i can’t bear to do a negative, thinspo-loaded post today, so i won’t. welcome my brain’s positive ish:
^ for some reason i’m really enjoying this picture. maybe it’s the camel. i mean, i prefer llamas but i consider myself a camel-fan… and i’m LOVING that little crocheted thins on his nose.
anyway, i found it on this blog:
http://agirlnamedbong.blogspot.com
it’s been my source of entertainment for the last couple of days, along with Heroes, which i’ve been watching via netflix.com
i’m on season 2 and i’m hooked! i here it gets worse but now apparently there’s a new writer so it’s better…?
i don’t know. but i’ll keep watching regardless because of milo. he’s why i started watching in the first place. you see, i disliked him on gilmore girls because i found jess annoying. like, really?!? stop doing bad things! but i hadn’t hit puberty yet, and i think that’s necessary to get the full effect, because it wasn’t until i re-watched gilmore girls a couple of months ago that i realized how stunning he is. i mean, really! i’ve seen and/ or known plenty of men who are good-looking or cute or hot, but only two who are really– well– beautiful, and he’s one of them. and i don’t mean just the face, but the whole being.
he’s the kind of person who artists dream about. a muse…
so, yeah– um, heroes. good show. haha
erm… ok! so i think next year i’m going to go vegan. i just feel like it’s the right thing to do– like vegetarianism isn’t enough. i can do more and i WANT to do more. i’ve been feeling increasing bad about eating animal products and i wouldn’t if my parents would stop practically force-feeding me and complaining about how i’m so hard to cook for. (not that i ever ask to be cooked for. i can fend for myself)
i’ve been taking a lot of pictures, too. mostly of the snow. i wanted to get a good one of the flakes falling, but my camera’s new, so i couldn’t figure out which setting to use. i’m enjoying experimenting with it most of the time, but sometimes i REALLY want a shot, and then it’s frustrating.
sorry… i’m kind of new at this whole positivity thing. if i decided to try this more i promise to get better at it!
but before i end the post i have a really random question: if you could go anywhere in the world for a couple of days (no time-traveling or anything like that), where would you go?
Boredom: the desire for desires – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Is this all just boredom? You have freed yourself from all desires. That’s a good thing right? Except if there is no pleasure you seek, then the best you can hope for is a 0 state of neither pleasure nor pain. Which is no better or worse than nonexistence. Anything else would just be more pain than pleasure, and worse than nonexistence.
I mean for a while this was all sublated by ambition. This was all necessary sacrifice for a worthy goal. Out of ambition I acted very much like a teenage Ayn Rand sycophant would, calculating advantage, and making a point of never sacrificing self-interest when I was in direct competition. Of course this was all done out of the noblest motives, in the belief that I was best qualified to use power in a utilitarian way. In this way anything that stood in the way of my interest, stood in the way of the salvation of humanity.
We all champion the heroism of men like Cortez when they burn their ships so there is no place to retreat to, and only victory can save them. But if you are defeated the burning of bridges comes to be the greatest of blunders. Had I been successful the same facts could be rewritten under different paradigms. My childhood and teen years, would be the story of a determined hero with his eyes fixed on the prize. With complete faith in his star.
SO now I’m stuck with a profound sense of ennui. I just don’t care. The world goes on its stupid way destroying itself. And I’ve just lost touch with humanity. I don’t believe in individualism, so I don’t think there is anything I can do to make things better. So it goes beyond the evils of the world. IT is the mediocrity of the world. The shallow caprice.
Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.
Is that true? I mean on the one hand it is philosophy that has led me to such misery. But on the other hand, intelligence as the ability to be a rational calculator, need not lead anyone to misery. It is only when one feels, that life becomes misery.
I don’t think that it is being over-educated that has ruined me. In my adolescence I had a narrow but deep education of very specific military subjects. But that broadened into wider political thought. By the time I self-taught myself a broad philosophical education in college, it was too late to make any real difference in my interactions with the world. A general philosophical education at a young age would have helped me put the world in perspective. And be more stoic and determinist about the evils of the world. To see myself more as an actor rather than writer of history.
