Codrus

Sense organs+environment+conscious mind>imagination>knowledge>influence>desire>morality>vanity.

"Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." - Solomon. The basis of vanity is morality; the basis of morality is influence; the basis of influence is knowledge; the basis of knowledge is imagination; the basis of imagination is our sense organs reacting to our present environment, and the extent of how concious we are of this happening.

The more open one's mind is to foreign influences, the more bigger and detailed its imagination can potentially become. It's loves influence on our ability to reason that governs the extent of our compassion and empathy, because it's love that leads a concious mind most willing to consider anything new (your parents divorcing, and your dad going from cowboy boots only to flip flops for example). Thus the extent of its ability—even willingness to imagine the most amount of potential variables, when imagining themselves as someone else. This is what not only makes knowledge in general so important, but especially the knowledge of selflessness and virtue.

When one strikes us accross the cheek, and we stike back in retaliation, we appeal to the more instinctive, barbaric mammal within all of us. But when we lower our hand, and offer our other cheek in return, we appeal to the logical, reasonable thinking being within all of us instead.

I think the only evidence needed to prove my claim made in the title is to use the "skin" that holds the wine of the knowledge of everything we presently know now as a species: observation. If we look at our world around us, we can plainly see a collection of capable, concious minds on a planet, presently holding the most capacity to not only imagine selflessness to the extent we can, but act upon this imagining, and the extent we can apply it to our environment, in contrast to anything—as far as we know—that's ever existed; God or not.

What would happen if the wine of our knowledge of morality was no longer kept separate from the skin we use to hold the wine of everything else: observation, and poured purely from the perspective of this skin? Opposed to poured into the one that its always been poured into, and thats kept it seperate at all in the first place: a religion. There's so much logic within religion, that's not being seen as such because of the appearance it's given when it's taught and advocated, being an entire concept on what exactly life is, and what the influences of a God or afterlife consist of, our failure to make them credible enough only potentially drawing people away from the value of the extremes of our sense of selflessness—even the relevance of the idea of a God or creator of some kind; becoming stigmatized as a result.

There's a long-standing potential within any consciously capable being—on any planet, a potential for the most possible good, considering its unique ability of perceiving anything good or evil in the first place. It may take centuries upon centuries of even the most wretched of evils and collective selfishness, but the potential for the greatest good and of collective selflessness will have always have been there. Like how men of previous centuries would only dream of humans flying in the air like the birds do, or the idea of democracy.

"We can't beat out all the hate in the world, with more hate; only love has that ability." - Martin Luthing King Jr.

"Morality is the basis of things, and truth is the substance of all morality." - Gandhi

"Respect was invented, to cover the empty place, where love should be." - Leo Tolstoy

"Never take an oath at all. Not to heaven (God and an afterlife), or Earth (humans)...Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ (regarding these influences); anything more than this comes from evil (a worry, a need, a fear for oneself; a selfishness, i.e., a religion). - Jesus, Matt 5:33

"The hardest to love, are the ones that need it the most." - Socrates

Conciousness>selfishness>fear>anger>hate>suffering.

What would be the remedy of fear, and the selfishness that creates it? Knowledge, but of the value of virtue and selflessness specifically. Therefore, all hate and evil would be a lack of knowledge—an ignorance. This is what inspired Socrates (debatably, the founding father of philosophy) to begin teaching strangers around his community, because he knew that it's a knowledge that needs to be gained thus, taught, to the point where he even took his own life to die a martyr to what he had to say. And the knowledge that the fear that would've otherwise have stopped him from even teaching anything at all would be a selfishness. This is what warrants hate and evil to any degree infinite forgiveness, and why it's so important to teach it the error of its ways, through love. Whether through meeting what you would consider as hate when you're met with it, with love, or exemplifying it via selfless actions. Because some people don't even have the ability to tell their left hand from their right (Jonah 4:11), but we can use the influence of an Earth (what a collection of people are presently sharing in—society, driving cars, holding the door open for strangers etc.) to teach the more difficult to do so; if everyone were sharing in selflessness and virtue, wouldn't it be seen as typical as driving a car is today? Therefore, nowhere near the chore it would be seen as otherwise, considering everyone would be participating in it. And what does a cat begin to do—despite its, what we call "instinct"—when raised amongst dogs? Pant. We are what we've been surrounded with, like racists, they just don't know any better, being abscent of the other side of it. And love (selflessness) is the greatest teacher, it renders the ears and the mind of a conscious, capable being—on any planet, to be the most open-minded, thus the most willing to truly consider foreign influences.

"We can't beat out all the hate in the world, with more hate; only love has that ability." - Martin Luther King Jr.

So I realized: what if the most logical explanation as to why a concious mind exists—on any planet, is to suffer? Suffer, however, based off our more fortunate standards specifically: to suffer the—what we would consider—"pains" of things like inconvenience, discomfort, misfortune, and displeasure.

Its the incessant indulgence in these things that lead a concious mind to be completely blind to the woes of such, thus the compassion and ability to empathize that comes with the experience (or knowledge) of suffering. It's hardly just an "eye for an eye"—the inherent need for ourselves to retaliate due to being concious of ourselves—that leads the world to be blind, it's our sense organs reacting to our environment and any desire for ourselves conjured from this reaction that is the most blinding; it's this that leads to the vanities we imagine in our heads, that we end up revolving our lives around, and make most important, that leads away from the "true life" a life of selflessness has to offer: a life most lived in the present, opposed to stuck in our heads, the images of what we consider the pain of our "past" and the thirst or fear for the "future" (our sense of time being yet another consequence of consciousness—like selfishness) dominating how we feel today.

It's our sense organs reacting to the extent we've presently manipulated our environment that leads to an addiction to it, even happiness, to the point where we become convinced that it's even lifes meaning: to become as happy as possible, but when we make our highest happiness the satisfaction of our greatest desires, we're only lead to an inevitable, massive disappointment, due to all exploitation of desire only being temporary. This begs the question: out of all the desire, and vanity that's bred from it, would there by any that don't end in inevitable disappointment due to being temporary? Love—but not Disney World kind of love, no, the Gandhi, MLK, Leo Tolstoy kind: selflessness—is the only desire that not only holds the ability to potentially last as long as man does, but also doesn't lead to inevitable disappointment. Dare I say: it's what the idea of a God or creator of some kind (not any man made God, but the substance of them)—its will: selflessness, to even it's extremes like self-sacrifice, that is the only desire worth seeking. But if you're someone against the idea of a God or creator (good luck finding the will to be selfless to the extremes) then let the fact that we're the only living things that have ever existed (on this planet, as far we know) that can even begin to consider abstaining from itself for any reason at all, be enough.

It's this that would end all suffering, but not by ending it, but by normalizing it I suppose you could say; to suffer for the sake of selflessness. To take the empty, ultimately only disappointing desire of stimulating our sense organs and fulfilling our vanities—for the sake of ourselves, and replace it, with the logic and alternative perspectives and behaviors that our inherency to selflessness breeds, that comes from our inherent ability to logic and reason.

What if we're designed to not be comforted or pleasured incessantly? Just look at the rich, most upper to lower middle class, even the poorest in a nation crippled by convenience; people of fortune (in life or in wealth) in general (like me): obese or crooked in some way or another, the idea of their temporary lifestyle they've become so attached to no longer being an avenue to being comforted and pleasured, saps or corrupts their concious mind, to the point where their willing to even kill to keep it—in some cases. Could a life of abstaining from your sense organs, and teaching yourself to thirst, desire and fantasize for the least, be what ultimately leads to a life of the most?