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> The 'hypersane' are those among us who have realized, for better or for worse, that the traditional things that most in a society strive for - material wealth

> The 'hypersane' are those among us who have realized, for better or for worse, that the traditional things that most in a society strive for - material wealth, social status, conformity to social structures, etc. - aren't really the keys to happiness and that when you "awaken" (and become hypersane, I suppose) you realize that along with those things come stress, anxiety, the rat race, and, well, a pretty boring existence. > I dig it! I expect to see a lot of folks reject this notion outright, because, well, cognitive dissonance. If you've built your life around conforming, it might be tough to hear someone suggest it's all for naught. > Thoughts? Sounds pretty self-congratulatory, like you think you figured out something most people don't figure out. In reality, all those "realizations" are so mainstream that they show up in Disney movies--there's nothing nonconformist about realizing any of that. And in reality, the kinds of people who act on those ideas sometimes flee their country and loved ones and live in Russia (Edward Snowden), blow their brains out with a gun (Hunter S. Thompson) or try to strangle themselves with their underwear in a supermax prison (Ted Kaczynski).

nlh 7y ago
> In reality, all those "realizations" are so mainstream that they show up in Disney movies. and yet...
- pas 7y ago
  the rat race (material comfort) is addictive. money works wonders. and it's easy to get stuck in a local minimum. (mortgage, kids/family need a lot of resources)
  - throwaway94857 7y ago
    Competition is as innate to animal life as is breathing. It's naive to think we can simply ignore our drive to compete with one another, as naive as thinking we can ignore hunger thirst or sexual desire.
    - JackFr 7y ago
      And yet we can reject our nature.
      - alt219 7y ago
        To some degree or another, and some better than others.
      - throwaway94857 7y ago
        Some try, fewer truly succeed. It's one thing to reject your nature, it's quite another to not live in some lingering dissonance as a result.
      - arkh 7y ago
        To what end? If we accept the heat death of the universe and the fact nothing can go faster than light everything is bound to disappear. Trying to better Earth based life is useless. Then why bother trying to attain something higher? Just maximize your own pleasure until your conscience disappear. Suicide by psychedelic use is the only "hypersane" response.
        mensetmanusman 7y ago
        Not everyone comes to this conclusion, one line of reasoning is: because there shouldn’t be a meaningless universe in the first place, it must actually have meaning.
        htek 7y ago
        The belief that the universe must have a purpose is a trap. It leads you down a particular line of reasoning that ends with you believing in a creator god (or gods), or that the universe itself is divine. You would likely also reason that you have a purpose in the universe that dictates your actions (adherence to religious dogma or doctrine). All of this is baseless and rationalized without objective evidence. Your only certain "purpose" in life is that which you, yourself make.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  I think that many people realize the emptiness of the things most of us strive for. Far fewer of us stop chasing the emptiness very much. As Steve Taylor said, "Off like lemmings at the gun/I know better, still I run." Me, I can see that this stuff is empty, at least some of the time. I can even stop chasing it, for a few hours or days at a time. I can't seem to do it for long, though.
  - madaxe_again 7y ago
    I think this is the dividing line - the willingness to actually completely stop chasing the void, and to instead build your own nexus of meaning. It’s a leap - we have very deeply woven memetic patterns that seem absolutely real to us. As others say, plenty, “including Disney movies”, “see” this world-beyond-the-world - but they see it askance, through a glass darkly, with the chattels and symbols of the artifice world wrought throughout. Fear holds shut the doors of perception, because to even deeply consider, never mind act upon, the idea that we live in a consensual hallucination, presents the illusion of being capable of devaluing one’s entire existence, and therefore one’s identity. Status becomes meaningless, the system of the world looks like a sad plastic toy being fought over by children, surrounded by immeasurable bounty they cannot or will not perceive. The thing is, the yawning chasm of gnosis is only six inches deep, but it appears unfathomable. Once you’ve really made the leap, it’s easy enough to live by the convictions it presents. I think Philip K Dick is the prophet of the ultra-sane. He saw the artifice, described it as “the black iron prison”, and spent the remainder of his days desperately trying to find his way through the thicket, but overshot, and plumbed the fringes of madness and a kind of razor-edged hypersanity. Sadly, he, like many of his characters, used the assistance of chemicals to pierce the veil, and he, like they, was undone by them. Psychedelics are a path, but they’re like taking a sledgehammer to a walnut, and usually break something else. You get there, but all too often you lose an important thread somewhere on the way. So, if you keep going back to the void, you’re still bound. Take the step. Stop wanting. Start being. Watch the world and laugh - it’s quite a brilliant bit of absurdist performance art. Doing so does devalue your existence up to the point of inversion, but the thing is, your value system also shifts so dramatically that it does not matter. If anything, looking back at the past is more akin to recalling an entertaining time spent in the playground, and is by no means valueless - just valueless as a mercantile/social exchange. A final aside: I think many find their way across the Styx as a result of trauma - feeling that the world has in one way or another wronged or rejected you often provides the instigation and fortitude to turn one’s back on it to reconsider - before emerging to engage with it once more on absolutely different terms. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that many terminal patients are blissfully peaceful, happy people, despite their own impending mortality - knowing you have no future is an incredibly liberating experience, and allows you to live Here and Now. It’s just such a shame that it takes pain and death to shake the scales from eyes that so easily could have been free sooner. I was one of the very lucky ones - I was going to die for several years - but I didn’t. I wept, I wailed, I mourned, I accepted, I lived for the small things, the dew on an ant, the bobbing of a bird in flight, the spray of salt off the sea, the myriad specks in the sky that speak of countless worlds and a dispassionate universe. I have not once even considered reentering the chattel world - this way of being brings me joy and contentment, and allows me to share that with others. I am small. I am finite in time and space. I am dust. This is good. This is beautiful. Final final aside: Huxley’s Island explores quite a bit of this, actually, and it’s a great read either way.
