The Perversion Of Life Starts With A Falsehood

It begins by adding a layer - the imposition of an object of self-interest - between one’s self and the simple and direct experience of the world. This clouds the immediate experience of life. Doing so creates an avenue of thought that increasingly objectifies one’s surrounding world. Eventually all things become destined for one’s own gratification.

There is a great difference between an utterly simple, uncluttered relationship to the world and one conditioned by profit motives and business considerations. Those who would seek to profit from the world as a 'resource' may undoubtedly experience the beauty of the world, but their real goal is to create personal gain, which modifies simple appreciation for the natural world and their place in it. This applies to all fields of human endeavour, even religion.

It is a distinct curiosity that those who most deride and abuse genuine religious experience are precisely the ones who insert between themselves and simple, straightforward reality, layer upon layer of illusions of self-interest and passionate attachments. These fabrications are all the more truthful to these people's minds because they seem to work, all because others of like minds have so structured societies to promote and reward these deceptions.

There is no greater tragedy in life than to be immersed in unreality.

- Ed Friedman