Well what about Rodney Stark’s rational choice theory of religion? That even the craziest New Agey religions that people believe are actually logical calculations about the benefits such religion conveys. In that sense Destiny was my religion. I derived far more pleasure from it then I would have from Gossip Girl. It is true that the promise lay in the future, but I borrowed on that future promissory note. Schopenhauer says that all the pleasure we gain from expectation is deducted when the actual pleasure arrives. But since the Future never came, it turned out I was living off pleasure that didn’t exist. Does that mean that the happiness I experiance in youth was not actual happiness?
So is it about evil or ennui? Well there is nothing less boring than the noble crusade against evil. So if there are so many dragons to slay, why is the world so horrible? PErhaps there is no hope for total victory. But you are not so base, that you can’t score individual triumphs?
Well what if you worked a “normal” 9-5 job, but from Hegel’s philosophy of right, you were able to see even burger-flipping as a noble realization of human history and rationality. And then after work you had your Indiana Jones adventures with all the pluralist sects that populate diversity USA. Ok lets not romanticize it. I mean these would just be discussion groups in people’s houses. But you know full well that your not capable of swinging from vines, and escaping death-traps. I mean you have the ability to work out to the point where you may look good, and have a brute kind of strength, but you will never have the fineness of useful strength or athleticism. In that sense you are better suited to be an Indiana Jones of American diversity.
Unless of course adventure was never really what you wanted? You just wanted stability and a hierarchy to climb? Pretty much any workplace offers that. I mean you like both flat and vertical hierarchies. A flat hierarchy is democratic, while a vertical one is a ladder to climb. Does adventure have to be geographical? I mean if you want to meet Satanists, vampires, cults, mystics, wizards, ghost hunters, paranormal, through the internet you can meet them right here in USA.
So is that so different from your “grand ambition”? You find a hierarchy that you try to climb, and you also have adventures.
As for utopia, that will be one of your scenes. Isn’t the struggle for utopia, utopia itself? And while it maybe difficult to join a hippie commune right now, if that becomes a longterm goal, then you probably can do it eventually. And so you can live out your days after a lifetime of adventure, in the society you would have won had it all worked out.
How much did you ever believe in utopia? Earlier it served as a distant goal, to justify your life of adventure. And after the fall it served as a ritualistic duty without any hope of victory.
Well is that a life you could live? Work during the day, Indiana Jones at night? I mean yeah its not as exciting as temples of doom, but you tried that road and know its not for you. You may not be able to duel a Voodoo priest, but you can learn from him the intellectual consciousness behind his thought.
Utopia means stability and harmony. Yes it is true the job market is chaotic now. But if you ever did get a public sector job, you would enjoy the relative stability of utopia. You always turned down the prospect of being a public teacher. So its not stability your after. Utopia is your Kantian Kingdom of Ends. It is the divine goal, that is supposed to motivate all your actions. Its nothing you should lament, that you don’t live in it.
And what of Tucker Max? Well if this is all an elaborate mask for your Nietzsche herd resentment , then this is purely an instrumental problem. You need to learn the skills to achieve the particular goal of being Tucker Max. And if its white-knighting genuinely, then be content that women lead more fulfilling lives now than they ever have in history. A women is far better off in the Roissyverse than she was in your beloved Athens. IF women issues are the primary bane of your existence, then Athens horrific treatment of them should far outweigh their beautiful democracy. Rome itself was founded in a Tucker Max manner, they invited over the neighboring town, and then raped all the Sabine women. Don’t get me started on Genghis Khan.
So if thats what your really concerned with, than you’d have to admit that all your beloved civic republic were even worse.
And you were so afraid of being a beta male, who bought pretty flowers, long before you had heard of the term beta or PUA. So if girls really have it so horrible, then why don’t you become a beta, and try to make it a little better for them? Is it so horrible to be taken advantage of, by a girl, if you know she faces a pack of wolves at every corner who wish to hurt, humiliate, degrade, debase her out of sheer sadism? Isn’t being a beta nice-guy the LEAST you can do?
Even from a hedonist point of view, if sexual success is what you wanted and you always claimed it wasn’t, but if it was, then you would have done a lot better playing the nice guy beta, than you did playing the omega jerk. I mean your justification is that beautiful girls, get treated too nice by the world, just because of their looks, and your being egalitarian by being rude to them. But if they really do live in a tragic world besieged by Roissys and Tucker Maxes, then their beauty is a curse that gives alphas a right to hurt them. In which case you must come to the opposite conclusion, that you should be especially nice to them.
