Life’s meaning, & a Taoist approach to Beckerism

• Moving forward
• Awareness
• Broad fetishisation
• Socialisation
• Self-mastery
• Hero complex
• Acute fetishisation
• All continually interact together under the umbrella of hero complex.
• We are in a constant state of flux, whether conscious or not. This is moving forward. As we develop awareness, we start to explore the world. Broad fetishisation results from this exploration, eg. I like this, I like that, I really like this, let me look into it deeper. Socialisation is inevitable as the person learns the bounds of their interaction with others, and adds a further area for self-mastery, such as understanding societal roles of correct behaviour. A hero complex develops as awareness of the environment, self, and possibilities and limitations within the life precinct grow. Acute fetishisation can be expected, as people specialise in their likes, desires, goals etc. A hero complex is causa sui and people will always be caught in its net. The Taoists responded by letting go of what there was to be caught in the net. Sages had nothing to be caught in it, so indifferent were they that their hero complex was to be minimalist, something they mastered.

~I do not touch on what role and to what extent death, sexuality, instinct or other factors play in the above. I do not consider it relevant. Whatever the cause, we are left standing in our present condition, and it is only an observation of our present condition that I am making. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, it is not relevant what exactly and to what extent certain ‘ingredients’ such as death-fear play; it is the mechanics that are important. If I did so, not everyone will agree, whereas a science of man should have consensus, lest it become another mere theory or hypothesis. I think both peace of mind and a science can develop together if we can firstly at least observe what is actually happening in our existence.

• FETISHISATION. This world is too wide and varied to ‘master’ it all. You cannot win all nobel prizes in every field year after year. We thus ‘fetishise’ parts of this world for ourselves, aiming for a single nobel prize in one field in just one year. Do you see how we limit ourselves, and rightly so? If we don’t, we may be considered mad, a meglomaniac, a dreamer, a neurotic.
• By, it becomes a part of our internal identity, trying to master it as it grows like a vine into the beam of our hero complex. Unfortunately for me, I fetishise having ten million dollars, an impossibility, yet this is my standard for self-mastery and hero complex. I am thus a failure, and leads to disillusionment, inability to accept lower standards, viewing the world through this prisom, behaving in ways responding to the previous points. Fetishisation can be a good thing, if realistic. The dao de jing says that the sage has no goals, no hopes, no needs, and is thus always content. Contentedness can be
• Fetishisations can be external, eg. a child’s card collection, an adult’s porn collection, a woman’s shoe collection, or internal: a child’s fantasisation about having a full card collection, a man’s fantasy of a FFM threesome, a woman’s fantasy of a perfect home and family in a prestigious neighbourhood.
• Importance: it is important to realise our ‘specialties’ that make us unique are small jigsaw pieces of self-mastery that make up the larger picture of our hero complex. No one person can have all the jigsaw pieces; man generally accepts this reality of impossibility of self-mastery, yet he is unable to accept that he is not a master of the small jigsaw piece he thinks is a part of him. To illustrate, a king accepts he cannot be king of the world (he is labelled a meglomaniac, a neurotic, if he thinks he can) and does not feel depression or loss from failure at such self-mastery. Yet if he is cannot be king of his own kingdom, he falls into despair, even suicide. He rejects one fetishisation (world ruler) and embraces a lesser fetishisation (country ruler).

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