Most adults have a job in order to get through life and (fill in the blank).Then one day it might dawn on each one of us that taking care oneself is another job. A personal one, the kind of job one might want to pursue.
To me, that could even be called a hobby, not a job. I enjoy finding better ways to prosper. Slogging along is not a life goal. Otherwise, how things work out is more times random or by following what somebody else wants.
A measure of true accomplishment is when it is not at someone else’s cost. Cooperation might even be a rewarding experience along the way. Some individuals move about to further their own goals at considerable cost to you and me.
We humans have a social trait that desires the rewards by being a part of something larger. That could be family, village, religion, tribe, or nation. Cooperation is then primarily for the benefit of the group as a whole, higher than an individual’s thoughts and desires. The dance rituals of groups is a transformative experience by its nature. When European exploration discovered the group dance around nature and ecstatic experience, this was dismissed as pagan. The Christian church of the middle ages dismissed dancing completely.
Control of group effect is part of most modern organizations that have specific goals. They must reject that which brings people together on their own, possibly without any other agenda. Natural, ordinary human experience. It would be really hard to form an army to go kill others.
This is the movement from love of single self into the experience of being a part or particle of the whole. This has been called part of All That Is.
It is known that even walking in a nature area like a woods has direct health benefits. A group in nature is a double good effect. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalism movement into nature is another form of moving farther than just yourself into this kind of harmony.
Extra Credit Quote from Goodreads
“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against.
The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes
Is the disease of the mind.”
― Sengcan, Hsin Hsin Ming