April 5, 2022
The past few days, I’ve been lazy. Instead of trying to come up with a new topic, my blog posts are going to become a reflection period.
There are a lot of concepts that I should take a bit longer to try to comprehend.
Now is the time!
Preface
I recently joined a reading group at the Objective Standard Institute, and the book of our study is Rand’s Romantic Manifesto. The reading group intrigued me because it was all about art and society.
What is good art? What does a society’s art say about that society? Why does art “speak” to us? How does it captivate us?
What is Sense of Life?
The concept of sense of life was my favorite takeaway from the first group session.
Your sense of life is the way you understand the world. It’s based on something deep inside of you — your character.
Who you are, what you believe, and what you value determines how you see the world.
How you see the world determines how you respond to it.
For that reason, it’s incredibly important to take time to evaluate your sense of life.
Childhood
Your sense of life is developed in childhood.
You’re not aware and conscious as a child. Most of the time, you’re experiencing and reacting.
The experiences you have as a child determine the things you make sense of. That’s why it’s called “sense of life.” It’s an input from your senses that becomes codified into your beliefs.
That’s why the environment that you grow up in actually does influence you a lot.
Adolescence
When you cross the threshold from experiencing and reacting to consciously participating, you can begin to evaluate your sense of life.
You should begin to evaluate your sense of life.
The goal is to increase your knowledge so that your sense of life isn’t limited to your experiences.
That means learning how to participate how you want to, not how you were taught to.
The main question is: how do you want to see and participate in this world, and what type of character do you need to be able to do that?
I think that’s the question I’m answering right now, and because it’s a process, it won’t happen overnight.