Test or Warning?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Our life is accompanied by such an important phenomenon as the "language of life circumstances." In the course of his life, a person finds himself in different circumstances that correspond to his moral state and the meaning of his desires or intentions. Getting into such circumstances can be viewed as a language through which a person is "informed" about the correctness or wrong of his path: confirming the correctness or pointing out mistakes. But who "communicates"? A believer can be told that these messages are made by God, a person with the views of an agnostic can be said that some unknowable force can interfere in the lives of people in this way … and some of them will not even deny it. The materialist may need a more complex explanation from a scientific standpoint, but this can be offered, although it is much more difficult. Each person, if desired, has the opportunity to make sure of the existence of such a language and interpret it in his own way, therefore the purpose of this article is not prove the presence of the language of life circumstances, and explain the difference between two fundamentally different types of messages transmitted to a person in it.

There are circumstances designed to teach a person new skills in the process of overcoming them, and there are circumstances designed to restrict a person from making a mistake or correct the direction of his development. The first we will call testsand the latter warnings … Outwardly, it is very difficult to distinguish them, because both of them (as it seems outwardly) restrict a person and prevent him from doing something directly. So what is the fundamental difference? Recently, I often hear this question and now I will express my subjective opinion on this matter. Once again: I will express your subjective opinion … It may not coincide with yours, not only because we have different life experiences, but also because the very language of life circumstances is purely individual and any phenomena for one person can mean something completely different for another.

Why does this question arise at all? The fact is that people in their lives often face difficulties, but some difficulties are overcome successfully, and some are not, bringing inconvenience or even suffering. This gives rise to the feeling that some life circumstances are called upon to educate and make a person stronger in something, and others - to stop him from committing a serious mistake, but at first it is not at all clear how to distinguish one from the other. Therefore, people often begin to persist and achieve their goal at any cost, thinking that they are on the right path, and then it turns out that they have wasted their energy. When should you continue to fight for your desires, and when, on the contrary, should you stop and rethink something?

So how can you tell them apart?

The answer is both simple and complex at the same time. Simple because it follows from the definition of the situation, but difficult because it is not a "magic button" that can be pressed and the answer will be immediately visible on the magic screen. In addition, knowing the correct answer will not immediately give you the ability to make the necessary distinctions on the fly. Don't believe me? Let's check.

Here it is, the correct answer. Trial - this is a circumstance, the meaning of the appearance of which in your life is to instill in you some useful quality necessary to achieve your goal, and warning - this is a circumstance, the meaning of the appearance of which in your life is to lead you away from your original goal. From these definitions it follows: if an obstacle that has arisen in front of you requires the education of a useful quality and it turns out that such a quality is necessary to achieve your goal, then this is a test, and if the obstacle in front of you indicates the error of your goal, then this is a warning. As you can see, everything is very simple in theory … but it is not so simple in practice.

To understand, you need to think. And, importantly, the very need for heightened thinking to tell the difference between a test and a warning is part of the very problem the person is facing. Making sense of a situation is a purposeful process that is an inevitable part of the situation itself. This key property is an important part of any social process … So, now you have come to terms with the fact that "thinking" is part of the solution to any problem. And sometimes you really just need to think about the problem, without even doing anything beyond that - and it will be solved. Having completed the lyrical digression in this paragraph, I get down to business.

How can the definition be interpreted?

So, you want something, but life's circumstances put an obstacle in front of you. Firstwhat to look at is your goal. Once an obstacle has arisen, it means that you may not see the target well. You need to fully and clearly formulate your goal, that is, what you want to achieve and, most importantly, why. Sometimes the goal is not one, but there is a vector of goals, in this case it is not important, but it is important to have a good idea of: WHAT you want and WHY … It turns out that it is far from easy to understand oneself and most modern people often do not know what they are doing and why, they deceive themselves and believe in this deception, not wanting to admit what they really want. Especially dangerous here is the so-called "rationalization" of their actions: when a person knows (or guesses) that he is doing stupidity, but very, very well substantiated his right to do it.

