Self-Actualization

The Emergence of Self-Consciousness

When an animal's consciousness, which is first directed at what surrounds him, has more time and energy than it needs, it turns inward and it develops self-consciousness. It essentially meets itself for the first time. It begins to know itself as that which is like others of its own species, but not to be related to in the same way.

A monkey sees itself in the mirror and sees a threat or a potential ally. It hasn't excess energy to develop self-consciousness. An ape will recognize himself in the mirror, and thereby know that what he sees is not a threat, but a friend, but a type of friend that he needn't deal with as other friends. He knows he is it.

A more advanced animal, such as a human, doesn't just become conscious of his outer self - his body, he becomes conscious of his mind. He becomes conscious of being conscious. He can then become further conscious of being conscious of being conscious and so on. But, initially when first becoming conscious of being conscious, he may see that consciousness as the monkey sees his reflection. He may see it as another.

He knows very well that his reflection in the mirror isn't another, and he knows his body, arms and legs as he looks down on himself aren't parts of another. So he knows that the consciousness he's conscious of is oriented through his body, but that doesn't stop him from considering it to be of a different mind. He may then consider the presumed other mind to have any origin he chooses. He may believe that a different person is co-inhabiting his body as well as another body, or that the presumed other mind is an entity with no body of its own, which may inhabit many bodies. He may see it as a God-mind.

He may see it as an all-powerful absolute God-mind, or as some pagans may have seen it, which is as the bodiless manifestation of his ancestors. The latter isn't too fantastical an idea because he has in actuality inherited the bodies of his ancestors.

The Slave's Free-Mind, the Uncontingent God-Mind

The unshackled slave's mind is free from its past and nature. The slave, like the master, is neither free from his past and nature, nor of that outside him which presses upon him, and tries to consume him. But, the slave's mind knows nothing of its self's dependence, it's detached. It doesn't even recognize its foundation in its body. It calls its self its mind. It then declares its body its self, too, superficially. It simply declares possession of its body. A slave knows of nothing other than slaves and masters. Its mind is free because it's a master. Knowing nothing of leadership, its a poor master, but it's enough that it is master.

The free-mind's body, which is given no guidance by it, does what he's told by his basest nature, his mindless brain and external forces. The free-mind chooses what it believes in. Its beliefs are those convenient to it and are convenient to its body's lower functions. It may be convenient to a belief that speaks of "existential solidarity" or something similar, and after making the most of this new host, refuse the hospitality of many of its past beliefs. Preferring to sleep on the ground, as it travels from place to place, often with little understanding of the concept of a road nor simple geometry.

A free-mind may find the belief in slavery as a virtue, and  declare its self a slave, using the term "servant". Even the mind that conveniently believes in "existential solidarity", which travels, doesn't seek. The free-mind usually takes advantage of the most substantial host. Usually the ones with the least patience for guest who offer nothing other than their own convenience.

The free-mind believes many things held by its host. Some of which may be poison to its body like a harsh grain which takes time to learn to digest. The body can't ask his free mind anything, including to seek other hosts. The body might attack the host of those beliefs or take flight, to another level - one could say, where the same free-mind will then continue to be stationary or travel horizontally as before, meeting this new level's conveniences. Time works things out one way or another. If nothing else, the mind may drift.

Occasionally, the free-mind may begin to unite with its body, giving up its freedom. He then becomes contingent on his body's needs for nourishment it can digest. The parts of his body and brain most responsible for the mind atrophied from their long absence of use, so unless he develops strength he's contingent on the most substantial beliefs within his convenience rather than his own derived from his nature and past. Even though still a slave due to lack of strength, he begins to delight in obeying.

He no longer arbitrarily reminds people he has a body accompanying his mind as often as before. His words are more whole with his entire being, his body/mind.

On the Alienated Westerner Developing the Pagan Mindset

Some refer to various forms of Paganism as practiced around the earth and throughout history as religions; I don't. For me, for a particular system of beliefs to be a religion it must follow a world denouncing theme. Any belief system that rejects what is real in favor of something yet-to-be, or hidden-behind-the-scenes, is a religion. Christianity, Judaism, and many of the Eastern belief systems are religions.

An atheist, I guess, is simply one who doesn't believe in a god, or gods. Most modern Westerners who considers themselves atheists share common traits. Most Western atheists have either personally rejected what they understand to be Christianity or where raised by those who did.

There's a common misunderstanding for such people. Just because they rejected the gospel and its god, doesn't mean they rejected the world denying mindset. In the more extreme form they replace the idea of heaven on Earth with utopia. But, even those who're more moderate, still betray themselves in their world denunciation. The very idea that one should expect the world to be other than it is, or to change to an idealized form to better suit one, is world denouncing.

Even to claim that one wishes to take part in changing the world personally, hints at world denunciation. It's true that everyone has some effect on the world in their life time, and that with effort such effect increases, but its common for the modern Westerner to exaggerate the degree of this effect.

Firstly, we mustn't confuse the world with the Earth, or the Earth with humans. When I say the world I refer to all of reality, including all of outer space, for which humans, far from being the center are just one relatively insignificant part. When I say the Earth, I mean just that, the planet Earth, a giant rock of multiple elements which cares nothing for humans, nor for anything else.

The Earth, as I mean it, while a highly chemically active rock, is not a rock to care about the degree of it's chemical reactions. So even if humans have the power, collectively, to destroy all life on Earth, the Earth itself has no preference. In other words, even if humans were to destroy all life, they wouldn't be drastically effecting the course of events on the Earth, in general, and will be far from drastically effecting the world itself.

So one can't change the world in any significant way whatsoever, but neither can one change the course of human events easily. Even if something one does happens to start a chain reactions of events that has a large impact on humans, it must be based on understanding of reality, followed by a willed course of action. Otherwise, one is only a pawn, not anything close to what may be considered a source of the change.

When a person has developed an understanding of the world, through experience, perception, and honest evaluation, one can better develop values that aren't world denouncing, and implement those values though actions, which while trying to make some impact on one's surrounding environment, have no intention on trying to drastically change humans in general, the Earth, or the world.

Most modern Westerners who claim to have surpassed Christianity are still basically Christians, with a world denouncing mindset. They haven't freed themselves from superstition, but are still mired in it. They aren't rational minded, but let their emotions cloud their logic. It's true they believe in science and they usually believe in the rational higher quality forms of it, rather than quackery. And, it's true they don't believe in ghosts, or other supernatural forces like that. But, they still have supernatural values.

To understand what I mean by supernatural values, one must look at what natural values may be. Natural values, are what humans have naturally created for most of their existence. Whatever details their beliefs may have contained, such as myths and gods, they've generally been metaphors for the reality of their existence. Whatever particular system of beliefs most cultures of man have held throughout out the vast majority of their existence, they've generally had a consistent mindset, what I call the Pagan mindset.

