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Sacrifices

Must there be sacrifices to live a fulfilling life?
What is the character of such sacrifices? How do they relate to fulfillment? By fulfilling life I mean, doing a job in society which in some way involves more than being just a "cog" in a machine, doing some robotic task in an office that takes no advantage of your meta-"human" abilities.

For instance we all know that doing such a soul-crushing job involves sacrifice--anomie, isolation, the feeling like you aren't important in the grander scheme.

But what about the inverse? What sacrifice is involved in absolutely pursuing your dreams, if you are fortunate enough to have identified them? How do YOU navigate this line?

ebolavac
protobola

Anomie, isolation and a feeling like you ARE important in the grander scheme.
 
^

"ARE": individually without the humanistic grandiose values of vanity, rather "our".
~
the abandoned words of one,
create space for the collective
word of many.
 
theres a sacrafice to everything you do.

but

u cant have light without dark
u cant have success without failure
u cant say your happy if youve never been upset
red is red because every color besides red is absorbed

so what is success but all the sacrafices youve made?
 
then i should be living it up well..!


i have since unwittingly bastardized myself, into a higher-awareness of myself.
with that awareness of;;; truly instilled, my surroundings
are now seen, and known of with deeper-relevance,
which is all reciprocating into what-ever 'medium' applied.

i chose knowledge, and word.
and with all this shit, through out my life, my own "sin" and sacrifice, accepted and understood --
it doesnt break my heart; if i allow only the binds to fail.
~for black is a color of all colors.
it does not reflect and is absorbent of all the Kelvins.
 
Perhaps the sacrifice is a loss of financial gain and/or recognition.
 
satiricon said:
In one of his more recent books, Richard Sennett argues that one of the things which is distinctive about contemporary modernity is that, with the emphasis on flexibility and increasing insecurity in the workplace, the kinds of contexts that require or allow long term planning are starting to fragment. This compels people to be constantly planning the next step, but unable to plan the step after that - an experience of constant insecurity which makes it difficult to built up a long term narrative of one's life. But, if you have the resources available to you, this kind of constant short term planning can reap rewards in terms of diversities of experiences and financial rewards as well.

So maybe short term strategies aren't such a bad idea in a social context that rewards flexibility and movement.

I find this pretty interesting, as one could say that this is an instance where the dislocation and fragmentation necessitated by contemporary economic development erodes the potential efficacy of prior cognitive strategies. So you'd expect various types of social pathologies insofar as there's lag in adaptation, where people are better able to cope with healthily adapted planning.

ebola
 
^ I tend to dig my heels in and be a luddite, who updates his gadgets only when the old ones are worn out or are obsolete to the point where it hurts me. Might that be an example of such (arguably maladaptive) coping?

After all, for all of human history until recently, one could learn most technologies and count on using them, in only minimally changed forms, for the rest of one's life.
 
"If someone tells you that there will be sacrifices, run a mile" - Ayn Rand.
 
Sacrifice for one's self, the type Ebola is talking about, is different from sacrifice for others.
There is a fundamental difference. And sacrifice for others is vastly superior. In fact, it is necessary in order to live fully.

"Only a life lived for others is worth living." - Einstein

This is because self-sacrifice is actually partially a trick.

"Self-sacrifice is never entirely unselfish, for the giver never fails to receive. " - Dolores McGuire

When we are referring to self-sacrifice, it is not real sacrifice. It may seem like sacrifice (at least temporarily), but it is just part and parcel of our power to achieve anything - in this way it is like the materials necessary to cast a magic spell. It is our choice to use the materials in order to cast the spell, and do the magic.

“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn


In fact, self-sacrifice is not only what we use to attain what we want, but by using it, we strengthen our selves, and move toward happiness.

"Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." - Hellen Keller

“Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to.”
― Mitch Albom


In fact, it is intricately linked with love (in the case of self-sacrifice, it is linked with self-love).

“You can sacrifice and not love. But you cannot love and not sacrifice.”
― Kris Vallotton
 
lol, shit I was doing this as joke... I attended to reply to the comment about disliking verbose questioning of every little thing by doing just that.
 
How big does a trade-off have to be before it qualifies as a sacrifice? If I'm deciding whether to go cliff diving or hang gliding, and I go cliff diving because it's cheaper, does "cold water" count as a sacrifice incurred to save money? If I'm deciding whether to work in scientific research or quantitative finance, and quantitative finance pays 5x as much, but I stick with research because it's more interesting, what particular quality separates this choice from the previous?

These questions don't yield good answers because they look at the situation from an outsider's perspective. Sacrifice is a wholly subjective phenomenon: you stop pursuing something that you wanted. And buried within this usage is the implication and necessity of a craving to be sacrificed. It is the desire itself that makes a sacrifice. The only gain is a mental burden.

Everything must be sacrificed, so nothing may be sacrificed.

Of course that's just the Path, and while the gains realized in Buddhist practice may be wonderful, we have a new problem: not clinging is hard. Sitting takes dedication. Cultivating serenity is a rare art. People don't do these things enough. And without them, we lay practitioners are not much closer to an answer than we were before.

But what are we even after? Fulfillment is just another desire, balanced with the others. Achievement and fulfillment are not interchangeable: one of these depends on an outsider's look. So achievements must be worldly, and we must trade other worldly concerns for them.

Fulfillment is right there in a blade of grass.
 
Fulfillment is just another desire, balanced with the others. Achievement and fulfillment are not interchangeable: one of these depends on an outsider's look. So achievements must be worldly, and we must trade other worldly concerns for them.

Fulfillment is right there in a blade of grass.

Love this!<3
 
OK I read this thread title, and I thought it was going to be about religious/spiritual sacrifices?

I have friends who are Hindu and I know they make pujas or offerings to their various gods/goddesses. I have been to Hindu weddings that were not that religious but the groom and bride would make offerings or sacrifices to gods such as Agni the Vedic fire god who was on stage as a witness to their wedding.

I also saw people give sacrifices/pujas to Ganesha with flowers, or certain types of leaves.

See here for more information on this: http://www.sanskrit.org/www/Samskaras/wedding.html

I remember growing up Christian and reading parts of the Bible mainly the Old Testament where people would do sacrifices and I found it all very odd.
 
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^The Hindu belief on sacrifice is what pushed Gautama Buddha to question and reject Hinduism. For the Hindu, anything can be used in a sacrifice; for Ganesha a coconut could be offered. The food you eat be it either the plant used for a salad or the animal used for meat, is made part of a sacrifice by offering thanks, at-least, to the land and to your god for providing it. In Buddhism, to be alive in this world is part of the sacrifice; hence why a monk, originally at least, is not to ask for things, and that includes food: if you are to eat at noon then you will eat at noon, if you think you were not in the right place at the right time, then you were not.
 
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I believe in self-sacrifice for a higher purpose - the purpose is often seen as trivial, but I see it as high. Those are my beliefs and nothing you ever say will ever (ever) make me change my silly small mind - and you can quote me on that. I would die for those beliefs - and I hope to die for my beliefs some day when I am 97 years old.

I'm all for sacrifice, but sometimes the executioner doesn't play along:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyPFQKpRnd0
 
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