TL;DR: I am motivated to provide resources for people to evolve themselves at their core.
I’m an idealist. I’ve always thought things should be the best they can.
I enjoy thinking about society at a high level, and about life in general and what it means. I like taking broad, complex topics and distilling them into forms I can understand.
It has taken me a long time to find my place in life because I am stubborn with what I will spend my time on. I have always wanted to nudge humanity along its evolutionary path, but wasn’t sure how.
From what I can tell, humans and other living things are spiritual beings temporarily operating bodies and minds in order to create. We create both of our inner, subjective world by perceiving and understanding and our outer, objective world simultaneously by acting. We are the connection between these two worlds. I think this present-moment action of creation is the purpose of existing.
I think there is great promise in humans, but we experience many growing pains for all our ambition. Often times, we seem to forget exactly what we are and why we’re here. In using tools to greater ourselves, we become distracted by those very tools and they become the object of pursuit.
Our medical system cares more to profit from sickness than prevent it, our political system serves itself rather that its people, and our socio-economic fabric appears to be limiting us rather than liberating us.
I’ve realized that societies go through ebbs and flows of greatness over decades and centuries, and I think right now we are going through a period of relative ignorance. History repeats itself because we forget it.
I think in order for humanity to continue evolving, we need to be reminded constantly why we are here and what we should be doing. We become what we consume on all levels, from food to information.
I have learned over time that the gravity of misinformation we are fed is staggering when it comes to the basic concept of how to live in accordance with nature, and how to live a happy and healthy life.
Over time I have met enough people like me that we formed a group and talked about our lives every week. We all had practices we had honed over the years to move up, against the river of influence to mediocrity our society seems to have chosen.
We decided to bring these practices together into one resource for ourselves and others to remind us not to just drone on through life, but to triumph over it. To aim high.
In UpRiver, I would like to focus on learning how to take control of my body and mind and to direct them towards a development of my spirit – my core being. I would then like to lower the barrier to entry for anyone to achieve this pursuit through releasing high quality information and tools to leverage it. I don’t think this is easy, but it is worthwhile.
I only control my own decisions. If I take my health and success into my own hands, the impact that ripples through society affects businesses, governments, and the social fabric from the ground up. Knowing this provides me a level of peace I can’t find anywhere else.
My hope is that I find a community that shares my values, and the power of our network helps push humanity further along.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”
-Nietzsche