They honor their ancestors, their kin, and the environment in which they lived. They have a love for the world, as it is, with no wish for anything to have been other than it was, and no wish for change other than that which furthers their traditions. As their environment changes, they adapt to it, rather than trying to change it or wishing to change it.

They are natural, therefore, naturally non-superstitious, or those who don't believe in the super-natural. Loving the world, as it is, they have no desire to try to find what is non-existent, hidden, or outside of the world.

So one may ask about the modern Westerner, who has been disconnected from his past, and ancestral lands. Some, far from having an intimate understanding of their ancestors and their traditions, are descended from relatively recently mixed ancestry. Even if they put all the pieces together through years research of family trees, anthropological studies and historical documents, they'd still have no basis for reestablishing or joining, when possible, their ancestors' Pagan traditions, because they would have more than one to choose from, often drastically different.

No, a modern disconnected Westerener, may wish to wait under a much latter date, if ever, to concern himself with the less intimate, often banal, details of his past. His past, which includes his ancestors, and the world in which they lived, is manifested in himself. An honest glance in the mirror - an honest look at his reflection, without guilt, fear, vanity, or any other emotion clouding his view, will provide more valuable information that a year of research.

He has no intimate understanding of a culture beyond the modernized mixed culture he was raised in. No family unity, rarely even knowledge of his family. He finds identity in shallow things. Such as the demarcated boundaries and power structures that developed through multiple motives into what's now called the state, or country in which he lives. Or by the political groups within. Or as an atheist, a minority, a woman among men, or a man among women. He finds identity based on the profession he's in even if it serves him poorly, and he can't even explain coherently why he chose it, or that he even finds it suits him.

No modern state values its citizens, it uses them, and the best case scenario with those states leaning towards some degree of democracy, is that they ask for nothing more than to be used in turn. If one is an American, be proud to be part of that exclusive club, and pay your necessary dues, but don't create your identity around that fact. Furthermore, to create an identity among a political group within is even more ill-advised. One casts one's vote, if its no problem to do so, but then forgets about it. The alienated Westerner I'm speaking of wasn't born to be a statesman. He needs not take the burden of the state onto his shoulders by identify with one of the internal competing interests for power. If he must choose sides, and be active in his support for it, then he'd likely choose based on safety alone. If he's from a country such as America, Canada, Australia, or most, if not all, of western Europe, then he has no need of that.

It exposes a profound dissatisfaction with the world to identify as an atheist. It's an identification, not of what one is, but of what one's not. So there are those who foolishly believe in the Judeo-Christian god, and if a person is not one of them, it doesn't mean he must identify as not being one of them. If one is intelligent and values intelligence more than any other trait, one doesn't call himself an anti-moron.

It's no different identifying as a woman among men, a man among women, a disabled person among the more healthy, or a part of a minority ethnicity among the majority ethnicity, or any other type of minority, or person in a group of those with supposed lesser power than those in another group. It's identifying as what one is not, as if what one is not is either something one should be spiteful not to be, or spiteful of.

A self-labeled feminists identifies not as a human of the female gender, but as a person whose not a supposedly oppressive male. She forgets her father was a male and her child may be a male. And those who identify as of a minority ethnicity, they don't take themselves as what they are for what worth they can find, but look to those who are not them - the majority ethnicity, and say I'm not that, as if they would prefer to be other than they are or would shame those who are different to give them what they couldn't take for themselves otherwise.

Using shame so-called oppressed groups have carved out a shallow existence of comfort for themselves for years, in American, I believe, specifically since the 1950s. If one is a healthy rich white woman then how can she identify as a victim just because she's not a man? If one is a healthy rich black man, how can he identify as a victim because he's not white. If one is a health white man, how can he identify as a victim because he's not rich? These labels, I use as examples among many; black/white, rich/poor, healthy/disabled, woman/man, are not all encompassing descriptions, but just factors that some people can make claim to. If one wishes to level all humans - make them all equal, one may as well work towards doing so directly, with courage, not indirectly and indecisively as is shown.

But, these those various groups claiming to be oppressed are not to be opposed. An alienated modern Westerner, let's say an American, need not make claim to having anything to do with any of them. There is no substantial consequence should he not do so.

If one is a healthy, rich white man, who's one of these alienated Westerners I speak of, he doesn't need to be resentful that he's meeting all the criteria as an oppressor by the so-called oppressed groups. He neither need feel anger at any disadvantage they give that he would otherwise not have, nor any shame for any advantage he does has. Nor does he need to take part in the activism, in either of the two supposedly diametrically opposed directions. If he has the Pagan mindset, he'll simply observe what is real, then adapt accordingly.

Of one is a disabled, poor back woman, who's one of these alienated Westerns, she doesn't need to be resentful that she meets all the criteria as an oppressed person by the so-called oppressed groups. She neither need feel anger at any disadvantage the supposed oppressing groups gave her, that she would otherwise not have, nor shame for any advantage the so-called oppressed groups may have gave her. She too, may avoid activism, and if she has the Pagan mindset, observe and adapt.

No, to have the Pagan mindset one doesn't identify with what one isn't, or doesn't have, or can't do. One identifies with what one is, what one does have and what one can do. One with the Pagan mindset doesn't act like a victim to the circumstance of the world. One loves them as that which made one what one is. One takes responsibility for everything. One would not change anything in the past, and would only change the present as first an adaptation, then creation, procreation, as one is reasonably able. If one must put on masks to better adapt, then fine. A person in the jungle may where animal skins to better be protected and blend in. A person in modern America may play the victim to get the protection and resources that pretense provides. But he'll be of the Pagan mindset in his own mind and as he speaks of himself outside his sphere of influence, such as anonymously online, he never speaks as a victim.

It takes courage to take responsibility and to strive to know oneself as one actually is, not as one may have fooled oneself, or have been fooled, into thinking one is. Courage can only be developed gradually. Awareness only found slowly. Responsibility only taken piece by piece. Self-love only comes after one has shed all delusional self-infatuation and had to deal with oneself in all one's humility and vulnerability.

The term Paganism has been abused by modern Westerners. The Pagan rituals of peoples' not one's own, or only with a thread of attachment are just further delusion. One may not know what to do, where to go, how to live, what to value, but one doesn't need to choose based on seemingly random convenience or choose what is offered from those with their own motives. One may attempt to obtain an excruciating degree of honesty about himself and the world. One may start from scratch with one's reflection and go from there.

