Ground of Becoming

Aristotle thought happiness is the foundation of existence. Since then, others have worried that maybe survival is closer to their own more suffering experience. I don't exactly disagree with Aristotle, or with those on the more suffering side of our species. But, where these two come together, in my experience, is within the context of health v pathology. To me, happiness is the Yang-face of health's Yin-face, so it is these two together co-arising the foundation of ego's regenerative existence, and degenerative subclimate pathologies. In learning happy health, life lived ever more fully, gracefully, positive karmically, as in gaming, the stress of stretching one's offensive capacities is reduced by the belief that we have a perfect defense. We know there are no WinLose strategic players; only WinWin intent. Because we know through co-empathic experience and the evidence of Earth's evolution, that WinWin always optimizes happy-health, while WinLose suboptimizes opportunities for developing further co-empathic learning capacities. So too, defensive concerns soften and languish by constant feedback that we have a flawless happy-health offensive strategy for further WinWin learning. In the real world there is no more a perfectly conservative defense against unhealthy suffering than there is a perfectly evolving offense toward happy health. In learning healthier living, cognitive-affective dissonance is our defense against polypathic co-empathy, our oppositional resistance. Empathic happy-health psychology, a deep awareness of our ecopolitical equivalence, empowers Basic Attendance (0)-sum balance, our regenerative offensive-centered listening position for learning effectively, balancing nurture with challenge, by noticing our own cognitive-affective defenses, without which we would have no radical sense of autonomous identity, no monoculturing monotheistic monochromatic severed ego. So too, without our primal co-empathic relationship with our mentoring environment, we could have no interdependent. ecological happy-health identities. And yet, our ego-patriotic conserving defense of happiness remains a secondary form in relation to our RightBrain matriotic nurturance function of a healthy regenerative climate, learning atmosphere, ecological integrity of ego-resilient polypaths. LeftBrain Aristotle thought happiness is the foundation of existence, because his RightBrain noticed health as his ground of becoming.