I mean can’t you just say outright “yes, I know that you are biologically programmed by your cavegirl greatgranny who got hit with a club and made a rapeslave, to submit to the alpha with the biggest club, but I don’t care about that. I’m who I’m, and I’m not going to change my moral values for you. Either accept me as a nice guy or get out. I’m not going to be a man I hate, just to please you. Your not worth that price to me, I don’t value you that highly.I insist on being a white knight torpedoes be damned!”
If any of those so-called recovering AFCs had every been “nice guys” and not Tucker Maxes in slow-motion thats what they would have said.
How can you be so certain that nice guys finish last? Just because everyone says so. The nice guys who COMPLAIN are NOT nice-guys they just pursue a conservative strategy.
They are a testament to the glory of Mises’ sexual free-market, because men much more immoral than you are forced to behave far kinder than you. I mean you consider yourself a nice guy deep down inside. But you have consciously made sure that you NEVER do anything nice for a girl, and you never have because you don’t face the pressure of the sexual free market. The sexual market forces those so-called white knights to behave more morally than they actually are. And that is what all their complaining and resentment is about.
I have seen no empirical evidence from middle, high school or college, that nice guys finish last. I’ve heard a lot of complaints online, and it is what pop culture pushes but I haven’t seen it with my own eyes. It may or may not have existed in frat college. But that was NOT what you were looking for. You condemned hedonism not Roissyism. Yes the jerks were doing well, but afaik the nice guys were as well. Anyway there are very few men in the world who would meet my standard for nice guy white knight. So maybe the problem is not that girls go for jerks, but that there are only jerks. Take your pick aggressive or conservative jerks. Conservative jerks AKA beta nice guys, would LIKE to live the Tucker Max life, long before Roissy “open their eyes”, the sexual free-market disciplines them.
Some Life-History Differences
Between r-Strategists and K-Strategists
r-Strategist
K-Strategist
Family characteristics
Large litter size
Small litter size
Short birth spacing
Long birth spacing
Many offspring
Few offspring
High infant mortality
Low infant mortality
Little parental care
Much parental care
Individual characteristics
Rapid maturation
Slow Maturation
Early sexual reproduction
Delayed sexual reproduction
Short life
Long life
High reproductive effort
Low reproductive effort
High energy utilization
Efficient energy utilization
Smaller brains
Larger brains
Population characteristics
Opportunistic exploiters
Consistent exploiters
Dispersing colonizers
Stable occupiers
Variable population size
Stable population size
Weak competition
Strong competition
Social system characteristics
Low social organization
Higher social organization
Low Altruism
High Altruism
PUAs actually take a rather traditionalist, dare I say Beta, view towards culture. Roissy himself has stated that he believes western civilization was the most favorable to betas and thus evolved towards the highest. I think there is too much confusion in PUA between alpha-beta and r/K selection.
For the most part nearly all the traits associated with alphas can also be called r tactics. Alpha becomes a pretty meaningless term when you have such large levels of civilization, and anomie. We don’t really have tribal families anymore. So I think the TERMS alpha and beta are meaningless but you can replace it with r/K selection theory and still have all the traits in-tact. For example you can have an entire K community, yet there could still be the alpha of said community. Alphaness, and I use the term loosely, is about power. While Roissy refers to the state as a replacement beta, in fact the Hobbesian Leviathan is the ONLY alpha alive today. Now I myself may use the term beta just because its popular but what I and PUAs both mean really is r/K selection theory.
R is the natural Rate of reproduction while K is Kare invested.
So morality and ethics as such is an attempt to encourage K traits. Hegel’s Philosophy of History is in some-sense the story of evolution from R as barbaric slave to nature, to K as free man consciously changing nature. Darwin saw life-history as the story of the draining of testosterone, and looked forward to the day in which the feminine traits of altruism and empathy would extent to the world. Larry Arnhart even hurls the charge of utopianism at Darwin.
That is also what the master slave dialectic is. The master is the alpha. He has all the fun in life, wine women and song. And his slave beta just works in the fields feeding Tucker. The alpha has more courage than the beta. He was willing to fight and die, the beta preferred life in chains to death. But ultimately it is the slave who is interaction with nature, who creates, and who builds. And so the world is the beta’s.
