⚫️ For Everyone Forever - SIX CORE IDEAS (part 4)
Why the mundane choices you make each day matter to the human race at large.
This is the fourth part of my Six Core Ideas series.
This series is a kind of manifesto covering the fundamental concepts behind what I’m building at GymnasiOn.net
To see the other parts, go to GymnasiOn.net/six where you can watch the videos or read the transcripts, depending on what you prefer.
So far we have spoken about how The Real World is a moving thing with a trajectory.
By looking at the world in this way we don’t just see where things are now but we can see where things are going and how they are interacting with each other.
We then covered why we eat Green Face Meals (made from both plants and animals).
Through this we experience the dynamic process that moves everything forwards like a motor. One side of the process opens up like a gatherer looking for plants. The other side closes in like a hunter stalking an animal.
Then we spoke about how Green Face Meals are just one way to experience The Real World by Starting with the Body.
More generally, we aim to have an actual physical experience of things instead of merely imagining or feeling like we have done something real. The easiest, safest, and best way to do this in the modern world is to use routines, diet, and exercise to turn our goals into reality.
And now we will talk about the fourth Core Idea: For Everyone, Forever…
A big problem we all face is that the future is uncertain.
If you look far enough up ahead, all you are met with is darkness.
While we can find a lot of joy and satisfaction in doing things that have a beginning, a middle and an end, it’s made much harder by the fact that we just don’t know for sure what the end will look like.
For this reason, every plan is a guess.
We have to make decisions and take action without knowing all the variables and because we cannot predict the future, we must rely on history and trajectory to guess how things are going to go.
Unfortunately, this often leads to short-term thinking. If we can’t be certain about the future, why not do things that are guaranteed to be good for me, for now.?
Maybe you skip a workout to watch TV or order a takeaway instead of preparing a Green Face meal. Maybe you give a rude response that makes someone leave you alone or spend time scrolling through videos on social media instead of reading an enriching book.
We are always tempted towards doing things that give us the most immediate returns because the further into the future we go, the less predictable things become.
But then the future arrives.
The world moves forwards and we inevitably step into the consequences of the decisions we made yesterday.
Behaviours that seemed good in the moment reveal themselves to be taking us on a path towards things we don’t want in the log run.
That TV show wasn’t actually that good and the missed workout has left you feeling groggy and stiff.
That takeaway made your stomach feel awful the next day and wasn’t even as tasty as you’d hoped.
That person you were rude to is now avoiding you and you need their input on some work.
And that book you wanted to read is still sitting on the shelf unread.
Because The Real World moves forwards, we can’t just do things that are good for us for now. We also have to think about tomorrow.
And then when tomorrow comes, we have to think about the day after that!
The world is eternally driving forwards in this way. There’s no end to the tomorrows we can be aligning our behaviours towards. When we take action and make goals to do something good and right and healthy, we ought to think as far into the future as possible and do things based on history and trajectory we can predict will be good not just for now, but later today, tomorrow, and on for weeks, months, and years into the darkness of forever.
With this in mind, we must look outwards. In order to continue acting in a way that is beneficial for the years ahead, we can’t only be focussed on our own benefit. Staying healthy in our own lifetime involves the health of the friends, family, and community around us.
By thinking about our collective health, we contribute to a stronger, more resilient society, a healthier environment to live in, a positive example for those who look up to us, which then feeds back into our own healthy life and positively affects the generations that follow us …
Not just for you but for everyone.
Not just for now but forever!
This is about making the connection between our daily mundane choices and the long-term wellbeing of the human race at large. Sometimes, it might not seem that important to eat well and work out and rest properly but when we zoom out and see things from this much higher perspective, it starts to feel worth it to make the right decision in the here-and-now.
With this eternal perspective applied in our everyday lives, relationships become much more important.
Community is integral to a complete healthy life. When we focus on what really matters, instead of only thinking inwardly to our own gain, we work on deepening the connections that are necessary for long term happiness and wellbeing. When we build communities arounds us at a scale that allows the highest achievers and the lowest beginners to learn from each other, everyone experiences a felt sense of value and support. Things align both vertically upwards towards higher goals, and horizontally outwards, bringing our communities together.
Empathy sits at the heart of this approach, as it involves genuinely understanding and collaborating with others as we work together to make things as good as they can be. When we share lessons, resources, and opportunities we not only address basic needs but also generate a sense of belonging and vitality.
This creates a society where people don’t just survive, but thrive.
This creates true prosperity which transcends immediate material comfort and makes an impact which sends out resonant waves far beyond our individual lives. But it starts with the body. Doing something real. Everyone loves being around those who are healthy, happy, and successful. If we all lived with this in mind, the world would be a profoundly different, more enjoyable place.
Every time we plan to turn a goal into a reality, we are stepping out into the darkness.
We cannot know the ultimate purpose of this process. We don’t know what it looks like at the end. Every moment we have to guess the next step. But we’re not going in completely blind. We can base our plans on the reality we have already experienced and the lessons we can learn from those that have gone before us. So we look to history and previous data to inform our plans and make good judgements to bring about the best possible outcome.
But how do we decide on the best possible outcome?
Well, we don’t want something that is beneficial now at the expense of the future. And we don’t want something that is beneficial for us at the expense of others. Instead we want the outcome that benefits the most possible people for the longest possible time.
So we try to do things that are good For Everyone, Forever.
This includes doing things that are good for you right now, but at the same time extends eternally into the future good of all.
We might get it wrong! Nobody can perfectly predict the future.
But at every step we can check ourselves and use this perspective to see if our daily actions are heading in the right direction and put ourselves back on the path to a healthy life.
For Everyone Forever is one of the six core ideas that drive what I do at Gymnasion.net. This is the fourth part of a series expanding on each of the six core ideas.
The next part of this series is titled “The Enemy is You”. With this idea I will explore why the biggest obstacle that stops us from achieving what we truly want out of life is ourselves.
Can you remember a time when a decision that seemed beneficial in the moment led to negative consequences later on?
Do you have any effective strategies for resisting short-term temptations in favour of long-term benefits?
Comment below or send me a message.
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See ya!