A friend sent me this and all I could think about is how well this resonates with Advaita Vedanta in layman’s’ terms.
Caveat: The video advocates for a good time after realizing nothing matters. The “nothing matters” part may be interpreted as nihilistic, but the speaker is also saying that you can find deeper/truer meaning in enjoyment when you realize you are not the focus in people’s lives and your physical life is finite. This is very Vedantic indeed.
Over the years I have come to appreciate Vedanta, and particularly Advaita Vedanta as the optimal path for intellectual truth-seekers. When posed with the question of the purpose behind creation, Vedanta teaches you to instead ask, “Why do I perceive a world all around me? How can I perceive myself, my own self, in its true nature, away from the world as an instrument?“
If you share an appreciation for the Pale Blue Dot concept, I highly recommend the following Vedanta authorities, in this order:
I list Swami Sarvapriyananda last because he is perhaps the most profound Vedanta teacher alive in the world today. I make this statement after studying him for two years. To truly appreciate him you will have to learn about Vedanta from more accessible resources. You may also benefit from more mainstream voices like Sadhguru, but I personally like the four authorities I have listed above because they take a far less “mainstream” approach to Sanātana Dharma (Hinduism).
Swami Sarvapriyananda’s teachings are best described in this interview.
I’m disturbed, yet not surprised at the number of people who willingly accept totalitarianism, who chase after the illusion of security and safety by silencing any information that contradicts the “One Official Story Explaining Everything,” even if that story is shown to be transparently false.
So many people are scrambling to find a reliable arbiter of truth because they are terrified by the reality of having to figure things out for themselves, never having been taught how. So they look to the historical purveyors of information they trust to be “true,” what we now call “corporate” or “legacy” media, and place their trust in them, feeling confident they now know who’s to blame for the relentless stream of lies coming down on them daily for years and years.
As it has been said time and time again, “this too, shall pass.”
In layman’s terms, you (the consumer) must be feeling the heat when you’re paying extra for your groceries and gas this year–that’s inflation. We haven’t seen it this high in about 20 years in America.
On the one hand, nearly three-quarters of fund managers agree with the Fed that the current rate of high inflation is temporary. On the other hand, given that much of economics is based on psychology and not raw numbers, this is a difficult phenomenon to predict.
Take for instance, the notion that the above-linked article states most investors are presently only holding 3.9% of their portfolios in cash. Yet, oracle-investor Warren Buffett (of Berkshire Hathaway fame) is holding nearly 40% of assets in cash or cash equivalents. (In general, if an investor holds more cash relative their investments, it means they are less concerned with inflation, i.e., depreciation of the value of their money.)
Personally, I’m still not convinced that inflation is transitory considering that money supply will always remain ~40% above 2019 levels. Yes, that’s how much the Fed “printed” in the last two years, and you can’t “unprint” money that’s already been printed and circulated into the financial system. Here’s a good article explaining the relationship between printing money and inflation.
This is why “modern monetary theory” (MMT) people really irk the hell out of me. MMT advocates (directly or indirectly) think that the currently-low velocity of money will stay low enough to compensate for the massive increase in money supply in the last year. Milton Friedman must be rolling his grave at this thought. In my opinion, the only thing transitory is today’s relatively-low velocity of money, not the inflation rate as MMT folks like to believe.
For the sake of the well-being of the economy and in turn, the well-being of all people, I sincerely hope that I am wrong. Only time will tell. Let’s revisit this, say, in 2025?