Now Roissy and Co. might actually agree with a lot of what I wrote above, but would insist the party is over and that feminism has ruined everything. Roissy calls himself a libertine capitalist. Feminism is the daughter of capitalism. The market had to quite naturally extend into the family sphere. And once women were pushed out of agriculture the discipline of the market would not let them sit on their hands. It is from capitalism, that women achieved the economic independence, that made male-female relations voluntary to a degree they had not been in the past. Precisely because American capitalism is so libertarian, women are pushed into the labor market far more strongly than they are in Christian Democratic Europe. In that sense I should feel a lot more sorry for myself than for any of Tucker Max’s conquests. I don’t just face pop cultural pressure to have a market relation with a boss, if I don’t do it I’ll starve!
Dawkins points out that the next stage in the selfish gene is Memetics. In that sense I was not really anti-survival. It is true I had very little concern whether my selfish-gene survived. But I wasn’t content to leave this world as though I had never existed. I was determined that my selfish-meme would replicate and rule the world. Even if my selfish-meme was not directly tied to me, and my name and legacy disappeared from the world, my memetic information which is just as real as genetic information would survive.
If the selfish gene is nothing but information code, then memetics is actually a more efficient way to replicate, since there is less corruption of the source code.
So my morality does not necessarily have to be in conflict with this harsh Darwinian world. It is perfectly compatible with the selfish meme.
The only thing worse than bad music, is bad music done by people who think they’re good at it. Listen to their albums is like watching a car crash in slow motion or watching one-legged man hobble across the cross walk or a dog licking peanut from the roof of his mouth. Although it’s frustrating, its somehow funny. Sadly, a lot of actors decide the next obvious step in their career is cutting the worst album known to man. Just ask Steven Segal and his album Mojo Priest!
Think you know who’re the best of the worst? Check out the gallery after the jump!
Poug is still going strong as we begin the second month of 2010. The relationship had lots of signs of potential disaster, but they’ve weathered the storm.
Last week, January 28, the happy couple partied together peacefully at Voyeur Nightclub. Paris looked cute in this black and white dress which she accessorized with a nice necklace.
Sex is what creates us, so it’s sensible that eroticism (that is, all the feelings we have about sex) will have the potential to carry our creative impulse into life, and throughout our lives.
It also works the other way. When someone is conditioned to either not think or experience sexuality with full awareness (or any awareness), or if they are programmed to respond with guilt and fear, self-awareness becomes blocked. If there is a sexual injury or the perception of one, it can block much of our creative energy, potential and happiness.
Our relationship to sex and sexuality is our relationship to existence. If we feel good about our erotic experiences, needs and feelings, we tend to feel good about life. If we are bitter, if we don’t get what we need, if we feel guilty or ashamed of our sexual feelings and experiences, that is most likely how we’re going to feel about life. This can manifest some strange ways, such as violence and manipulation, just like feeling good about sex can manifest as a passionate, creative person who creates their existence consciously every day.
Why don’t we see the connection? Well, we’re conditioned not to, principally by religion. Notice that this thing we call religion takes credit for our existence at the same time it makes sex bad. You also can’t be aware of something you cannot feel, have no experience with or don’t know exists. For 25 years, Americans have grown up with something called Abstinence-Only sex indoctrination, which in effect denies the existence of their natural sexuality (Europeans who know about this think we’re on crack).
Our biology does not give up so easily, though. The psyche’s hunger for sex (which is the hunger to fully exist), for a while, pushes through this resistance. What we find then is often a lot of programmed people who themselves fall for the deception, and it can become very difficult to get our needs met. Honesty can be met with rejection. Wanting anything unusual can be met with a weird look. Even equating sex with deep vulnerability, such as in a relationship, is frequently avoided. How often do we have the feeling that someone is just not going as deep as they can, not calling themselves present?
Imagine, then, all the thought and discussion we have about sex and issues that stem from it — and substitute the word “self.” Imagine the need, the fear, the anxiety, the desire, the deep craving, the judgments we fear and the ones to which we’ve fallen prey. Imagine everything ever said in a church sermon. Imagine the jealousy and the drama and the secrets. Imagine everyone we’ve ever fucked or wanted to. Imagine sex education, the birds and the bees, masturbation and all of those orgasms. Imagine all those sexual relationships wherein we tried to find our Self.
Replace the concept “sex” with “self” and see how the world looks through that lens. How would it feel if somebody said to you, “Hi, I really want to have Self with you”?
Or, translated: “I really want to be myself with you, and have you be yourself with me.”