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago
  "On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness." - David Foster Wallace
patientplatypus 7y ago
The point is not realizing what one should do but internally valuing it on an emotional level so you do it every day - not because you have to but because you want to. "Realization" is only the first step - the Buddhists would say this is "right thought" but also there needs to be "right action" etc etc. This describes me well as I've gone through having that realization due to some extreme peak experiences. It makes life harder as well as more interesting, although I'm not sure if I'm better or worse off. I care more about things that are broken in society which I cannot fix, although I try where I can. I would also say that if you believe it is "self-congratulatory" that is also not right. Part of the realization that comes with this is that society is just a game everyone plays, and really we're more or less all the same. I think you may believe it is "self-congratulatory" because in typical society someone only acts different from another in order to advance oneself in the hierarchy. Someone who comes to a realization of this sort simply doesn't believe in the hierarchy in the first place.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  > The point is not realizing what one should do but internally valuing it on an emotional level so you do it every day - not because you have to but because you want to. "Realization" is only the first step - the Buddhists would say this is "right thought" but also there needs to be "right action" etc etc. Agreed. > This describes me well as I've gone through having that realization due to some extreme peak experiences. It makes life harder as well as more interesting, although I'm not sure if I'm better or worse off. I care more about things that are broken in society which I cannot fix, although I try where I can. Okay, but caring more doesn't matter. So basically you're saying you have the right thought, but aren't taking the right action because most of the time you feel you can't. Yep, that's the problem: right action is hard, right thought without right action is pretty pointless, and even right action doesn't always produce right results. > I think you may believe it is "self-congratulatory" because in typical society someone only acts different from another in order to advance oneself in the hierarchy. No, I believe it's self-congratulatory because nlh (like most people) likely doesn't act different from anyone else. I know I'm criticizing you and nlh here, but I don't mean it unkindly. The same criticism is true of me.
- scottLobster 7y ago
oroeo92k 7y ago
It’s possible to encounter a concept and not emotionally “get it.” It’s one thing to hear about something on TV and another entirely to change your entire life. If it were “gotten” by the masses via Disney shows, we’d all stop chasing it at all. Social ties and bonds existed before money, achieved via other means. So yeah we don’t all “get it” in the same way. As someone with enough to retire on at 40, money feels pretty pointless to me. Same old cheeseburger or whatever Gates said. It’s what other people gave me for satisfying their goals. ️ Economic anxiety, a policy pushed by financial planners, is what motivates. Not money.
- xwdv 7y ago
  No, even if you realized all that to it's full extent, the fact is we don't get to choose how we live if we plan to live in our current world for very long. Imagine we lived in a violent brutal world where it was kill or be killed. Even if you realize that killing only brings you stress and unhappiness, you won't last very long if you stop doing it. As soon as you lay down your arms someone will come and bash your head in with a hammer and take what's left of your belongings and family. You could decide money and the rat race are pointless and decide to just stop pursuing it. And you'll survive... for a time. Then you won't be able to function in society. Won't be able to eat, or have a place to live, effectively the equivalent of having your skull bashed in like in that previous world.
  - oroeo92k 7y ago
    That’s why I said “economic anxiety” is the motivator. I didn’t say there wasn’t a motivator. I said it isn’t money. Until about a hundred years ago, most folks were self employed and chased down whatever they needed for the day. It’s in that last few hundred it became mostly about money for the masses. There are people that live isolated and off the grid lives, unmotivated by money & rat race. Your idea of survival & what makes a good life may not match up with others. But in the context of daily life of the masses, you’re correct in that we all just chase the popular social meme. It HAPPENS TO BE money, but it could be bottle caps get you stuff that supply side is selling. It’s what supply side accepts or gtfo. The threat of being evicted from the only life one knows is not literal death, but it feels like it, so we chase money, not bottle caps as a pragmatic acquiescence to social forces.
TomMckenny 7y ago
I'm not sure the people you cite were following a Disney formula. But along the lines you're drawing, sometimes they are persecuted (Galileo) sometimes die in poverty (Van Gogh) sometimes killed by a mob (Hypatia of Alexandria) and sometimes they are hounded to suicide (Allan Turing, Aaron Swartz) But far more often, none of those things. And either way, I never have heard such people say they wish they'd been average.