The below essay was started as a response to the post made in the below thread on 6/17: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

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Shame, and obeying one's drives in the moment and setting ideals

One asks oneself if he should create conflict to provide potential growth or should wait for it to come to him. If the question is answered emotionally, despite illusions, it'll be answered as the former, unless the libido is strong enough in the moment. It takes an ideal developed previously through rational unemotional thought to persuade one to act against one's emotions/libido. But, it seems even the most rational ideal will have been adopted due to emotion. At best it'll be done with what may be called higher-emotions, emotions which can be said to take place more slowly, and are deeper into one's being/past than the everyday surface emotions. At worst it will be made out of timidity, a more primal form of fear, which creates confusion, which can create a deference to the ideas of others. Once developed, shame will take over in the moment when one is given a choice to be made relatively quickly. Shame then may be the inhibiting emotion over other emotions which will either stop one from hiding from danger or stop one from recklessly going into danger due to the libido.

But, what one essentially does when creating such a shame-barrier, is add one more consequence to be considered when facing a difficult decision. It basically is one more wall to be stuck between. So if one's ideal is not to make a fool of oneself when speaking, shame will at times be a barrier against the desire to speak. It will compete with other barriers. The desire to express oneself, which I believe may be related to the non-libido based need to be integrated into a protective group, or the libido based need to exert oneself, may be stronger than the shame.

Two differing interests clash. This conflict of the emotions doesn't just take place abstractly in the mind, it's prevalent throughout the body. It stresses the body in ways that one can clearly feel, and which can create health problems over time. This is may be best characterized as a clear example of the sensation of the will. One may ask why one can't simply let the weaker emotion surrender to the stronger after only a short display, rather than a full battle. It's a matter of one making the will itself as an ideal. One makes the idea of free choice, even in the moment, where one thinks that one must constantly let every decision churn within oneself so as to be made freely. It's a slave ideal, that once gotten rid of makes choices in the moment go easier, and makes one all together more decisive.

If one decides that an ideal is to not make a fool of oneself, one decides, at what cost one should follow it. The root is always in a need and the fear of losing or not obtaining that need. Here it's a social need, one's attempting to prevent the consequences imposed by others of being perceived as such a fool. Such as being ostracized, or at least regarded lower. So one may face the conflicting choice of speaking because of base emotional desires or not speaking because of the shame, another base emotional desire - but provoked with an ideal. Here both desires are social. They both represent the fear of failing or diminishing socially. Basically, the conflict may be as simply as either risking being thought of as a fool or risking being forgotten.

What's important is that one understands that creating a battle, just for show, just to supposedly prove one can will, does not help the decision. As far as the mind goes, or the more noble aspects of a person, what one may say make him a person rather than an animal, these higher-emotions/drives/needs/thoughts, are too slow to act in the moment, they must exert their influence well before the moment to act.

When one speaks and makes and makes a fool of himself and is actually shamed by it, obviously his desire to be noticed, and whatever other desires are behind that act of speaking, won over the desire to not be a fool. But all other people see is him making a fool of himself. They don't know his shame. Even if he claimed to be ashamed, he may not be entirely truthful. After all, it's easy to be proud of unreal shame.

So when one makes a fool of himself, he must face the consequences, and if he has the Pagan mindset, take responsibility, at least in his own mind, for these consequences. He's given no pass because he's ashamed. But that at time he must obey his desire to speak over his desire not to be ashamed doesn't mean he should delay the decision with self-decaying willing - a battle waged after the war has been fought. He obeys his winning drive, and as always over time adjusts his ideals to the interactivity of reality.

Earlier today I was wondering why life is so dirty (as in unsanitary) and mortal. I was wondering if the earth's crust was releasing refuse on the surface level, which then becomes the building blocks of common life. But other currents and forces deal with sub-surface minerals, elements, chemicals, and energies, which could possibly be more pure and good. Because life and mind is chemistry, a higher chemical would equate to a higher being.

High and low quality both share common origins.

When an empire needs to succeed, the main thing, the only thing they can do, is try to give the right amount of resources and attention to the most necessary and good of things.

Actualization requires and is fueled by essence.

Morality is a little bit immoral or cruel when it is perfected.
It means we are careful with our value, and distribution of our life and thoughts and emphasis.
You can't save everybody, so ya save the most preferable people if possible.

Sometimes we need to kill parts of ourself, sometimes we need to birth new psychological components.

That comes to mind when we would think about self actuation.
The self is nothing but a set of non self, in the shape of a supposed self.

We are what we eat. That is why i see a relation between poor chemistry and poor living. The dimensions of life are reducible to mineral "life" or pre-life. Some minerals are mysterious. I have the feeling we barely know what they are, or what they can produce. All life on earth is a small expression of what is possible for a set of minerals. When making a good house you need good wood and stone etc. I think DNA based life is sloppy and crazy. Not that I want to insult it. I'm trying to be honest about it.

We'll wait for the alternative.

Standards, Ideals, and the Will to Power Explained in Terms of Need

A living being is ordering within disordering, in other words it's the continual attempt to make a distinguished pattern in otherness. Life's fundamental aspect is need. Living beings have the need to sustain, then when possible grow, and when possible create or procreate. All those needs are fundamentally the need for continued and increased power.

Power is measured in terms of how ordered a living being is, how distinguished it is in its environment, its complexity, efficiency, and size. Power is also measured in terms of a living being's ability to replicate its order and the amount of resembling order that exists outside of it, including other similarly ordered living beings.

All actions by a living being are caused by needs. There is no fundamental difference between needs and actions. Needs that may also be considered actions follow actions that may also be considered needs in a cycle. The cycle is similar to cause and effect, where every cause is an effect and every effect is a cause.

When a need is following an action, that action is a disordering action. When an action is following a need, that action is an ordering action. Actions can be both ordering some aspects of a person and reality and disordering other aspects. The need to grow, create, and procreate are related to a living being's need to cause actions that are more ordering on average than disordering.

Complex needs and actions are the accumulation of various simple needs and actions. This cycle of need and action takes place intermittently both internally and on the external portion of the living being. Internal needs and actions eventually provoke overt external needs and actions or what to an outside observer simply looks like action. Opposing needs compete and the strongest needs have the most influence on the more complex needs and actions that are caused by them.

A simple living being has simple needs. The higher the animal the more complex the needs it's capable of having. People who have complex needs have them because they use their ability to make complex thought to think about their needs.

All thought is action caused by need and the fundamental subject of all thought is need and action. Needs and actions are part of reality, therefore all thought is about reality. A need all people share in various intensities is the need to hide from aspects of reality. For some people this need manifests itself as the need to hide from reality altogether. If one's need to hide from reality is stronger than other needs one won't think about his needs and therefore won't obtain complex needs. He'll act from simple needs and be little more than an animal.

Some people do think much about their needs, and therefore create higher needs, but they do so inaccurately. Rather than hiding from reality by not thinking about it, they hide from reality by avoiding aspects of it and misrepresenting it. Such people may be far from animals, but have very little power. When a person is willing to think about reality, but has the need to hide behind misrepresentations, then people and cultural forces, with needs that don't necessarily correspond to that person's individual needs for power, will be able to easily fool him.

