Turning on the Axial Age

 Naively, humans see wealth, political and personal power, and lots of sex as indicators of divine favour. 

 

 The axial age was about noticing these things have a strong tendency to make you less happy, rather than more. Take care of the parts that were venal revolts of the scholars, but don't worry, I'll get there.

 For example, Epicurus noticed that good food, good friends, and a productive day is quite enough - better than alexander the great, for example. "Get out of my sun." Groping toward the hunter tribe lifestyle, without being aware of anthropological history. 

 The sun is clearly the most glorious thing, even if you don't know how truly immense the thing is. Humiliatingly dwarfs anything mortals can offer. 

 It is from this time that this cycle's substance vs. appearance dialectic comes from.
 E.g, would you rather appear to be wealthy and have unlimited access to all the sexy women, or to genuinely be immensely wealthy and sexually appeased? If, to achieve the hottest girl in town, everyone had to think you were a dirty, lonely loser, would you do it? 

 Wholesome wisdom is far more valuable than some petty, parochial wisdom about accumulating mere gold coins. Narcissism: I found the substance of wisdom is inherently opposed to the appearance of wisdom. Displaying greater wisdom makes it look like I'm ever more insane. Each submission to Logos grants me exponentially more personal power, and likewise makes me exponentially more unpopular. Persuasiveness is diametrically opposed to truth. Even if a realm were ruled by a philosopher-king, you wouldn't notice. He would never be able to assert his true beliefs; he would have to disguise himself as an absolutely regular king. 

 So, like, what if you tried to be a likeable person and went around making friends with other likeable folk? Imagine if both you and your neighbour both decided to live in such a way as to be good for your neighbours? Like, damn, why did it take thousands of years to think of that one?

 It was the axial agers who noticed man looks for excuses not to cooperate. Many refuse to deal with anyone who isn't part of their family. If you deliberately push all your pollution onto neighbouring families, it doesn't work out for you. They're doing the same thing to you, and you have more than one neighbour.
 Family is a crutch. It's disturbingly universal that folk don't like their families either, they're merely being manipulated by a Darwinian drive. If you take someone with identical behaviour but different blood, they won't like them - often, will dislike them especially - revealing that the only thing they truly appreciate is genetic overlap.
  The christian races, of course, can't even live up to this low bar. Especially notable in americans or brits. They especially hate anyone who shares their blood. 

 "The mad can speak wisdom, the ugly can be satisfied." E.g. hunchback of notre dame. These tropes date to the axial age.

 I mean, they can be, but it's not the way to bet. The jester is only more reliable than the king when he's the king of clown world. When everyone has gone crazy, they claim obvious truth sounds insane.
 A diamond in the rough, a lowborn aristocrat, isn't a diamond. They will never be properly classy, and that goes for their children as well. A topaz or amethyst in the rough, maybe.

 Because it is possible to enrich yourself at the expense of society, using an excess of examples, it is possible to convey the impression that all self-enrichment comes at the expense of society. 

 E.g., if you misuse the idea of [society] you can show that anyone paid for their work is taking more from [society] than they strictly must. Society gains more if it can get it for free, see? Same as any discrete entity. Then a rising tide lifts all boats...right? And the fact you just proved Communism gives nobody pause, apparently. If you didn't already see it: if the craftsman is not being paid for his crafts, then he's not part of society, and that's why he starves to death rather than rising along with [[[society]]].
 Hence vows of poverty and so on. Rich man, eyes of needles, etc.

 For the record, stolen wealth looks like vast wealth, but it is costing the owner more than it is worth. They're pretending to enjoy it; or they're not even pretending.

 

 Pre-axials thought the purpose of life was to accrue divine favour.

 Axials thought the purpose of life was to accrue divine favour.

 Existentialists think the purpose of life is to accrue divine favour, but they're atheists and think the divine doesn't exist, whoops.

 

 For the record, this genuinely is dumb. [Divine favour] is mommy's love, but after putting on hollywood makeup so it sounds all profound. "I'm not a toddler, I'm a big sophisticated city-dwelling grownup." Yeah, uh, nope.

 Gods have things. You want the things. [Accruing divine favour] is in fact accruing a wage from the heavens, because they have more stuff than you. To really get how dumb this truly is: whose favour do the gods want to accrue? How does mommy per se learn what to approve of and what not to approve of? Where do the heavens get the stuff you want them to give you? Mommy will approve of you self-aggrandizing, but why would the heavens pay you for, e.g, working out?
 Normal mortals cannot follow Socrates' dictum, because they already know they don't like the answers to the questions.

 

  Existentialists noticed that wealth, sex, health, beauty, and power feel good.
  The purpose of Socratic or Epicurean wisdom is, also, to feel good. All not merely selfish, but self-absorbed. A toddler, also, seeks to feel good. Nameless christoids claim that forgoing material rewards (and giving to the church...so they can go to hell, I suppose...gotta curse your pastor and heap coals on his head...) will have infinite returns later. Just stuff. But you get paid after you die.

 Surely, divine glory can't be nothing more and nothing less than...gud feelz?

 Existentialists noticed the rewards of axial age virtues are nothing more than the lotus eating the axials explicitly condemn.

 The only reason to be awake rather than dreaming is to make the waking world into a pleasant dream, because you wake up from dreams, ending them, while you can't wake up from real life. Long term, short term. Hence, a regular good dream that it happens you can't wake up from is axial utopia. The instinctive repulsion for [[fake]] dreams over [[real]] life is based on a contingent. Mere hysteresis. 

 The above is overly charitable. Most of the the time axials are all about piously cooperating with your neighbour even when they refuse to cooperate with you. "Return the cart," even if you're the only one doing it. Buncha nerds telling you that the highest moral principle is: never beat up the nerd. The best kind of warrior is: the pacifist.

  The problem is not genuinely hard. Mortals simply don't want to solve it, thus always find an excuse to avoid solving it. Anyone who notices the solution conscientiously keeps it to himself. I'll go ahead and betray the conspiracy and my fellows, such as they are. 

 

 The purpose is to uphold divine glory (insofar as you can) and to become someone who enjoys upholding divine glory, so all signs point to doing it as often and as intensely as possible. To make selfishness and [self-sacrifice for the greater good] the same thing. There's no need for a disharmony. If there's a tension between long and short term, learn to enjoy the short-term company of things with long-term benefits.

 Yes, it should feel good.
 Wholesomeness is called wholesome because it covers all 360 degrees.

 We can go further. The purpose is not to receive divine favour. The purpose is to create divine favour. To bask in the presence of the sacred, forge the sacred with your own hands.

 You can find out what counts as divine glory via curiosity. That is, ask. We do a little cooperating with cooperators.