For example, some consumer really wants an iPhone, he really wants to buy it and have it, despite the fact that the market offers 3, 4 or even 10 times cheaper options for mobile devices. Knowing this, knowing that money can be spent more profitably, a person begins to come up with a rationalization of his desire: there are exclusive iOS applications (although there are analogues of all these "chips" on other smartphones, and much of this "kitchen" is not it is generally necessary in principle) that such a phone makes a person unique (this is no longer the case, since many have such a toy, which is why the originality is lost) … in general, you can find many reasons (I even heard such nonsense as “bull's eye on the back panel beautiful”), this does not change the essence - a person is simply deceiving himself, he wants a thing for another reason, but does not name it (there is a funny video (3, 5 minutes) on this topic: in English and Russian, but with obscenities). I won't name it either, guess yourself. Another example: a person needs a new car, otherwise the old one has already skated for 3 years, the warranty is over, “something is junk there” and “the engine has stopped pulling”, etc. The reason is different, think for yourself. No, I'm not at all saying that in rare cases the reason is really justified, but in most cases it is cheap rationalization and self-deception. So, come up with the rest of the examples of rationalization yourself - I guarantee that they are in your life.

Why did I talk about rationalization? Then, that this is one of the reasons why a person cannot correctly determine the purpose and motive of his own behavior and why he often does something that does not make reasonable sense. A person needs to understand his goal clearly and with complete confidence. If a person wants an iPhone because “all the girlfriends already have this” and “so I will look more like an elite girl”, then he should formulate the answer to the question “why?” In this way. If a person wants a new car instead of an old one because “I was worn out with this bucket of nails” or “so many minor breakdowns have already accumulated that it’s easier to sell and buy a new one”, then this is how the thought should be formulated.

Correctly explaining your own motive is a big problem, but if you don't, you won't understand the difference between testing and warning.

Next, let's say you learned to correctly see the goal and honestly explain your motivation to yourself. Second step - to determine the degree of coherence between your goal and the goal of your existence. Yes, this seems like a cruel joke, but this is not a joke, but a very real rule. The purpose of life of any person (briefly): the development of oneself and the world around. It is easier for a believer to understand a different interpretation (the meaning is the same): to be the viceroy of God on Earth. It will be easier for a materialist to express this thought through the objective necessity of matter in self-knowledge and through the fact that human progress on Earth is one of the steps towards this self-knowledge. Yes, I know that the materialist (and atheist) does not raise the question of the meaning of life (as well as the question of the meaning of a door or a samovar), but the very meaning of life, which he still has, does not change:).

Each person is free to determine the purpose of his life more specifically than I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Simply saying “develop yourself and the world around you” would be too abstract. The way this is expressed in each person is purely individual and closely tied to his creative and genetically determined potential, and then this is not the topic of this article.

So, no matter how a person defines his meaning in life, his goal may be consistent or may run counter to this meaning. In the first case, the problem on the way to the goal is likely to be a test, and in the second - a warning. But not necessarily, because there is more to think about.

Thirdwhat needs to be done is to determine the degree of consistency of your meaning of life with the meaning of the existence of the Universe or with the Highest Goal (call it as you like). The Highest Goal is not a specific concept, it is an idea that includes some infinitely distant goal for a person, which must be followed in order to stay in line with the harmonious development of the Universe as a whole. The phrase will be more understandable for a believer: follow God's providence. The materialist must understand this thought differently, namely, as the need to follow the objective laws of the development of matter in the process of its self-knowledge.

Further, everything is simple: if a person's goal is consistent with his meaning of life, and this meaning is consistent with the direction of the development of the Universe (consistent with God's Providence), then the obstacle that arises in front of a person is a test. If something does not agree with something, then this is a warning.

At the same time, one must understand that it is not so easy to determine the alignment of one's life with the general design of the Universe. As an example, you can point to one funny feature of people, which for some reason is not taken into account by them when trying to such an agreement. This feature is their answer to the question HOW … That is, HOW a person will achieve his goal - this is the most important part of any business. And be the goal extremely correct, be your life extremely righteous, if you achieve this good goal with the wrong methods, you instantly violate the harmony of the development of the Universe. And the harder you do it, the more painful the recoil will be. You can understand whether you are achieving your goal correctly only after you have found the correct answer to the question of whether the goal can justify the means, and if so, in what cases. The answer that is correct for you may surprise you, but I will not report my answer in this article. A person may have dozens of such mismatches in the most unexpected places, and he may not notice them. After all, you must admit that until I told you that the method of achieving the goal is also important, you probably did not think about it. Think … think as much as possible on your own, because now I am holding back much more than I am reporting, and I am doing this on purpose.

Why are tests and warnings needed?