nlh 7y ago

> In reality, all those "realizations" are so mainstream that they show up in Disney movies. and yet...

pas 7y ago
the rat race (material comfort) is addictive. money works wonders. and it's easy to get stuck in a local minimum. (mortgage, kids/family need a lot of resources)
- throwaway94857 7y ago
  Competition is as innate to animal life as is breathing. It's naive to think we can simply ignore our drive to compete with one another, as naive as thinking we can ignore hunger thirst or sexual desire.
  - JackFr 7y ago
    And yet we can reject our nature.
    - alt219 7y ago
      To some degree or another, and some better than others.
    - throwaway94857 7y ago
      Some try, fewer truly succeed. It's one thing to reject your nature, it's quite another to not live in some lingering dissonance as a result.
    - arkh 7y ago
      To what end? If we accept the heat death of the universe and the fact nothing can go faster than light everything is bound to disappear. Trying to better Earth based life is useless. Then why bother trying to attain something higher? Just maximize your own pleasure until your conscience disappear. Suicide by psychedelic use is the only "hypersane" response.
      - mensetmanusman 7y ago
        Not everyone comes to this conclusion, one line of reasoning is: because there shouldn’t be a meaningless universe in the first place, it must actually have meaning.
        htek 7y ago
        The belief that the universe must have a purpose is a trap. It leads you down a particular line of reasoning that ends with you believing in a creator god (or gods), or that the universe itself is divine. You would likely also reason that you have a purpose in the universe that dictates your actions (adherence to religious dogma or doctrine). All of this is baseless and rationalized without objective evidence. Your only certain "purpose" in life is that which you, yourself make.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
I think that many people realize the emptiness of the things most of us strive for. Far fewer of us stop chasing the emptiness very much. As Steve Taylor said, "Off like lemmings at the gun/I know better, still I run." Me, I can see that this stuff is empty, at least some of the time. I can even stop chasing it, for a few hours or days at a time. I can't seem to do it for long, though.
- madaxe_again 7y ago
  I think this is the dividing line - the willingness to actually completely stop chasing the void, and to instead build your own nexus of meaning. It’s a leap - we have very deeply woven memetic patterns that seem absolutely real to us. As others say, plenty, “including Disney movies”, “see” this world-beyond-the-world - but they see it askance, through a glass darkly, with the chattels and symbols of the artifice world wrought throughout. Fear holds shut the doors of perception, because to even deeply consider, never mind act upon, the idea that we live in a consensual hallucination, presents the illusion of being capable of devaluing one’s entire existence, and therefore one’s identity. Status becomes meaningless, the system of the world looks like a sad plastic toy being fought over by children, surrounded by immeasurable bounty they cannot or will not perceive. The thing is, the yawning chasm of gnosis is only six inches deep, but it appears unfathomable. Once you’ve really made the leap, it’s easy enough to live by the convictions it presents. I think Philip K Dick is the prophet of the ultra-sane. He saw the artifice, described it as “the black iron prison”, and spent the remainder of his days desperately trying to find his way through the thicket, but overshot, and plumbed the fringes of madness and a kind of razor-edged hypersanity. Sadly, he, like many of his characters, used the assistance of chemicals to pierce the veil, and he, like they, was undone by them. Psychedelics are a path, but they’re like taking a sledgehammer to a walnut, and usually break something else. You get there, but all too often you lose an important thread somewhere on the way. So, if you keep going back to the void, you’re still bound. Take the step. Stop wanting. Start being. Watch the world and laugh - it’s quite a brilliant bit of absurdist performance art. Doing so does devalue your existence up to the point of inversion, but the thing is, your value system also shifts so dramatically that it does not matter. If anything, looking back at the past is more akin to recalling an entertaining time spent in the playground, and is by no means valueless - just valueless as a mercantile/social exchange. A final aside: I think many find their way across the Styx as a result of trauma - feeling that the world has in one way or another wronged or rejected you often provides the instigation and fortitude to turn one’s back on it to reconsider - before emerging to engage with it once more on absolutely different terms. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that many terminal patients are blissfully peaceful, happy people, despite their own impending mortality - knowing you have no future is an incredibly liberating experience, and allows you to live Here and Now. It’s just such a shame that it takes pain and death to shake the scales from eyes that so easily could have been free sooner. I was one of the very lucky ones - I was going to die for several years - but I didn’t. I wept, I wailed, I mourned, I accepted, I lived for the small things, the dew on an ant, the bobbing of a bird in flight, the spray of salt off the sea, the myriad specks in the sky that speak of countless worlds and a dispassionate universe. I have not once even considered reentering the chattel world - this way of being brings me joy and contentment, and allows me to share that with others. I am small. I am finite in time and space. I am dust. This is good. This is beautiful. Final final aside: Huxley’s Island explores quite a bit of this, actually, and it’s a great read either way.
oldsklgdfth 7y ago
"On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness." - David Foster Wallace