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Locked-In Syndrome
THE OTHER NIGHT at Upstate Films, I saw a film called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It’s the true story of a man named Jean-Dominique Bauby, once a prominent writer and editor in Paris. At the age of 42, at the peak of his success as editor in chief of Elle, he suffered a massive brainstem stroke, losing all mobility and sensation except for his hearing and use of his left eye.
He could think; he could see; he could hear. His memory and imagination were intact. But he could not move or express himself — except for one eye. This is called “locked-in syndrome.” It is consciousness locked into a body that cannot respond; it is the ultimate mind-body split.
Think that sexually, we are a society of people suffering from a variant of locked-in syndrome. We may have our erotic imaginations, we may have our memories and we may have our desires. But we have untold thousands of reasons not to act on or even speak about our experiences. To some extent, nearly everyone in the current version of Western culture is erotically paralyzed.
We can have liberal values, but are often trapped in groups of people who don’t share them or don’t reveal it if they do. We can have progressive ideas about relationships, but are only able to find people who have traditional values, or with those who seek some freedom but who don’t speak up.
We might be locked inside of fear, of insecurity, or the cocoon of lies that we have told in the past — or more probably, the lies that we were told. We might be trapped inside fat, or the feeling of being ugly or undesirable.
We might have ideas, images and feelings, but lack the words and concepts to express them: trapped in a kind of seemingly imposed silence. This silence can come with the feeling that we will be struck down if we dare to open up and speak.
We might be trapped inside a sense of vulnerability so acute it feels like walking around a city naked. For many, this would translate to naked in the winter.
Some are trapped inside a sense of injury from a sexual assault, incest experience, or growing up around shifty boundaries as a kid.
We might be trapped inside a wall that was put up when we were told that masturbation is wrong.
Or trapped in the inability to ask for what we want.
Trapped inside of any version of the mind/body split — “caught in one’s head.”
Trapped inside of embarrassment, unable to speak or even feel because of the shame associated with doing so.
Trapped inside of being gay when everyone thinks you’re straight or straight when everyone thinks you’re gay. Trapped inside of being bisexual when the people around you…just don’t get it.
Trapped in a monogamous relationship when we’re really polyamorous.
Trapped inside the need to be in love, and otherwise being unable to express sexuality.
Trapped inside an image we must maintain, of wanting to seem pure and upright. Trapped inside of pride; a closely related theme.
Trapped inside religious conditioning, even if we don’t think we have it.
Trapped inside of tradition or family expectations.
Trapped inside of not knowing what we want. Trapped inside of a lot of people telling us what we are supposed to want, even though they have no clue.
Trapped inside of not trusting people. Trapped inside of not trusting ourselves.
Trapped inside the feeling that we don’t exist.
Trapped inside a parent telling us we’re ugly, even once.
Trapped inside of having been raped or molested, and having had that wound fester.
Trapped inside a myth of what monogamy is supposed to be, even if we know it’s not that thing.
Trapped inside not being able to find a lover, or a sex partner. Trapped inside of seeking the perfect person, and not letting anyone else in.
Trapped inside of feeling “dirty” and terrified of being found out.
And on, and on.
I think that in many ways, though we are walking around, many of us here are in considerably worse shape than Bauby. He at least was fully conscious of being alive. He was able to write a book communicating by blinking his one eye. Most of us are far less articulate about our erotic and emotional needs than this.
I would ask: where are we going to learn? Where is the place that the conversation is welcome? If it’s not about sex, where is the place that you can really be your Self?
Sex is Self.
Held Hostage by Jealousy
Hannah mentioned that her boyfriend would be jealous if he found out that I was photographing her topless. Then she added, “I don’t know if I agree with that.”
Her objection was phrased tentatively and non-threateningly, but her voice was firm and carried a hint of pain. She knew that somebody was trying to take over her life in a way that they were not entitled, and that was only covering up their own insecurities.
“Well, it’s your body, right?”
She agreed with this, but described some of the control issues involved. We weren’t having sex — she reserves that for him. We were just taking pictures. But in his mind, only he should photograph her — nobody else. Nobody should even see her, just him. It occurred to her that under these rules, she would be laying herself on the altar of sacrifice to cover for his insecurities.
"My jealousy keeps me monogamous."
We mused over this for a while, and then she said: “People aren’t monogamous, they’re jealous.”
