Dr. Sadler:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/22133740
Notes – First 60 min:
Living in accordance with nature means partnering. Many people will partner and Zeno wrote about a time of free love. In accordance with nature is a catchphrase because it doesn’t tell you how to do it. What should we put at the top of the list?
Valuable erotic love is a person worthy of friendship. To live by nature. To partner and mate. Mutual love of each partner needs to be respected. Financial decisions are important too and many people are looking for a committed partnership beyond sexuality and gender.
Systems of appearances like books and movies can also be expanded into the realm of appearances. We can’t retreat from these appearances but we can try to get them right. The principle of charity should be applied as appearances are tested. When you desire for someone to have a certain reaction to you, you are giving them power over you. Be aware of control. What you can and can’t control and who you give this control to.
Knowing when to get angry and bring in a mediating party in a frustrating situation can stop a person from thinking they are stoic enough. The four cardinal virtues can be used to evaluate your partner realistically. Wisdom, justice, temperance and courage. If incompatibility exists at the beginning, it will persist as a person quick to anger will not do well with another who lives a quite and peaceful life. Developing solitude within your life and interacting with someone who has done the same can be a match.
Additional Thoughts:
- I had the longest friend in my life kill himself at the end of July. He was a sensitive and authentic man. Too authentic in many ways to a world gone mad with money. He never had an erotic love interest. Every time we talked he was still single. So I wonder if he was out of accordance with nature. Did my friend live as an outsider? I tend to think he did.
- Love in an erotic way certainly shows natural love. Committed partnerships in a consumer capitalist culture do require financial decisions to be mutually agreed upon like sex.
- An audience member brought up that we can’t control history and Dr. Sadler illustrated how that is true even for oneself. That we can’t control our own history. Once it’s set, we can’t unwind the way it’s gone.