It takes courage to spend much time and energy accurately reflecting on reality. Basically, in this case courage is defined simply as having sufficient need to counter the need to hide from reality. If one has the courage to think about reality long enough to take his need for power and make in into the complex need to use his intellect to seek power, then that need may outweigh the need to hide from reality in subsequent circumstances. Overall his power will increase.

When actively thinking, various needs take turns coming to the forefront for various lengths of time. Since needs are caused by disordering actions as well as causing ordering actions, thought can both be ordering and disordering. Basically, certain aspects of the body are being ordered while others are being disordered. It seems likely that what's most being ordered during thought are parts of the brain and what's most being disordered are other parts of the body that are integral to the thought process.

Concerning overt external action; indecisiveness, lack of focus and actions done halfway are the result of a stalemate or near stalemate among the needs competing in the moment. This is common during times of pressure. One obtains more power by efficient use of thought; by letting one's need compete during times of leisure, during times of pressure one will have resolve.

There is a certain form of irony I'll address. - There are subjects that are seemingly incomprehensible. The only reason that one even accepts that they are valid is because those one respects speaks of them. When one asks those people for clarification, they generally respond, but one is never satisfied. If one can't understand them, and rather than pressing for answers is willing to wait until some later time, or realize that one might never understand, then perhaps one is at least halfway towards that understanding.

I'm referring to the subjects related to nobility. One can never see a four dimensional being in three dimensional space, but only vaguely sense it or rationally deduce the probability of it's four dimensionality by observing the movement of the three dimensional figure which is the product of the four dimensional being weaving through three dimensional space. In the same way one can never know that another possesses a greater nobility with the same certainty that one may know one has equal or lesser nobility. One must vaguely sense or rationally deduce it's probability. Neither jealousy nor subjugation to greater nobility will help one become more ennobled. Perhaps the best option is a more simple quiet respect.

Noble Self-Value as Part of the Path Towards Authentic Power, Addressed to the Alienated Westerner

There are those who are shameless, who see no problem living as livestock, a pet, or a zoo animal. Such people hold onto one value fiercely, which is the value of no-values, and attempt to get rid of all others. Chances are many who consider themselves to be such people, are not. They may actually still greatly value pride despite themselves. As well as fiercely attempting to eliminate values, they are fiercely egotistical. They trip themselves up in this. They refuse to accept that they value themselves so they never explore what exactly it is they value about themselves. They leave themselves floating in the wind so that when they're ego is most in crisis they end up following, like a cow, whoever appeals to their ego with flattering lies.

Even the most rejected of men may as well embrace having values and admit to having values. They may think about what it is they're really turning away from; not values in themselves, but certain values that have been partially imposed on them, and have not worked well for them. They may ask themselves what it is that they reject and what they do value in life and which of those values are missing.

But, it's poor planning to focus entirely on what one is most deprived of leaving no room for other deprived needs to become more substantial at later times. It's better to use cautious planning concerning one's latent needs, and attempt to fulfill them in an order that doesn't just take under advisement the intensities of the needs, but the practicality of the needs. One may also predict how the mitigation of some needs may best lead to the mitigation of others, and factor that into the order one attempts to fulfill them in.

As well as providing for baser, simpler needs, one may seek a higher respectability, that which comes from an authentic, meaning noble, sense of self-value. Authentic self-valuing is the only way towards authentic power. Many base their self-value on individuals, or abstract institutions, anywhere from the state to political groups. But, authentic self-valuing must be from and for oneself and one's kind, and mustn't be based on falsities, even those that might not actually be derived from others. For those lacking knowledge or access to their own kind, if they believe they've been deprived and set adrift by society then the innocuousness of the concerns or evaluations of Modern's should be more transparent than otherwise.

If one has an employer one may best work towards giving him the perception that one's his kind of worker - probably meaning stupider than he and altogether a pushover. Concerning one's friends it may be best to simply make oneself tolerable company as far as they keep themselves tolerable company. Concerning family, and heritage in general, see the essay, On the Alienated Westerner Developing the Pagan Mindset.

As for political concerns. Why reject the common political notions just to be sucked into more unusual ones? Does one's slavishness to an unpopular unachievable ideal for the human species make one better than those who are slave to the more popular? Those harboring resentment are those standing inline for recommunion. Their harsh stares and angry bared teeth turning into wide eyed smiles as soon as they're tossed a compliment or other scraps to gnaw on.

Chances are one's not even remotely self-sufficient, nor robust, but at the height of vulnerability. One may be an insect in the world at large, pathetic, near powerless, but what's most despicable and inept, and what's most likely a certain sign that one will continue as such, is one's reliance on the thoughts of other insects.

The best but hardest approach to authentic self valuing is likely to excruciatingly slowly let one's self-value dissipate near completely so that it can possibly later be renewed without corruption. For one unable yet to take such an approach, or perhaps what would best be considered an early step in that approach; on may simply let the self-value one derives from others be slowly replaced by self-value for not having as much self-value derived from others.

You can save a ton of money, and save a lot of living and doing, if you let go of all the things that are not needed. If, for example, 1000 people are doing a certain deed in society that is needed. They run a food bank, let's say. Now, I don't need to devout my life to that, because there is probably something more important, and 1000 + 1 is not really a big difference.

Some things are more important than others.
Finding the best things to do, and dropping the futile and superficial.

The Myth of Near Indefinite Sustained Joy

Firstly, a word on need. As living beings we are in a near perpetual state of need. We aren't like a stone statute that can remain relatively unaffected by its environment and be relatively unaffecting to its environment. We constantly take and give to our environment, as the continual process of obtaining what satiates our need to fulfill lack, and giving away the excess we need to dispel.

Secondly, it's necessary to understand what sensation, whether pleasant/joyful, or some degree of pain/discomfort, is based on. Sensation is based on internal and external things interacting with our body-nervous system. Perhaps sensation that is stored by our brain-body, but not consciously experienced, may just be done so in terms of the collection of internal/external data, but when consciously experienced, it's always felt in the form of need or the temporary cessation of need.

The sensation of need can be described using words anywhere from minor discomfort to agonizing pain.

Pleasure is the sensation that comes when our body feels we should be aware of the temporary cessation of need. Pleasure can't be self-sustaining.

Thirdly, it's important to understand, that while need or the temporary cessation of need is what conscious sensation is based on, that doesn't mean that we always feel our needs or cessations of needs.

Just because we feel pleasure at the temporary cessation of a need, doesn't mean that we had previously felt the need that has now temporarily ceased. For example, we may feel pleasure when receiving a shoulder massage. This pleasure is due to the sensation of the cessation of tension in our shoulders. But, it doesn't mean that we had ever noticed that tension. Whether we did or didn't doesn't necessarily have a correlation between the pleasure we feel.