patientplatypus 7y ago

The point is not realizing what one should do but internally valuing it on an emotional level so you do it every day - not because you have to but because you want to. "Realization" is only the first step - the Buddhists would say this is "right thought" but also there needs to be "right action" etc etc. This describes me well as I've gone through having that realization due to some extreme peak experiences. It makes life harder as well as more interesting, although I'm not sure if I'm better or worse off. I care more about things that are broken in society which I cannot fix, although I try where I can. I would also say that if you believe it is "self-congratulatory" that is also not right. Part of the realization that comes with this is that society is just a game everyone plays, and really we're more or less all the same. I think you may believe it is "self-congratulatory" because in typical society someone only acts different from another in order to advance oneself in the hierarchy. Someone who comes to a realization of this sort simply doesn't believe in the hierarchy in the first place.

kerkeslager 7y ago
> The point is not realizing what one should do but internally valuing it on an emotional level so you do it every day - not because you have to but because you want to. "Realization" is only the first step - the Buddhists would say this is "right thought" but also there needs to be "right action" etc etc. Agreed. > This describes me well as I've gone through having that realization due to some extreme peak experiences. It makes life harder as well as more interesting, although I'm not sure if I'm better or worse off. I care more about things that are broken in society which I cannot fix, although I try where I can. Okay, but caring more doesn't matter. So basically you're saying you have the right thought, but aren't taking the right action because most of the time you feel you can't. Yep, that's the problem: right action is hard, right thought without right action is pretty pointless, and even right action doesn't always produce right results. > I think you may believe it is "self-congratulatory" because in typical society someone only acts different from another in order to advance oneself in the hierarchy. No, I believe it's self-congratulatory because nlh (like most people) likely doesn't act different from anyone else. I know I'm criticizing you and nlh here, but I don't mean it unkindly. The same criticism is true of me.
scottLobster 7y ago

oroeo92k 7y ago

It’s possible to encounter a concept and not emotionally “get it.” It’s one thing to hear about something on TV and another entirely to change your entire life. If it were “gotten” by the masses via Disney shows, we’d all stop chasing it at all. Social ties and bonds existed before money, achieved via other means. So yeah we don’t all “get it” in the same way. As someone with enough to retire on at 40, money feels pretty pointless to me. Same old cheeseburger or whatever Gates said. It’s what other people gave me for satisfying their goals. ️ Economic anxiety, a policy pushed by financial planners, is what motivates. Not money.

xwdv 7y ago
No, even if you realized all that to it's full extent, the fact is we don't get to choose how we live if we plan to live in our current world for very long. Imagine we lived in a violent brutal world where it was kill or be killed. Even if you realize that killing only brings you stress and unhappiness, you won't last very long if you stop doing it. As soon as you lay down your arms someone will come and bash your head in with a hammer and take what's left of your belongings and family. You could decide money and the rat race are pointless and decide to just stop pursuing it. And you'll survive... for a time. Then you won't be able to function in society. Won't be able to eat, or have a place to live, effectively the equivalent of having your skull bashed in like in that previous world.
- oroeo92k 7y ago
  That’s why I said “economic anxiety” is the motivator. I didn’t say there wasn’t a motivator. I said it isn’t money. Until about a hundred years ago, most folks were self employed and chased down whatever they needed for the day. It’s in that last few hundred it became mostly about money for the masses. There are people that live isolated and off the grid lives, unmotivated by money & rat race. Your idea of survival & what makes a good life may not match up with others. But in the context of daily life of the masses, you’re correct in that we all just chase the popular social meme. It HAPPENS TO BE money, but it could be bottle caps get you stuff that supply side is selling. It’s what supply side accepts or gtfo. The threat of being evicted from the only life one knows is not literal death, but it feels like it, so we chase money, not bottle caps as a pragmatic acquiescence to social forces.

TomMckenny 7y ago

I'm not sure the people you cite were following a Disney formula. But along the lines you're drawing, sometimes they are persecuted (Galileo) sometimes die in poverty (Van Gogh) sometimes killed by a mob (Hypatia of Alexandria) and sometimes they are hounded to suicide (Allan Turing, Aaron Swartz) But far more often, none of those things. And either way, I never have heard such people say they wish they'd been average.