The test is necessary so that in the process of overcoming it, a person receives a new ability or a new quality that will be necessary for him to achieve the goal. The simplest and primitive example: in order to become a scientist, in the overwhelming majority of cases, you need to "serve" 9-10 years at the university (bachelor, master, postgraduate student), this obstacle is a test, after passing which a person gains knowledge, experience, cognition methodology and a number of qualities, necessary for the scientist. You can't just take it and become a scientist, you need to go through some training and only after going through it to get the opportunity to engage in science. Without going through this school, you cannot cope with science. I do not argue that there are other ways, but they are not available to many and they still have their own tests. If a person achieves the formal status of a scientist differently (he buys a diploma, for example, and then makes his way "upstairs" with bribes), then all his activities will be completely unscientific and he will not receive any science in the end. Another simple primitive example: a person eats too much sweets, over time he begins to have health problems, sweets begin to bring physical pain in addition to pleasure, this pain intensifies, then physiological changes, diabetes, obesity can begin - all these are subsequent warnings about the fact that a person is clearly not doing what he should. Perhaps a hedonist, or an epicurean, will object to me that eating sweet is perfectly consistent with his meaning of life (for hedonists, the meaning of life is to have fun), but no matter how impeccable this rationale and the very position of Comrade Epicurus in the eyes of hedonists, this position directly contradicts universal meaning. Of course, here I mean the vulgar interpretations of the teachings of Epicurus, because if you develop the idea of receiving pleasure, then you can find this pleasure in persistent creative work, and not in buns with sugar.

Indirect signs

Unfortunately, not every person is able to perform even the first step - to correctly determine the goals and motives of their actions, what can we say about the meaning of life or about understanding the Highest Goal? Such people first need other criteria by which to distinguish a test from a warning. These criteria are individual, but I can assume (only assume) that the following indirect signs will almost reliably work for most people.

Prevention is most often painful and destructive. Any warning (depending on the measure of influence on the process of the person himself) grows smoothly. At first it is something harmless and simply unpleasant, then, if the person persists, the warning becomes more obvious and more painful, why else … and so on, until one of the two most likely events occurs: (1) the "blow of fate" will be so powerful that a person will finally stop (maybe even die), (2) a person will still achieve his goal, but he will greatly regret it later. Thus, a warning can be quickly recognized by the nature of its effect: this character is threatening and painful. But there is a subtlety. A test can also be painful if the purpose of the test is for the person to learn to overcome pain or to come to terms with the fact of the inevitable course of life. For example, sooner or later a person's older relatives, for example, parents, die. It hurts, but most likely this is not a warning, but an inevitability that needs to be understood, comprehended and drawn conclusions. For example, conclusions about the finiteness of one's own life with all the ensuing consequences.

The test, in most cases, can be quickly and reliably determined by the nature of its appearance. The test is not accompanied by any painful methods of limitation (except for exceptions like the one in the previous paragraph). The test usually does not restrict a person at all, but only makes his pursuit of a goal more difficult. Wherein (important), when a person moves towards the goal, overcoming limitations, he receives "help from above". That is, circumstances develop in such a way that time after time a person has a convenient chance to do what he has to do, even though it will be difficult for him. Challenges are much more difficult to manifest, so it's harder to give a good example. Well, let's say the birth of a child. A family can live poorly and poorly, but suddenly (for yourself you know what reasons), a woman begins to wait for a child. Should I have an abortion? No, don't, because this is a test: if you take responsibility for a child and decide that you will sacrifice your pleasures for the sake of his upbringing, then help from above will always come in one form or another … this is another question, whether a person has enough morality to recognize and to accept this help or not enough, but such a problem does not affect the meaning of the test. On the other hand, this same test can also be a warning: it makes no sense for this person to copulate for pleasure, bypassing the original goal of the process (in fact, this is generally a very interesting question - when is it possible and when it is not possible).

So, the test is always accompanied by repeated help from the outside world, and the limitation - with sticks in the wheels. If you learn how to correctly distinguish help from sticks (and this, you must admit, is much easier), then in most cases there will be no problems to distinguish a test from a warning.

Additional reflections

Trials and warnings, in general, can turn into one another and always go side by side with each other: the achievement of any goal always generates a trial, but a deviation from the Highest Goal always generates a warning. You need to be extremely attentive to the language of life circumstances in order to recognize the environmental factor in time and, if necessary, change your concept of life.

And one more important thought that needs to be borne in mind: the language of life circumstances is individual for each person, while it always exactly corresponds to the level of development of the person himself. That is, any person receives such messages in the language of life circumstances that he is able to correctly understand. Some people are given complex hints, others are simple, but everyone gets what he has the ability to figure out correctly. To each his own.

Just in case, I will repeat the same idea from a different angle. The things that can be done by some people may not necessarily be done by others. Therefore, there is no point in lamenting that "Vanya and Masha do this and rejoice, and when I do this, everything is bad." Vanya and Masha are at a different level of development and have other tasks before them. They can be both much more complicated and much simpler than yours, and almost always this does not concern you. Go your own way and only your own.