Then just because a need has been temporarily fulfilled doesn't mean we feel pleasure because of this. This is true whether we had previously felt that need or not. For example, if we feel hungry and eat, we will feel pleasure at the temporary cessation of that need. The reason is to keep us eating, because without the pleasure we may not bother. But, we can possibly be given food through a tube, and fill no pleasure in the process of becoming full.

Fourthly, we may look at the myth of near indefinite sustained joy itself. The idea is that one can keep experiencing one pleasure after another or the same pleasure continuously without significant pain or discomfort ever interrupting.  But, with the above in mind we may see how this dynamic would be essentially impossible. Pleasure/joy is what follows need, therefore the only way that pleasure can be continuous is for us to not consciously experience our needs, while often consciously experience those needs' temporarily cessations. I don't know if that system is even hypothetically possible, and doubt it is, but let's look at what the cost would be should one manage to maintain it:

If our needs are not consciously experience, but simply always taken care of without our conscious attention until upon their temporary cessations are conscious awakens just for the short time that cessation lasts, then the part of our brain-body responsible for conscious thinking would atrophy. We might experience nothing but pleasure, but we may ask what we'd make of make of it, or how such pleasure would feel; basically like if an ameba was awakened every time it fed, we wouldn't know what to do with our pleasure. And that cost/pitfall, isn't even the most relevant when one looks at the useless sheltered life that would result from that system.

No, our pleasure gains meaning and intensity because we consciously experience the need for which's temporary fulfillment the pleasure represents. Great pains leads to great pleasures, but let's look at it a slightly different way: Great needs if regularly temporary fulfilled lead to great pleasures, but those great needs must generally be felt; felt as great pain.

Lastly, I'll mention two things. First, it's worth mentioning that while over time our degree of pleasure can rarely exceed our degree of pain, we can maintain an approximate balance, which I call contentment. I'll discuss that further in the other essay just below this one. Second, while pleasure can't be self sustaining, pain can. If we reverse the system described earlier in this essay and avoid consciousness during pleasure, or more realistically simply always have new needs impede on the short times we can experience pleasure, then pleasure may essentially never be felt.

Being that most of our development before we're fully grown is done unconsciously, once grown we already exist in side of complex beings, that may have a long way to go in losing-complexity/decaying before death. We may experience this spiral downwards, while I'm skeptical of the reverse. During a downward spiral our conscious minds have already reached a state of complexity that knows what to do with this pain - knows how to feel it or in other words; simply can feel it. During a spiral upwards, which is mostly commonly in living beings as the time from conception up to being full grown, one starts with an undeveloped consciousness as one starts with an undeveloped body, and therefore this great process of health, which is the years in which the development of the body takes place, can hardly be characterized as being experienced with an excess of pleasure.

The Myth of Near Indefinite Sustained Personal Peace

The above essay covered most of what would be in this. Here I just want to explore an aspect of the more broad idea of happiness as opposed to the more simple idea of joy. That aspect of the idea of happiness, as opposed to others which are generally covered in the above essay, is that of personal peace, for which's fullest conceptualization is that of achieving a state where the majority of one's worries will be gone, and one will have accomplished virtually all that one has sought to accomplish, and have all that one has sought to have, and live in a state of near bliss, only occasionally interrupted by minor discomforts.

To see through that myth we must look at human nature. It's not to seek a certain degree of comfort and then settle, but to continually grow when possible. If we feel deprived of something, then if we manage to satiate that deprivation, we'll feel happy for a while. But then we'll begin to want more. Historical examples are numerous of this, but are there are few, if any examples of the reverse. People can settle, they can meet a long lasting state of contentment, but that contentment does not equate to happiness, it's a state between happiness and sadness. Generally a highly compromised existence, tending more towards what people commonly would be more likely to call a sad existence than a happy one.

Think about the joy one experience after working very hard for very long then going on a quality vacation. In this case what has happened is that the need to rest has grown and grown, and once on vacation that need is being satiated. But once we have rested all that we need, then we can rest no more. To sit in one place on the beach all day and stare at the ocean stops being an act of rest from hard work and becomes a test of endurance in itself. It becomes a test to maintain self control amidst mounting pressure to begin activity again.

We have many over-arching needs in our lives, that we can spend years trying to relieve, and there's not necessarily any reason we shouldn't try. But, it's helpful to understand that once the needs are fulfilled, other needs will come.

Self-Sufficiency in the Wilderness

For a Modern both what is called 'civilization' and what is called 'nature' is simply artificiality. Any difference is negligible concerning the way they use and perceive the two environments. For the more noble what the Moderns call 'civilization' is the most desolate hostile form of wilderness they can encounter. While 'nature' is generally a temporary place of relaxation. - Certainly, some of the remaining unsettled areas of the earth are about equally hostile as any 'civilization', but relatively very few people, Moderns or not, have anything to do with them.

A man thinks he's self-sufficient when he enables himself to survive in these less developed parts of the world. He practices where safety is always a helicopter away, and then maybe actually tests himself where they're not. But, he's not really self-sufficient. Being that natural environments are continually being encroached upon by artificiality, what he has accomplished, is the ability to live in a temporary sanctuary. Which is not a useless accomplishment, but even if he can live his whole life their and raise a family there, his children will be inept when the sanctuary is encroached upon.

To be more self-sufficient, to be a 'wild-man', as one may call it, is to be one who can best survive in the most common/imposing environments he and his children will have to face. These jungles are the worst kind. Not where the worst one can expect is death. These jungle prefers a slow, live form of consumption.

Dreams often reflect on pressing present matters, but dreams may also be considered a form of better reliving past experiences. To dream of anything shows that the matter is on the dreamer's mind, here the difference is just the immediacy.

Every common route that one traveled and significant relationship one had will be relived in dreams. Should one have developed a higher cognition over time, a greater awareness, understanding, then the reliving of those dreams will reflect that. Routines one had may be relived in dreams with one's current mentality, but dreams may have more subtle ways of imprinting one's present mentality on one's past. Here I emphasize the route and the relationship, as opposed to the routine or event. Which is not to leave the latter as entirely irrelevant.

Literal or figurative routes one has worn through with travel are retrodden during sleep. They develop new aspects, become seemingly more than they were or other than they were. Seemingly, though, may be all. The past is a fullness, it has no reality outside the fluctuating present. Our memories lose ground when they reflect a merely retroacted present.

The dynamic memory - not to be confused with the dishonest, selective, compartmentalized, or as often called, 'rationalized', memory - becomes a situation as it needs be for those who not only biologically press onwards, but consciously do so as well. The past never changes, as it always reflects the present as it is, in the conceptual moment, which is as it is, and couldn't be otherwise. But, one's understanding of the past changes constantly. One being so used to keeping memories in terms of static images, dreams must keep up with the past's lack of reinterpretations.

