Most men of modernity seem to believe that at the end of their journey as men some big prize awaits them, a treasure underneath the dragon’s lair, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, a damsel in distress to be saved from a vicious gang somewhere on the mid-western prairie. This image of the great reward which awaits the noble warrior has been imprinted on our collective psyche by the modern media, as most modern ideas being pushed by the invisible hand are. In the view of our ancient ancestors, who weren’t distracted with needless time-wasters and were much more focused and concentrated on life and through this focus they gained much greater and deeper wisdom than we ever could supply with our modern technology and education. The old shamans and great wise old-fathers of our ancient and traditional tribal communities would have laughed at the notion that any sort of reward awaited a brave man at the end of his days. The linear way in which we today see existence and life lead us to form religions, philosophies and cultural beliefs which focus on gaining something from a well lived life, like a good little boy who gets a piece of candy for scoring high on his homework. What we modern men fail to realize is that life and existence aren’t a path to be taken to the final destination, they are instead- a dance!

As I’ve written before on this blog, and many of you would already have known this, I write my articles not only from the Stoic, but from the Daoist perspective as well. I like and agree with a lot of things which are presumed under the term of Daoism. You can learn more on Daoism and it’s similarities with Stoicism and using them in combination to develop an even better personal philosophy in the following article “The Logos and The Dao”. One of the most well-known Daoist symbols is the Ying-Yang, a representation of the circle of life and death, birth and rebirth, but also a dance of polarities, good and evil, bitter and sweet, dark and light and so on. This symbol represents the dance of life in the form many of our ancient cultures understood it, from the dry deserts of North Africa, to the humid climate of Cambodia and to the east European steppe, our shamanic ancestor would have been very familiar with the concepts which the Ying-Yang represents. Many religions try and imagine a higher purpose to life, something metaphysical which would pull our miserable existence to a higher goal and thus redeem us. What they fail to realize is that we do not need redemption. We are a part of the dance of existence just like everything else. Just like Nietzsche said, the ultimate purpose of existence is simply aesthetic. The beauty of existing and partaking in this wonderful dance of light and darkness, of sensation and dullness, of good and bad moments. Of course, even though this is all just a game it doesn’t mean you should succeed in it. If you stop striving to be the best man you can be, and if you stop developing your skills and abilities and evolving as a person and as a man, the game for you is going to lose most of its charm. Playing the game of life and not dedicating yourself to achieving the most of what your potential allows is worse than not playing at all. This is a game that you were privileged to play, and in order to honor this privilege you need to play it to the best of your ability, while trying not to take it too seriously, and to go with the flow (another useful Daoist concept to understand).

Modern men often don’t realize this, they either take life too seriously and expect a reward at the end, spending countless hours working at their dead-end jobs and not developing in other areas of their life in which they may be able to develop more and to live a more fulfilled and joyful existence. They expect the reward at the end, be it they retirement, their new car, bigger house etc. they live their lives in order to obtain things, and not in order to enjoy the dance of existence, thus they always fall short of being fulfilled, and they die with countless regrets burdening their souls.

On the other hand, there are those Nihilistic men, who reason that just because life doesn’t have any inherent meaning — it isn’t worth it living it to your full potential. Of course, what they fail to realize is that the meaning of life arises from its meaningless, the meaninglessness is just a stage on which the dance of existence is performed, and each individual dance of an individual thing in existence gives it more and more meaning. When we play a video game, we don’t stop playing it because we realize that playing the game is meaningless since it doesn’t serve any higher purpose, we enjoy the game as a process, or a challenge or a narrative, and through us playing it, we give it a meaning, just like with life, the meaning of a video game is given to it by those who play it. Both of these groups of men fail to realize the ancient truth that was once widely known by our great ancestors. The modern world, with all of its distraction, endless entertainment and comfort brainwashes us into a belief that makes little to no existential sense. The media bombards us with entertainment and cheap thrills, forming in us the need to endlessly consume cultural products, without even producing anything for ourselves. They distract us from the greatest game ever made, the dance of existence. Live the life you have the best you could, and enjoy each step you take to the marvelous symphony of life.

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