Post by Admin on Mar 2, 2022 3:28:54 GMT
Chapter 1 - Reframe the Suffering
Satan challenges God to curse Job in order to test his loyalty to God. God agrees to allow Satan to test Job. Job's family, servants, and cattle are all destroyed by a series of God/Satan-ordained phenomena. Job's response (Job 1:20-22) - "At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: 'Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.' In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing."
*Kriah Ritual*
Their ritual of sorrow, termed the kriah, involves the tearing of clothes. Kriah itself is the Hebrew word for "tear". For Job, this ritual seemed to have symbolic significance in metaphorically returning to an infantile state. Job seems to think that everything you have in excess of what you are born with is a blessing. Job's natural state at birth was nakedness. Clothing was obtained after birth (the Lord giveth). Job destroys his clothing, seeming to show that he accepts that the Lord can also justly take away that which he hath given. Job's natural state at birth was hairlessness. Hair was obtained after birth (the Lord giveth). Job shaves his head, seeming to show that he accepts that the Lord can also justly take away that which he hath given. The root of this ideology is the debasement of oneself to a type of baseline-zero gratitude.
*Gratitude*
I like to define gratitude as acknowledging you deserve nothing more than a certain baseline, and therefore being thankful for everything in excess of that baseline. Depending on where you set your baseline, your gratitude can shift in intensity. The lower your baseline, the more positive emotion you get for feeling lucky for all the things you have in excess of that baseline.
*Desert*
Our feelings about desert, or that which we deserve, are the deepest type of metaphysical expectation. When we claim that we deserve something, we seem to be making a judgement about the nature of reality and declaring that reality owes us something. So while we might be pleasantly surprised and pleased by turns of events that exceed our expectations in the moment, the joy of gratitude comes from a deeper felt sense of expectation in relation to what we deserve. The opposite of this feeling of gratitude might be a sense of entitlement, where you feel you metaphysically deserve a higher standard of living from reality, and are therefore disappointed when reality doesn't live up to that expectation.
*Reframing Expectations*
It would seem to be human nature to often take for granted what we have. We seem to have a propensity to view our current material wellbeing as the expected status quo, any improvements to our status quo would provide a positive emotional affect, and any regressions from our status quo would provide a negative emotional affect. Therefore, our emotions are connected to our expectation of maintaining a certain status quo. During a process of self-introspection, we can analyze our status quo and change it. The status quo is the default for what we expect from reality, and our frustrations are merely deviations from that arbitrary expectation. When we reframe our experience, we recalculate what our expectations should be. We convince ourselves that perhaps we shouldn't have expected the status quo. By shifting our expectations, we have the ability to shift our emotional valence from negative to positive.
*Baseline Zero*
By setting the infantile state as the baseline expectation, he acknowledges that he doesn't deserve his hair, nor his clothing, which he removes as a part of his kriah ritual. Anything obtained after birth, like family, servants, and cattle, are likewise things that he obtained in excess of what he deserves - and therefore he can assuage his agony by converting the feeling of loss to a feeling of gain, merely by lowering his baseline expectation for what he deserves out of life.
*The Golden Mean*
The Aristotelian perspective on virtues would be to look for the balance between the two vices of obsequiousness and ingratitude. A moral problem and perhaps a hidden evolutionary strength of the Judaeo-Christian tradition is that they smuggle in obsequiousness into their definition of gratitude. By reducing our baseline to zero, we become slavishly thankful to God, as if we don't even deserve basic decency, dignity, and human rights. This obsequiousness is morally problematic because it promotes living in a way that embraces a low standard of wellbeing for human flourishing and therefore makes the world a worse place by encouraging apathy towards the concept of wellbeing. Yet, this attitude may be evolutionarily advantageous if it inspires contented endurance during periods of misfortune.
NEXT: Chapter 1.5 - Personal Backstory
Satan challenges God to curse Job in order to test his loyalty to God. God agrees to allow Satan to test Job. Job's family, servants, and cattle are all destroyed by a series of God/Satan-ordained phenomena. Job's response (Job 1:20-22) - "At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: 'Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.' In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing."
*Kriah Ritual*
Their ritual of sorrow, termed the kriah, involves the tearing of clothes. Kriah itself is the Hebrew word for "tear". For Job, this ritual seemed to have symbolic significance in metaphorically returning to an infantile state. Job seems to think that everything you have in excess of what you are born with is a blessing. Job's natural state at birth was nakedness. Clothing was obtained after birth (the Lord giveth). Job destroys his clothing, seeming to show that he accepts that the Lord can also justly take away that which he hath given. Job's natural state at birth was hairlessness. Hair was obtained after birth (the Lord giveth). Job shaves his head, seeming to show that he accepts that the Lord can also justly take away that which he hath given. The root of this ideology is the debasement of oneself to a type of baseline-zero gratitude.
*Gratitude*
I like to define gratitude as acknowledging you deserve nothing more than a certain baseline, and therefore being thankful for everything in excess of that baseline. Depending on where you set your baseline, your gratitude can shift in intensity. The lower your baseline, the more positive emotion you get for feeling lucky for all the things you have in excess of that baseline.
*Desert*
Our feelings about desert, or that which we deserve, are the deepest type of metaphysical expectation. When we claim that we deserve something, we seem to be making a judgement about the nature of reality and declaring that reality owes us something. So while we might be pleasantly surprised and pleased by turns of events that exceed our expectations in the moment, the joy of gratitude comes from a deeper felt sense of expectation in relation to what we deserve. The opposite of this feeling of gratitude might be a sense of entitlement, where you feel you metaphysically deserve a higher standard of living from reality, and are therefore disappointed when reality doesn't live up to that expectation.
*Reframing Expectations*
It would seem to be human nature to often take for granted what we have. We seem to have a propensity to view our current material wellbeing as the expected status quo, any improvements to our status quo would provide a positive emotional affect, and any regressions from our status quo would provide a negative emotional affect. Therefore, our emotions are connected to our expectation of maintaining a certain status quo. During a process of self-introspection, we can analyze our status quo and change it. The status quo is the default for what we expect from reality, and our frustrations are merely deviations from that arbitrary expectation. When we reframe our experience, we recalculate what our expectations should be. We convince ourselves that perhaps we shouldn't have expected the status quo. By shifting our expectations, we have the ability to shift our emotional valence from negative to positive.
*Baseline Zero*
By setting the infantile state as the baseline expectation, he acknowledges that he doesn't deserve his hair, nor his clothing, which he removes as a part of his kriah ritual. Anything obtained after birth, like family, servants, and cattle, are likewise things that he obtained in excess of what he deserves - and therefore he can assuage his agony by converting the feeling of loss to a feeling of gain, merely by lowering his baseline expectation for what he deserves out of life.
*The Golden Mean*
The Aristotelian perspective on virtues would be to look for the balance between the two vices of obsequiousness and ingratitude. A moral problem and perhaps a hidden evolutionary strength of the Judaeo-Christian tradition is that they smuggle in obsequiousness into their definition of gratitude. By reducing our baseline to zero, we become slavishly thankful to God, as if we don't even deserve basic decency, dignity, and human rights. This obsequiousness is morally problematic because it promotes living in a way that embraces a low standard of wellbeing for human flourishing and therefore makes the world a worse place by encouraging apathy towards the concept of wellbeing. Yet, this attitude may be evolutionarily advantageous if it inspires contented endurance during periods of misfortune.
NEXT: Chapter 1.5 - Personal Backstory