All the many places we've been and people we know, spiral before us in an endless parade, ever making slight alterations to reflect our needs, while still maintaining an illusion of timelessness - not as static images, scientific events, but as a personal history, a personal legend, even. In the this sense the timelessness is actually more fully engrained as our dreams of once common things become more vast, shimmering, etherworldly.

In these dreams, there's a juxtapositions of the person one is, reliving the times that are no longer, and the person one is, reliving the person one was. People and places one knew as a something new to oneself, one dreams of knowing outside of temporal restraints. In our more melancholy of states one may reflect on such reoccurring dreams throughout one's life as one often reflects on past events in their more common state of reflection. In this dream based nostalgia - the spiraling years of intermittent nostalgia itself, which constitute some of the more profound substances of one's life - one sees the parade of people one knew pass across one's past fields of travel. In our most melancholy moods, reflecting as if for by chance the last time, everyone, even the most solemn, wave as they pass by.

Science and spirituality

Despite most modern first world people being superstitious, there is still a common fear among many of them of seeming superstitious. This is where established science comes in. Established science is also highly superstitious in some areas, but it operates under the guise of its supposed original purpose, which is the stringent scientific method. Science that actually is reality oriented is generally science that produces verifiable results. For those working within a community involved with such development, having a mentality, or even using terminology, divergent from that community would be detrimental to its productions. Outside of that community, though, divergence would be irrelevant except for the fear of being seen as superstitious. A Modern, even one entirely unconnected with established scientific communities, will ask himself why he should take the time to observe reality directly and create his own mentality on it, when he may be ridiculed for sharing it to those who are well versed in published scientific works.

In any given conversation about reality that may remind many of established scientific findings, unless one is an actual scientist, the profuse use of established scientific terminology, and the overt concern for details that are mostly irrelevant to the conversation, is actually likely an indication of how little one understands the subject. For those who have learned much about established science, it may help for them to try thinking and speaking about various subjects, they think they understand in established scientific terms, using ordinary language, not scientific or religious (Eastern and Western) terminology and most importantly with a lack of concern for being seen as incorrect, and without including anything that they haven't personally verified through experience and observation.

The dryness, or lack of spirituality that seems to surround the scientific community is likely not so much an issue for those actually on the intellectual forefront of it. Those on the forefront cannot be binary thinkers; binary thinkers, just as basic lab assistants, are merely drones - those on the forefront are artistic minded and science likely fulfills there spiritual needs. This is so because they actually understand the science. So, what is dry and nonspiritual about science isn't that it's too close to reality, but that when largely taken through the societal wringer it develops a distance from reality. The only difference here from such dry science and Xt. is that the dry science is not made to make one feel good about oneself - which may explain its attraction to highly nihilistic people that have a negative mentality taken beyond the state of such easy comfort as Xt. offers.

In conclusion, being on the actual frontier of science, whether as an actual intellectual leader of a scientific community, or simply as one who recognizes the authority one obtains from taking nothing but what comes directly from his own perception, is actually a highly spiritual endeavor, perhaps the only thing worthy of being called spiritual.

Those kinds of scientists who are engaged with nature, who actually understand how a theory comes about and its pitfalls, those are usually not very atheistic people. They don't make atheism into a 'thing'.
It's those who see science as an authority, those who point at a science paper, their scripture, who make atheism into a thing. And this should not be surprising because their whole approach is about having authority based on scripture interpretation.

On the question of if it's possible to understand reality in a highly accurate way and yet to not have much control over oneself. At first they seem like separate things, but one only needs to look at the roots of misunderstandings of reality. In a more general context reality isn't that difficult to understand in an intellectual way, but it's very difficult to deal with the knowledge of reality as it is if one has never had the need to develop the strength to do so. One without self control will let one's emotions persuade one to tell comforting lies to himself and to continue to do so even in the face of accurate depictions of reality or in the face of more difficult experiences that would otherwise wake one up from one's delusions.

So when we take the two seemingly separate things; an an accurate understanding of reality, and self control, we can see how they generally go together, because without self control chances are one will distort his understanding in some areas.

Compartmentalization is a common way for one to understand many aspects of reality and still misunderstand others. Where one's emotions are least in control is where one's understanding of reality is most distorted.

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Slaughtz wrote:

Most of these procrastinators think that if they can try to convince themselves that the activity they perceive as rewarding is not so rewarding, they'll be able to cease the procrastination. While this may be true, usually they're unsuccessful. The reason is: there are reasons that they perceive the play activity as more rewarding than the work activity. Reasons they're probably not even aware of - such as entertainment videos which are set up to be addictive or attention grabbing. Also, deeper anxieties can come into play, that they're afraid of facing when they're not distracted.

So how do you choose to do that project if you're a procrastinator? You choose it. You cut your losses of the opportunities that passed you by, or you panic to get it done. So long as you're holding on to old anxieties (which are likely very real) you're going to find much more resistance to being responsible with your time. If you can do something about the anxiety but it's too large for you right now, then procrastinate that one anxiety. Free up your time to address the anxiety/project that you need done now. That means making a judgment call - a very real and final one - on what anxiety is most pressing to you. If you do not allow yourself to procrastinate the larger anxieties, they will not go away. They will remain with every other anxiety you concern yourself with.

So the trick that works is not to try to convince oneself that the project procrastinated is unimportant, but to delay thinking about the greater anxiety that is responsible for the procrastination just long enough to get the project done. When I wrote my response a few days ago I didn't entirely understand you were saying that. I think I suggested something the same or very similar. - One needn't war with one self over a one time decision when if one can manage to simply stop thinking about it (perhaps by throwing oneself into the distracting things you mentioned rather than do them with resistance) and then when the moment is right, because there happens to be the least resistance from the part of one against the project procrastinated (when one is properly rested in very specific ways not necessarily relating to sleep, giving one more clarity and strength than otherwise), one will just 'find oneself' doing the procrastinated project (the act of conscious initiation of the project would be the act of restarting the battle with the opposing half), and this 'finding oneself' doing it, will be what I meant by just walking past the opposing side of oneself when he's caught off guard.

Then there's the longer term consequences of such a strategy. Perhaps the opposing side will be in a sense more wary, or even angered, and perhaps the opposing side will have had good reason for fighting for procrastination which will become clear. But, perhaps the opposing side will in a sense see that it wasn't as bad as he thought.

One seeks order. This includes order one perceives in his environment, order he perceives internally, and the degree of order which is his very act of being alive and healthy to some extent. The more order one lacks, or loses, the more stress one feels. One is afraid of the unknown because by definition it is chaotic in one's own mind. When one has anxiety surrounding a project, one may ask himself what order is he sacrificing by with the project or with his intended approach to the project. Which relates to this comment of yours:

Quote :

For "men", though, I think the costs are becoming too high. They would rather be poor than lose themselves/their sanity.