I understood exactly what she meant, but asked her to explain in her own words. Here is the idea: Monogamy for most people is less about fidelity and more about not wanting to make one’s partner jealous. Or, it’s about being good, whether out of guilt, or so they don’t do anything that makes you jealous.
“So if your partner wouldn’t get jealous, you would do anything you wanted?” I asked.
“My jealousy keeps me monogamous. Seriously, what other reason would there be?” She admitted she didn’t want him to do anything that would make her jealous, either. I call this kind of deadlock gunpoint monogamy: if you move, I’ll shoot. If I move, you’ll shoot. We both better be good. Note, I don’t believe this has anything to do with love.
I wonder how many people she speaks for. Maybe not everyone all the time, but certainly for most people most of the time.
This explains cheating: someone does something behind their partner’s back to “save them” from their own jealousy. Or they don’t reveal what happened in order to save themselves from being confronted by that jealousy, and thus addressing the insecurity and attachment behind it. Or, we would “rather not know” and look the other way when we have a feeling our partner is involved in extracurricular activity.
Many people — again, not everyone — feel entitled to share their sex with someone, but not obliged to bear the brunt of their partner’s possessive rage and potential revenge that would likely follow. So most people keep quiet, well versed in what usually happens when they tell the truth.
As misguided as jealousy of this type may seem, and as unethical as it may be to cheat (which really means to lie), there’s a grain of truth inside the deception: and perhaps a more important issue lurks in there. If we’re not another person’s property, what are we then? Alternately, if we’re not free, then what does that mean?
We know inside that we’re all responsible for our own jealousy. Yet typically we either make it everyone else’s fault (“he made me jealous”), or take on the burden of shielding others from what might stir up their rage (and this is often a convenient, deceptive excuse). Projection takes many forms. I’ve noticed that the people who pour on the jealousy tend to be the most likely to cheat.
We know that being alive grants us the right to make choices; we know that “it’s my body and I can do what I want” and that “I am free to care about who I care about,” and that nobody has a right to dictate our emotions. We know that most erotic desire is biological. It’s difficult to miss how sexy people are, and that feeling comes from deep down.
But we tend to walk around inside a contradiction of desire that we can’t honestly express, and of feelings we can’t honestly share, because we fear we’ll be out on the street.
Relationships in our society and in many others are trumped up as the pearl of great price, the most valuable thing in the universe — and to many, it makes sense to avoid the one thing that could threaten this, at any cost. The result is we can gradually come to live lives of total deception. As a result, the emotional subject matter that we need to open up about in our relationships goes unaddressed. We avoid jealousy and thus avoid what it has to offer us as a growth tool; as a cosmic mirror. We avoid truth, and erotic energy dies.
Much of that unaddressed emotional material involves insecurity and lack of self-esteem. A relationship can cover that up for a while, and jealousy can quickly expose the emotional void we lived with all along. If someone wants someone else, we must be unworthy. For most people, jealousy is so painful and so entirely debilitating that it makes sense to avoid it, just like you would not intentionally put your hand on a hot stove.
The idea that one’s lover could be with someone else is often viewed as the ultimate betrayal, and the worst form of abandonment. The supposed solution is to avoid the feeling and anything that can lead to it at all costs, though without recognizing what that cost really is. Taken unconsciously, the cost of jealousy is loss of the right to exist, or the denial of your partner’s right to exist. Usually, both happen together.
Few recognize that jealousy, taken as a conscious experience, is a teacher. But sometimes the pain gets so intense that people finally get curious about what’s causing it. An enduring article on Planet Waves called Jealousy and the Abyss by William Pennell Rock consistently gets 600 unique visits every month, most of them directly from search engines. The article proposes that jealousy is an existential crisis. In other words, jealous episodes threaten the ground that a relationship stands on; and because most of us view a relationship as existence itself, threatens our own sense of existence in the world.
Jealousy, the author reasons, is a cover-up for the fear of non-existence, or death. If we can sort out all the things that mock for jealousy (envy, attachment, guilt, fear and anxiety) we can learn something about our relationship to existence. “The core is an existential problem; it has to do with illusion and the essentially fearful nature of the ego,” he writes. “In possessiveness, ego defends itself against nothingness. When we come to know and accept the nothingness at the core, jealousy and the pain of obsessive attachment cease.”
