as a superior being…by everyone.
Then we want to rule everyone in our sight;
Once that is done then we want to live forever…Since that is not possible then…We want to have a legacy in the shape of a child, book, rocket, hospitals in Africa or name on buildings.
Keeping the brown (snow) flake inside me aside, it was crucial for me to be present, deeply conscious and accept ‘What is’ (Reality) to channel daily life experiences and evolving emotional dysfunction to healthy self regulation. The alternative is living a life of grass is greener aka opportunity cost analysis paralysis, complaining & blaming as an existence. Read more here: The Thought-Emotion Web: Our Infinite Inner Worlds
Back in the day, TV and media used it to record life in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) to show it to people in La jolla, Newport Beach (US) to get their reactions, then play those reactions back to Saudi Arabia and then record their reactions to show it to people in US – termed as ‘Outrage porn’. Nowadays, it is awesome how much woke and outage p*rn you can make just while buying coffee at the next door shop. As everything is viral on media & social media nowadays, it spreads and gets forgotten quickly just like COVID-19. A virus which controlled global existence for years and was forgotten by the media in a handful of months. Noting, I deeply empthise with people whose lives were reshaped due to personal or familial losses. I am also one of those people whose day to day reality has been rattled since the pandemic, which I am now able to share later in the piece.
My burning question is that at what stage we say the person whose observing grass is greener isn’t able to distinguish between red, green, blue and Fiusha? Perhaps the observer’s senses are inundated, tired, wearing rose garden glasses which don’t feature reality or provide any of the original benefit. That benefit being: self regulation, that things are never as good as we imagine and never as bad as we imagine. It was this mild dissatisfaction which evolved us becoming more conscious, working hard and dynamically adapting to a world which is constantly changing.
Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. — Voltaire
A part of me actually admires this unique life philosophy (modern capitalism) which is agnostic to industry, domain, age, culture, religion, class and creed. It is a near perfect and self perpetuating commercial function as the new humans auto subscribe to it at birth. Ironically, it gives the false prophecy of freedom, equality, ego satisfaction and status to everyone in it, while inherently oppressing and domineering them.
When the world birth rate goes negative (a trend in Australia and most developed countries), every human interaction is a cost-benefit analysis. Parents act as shareholders for children; every embryo is geared for productivity; every family unit is like a business unit and every dollar for charity needs to meet the return to virtue signalling and attention ratio.
What happens after that?
We start making robots to sell shit to robots to shuffle the money robotic process automation made to humans?
The question then becomes which humans?
The ones with the robots, the ones using the robots or the ones who make them?
Then, do we introduce robots with a deep seeking grass is greener virus into their functioning to make their artificial neural networks (brain or large learning model) feel insecure to continuously increase their productivity to infinity & beyond?
Imagine the Exodus from Open AI Earth on NVIDIA’s chip origin story based by deep seeking robotic evolution through human insecurity modelling for humanoid capitalism – I am sure that is already there if we (humans) are training them.
News Flash: The technology is new, the psychology being exploited is as old as human history.
(Note to self: Stop writing woke shit, it only works if it is commercially appealing to the masses. It is easier to ignore it as a rant – which is fair too. As my mother says, you can take a horse to the water but you can’t make it love you)
I wonder what if it’s like taping burgers to your body and constantly asking yourself, why am I hungry?
What if it is self limiting and sabotaging behaviour?
What if the only grass that matters is the one you’re standing on, focus on, the one you water, the one you focus on. Even more the one which extends kindness, generosity and meaningfully contributes to others.
“Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.”― Voltaire
I dare say we have a default life philosophy (modern capitalism) and we have a self comforting cherry of belief on top. Yet, we get up in arms, lose sleep over online comments on an Instagram post where we feel someone disrespected our belief and start pontificating on reels when someone says something about the belief we preach without practicing a shred of it in our day to day life.
Belief based life philosophy is a different ball game altogether. Science is backward looking and belief is forward looking.
Well you may say, I don’t believe in anything. To that, I would say you believe your body matters so you exercise, you believe your work matters, so you arrange your life around it, you believe having existence matters so you create art, children and meaningfully use your limited time on the planet to make it a reality.
The belief that I speak of in essence features values based ambition. The belief defines principles and determines your life philosophy. The belief based life philosophy is an approach to life where the core tenets of beliefs (spiritual, ideological or even personal) direct your habits, day to day living and broader purpose in life. Against the default life philosophy (modern capitalism) which often features a contrasting approach of ambition (attention, fame, status etc.) minus belief and minimisation of values.
At the expense of coming across as a idealist, one might say, the life of Prophets (Moses, Jesus and Muhammed PBUH), an imam, a monk, a yogi, a scholar, a priest, a nun or someone who is a true rationalist with a maker’s mindset – who have a realistic understanding of their strengths and flaws, pursue the greater good and tolerant of intolerant people. Mainly, ensuring alignment of life to their core beliefs even at the expense of their personal wants and needs. A persona like Pericles of Athens, Socrates, Rumi, Emmanuel Kant, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Gandhi, Buddha or even Warren Buffet.
