Epicurus and the 'real world'

What if I told you that there had never been anything wrong with me but that in fact the thing that was wrong was the very construct of society that I was brought up believing I needed to 'belong' to?

What if I dared to say that this could apply to millions of other people and that if only we were to change the water in the fishbowl rather than injecting the fish then millions of people would not only be NOT killing themselves but also living much happier lives?

The people that subscribe to what Stuart Wilde called 'tick tock' and I call 'the real world' will laugh, but then if they actually took the time to think about it (they have no time to think in the real world) then they might feel differently.

I'm not sure anyone will understand, but the world you all subscribe to is merely a brainwashing of the ego. Once your ego breaks down to virtually nothing then you will begin to see that the root of all your suffering was the very construct that preyed on the weakness of your ego and locked you into its spell in the first place.

This construct is killing people.

I think that you should be given a choice at school as to whether you want to subscribe to 'truth' or 'power'. If you subscribe to truth, then you are in for a rough ride, but the payoff will be immense because as Nietzche said 'without deep suffering you cannot experience great happiness'.

And having suffered brutally I can tell you that he was right. And finally claiming my happiness had zero to do with anything I ever earnt, achieved, loved, or associated with.

What it HAD to do with was understanding my own truth, becoming my biggest supporter and having an unwavering conviction to a belief that no one else held. And now that I have this, I am vastly happier.

I realise how horrendous and how I will not sacrifice my happiness for anything or anyone every time I dip back into the real world and am presented by screaming egos and people who shout and scream at each other to get what they want.

This repels me instantly and reminds me that if I was to subscribe to all that crap then I'd be depressed and suicidal again in five minutes and I would honestly rather starve in the hedgerows than ever go through that again. The suffering of starving would be nothing in comparison to being poisoned with drugs, locked in a psych ward, pounded to the floor and injected resulting in being suicidal constantly for two years afterwards.

NOPE I will not go through that again for anyone.

Fortunately, one person in this world understands me and the philosopher Epicurus wrote about it too, so NO I am definitely not mad.

Epicurus said we need three things to be happy: friends, freedom, and an analysed life.

I have one friend that understands me so that's (nearly) a tick, I have an analysed life, but as yet I don't quite have my freedom. Why? Oh yes because the 'real world' denies me this. This means that until I find a way of creating freedom then I cannot be truly happy.

BUT I do have freedom of thought and that to me is worth more than anything!

Epicurus left the government restrictions and control of Athens and took his friends up onto a hill and set up a self-sufficient commune. He had friends, freedom, and the time to contemplate and therefore have an analysed life. By all accounts he was happy. This is all I want too but I am trying to work out how on Earth I do this in this 21st century crazy 'tick tock' day and age...

I can hear my haters saying 'stop being so self-indulgent Tom, get over it and join the real world like the rest of us have to', and I say to them - NO FUCKING way - have you seen how angry you all are, have you seen how stressed, depressed, panicked, anxious, filled with drugs, propped up by pills, desperately running around like headless chickens trying to find this thing called happiness while I sit here writing and all the while quietly smiling to myself and KNOWING true happiness without anyone or anything to help me?

It is the very construct you are subscribing to that is making you ill.

The problem is that you have all fallen for the same trap, the same as I did - the very trap that so nearly caused me to take my own life. That's the one that sought to appease your egos at the expense of any other part of yourself, and for that I blame the controlling advertising on all products, drugs, and everything materialistic that you all believe is making you happy.

The truth is that you are being brainwashed into believing that the new car, house, coat, horse, pair of shoes or whatever, is giving you status (ego) and allowing you to get 'membership' to some group or other that you then feel you 'belong' to. This is utter BS. If you were secure in yourself and your own merits, then you would never need to do this!

In this example it is not the coat, bag, shoes, car etc etc that you really want but the membership to the 'group' (i.e friends) - see Epicurus was right. It has nothing to do with the shoes. FFS - wake up!

What he was blatantly pointing out was that:

We are totally confused about what we want and what we NEED!

Now that I am understanding all of this, I am so much happier.

I no longer feel strange, disconnected, or an outsider and I am far happier inside my own head, solitary, without the madness of screaming egos around me.

I never belonged to the 'real world' and that was the root cause all along.

I was never 'ill'.

All I needed to do was to change the water.

Now I see what I see, and know what I know, I cannot believe how gullible and STUPID we all are. What's horrendous is that we are feeding the unhappiness of society with a load of poisonous pills and fleecing other people's pockets whilst murdering our children (with the drugs purporting to help them) and then blaming the Government (which is founded on ego) so that they put more money into the very construct that is killing people in the first place - round and round it goes.

And now that my ego is on the floor I don't care if anyone ever reads this so won't even be bothering to share my thoughts on social media! - which, by the way, is the biggest brainwashing and ego feeding machine that ever existed.

More profound thoughts anon.

TR