Happiness is Blue, Gold is Guilt?
There are two fairly large and overlapping groups of people I know. One group believes that affluence contributes towards happiness, the other group believes that affluence contributes to poverty in the spiritual realm. The overlap causes a genuine disconnect: is spiritual richness then exclusive of material happiness?
Of course, there is a large group where there is no such problem. These believe that richness in the spiritual realm creates wealth in the material realm and therefore nobody needs to be guilty about being materially affluent.
The problem, I think, is that these two realms have often been seen as mutually exclusive, even opposite to each other. What I believe is nothing new: I believe that the material realm is a lower order reflection of the spiritual realm. For those who don't believe in a spiritual realm, it's analogous to using description theory as a higher-level construct that deals with material things when it has to.
It is probably also easier to argue that the material realm proceeds from the immaterial than vice versa. But that's not the point. The point is that seeing things like beauty or niceness or happiness or anything like that requires physical apparatus. If the physical apparatus is functioning better and more healthily, so much the better.
It's not so much the sound mind in sound body thing; I don't think it's possible except in a theoretical sense to separate the two. I think that any analysis or appraisal or evaluation of the material realm is impossible without what some people call the spiritual realm and others call the abstract realm (whether correctly, usefully, consistently or not).
This is why the crest of the College of Wyverns is half in blue, for the spiritual things, and half in gold, for the material things. Yet it's not a clean division, the two are mixed in the chief of the shield, where the wyvern itself is placed as the dominant charge. What holds the two halves together are the blood-red letters, which signify in this plane that all humanity shares a common physical heritage (blood) — and in the teachings of that school, the idea that the blood of the Divine binds heaven and earth as one.
This is why you don't need to be guilty, defensive, offensive, or overly joyful about material pleasures and the material life. All that is merely the lower level output of the higher level structure. That's why some people aren't happy although enormously wealthy, while some people are. Perhaps at the highest possible level of the ineffable hierarchy, we'll finally figure it out.
But I doubt the solution will please those who in this life are purely quantitative or purely qualitative researchers. In fact, I doubt that such a solution will please anyone completely, for this is the nature of our humanity.
Of course, there is a large group where there is no such problem. These believe that richness in the spiritual realm creates wealth in the material realm and therefore nobody needs to be guilty about being materially affluent.
The problem, I think, is that these two realms have often been seen as mutually exclusive, even opposite to each other. What I believe is nothing new: I believe that the material realm is a lower order reflection of the spiritual realm. For those who don't believe in a spiritual realm, it's analogous to using description theory as a higher-level construct that deals with material things when it has to.
It is probably also easier to argue that the material realm proceeds from the immaterial than vice versa. But that's not the point. The point is that seeing things like beauty or niceness or happiness or anything like that requires physical apparatus. If the physical apparatus is functioning better and more healthily, so much the better.
It's not so much the sound mind in sound body thing; I don't think it's possible except in a theoretical sense to separate the two. I think that any analysis or appraisal or evaluation of the material realm is impossible without what some people call the spiritual realm and others call the abstract realm (whether correctly, usefully, consistently or not).
This is why the crest of the College of Wyverns is half in blue, for the spiritual things, and half in gold, for the material things. Yet it's not a clean division, the two are mixed in the chief of the shield, where the wyvern itself is placed as the dominant charge. What holds the two halves together are the blood-red letters, which signify in this plane that all humanity shares a common physical heritage (blood) — and in the teachings of that school, the idea that the blood of the Divine binds heaven and earth as one.
This is why you don't need to be guilty, defensive, offensive, or overly joyful about material pleasures and the material life. All that is merely the lower level output of the higher level structure. That's why some people aren't happy although enormously wealthy, while some people are. Perhaps at the highest possible level of the ineffable hierarchy, we'll finally figure it out.
But I doubt the solution will please those who in this life are purely quantitative or purely qualitative researchers. In fact, I doubt that such a solution will please anyone completely, for this is the nature of our humanity.
Labels: Happiness, Heraldry, Natural Philosophy, Wyverns
etched with acid at 3:46:00 pm
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