Ironically, also someone who is usually dedicates their life being true to their beliefs, suffers hardships most in life and in modern times is conveniently labelled as idealist. Their journeys are usually mentioned in books and history based storytelling to inspire innovation, art, ethics and leadership in young and middle aged generations (the same which auto-subscribed to modern capitalism at birth). I wonder, all of them suffered from grass in greener and all other human madness and virtues but still they were able to pursue something beyond themselves and for others.
My solution is Amor Fati – a term by Nietzsche which means Love of Fate. Hope for not-bad, not-good, not for past, not for future or eternity – To only hope and want what already is…not only to merely endure that which happens of necessity…but LOVE IT. The cards you’re dealt with are the cards you always wanted as Tawakkul in Islam, Surrender in Western Spirituality or C’est la vie from the Byron Bay Chick…it’s all the same quest for connecting with the stardust and formlessness that is uniquely you!
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it destiny – Carl Jung
I acutely know that it’s easier said than done. On a personal level, as previously mentioned my day to day life was changed since COVID – the vaccination unmasked or caused an autoimmune disease (Refer references, not promoting a conspiracy theory) which resulted in pseudo philosopher so lose his ability to have mental clarity, articulation in creativity and a hyper-active person who hasn’t been able to run for over a year. I’ve lived with the chronic day to day mobility pain of a 80 year old being below half that age – not to mention obsessed with CrossFit & exercise. The belief and life philosophy of finding meaning through life’s unchosen suffering encouraged me to find out about writers (Mary Flannery O’Conner – 1925 – 1964) who suffered similar diseases yet wrote world class novels like Enduring Chills and Wise Blood. I was weathering the temporary memory and hair loss as drudgery but the acceptance that allowed me to continue writing this piece was due to Tawakkul (Amor Fati). To close this emotional vomit, I am much better as medication settles in, no irreversible life impacts help and I am progressively doing what I love:
Pain is like sand on life’s beach: Just as glorious sunny days bring happiness, gratitude & joy; the constantly shifting seabed rattles your life experience to make you more resilient for future challenges. It’s nature’s gift 🌊 — teaching us not just to survive but to thrive in unpredictability.
I believe greatness lies in proactively converting life’s pain into innovation that creates meaning, purpose; and contributes to others. — Adnan Rasool
And ‘No’, I am not grass-is-greening (selling) you my solution – which is a good thing. But I believe, deep in your heart, I know you’ve had a fleeting sensation through life experiences; that have highlighted the inefficacious and self-defeating side of modern capitalism based life philosophy.
The aim for this piece is to relay consciousness to ‘choose’ your own beliefs (spiritual, ideological or personal) and associated life philosophy – no matter how odd or absurd it might be as long as it’s constructive, aligned to your personal values and has positive contribution to broader society.
There is no harm even keeping your auto-birth subscription intact, now another dimension has come in, your spirit, consciousness and self awareness…
But this is not about me…
This is for YOU to uncover your own myth…You know now where to start…You now have the knowledge…You know how to start manifesting the greatness that’s destined for you…Now go do it and I can’t wait to hear about it…
Sources:
- Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production, while materialism is a social and philosophical belief system.
- Consumerism vs Materialism
- Consumerism refers to the tendency of people living in a capitalist economy to engage in a lifestyle of excessive materialism that revolves around reflexive, wasteful, or conspicuous overconsumption.
- Quran – Chapter & Verses:
- “‘Verily, it shall be forbidden for them for forty years; in distraction shall they wander through the land. So, grieve not over the rebellious people.’” (Surah al-Ma’idah, Ch.5: V.27)
- “And [remember the time] when We delivered you from Pharaoh’s people who afflicted you with grievous torment, slaying your sons and sparing your women; and in that there was a great trial for you from your Lord. And [remember the time] when We divided the sea for you and saved you and drowned Pharaoh’s people, while you looked on.” (Surah al-Baqarah, Ch.2: V.50-51)
- “And We brought the children of Israel across the sea, and they came to a people who were devoted to their idols. They said, ‘O Moses, make for us a god just as they have gods.’ He said, ‘Surely, you are an ignorant people.” (Surah al-A‘raf, Ch.7: V.139)
- Human Nature by Robert Green
- Dependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality
- In 2021, Musk called population collapse potentially the greatest risk to civilization’s future. And in 2023, he urged people in Italy and other developed countries to have more kids.
- Humanoid means having the appearance or characteristics of a human. It can be used to describe a non-human entity, such as a robot or fossil
- Trigger warnings do not work, according to recent meta-analysis – Original research here
- The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity
- Insights into new-onset autoimmune diseases after COVID-19 vaccination
- The Exodus from Egypt: The source is personal religious studies. The event narration is inspired by the book Laws of Human Nature by Robert Green.
- Image Purchased from Shutterstock
