Marvelling At How Well-Equipped
Human Beings Are.

(Commemorating Srid’s Visit; April-May 2024).

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Upon reading or hearing Richard’s oft-repeated “enjoying and appreciating being alive” catchphrase (as in, ‘being here at this propitious place in space at this dynamic moment in time’, for instance) it can, on mirificent occasion, serve as a prompt for marvelling at how well-equipped human beings are—when emerging as suckling babes on this verdant and azure planet which begat the human race and whereat humankind flourishes—inasmuch there is not only an innate awareness of being sentient (which awareness of being conscious no other creatures come equipped with) there is also an inbuilt affective monitor, in the form of hedonic-tone, of the pleasurable-displeasureable status of any and all of the affections which arise out of the rough-n-ready survival package of genetically-inherited instinctual passions.

Furthermore, blind nature has provided what the Positive Psychology Network, and the ilk, refer to variously as an “affective adaptation set-point”, or a “hedonic adaptation set-point”, or a “treadmill adaptation set-point” to designate the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of well-being despite major positive or negative events or life changes. The process of affective adaptation is often conceived as a treadmill since no matter how hard a person tries, in their life-long pursuit of happiness, they will inevitably return to the same neutral set-point after a significantly emotional life event. Numerous studies—including a decade-long longitudinal study of over a thousand sets of twins—have established that about fifty percent of a given person’s chronic or characteristic level of well-being is genetically determined (although some studies provided evidence the heritability of well-being is as high as eighty percent), ten percent is affected by life circumstances and situation, and a remaining forty percent is subject to self-control.

(It almost goes without saying, of course, that when feeling-being ‘Richard’ first devised and put into practice the eminently successful way of enjoying and appreciating being alive, via first being as happy and as harmless (as free of malice and sorrow) as is humanly possible by setting a baseline experiencing of ‘feeling good’ each moment again, come what may, for the remainder of ‘his’ life—a way nowadays known as ‘The Actualism Method’ as the result of a tongue-in-cheek jesting on a (purportedly) no-method spiritualist forum—‘he’ was totally unaware of any such “adaptation set-point” by whatever name, which has feeling neutral as its baseline experiencing, and just blithely went ahead and gladsomely established ‘feeling good’ as the minimal set-point as it felt good (hedonically) to feel good (affectively) for the rest of ‘his’ life. Nevertheless, it is handy to know—and to be well aware—that the tendency in the early days of actualism practice to revert to ‘feeling neutral’, rather than ‘feeling good’, is because of it being blind-nature’s default set-point).

Moreover, and also unlike any of the other creatures, as intelligence has evolved in humans—the cognitive faculty of understanding and comprehending, as in intellect and sagacity, which means the cerebral ability to sensibly and thus judiciously think, reflect, appraise, plan, and implement considered activity for beneficial reasons (and to be able to rationally convey reasoned information to other human beings so that coherent knowledge can accumulate around the world and unto the next generations)—it is simply marvellous that the human animal is well-placed to comprehend how those rough-n-ready survival passions, which were oh-so-essential in the hunter-gatherer era but are nowadays detrimental to human weal and welfare, can be safely eradicated via a powerful ‘self’-sacrificial instinctive impulse (altruism) which ‘blind nature’ readily provides as part of its rough-n-ready survival package.

Even more to the point, it is outright marvellous this ginormous universe even exists in the first place—complete with its immeasurable amount of matter (either in its solid aspect, ‘mass’ a.k.a. ‘minera’, or its puissant phase, ‘power’ a.k.a. ‘energy’) which is perpetually arranging and rearranging itself in endless varieties of myriad forms all over the boundless reaches of its infinite space throughout the limitless extent of its eternal time, in a ceaselessly kinetic manner, and which self-replenishing infinitude can most readily be described as perpetuus mobilis (i.e., ‘a perpetual motion machine’)—for any and all of the 8.1+ billion humans to be enjoying and appreciating being here and experiencing its multitudinous marvels first hand.

And, from the macrocosmic to the microcosmic, it is surely a matter of wondrous marvelment that, out of all the microscopic multiplicity of male gamete, out of a plethora of spermatozoa ready to potentially fertilise the female gamete, the ovum, only one out of literally millions—a single discharge (about a teaspoonful of semen on the average) may contain more than two-hundred-and-fifty million spermatozoa—managed to successfully penetrate the ovular sanctum sanctorum and ...!voila!... here sits this singular personality reading these words (and not some other potential family member) representing the most accomplished of multi-millions of corrivals.

So, being emblematic of the crème de la crème of those multiplicious fallen-by-the-wayside contenders it is, in sooth, both the birthright and the destiny of each and every human being to escape their fate by becoming free of blind-nature’s instinctual passions, and the ‘feeling-being’ formed thereof, via the cheerfully willing manumission of each and every one of the eight-billion-plus flesh-and-blood bodies unwittingly hosting eight-billion-plus usurpers within.

Ain’t life grand!

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