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Slaughtz wrote:

Procrastination is an interesting subject to me, since I am still doing it, despite my exposition on it. There's concepts such as "living for today" and nihilistic dismissal of future consequence and how modernity not only enables but encourages it. That is just a cultural analysis, though. The real issue comes down to the individual and their courage. When it becomes too much to bear, they'd prefer avoiding responsibility, knowing it might break them (their ego). Avoiding or putting off trauma so that they might find a solution elsewhere before it happens. When in panic mode (right before the due completion of the work/project), they don't seem to see the irony that the project didn't break them at all but yet they continue to fret the same way over future projects.

Honestly, if there is no threat to their livelihood, they are not going to take it seriously enough to work on it. When their life is not threatened (I can just be a bum or work at McDonald's), when they're sheltered, why bother? The only thing that was making it as good as death was when people were discriminating - they saw the poor as lazy or unfit, they saw the uneducated or uncultured as too socially inept - a sexual death sentence.

For "men", though, I think the costs are becoming too high. They would rather be poor than lose themselves/their sanity. You see rich white guys kill themselves over the smallest of hiccups in their life... the smallest stress. For example, the man who killed himself over a crushed phonel They maintain a fragile balance. Without outlets or perspectives for meaning behind their sacrifices, they aren't going to be able to make those sacrifices without having that same fragile balancing act. This is the result of not knowing yourself, your history - no perspective on what you're bleeding for, dying for... you need to reserve more "me" time.. hah. Most of it is, of course, just not wanting to pay the costs associated with preserving yourself into the future.. yourself with the past that made you and the things/tastes you hold dear. You don't want to take the losses. Which is why to solve procrastination, you need to cut your losses... no shortcuts.

I have some comments on this not directly relating to the subject of procrastination. You seem to be contrasting the man who wishes to sacrifice his present enjoyment so as to better obtain employment in the future to the man who doesn't. The emphasis is on the degree of utility such employment might serve. Money for personal survival, as you say, is now nearly irrelevant. It is useful for being able to live more healthy. The degree money and the social status that certain employment offers for reproduction is also less an issue than it used to be, but certainly not irreverent. This is includes finding a spouse, raising healthy children who're educated as one would like.

To stereotype, the men you seem to be contrasting are both very similar (for convenience I'm going to use the label of 'the men you seem to be contrasting', but meaning as it seems to me on the surface, not for me to suggest I actually think you meant it as I portray it). Neither one has a higher than normal sensitivity to his environment, nor curiosity. And neither is of the constitution to have a profound dissatisfaction with the types of lives that modern America readily suggests. The differences between them are things such as guidance, focus, farsightedness, and the more common notion of responsibility.

But, contrast another type of man, who is all the things I mention the former is not. In that sense one of the two extremes there is the man who not only lacks self control, but also; doesn't know himself, still largely maintains his sense of well being through the opinions of others, and is still shares a common mentality with most others in society - even if he can't help but question it and be dissatisfied by it. Then on the other extreme, we have the self-actualized man, with self-control, self knowledge, and personally derived self-esteem and with a less common, less temporal mentality.

Concerning the men you seem to be contrasting, it's clear which man takes the time to provide for better employment in his future and which doesn't, but concerning the man I'm contrasting, it isn't. Concerning the first extreme, he has any degree of the problems preparing for better employment as the man you seem to be contrasting, plus a variety of others. It seems that should he become self-actualized, which probably rarely happens, he'd have no difficulty preparing for such employment, assuming he desires it. But, then not being self-actualized, he probably has far more difficulty.

In most cases, to get a high degree at a university must take a large degree of resolve in his present task, which if not the type of lucid resolve that the self-actualized man acts with, then it must be with the resolve which comes from support from one's peers, something that only comes to those content with society's common mentalities. The man I'm contrasting, before he really even approaches the path to self-actualization, still lacks such contentment. He must resort to the strategies, or even call them tricks, that we've been speaking of. Expanding on what I was saying in my above posts, he must sort of just 'find himself' making his way through the University, and to 'find himself' a graduate.

So anyway, I'll repeat that this is just stereotyping, but hopefully for the purpose to better sort out the more complex dynamics that are actually taking place with various people.

The purpose of philosophy is to explore oneself and reality and then create values. Most people being farsighted, soon come to the question of what is to come well beyond their own lives. One then finds that time ruins, and can either develop a heroic attitude as part of his creation of values or develop a defeatist attitude which inhibits his continued philosophizing relative to the strength of that attitude. The heroic attitude is the attitude which attempts to preserve all that one values, despite their inevitable ruin.

The basic definition of philosophy becomes convoluted when mixed in with other acts done under the same name. A charade that has nothing to do with philosophy, where due to varying motives one creates fantasies and calls them real.

Honest men wish to gather to discuss philosophy, and for those who share values to create solidarity. Sharing blood is one aspect which leads honest men to share values, but even those among the human species with relatively highly divergent blood may share values, incidentally. It seems that heroic attitude is one that may be shared both due to blood or incidentally.

For one unable to philosophize, but wishes to, he must dedicate much of his time towards developing that ability. He must attempt to explore reality honestly, and fail, repeatedly, as part of developing this ability. To start he might want to not mislabel what he doing. Not philosophizing, he's developing an ability. Some honest knowledge will come in, but he can only guess how that would compare to the knowledge he'd gain with the ability to take a more complete honest approach. Furthermore, he must create and speak of values only as is necessary for his own continued and long term well being. But, this is a matter of self-improvement. Anyone seeking self improvement mustn't confuse the end result or intermediary stages, as a place to attempt to immediately be at. One must continue as one is, with slight progress in mind.

A life of struggle

A man has needs not just to maintain, but to expand. Throughout his younger years, in his health, his mind is focused on such expansion. He dreams of it, contemplates it, and at times finds himself solely obsessed with it without any knowledge of how such obsession began. Consider a man who lived through his younger years into his older years maintaining his more basic needs just enough to keep him as whole as is needed to remain obsessed with those needs to expand, but with little success in fulfilling them. Such a man couldn't find the circumstances for a calm family life, nor the inner charge to make significant artistic and intellectual creations that he could have then pushed forward.

As this man found himself distanced from his prime, he saw his last chance for creation float out of view. He railed in agony, a renaissance of his prime, where his obsessions once fueled by vigor were then fueled by desperation. As he aged further, becoming barely able to maintain himself, his desires to expand began to fade.

This man's life was a common enough phenomenon, except he didn't use painkillers. He didn't drink his desires away every night, nor declare victories that weren't there. He remained as humble as was necessary to honestly reflect his circumstances. Because he always accepted his failures, and never hid them, his desires to expand faded away without confusion, leaving him without the need to maintain long held illusions of who he is and what he did. His desire to expand died, but his mind, as always, remained lucid.

