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The key to continuous happiness is to declare problem solving as life's highest pleasure. A most important OpenMystic discussion would center around the idea of limits, where a limit is taken to be a constraint, extreme value, or a boundary. Homework - After reading further in this essay, one could go to today's morning newspaper, any Internet news website, any random Google page, a random Wikipedia page, etc. and then consider the ways that new and old limits are being pressed in every item you find. Don't just think of simple temperature limits, sports limits and so forth, but be broader in your awareness of limits being tested. Then consider the numerous new and old limits that you will test or have tested during the day. Each one of those limit incidents with their problem/solution dialogs will foster an incremental increase in both the personal and collective temporal aperture domain. All human features - in fact the features of every living thing if not arguably all things and meta-things - are derived from recurrent interactions with or at limits. Binocular vision and binaural audio for instance provide an advantage of defense against ancient predators - various physical survival limits. Animal fur is a defense against the cold - a thermal limit.. The testing of limits is innate, continuous, and interactive. Where not provided incidentally by external forces, humans design endlessly variegated tests for performance limits - NASCAR, university final exams, on-the- job problems to solve, and on and on ad infinitum. Significant also is that most experience dealing with potentially deadly limits that is encoded in the human genome derives from the trials and tribulation of our pre-human predecessors - our animal kingdom forebears. The broader every day universe is certainly geared to define and push new limits - Katrina, Saddam, George Bush, Global Warming, Adolf Hitler are a few of the endless variety of expected and unexpected tests to limits. The flow of life is defined by continuous, endless interaction with limits. Limits in effect pose transient or chronic problems requiring solutions. It is apparent that to be fully in harmony with the flow of the daily every day universe that the ultimate path to constant happiness is to define problem solving to be one's highest pleasure. The universe provides a continuous spray of problems to every living thing and to take pleasure from finding the broadest range of solutions to these would obviously make everyday life a paradise for the person in tune with this notion. There are potential down-to-earth bonuses in that an expert problem solver can expect to be perpetually and gainfully employed. Definition of problem solving as being the highest pleasure is a certain pathway to continuous enjoyment of life. As well, frequent success at solving variegated problems can lead to a sense of strength, confidence, empowerment and control. This is a pleasant positive reinforcement for the decision to personally declare problem solving to be the highest pleasure. The popular conception of "paradise" as an easy street life of leisure without problems is both deadly and impossible since the "use-it-or-lose-it" proviso of life systems means that such a nominally attractive paradise would ultimately be the end of all life there. As a tie-in to the overall
Open Mystic theme, interaction with endlessly variegated limits force
living systems into a continuous problem solving scenario. It is that
problem solving in the very broadest sense that fosters growth of the
temporal aperture as described earlier in Open Mystic. The
increasing breadth of experience and knowledge expands the temporal
aperture in an asymptotic march towards the Infinite.
See also page 23.
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