INTRODUCTION:
I imagine you’re here for many of the same reasons that I began looking into philosophy years ago: there’s a faint feeling, a whisper, that there is a better way to live, but the path there is not entirely clear.
“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”
-Haruki Murakami
If this is what you’re thinking, you’d be right. For many of us, there is a better way to live. A way of thinking that’s more constructive, more resilient to hardship, less reactive to stress, more peaceful, and more productive.
Generally, our behavior follows these three steps:
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We experience a stimulus
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We process that stimulus
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We react to that stimulus
In almost all cases, the stimulus is outside of our control, and will happen whether we want it to or not. How we process it, however, is something that we can work on, and that is exactly what Orion Philosophy aims to help with.
When we find and address the parts of our mindset that hold us back, and develop other parts that lift us up, we begin to shape how we process the world around us for the better.
Part 1: The Mind
The human mind is a complex piece of biology. A tapestry that’s woven over time from millions of strands of lessons, experiences, and knowledge. It colors everything we do. However, over the course of our lives, those strands can become knotted, frayed, and torn.
Experience can leave us with negative ways of thinking or destructive perspectives on life. One core tenet of Stoicism came from a philosopher named Epictetus, who said:“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.”
It’s a simple statement, but one that holds the key to your well-being. It’s not the conditions of your life that make you unhappy; it’s simply how you perceive them. That’s why Orion exists.
Orion’s purpose is to lay out principles, premises, and practices to find the areas of your mind that are blocking the path to a better life, and to promote resilience, happiness, and calm.
Like all of the information here, the purpose is not to tell you how to do anything, it’s to provide you with ideas and tools to find your own solutions, develop your own skills, and, if you choose to, change your behaviors and perspectives.
Your mind is really the only tool you have. It’s with us everywhere we go. It cannot be taken away, and it’s constantly shaped and re-forged by our experiences, our self-talk, and our imagination.
The conditions of your mind will dictate the conditions of your life. If you’ve been fortunate, your mind will be free of cracks, dirt, warps, and smears—the imperfections we pick up from adversity, hardship, and suffering.
However, most of us, if not all of us, have picked up some imperfections along the way. Hardship creates cracks in how we see things, cracks like bias, intolerance, judgments, and stress. Negative experiences with people, for example, can cause smears on how we view other people.
We all unconsciously collect these negative patterns of thinking from the time we are born until the time we decide to take ownership of how we see the world.
It’s for exactly this reason that the single greatest thing you can do to live a happier, less stressed, and more resilient life is to take full responsibility for where you are, look at yourself objectively and honestly, and learn to see your conditions in more productive ways.
The Stoic Dichotomy of Control:
Whenever we find ourselves in difficult situations, our mind becomes flooded with hundreds of potential pieces of the puzzle.
“What if this happens?”, “What if they don’t like me?”, “What if I don’t get the job?” etc, we’ve all been there.
However, despite all the noise that surrounds our problems, there are only two parts of any problem that really matter:
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How we perceive the problem.
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How we respond to the problem.
That’s it.
Our perception of life is basically the way in which we view the world. This is a result of our beliefs, experiences, and values. No two people see the world in the same way because no two people have shared the same experiences. We’ll explore this later in Foundation 4.
The second part; the way we respond, is simply how we decide to act based on our perception.
Despite the common belief that we are in control of our environment, we only truly have control over these two things; our thoughts and our actions.
“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our actions.”
-Epictetus
This is good.
It’s good because it challenging us to accept an uncomfortable truth; that most of what happens around us is completely outside our control. This can be a hard pill to swallow.
It’s good because when we accept this as a reality the only option we are left with is to focus our energy on what we truly have control over. Our thoughts and our actions. With practice this makes us a problem solving powerhouse because we are able to quickly analyse a problem, dissect the parts we can influence, and target them without wasting time and energy on the things we have no control over.
Philosophy & Suffering:
I’m sure you can think of someone who stays happy, positive, and composed in stressful situations. History is filled with examples of individuals who remain calm and effective despite the hardship or seemingly impossible conditions they find themselves in.
Similarly, you can probably think of a person who always seems to find something to complain about, despite the comfort and opportunity they have.
Given that these two examples are true, it’s clear that our suffering is not merely caused by the conditions we are in, but the way we perceive and respond to them. Our philosophy of life
While our conditions will certainly influence how we think and feel, it’s how we view them that ultimately prevents or causes our suffering.
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.”
-Epictetus
Luckily, this all links back to the mind and what we discussed at the top of the page. Our thoughts and actions are our responsibility, and they are under our control.
The Foundation:
This Foundation is a set of 6 principles that aim to provide you with a structure for re-framing how you view hardship, adversity, and potential causes of suffering.
The ultimate goal of these 6 rules is to begin walking down the lesser trodden path of self awareness, self reliance and responsibility.
Ultimately, this will limit how much we allow external events to influence our well-being. If it was boiled down to one word it would be building Resilience.
While some parts of our culture today seem to expect all forms of hardship to be removed from our lives, we accept responsibility for ourselves and go about learning the tools to deal with adversity.
“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”
-Haruki Murakami
After all, as soon as we remove one source of suffering, it rises again in another form. We end up having to deal with it in one way or another.
Finally, contrary to what much of the “self-help” industry has pushed our way, this is not an easy thing to do. There are no shortcuts or quick fixes here. It’s an uphill mountain path that requires time, introspection, and a relationship with yourself that needs to be brutally honest about who you are and why you are that way.
However, the further up the path we go, the cleaner the air, the better the view, and the more we can see.