He more calmly looks back on his life of agonizing desires, that were never met, and expecting only what he's used to, realizes his desires have left, and therefore so too has his pain. This tired, but lucid, man finds that as he reflects backwards on the agony of his life, a life he deemed a failure, that his pain of desire has not simply left him with nothing but the pain of regret. He begins to understand that his past suffering is what he loves the most. He feels gratitude towards the circumstances which allowed it. Momentarily, or from time to time in those latter years of his life, he experiences joy.

Solitude is a selective force in itself, and not for all.

Still,

Andrei Tarkovsky wrote:

"I don’t know… I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view."

Value as Power

As opposed to the decadent line of thought called hedonism, which says pleasure is the positive value and pain is the negative, power is in fact the positive value and disempowerment the negative. One knows that his search for power involves making the best decisions he can make for obtaining the most power and the longest lasting power, including ways to continue his essence, genetically and/or memetically after his death. But, he also knows it will all eventually fade. Even Empires fall and eventually all remnants of their culture are gone. This shows that power's value is not a continual projection into the future alone, but has a value based simply on it's presence. Even one stranded alone on an island, with no chance of ever leaving or finding human company, can empower himself through seeking self-actualization which involves living as nobly as possible during his life, and that power will have a positive value to him despite all traces disappearing after his death. This notion doesn't exclude relating to power as a continual becoming, but it grounds that relation in the face of the generally unpragmatic speculation common of people looking for excuses to avoid exertion.

An action, a motive, a choice, only has value in relation to a telos, a goal, an objective....an idea/ideal.
Power describes energy...as movement.
Power, on its own, such as a pattern, a vibration, has no value, unless a consciousness is present to measure it, by juxtaposing it with itself, or with its objective.

Hedonism has its own values, as it posits the satisfaction of need/suffering as its primary objective.
Humanism it's own values, as it posits the abstraction of humanity, as its primary motive, its central theme, its governing and directing objective. It refuses to leave anyone behind, as humanity, as a whole, must find satisfaction, or must survive - inter-subjectivity.
The individual ego, identifying with a greater Self - herd psychology - at the cost of itself.
Self-Sacrificed, by ego, to the abstracted Self, which begins as God, and then State, in the Marxist sense, and has now proceeded to identifying with an abstraction of humanity - an idealization of the species concept, which eliminates sexual specialized roles, and breeds of men.

Then there are ideals that posit goals outside the individual's survival, or gratification which places self as a secondary goal, placing the goal outside self, evaluating itself, and all others, according to this external standard.
Not survival, not gratifying, satiating need, or relieving suffering.

Satyr wrote:

An action, a motive, a choice, only has value in relation to a telos, a goal, an objective....an idea/ideal.

Yes, I was confused and spoke of value as something that exists outside the evaluator.

The evaluator has different propensities towards action, actions which reveal various levels of will or value. What I spoke of in the last post relates to what I perceive to be values that most would share if healthy.

One asks himself if he should seek to impact the long term future more, or the short term, which would mostly include his own actualization. He must try to gain health, mostly through self-knowledge, and in doing so know what values he would have as one who is fully healthy. To reemphasize my mistake, values exist only in evaluator, and so a healthy person would not have reason to seek much, or any, outside influence in seeking to know his values. If the options before him seem, simplistically speaking, to be a choice between self-actualization or abandonment of it in favor of helping those of his kind live better in the future, there is no right choice except the choice he makes with honest introspection.

An ideal can act as the reference which offers a standard to evaluate human behaviour and choices made, after they are made. Many choices occur subconsciously and are evaluated consciously after they have produced outcomes.
But an ideal can be unreal, supernatural, beyond human experience because ideas and ideals are mental projections of a desirable destination/goal.
So, before one begins evaluating himself he must evaluate his goal and how realistic it is - how within the realm of the experienced real. How attainable it is.
Then he can evaluate himself and his own talents, strengths and weaknesses, in relation to the attainability of the ideal/goal.

I cannot emphasize this enough: how words are used and defined determines the individual's anchoring within the world. Words, referring and representing concepts (ideas, ideals) must refer to the experienced.
This is where the aristocratic ethos comes into play. An individual may value a goal which he may not be able to attain to the same degree another can - he experiences the ideal, the goal, second hand, and appreciates it, using it to establish his own values, even though he may not be able to attain its highest peak.    

I say this because words are often used to confuse and not to clarify - used to manipulate and exploit and not guide.
An ideal, a goal, can be so supernatural, unreal, that its attainment is impossible. In this case the goal is used to impose upon the individual the sense of incompetence and insecurity, placing an ideal beyond the experienced so that nobody can attain it, and in the collective failure to subjugate self to the unattainable ideal.

This method is used to manipulate and to subordinate.
The ideal must be attainable to a degree, and experienced so that even if the individual cannot attain the highest he cans till be inspired by those that can, and in striving towards its attainment to become more; achieving his own personal height of attainment.

So, 'value/ideal-goal/motive-movement' are part of a triangulation corresponding to mind/nervous system/body: ideal/action/real or goal/choice-activity/world.  
A triangulation present throughout philosophy and spirituality. Even Christianity has a version of it: God/Holy Ghost/Son.
It is the basic triangulation of a predator focused on its prey.
Predator and distance to prey gives value to the prey for the predator.
Subjective relating to objective.
Ideal(mind)/Motive(action, choice)/Real(physical, body).
Triangulation in its many forms.

This triangulation is what we call 'meaning'.
The two points of the triangle (goal/objective & distance/effort/movement/action), in relation to the first point (the subjective judging conscious mind) is what we call 'value'.
When we speak of our values we are referring to these triangulations (ambitions, goals) that give meaning to our lives, i.e., our actions, motives, choices.

An example of how a word can refer to a concept that is unrealistic and nothing more than a mental abstraction projected into the 'beyond' or the 'beneath' (occult) is the concept of 'god', as it is defined by monotheists (absolutists).
This is an ideal that acts as a method of subjugating, manipulating and exploiting those who adopt it as a standard that shapes values.
The ideal is unattainable, and cannot be experienced in reality - its promise is for an after life, or its experience after death.
This ideal/goal acts as a method of manipulation and exploitation, and has seductive power because it is unattainable by all. So, the weakling/coward can feel comforted that his failure to attain it is a collective failure - parity is achieved in the negative.
All are equal in being victims of the unattainable ideal.
The absolute, i.e., god, acts as a justification for the absolute nil.
Like the concept of 'power' raised to the unreal supernatural status of omnipotence - the ideal is defined out of existence so as to impose the collective identity of weakness. Absolute power acts as a unattainable standard that imposes an identification with absolute weakness - either/or.
Moderns have adopted this as a way of comforting self.