My thought:

In life, we always want to feel that our power, influence, and strength is ASCENDING. It brings us great dismay when we feel our power is descending. 

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For example, when we think about money — it isn’t about how much money you ultimately got. It is more about income flow (the stream of money constantly entering your bank account), the feeling that your earning potential is increasing, and the feeling that your bank account is becoming more swollen. We want to see upwards growth — this is the feeling of augmenting strength. 

Also for myself, I track my personal growth via my strength gains. I track my “PR” (personal records) at the gym in my deadlift, squat, and bench press. When I feel that I’m on the road to increasing my ultimate strength and lifts, I’m happy. When I look at myself in the mirror and I see my body and muscles getting bigger, I feel happy. But once again — it isn’t about objective strength, or ultimate strength or numbers. It is about the feeling of growth, the feeling of increasing power.

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Don’t allow your will to be obstructed

I think this is the big thing:

The worst anger is when we feel that our will is being obstructed by something. 

Then perhaps anger is like fire and ammunition— anger gives us ADDITIONAL strength, power, and adrenaline to overcome obstacles, enemies, or those who get in our way, or who we feel is obstructing us. Thus perhaps the biological thing is to channel your anger to overcome whatever is obstructing your will. Perhaps this is how warriors, fighters, and soldiers fight — by channeling a combination of desire to become dominant, part fear (to focus them), and also part anger that their opponent is getting in their way. 

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The goal

Then it seems that the goal of life is to never stop augmenting our strength, power, and influence in the world. It is all about continual growth and progression.

What does a tree want? A tree wants to grow infinitely tall, and to maximally extract resources from the earth — burrowing her roots deeper, and gathering more nutrition from the sky. 

What do we as individuals desire? We desire to feel as if we’re always ascending and becoming more, and becoming stronger. Perhaps this desire is a good one. This is the fuel which keeps us empowered and motivated in life to keep on going!

How many resources can you consume, or should you consume?

Now this is the tricky thing — this notion of “sustainability”. We humans consume lots of resources. 

Let us talk about ourselves as individuals, not of “humanity” as an abstract whole.

First question: how much resources do we need as individuals?

For myself, I of course desire the maximally optimal conditions for my own individual thriving. This means, being self employed (not having to work a 9-5), having complete freedom over the cadence and flow of my day, having a fast WiFi connection (to upload), a clean and Uber-convenient apartment (minimal cleaning and maintenance), no car, no responsibilities, a good powerlifting gym close by, lots of natural light, coffee and water on tap, and meat on tap (crockpot). Besides this, I don’t need too much. 

For my tools, digital camera (RICOH GR III), vlogging camera (Lumix G9), laptop (MacBook Pro), tablet (iPad Pro). 

When do I feel my personal power is ascending?

I feel my personal power is ascending when I’m creating more. When I’m making more. When I’m sharing more.

Also the feeling that I’m discovering deeper truths about art, life, photography. This is great, because augmenting my personal power is 100% in my grasp — my feeling of augmented power comes from my sense of artistic creation and productivity.