Living in the world - not on it -

Living in this World

“Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.” ― John Muir Reading what I get out of what naturalist John Muir wrote, I sense we have all been “on the world not in it.”

Living on the world would cause us to be void of those incredible human traits that make us unique and caring about each other. Living like someone whose mere existence on this world would resemble an empty form of humanity, filled with the lack of empathy, guilt, remorse, shame or compassion. In other words, this kind of person is a parasite in nature’s own definition. Certainly, living a life like that is and can be deceitful, immorally dreary and likely such a persona would reflect someone who is unhappy or unfulfilled in his or her personal life. Unconsciously or consciously, one might refer to someone with those types of traits as a sociopath and complete the list of lacking substance or morals making them void of a conscience as well as some well hidden criminal traits.

Otherwise known as pretenders, they are great at faking caring for others and use their ‘moral outrage’ as a tool to play victim in various situations. They use the world around them as a tool or scam to give off false impressions and pretending to be a caring or thoughtful person. Sadly, there is little reality in their lives as they focus on doing and saying things mere for the show of it and not sincere at all. Living in the world would include character traits or personalities of all those things a sociopath possesses. There would be empathy, sorrow, shame or guilt and this would motivate them to become better and more empathetic rather than a scammer or ‘player’ in most cases.

Basically, sociopaths are the chameleons of our society and prey on others to co-exist amongst us so they can profit from us, rather than share or care for others. They are the kind of people who have no conscience and should not be trusted. After all, they would only pretend or act as if nothing had happened if challenged when something went wrong and find an opportunity to play a mind game in some manner or another. They are good at reversing the guilt factor as they themselves do not feel any guilt.

Living in the world requires you care and fear about others. Your mind focuses on what others think and how you act or treat them as well as how they treat you without any per-determined conditions or arrangements. A sociopath, on the other hand, manipulates these types of conditions or engagement to further impact their ability to ‘con’ others further than they already have. Their limit of fear is almost zero and their ability to scheme or work against others is higher than the average person. Living within the world would require a compulsion to tell the truth, avoid deception and manipulating others.

Sharing and caring requires positive behaviors that includes no cheating and having a strong moral fidelity to stand by others rather than cheat or sin you way around them. While a sociopath takes others for granted and refuse to take responsibility for their own actions, a person living within the world or society, learns to give rather than take or steal, to love and not fake or hate, and to praise and help rather than threaten, ruin someone’s reputation or smear a name.

Living in the world means you have to think of others and creating an agenda that is beneficial to many rather than only yourself.

It means to be considerate and going the extra length to please someone rather than taking advantage of someone you have targeted especially in their time of need or grief.

Living with the world and not on the world means thinking of others rather than self and giving a damn about their feelings more so than your own. You would experience guilt, pain, regret and other feelings that a sociopaths lacks. Therefore the circumstances are such where you can sincerely say you are sorry when someone loses someone dear to them and mean it rather than simply saying you are sorry for your own loss or opportunity of the event.

Thus the major difference is in the actions of self and how they affect those around you as you determine how the hurt has affected others rather than your own life. Being part of a social circle or family brings true feelings of regret and other emotions without any emotional discounts, where the fake regret of a situation around him or her affected their own lives or damage to themselves.

Finally, living within a social circle may bring stability, togetherness, companionship or loving someone and having personal relationships that include elements of trust and keeping promises. Your focus is on being reliable and dependable rather than betraying or failing the others again and again.

Whenever one lives on the world, one can ill afford to remain in one place too long before exposed and therefore moving around and wandering all over the world is required to find new victims and play their games over and over as such a pattern is likely to exist if you live on the world and not in it.