Beyond Cosmetics
Where ‘depth’ is involved, in many cases, efficiency runs counter to appearances.
AURELIS
ends on Inner Strength. This goes way beyond cosmetics.
Since AURELIS is specifically depth-minded, this is specifically important.
A drawing from my PhD thesis:
You think you draw something to you and actually, you’re drawing it away from you, endlessly… until the difference between conceptual and subconceptual processing (grossly: above and below the bold line in the drawing) is rightly grasped [see: ‘About ‘Subconceptual’].
A few examples:
- One tries to fight overweight and gets more and more obese.
- One tries to fight addiction and gets more and more entangled.
- One tries to fight burnout and gets more and more burned-out.
Efficient? No. In many cases, it’s even counter-efficient.
This is not always the easiest message, though, in an ego-driven world.
This way, eventually, efficiency beyond cosmetics is bound to an ethical choice.
You need to take care of the ethical base upon which to erect some depth-related building. This ethical base is itself goal-bound. Only then can you rightfully strive for efficiency towards that goal, which in such case will be ethical as well as durable!
Searching the relevant goal starts with the most obvious goal, then the search almost always goes beyond, in-depth. Here, things are mostly muzzled. The more encompassing a project, the more muzzled. Politics being a perfect example: what is ‘left’ and what is ‘right’ from the moment ‘depth’ is involved?
I agree: we haven’t seen much of this in real politics until now.
As to AURELIS, the ethical base is explicit. [See ‘Five Aurelian Values’]
No cosmetics.
The AURELIS goal is not merely some relief of superficial suffering. It’s about being friendly to the total person: yourself and others.
It is not the defense of some jointly inhabited, fragile ‘house of cards’ that always needs hardness at the outside in order not to tumble to the floor. Such a house of cards may provide an us-feeling but regrettably, one that is flawed from the beginning, from inside. Even before there is an inimical ‘them’, it’s already begging for one.
Real friendliness is not a semblance of strength. Therefore, it’s not hard [see: ‘Weak, Hard, Strong, Gentle’]. The following may be one of the most important things to always remember:
Ethical = strong
because real strength is not merely cosmetic, by definition. Cosmetic strength is not durable, not flexible, not ‘alive’. It’s weak. Precisely because of this, cosmetic parlance frequently shows itself quite hard, in a thin layer.
If possible, you shouldn’t bother if others try to put you in some cosmetic bottle. Just try not to be scratched.
Meanwhile, the aim of AURELIS remains: to realize much, way beyond cosmetics.