November 8 2025

VINEETO: Ha, so much better that you started to think for yourself and experientially explore for yourself.

SONYA: Yes, definitely. Of course I couldn’t grasp it before, I was just blindly trying to imitate Kuba.

VINEETO: Hi Sonya,

Naturally you did that, after all you had to first discover, and then question, that you did everything to stay “connected” to Kuba (see Actualism, Actualvineeto, Sonya, 3 July 2025)

Now, having discovered how delightful it is to stand on your own two feet and think for yourself, you might be more easily be able to experience intimacy with the fellow human being you share your life with.

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VINEETO: Perhaps not being burdened by too many “lofty thoughts” and “psychic adumbrations” in the first place gives you an advantage so you can concentrate on the “profound feelings” whenever they get in the way of enjoyment and appreciation.

SONYA: Hahah, Kuba likes to joke about how all that’s going on in my head are ponies and rainbows.

VINEETO: Ha, to each their own. You follow what you determine is adult sensibility and non-sophistication. Being foolish is the worst people can say about you when you play the game of naïvely playing together and being happy and harmless rather than engage is useless and harmful power-battles – so you know that you are not foolish. And the pioneer, which you are by living the third alternative, are bound not to rely on the judgement of their peers who follow the tried and failed route. (see images Actualism, Vineeto, List C, No. 4, 4.12.1998)

As I wrote to Chrono the other day –

Vineeto: By choosing to be naïvely happy and harmless you voluntarily withdraw from the battlefield (not as a pacifist or virtue-hunter) but as someone who prefers (i.e. values more) getting along in a beneficial way with your fellow human beings.

You are playing a different game, so to speak. Or, as Richard called it – playing for fun, not for keeps. (see Actualism, Actualvineeto, Chrono2, 6 November 2025).

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VINEETO: Indeed, being kind to yourself, down-to-earth and unsophisticated you can do one step at a time and with each success you become more confident that living as happy and harmless as possible is doable and fruitful – and what is more, you keep on enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive while doing it.

SONYA: Yes, this is really helpful to keep in mind. I appreciate how as a younger woman it is easier or more socially acceptable to be this way. However, I am intrigued sometimes when I get called “simple minded” because I’m happy at work or appreciating the vibrant green of my iced matcha latte. Yet, everyone benefits from me choosing to be this way. Being happy and harmless seems to not mix well with being a “mature adult”. I’m starting to see how being sophisticated is not in line with enjoy and appreciating. It definitely gives off an exclusive vibe, unattainable, separate.

VINEETO: Yes, it is the old ‘us’ vs ‘them’, and you are apparently in the minority because not many people dare to be naïve. It is your choice how you want to live your life, you reap the benefits and, as you observed, others benefit too from your felicitous and innocuous infectious vibes.

SONYA: Just to add, it also doesn’t mean that I am to be like an immature child either. I always liked the phrase “childlike wonder… with adult sensibilities”.

VINEETO: It is indeed very helpful to keep, and develop, your “adult sensibilities” together with the “childlike wonder”. Even in the often vicious battle of survival both amongst animals and humans, it is not the strongest which survives but the ‘fittest’.

Richard: The Phrase ‘Blind Nature’: As a matter of related interest: whilst blind nature is unintelligent it is not necessarily haphazard, arbitrary ... it, being cause-and-effect based, is pragmatic (as opposed to principled) in an adventitious way. The evolutionists’ phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ means those best fitted to the environment survive to propagate the species and does not necessarily mean survival of the most muscular (as it is sometimes taken to mean).

And because intelligence, which is the ability to think, reflect, compare, evaluate and implement considered action for beneficial reasons, has developed in the human animal it may very well be the best-fitted of all ... especially now that blind nature’s legacy can be safely dispensed with. (Richard, Abditorium, Human Condition, #blindnature)

And here is a longer explication of the same topic with listing all the various thought-processes an intelligent human can make use of –

Richard:... in evolutionary terms the long, slow evolution of intelligence has its roots in the most ‘on the ball’, the most shrewd and/or sharp and/or smart and/or cunning and/or wily and/or sly, and so on, outmanoeuvring the least ‘on the ball’ – the most dumb – and there is nothing abstract about that (the term ‘survival of the fittest’ does not mean the survival of the most muscular, as is often commonly misunderstood, but means those most fitted to the environment live to pass on their genes whilst the least fitted languish and die out).

And, even more prosaically, the long, slow evolution of intelligence is also the result of successfully negotiating what has been called the vicissitudes of life: not only obtaining such basic necessities as air, water, food, shelter and clothing (if the weather be inclement) in the face of fire, flood, famine, tempest, vulcanicity, pestilence, disease, and so on, but prospering whilst doing so because of tool-making, for instance, or the utilisation of fire, for another ... none of which are abstract.

Intelligence is the cognitive faculty of understanding and comprehending (as in intellect and sagacity) ... which means the cerebral ability to sensibly and thus judiciously think, remember, reflect, appraise, plan, and implement considered activity for beneficial purposes (and to be able to rationally convey reasoned information to other human beings so that coherent knowledge can accumulate around the world and to the next generations). Yet there is more to intelligence than the faculty of the human brain thinking with all its understanding (intellect) and comprehension (sagacity) as, along with the self-referential nature that being conscious implies (agency, or intervening action towards an end, implies self-interest), the brain’s cognisance of being a conscious body – thus being self-conscious or self-aware – in the world of other animals, vegetation, things, and events, is an essential prerequisite for intelligence to arise ... and, again, there is nothing abstract about being aware of being conscious.

Incidentally, abstract (conjectural) thought is but one of the many ways of thinking: for instance there is practical/ impractical thought; pragmatic/ imaginative thought; reasoned/ expressive thought; adventitious/ principled thought; prudential/ philosophical (or politic/ philosophic) thought; insightful/ intuitive thought; judicious/ injudicious thought; rational/ irrational thought; logical/ illogical thought; salubrious/ pathological thought, as well as illative thought (inferential, deductive, inductive thought) and reflective thought, contemplative, meditative, pensive thought) and so on.

As thought is broadly categorised as being perceptive thought (sensible thought), or realistic (extrinsic) thought, and imperceptive thought (intelligible thought), or autistic (intrinsic) thought, then I guess the latter could be broadly categorised as abstract thought. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 50, 3 November 2003)

Enjoy your childlike wonder with adult sensibilities.

Cheers Vineeto