He seems to be the only truly happy person in the show and he gives a few soundbites and then never appears again in any detail.
Just wondering what kind of philosophy/lifestyle he is supposed to be endorsing.
He seems to be the only truly happy person in the show and he gives a few soundbites and then never appears again in any detail.
Just wondering what kind of philosophy/lifestyle he is supposed to be endorsing.
Pretty much. It’s kind of in the same vein as Buddhist philosophy. A major tenet of which is to end suffering you have to crush desire. Him talking about everything being meaningless is also related to buddhism.
A lot of people (but not all) who are very successful are also very unhappy. In fact that’s why they’re successful. If you’re satisfied with your life, why are you going to do the work it takes and go through all the struggles nessecary to be at the top? Elon Musk and Donald Trump don’t seem like they’re actually happy that much.
Desire is like hunger, it is unpleasant to encourage you to do something, in the case of hunger eat, and in the case of desire work or suffer to gain something.
So Cuddlywhiskers basically gave up wanting anything, fame, success, even trying to help people.
Just because a character says something doesn’t mean it’s true. If Nadia the whale died recently it means he only recently started living in the yurt. Maybe he is happy, maybe he’ll get bored in a week and go back to doing things. I’m not sure the showrunners are saying “Cuddlywhiskers is right and we should all live that way” That’s not how the characters end up or how the writers all live.
One thing I’ve heard about nirvana/enlightenment, a concept in Buddhism that basically means completely crushing desire and being content, is "Enlightenment is the closest thing to being dead while still being alive.
I like a lot of Buddhist philosophy and find it useful, but I think it’s wrong in thinking all suffering is bad. You wanna be free of pain? Ok I guess, but some of the best meals of my life have been when I was really hungry.
Maybe I want to suffer.
But I also think it’s true that a lot of people make themselves dissatisfied chasing things. Comparison is the death of joy.
You probably live better than a lot of kings in history. Running water in your home? AC? Nearly every song ever written on demand?
Alexander the Great never had any of that.
People were happy 10,000 years ago before having a Lamborghini or winning an Oscar or traveling the world were even possible. For anyone.
Imo, if you can’t be happy sitting around a fire with good friends and a full stomach, you’re doing it wrong.