How does one achieve a purposeful life?

You open yourself as wide as you can, for as long as you can, and help others open themselves as wide as they can, for as long as they can, in order to create as much as we can, for as long as will be.

Opennessence

The world’s oldest civilization was the Sumerians. They set up our world of subdivided units. Opennessence is as useful as the Sumerian’s sexigesmal (base 60) number system and its many derivatives: like the 360 degree circle, 60 minutes of time, 60 seconds of time, 60 minutes of latitude and longitude, 60 seconds of latitude and longitude, 12 months, 12 signs of the zodiac,12 AM hours, 12 PM hours, a ”dozen,” a gross (a dozen dozens), and the duodecimal system (base 12). This ever-powerful sexigesmal “60” system conveniently also used the duodecimal system — 60 is composed of five 12s. With 10 fingers, why would we ever use a system of base 12? Because 12 is more divisible than 10, so in some ways it is more useful and/or more user friendly. 12 can be divided cleanly by 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. 10 can only be divided cleanly by 1, 2, and 5. Opennessence is similarly a beautiful simplicity and full of usefulness. Its values/virtues are the universal virtues that have been deduced by humanity worldwide and throughout all of history. The Greeks said that the greatest virtues were “goodness, truth, and beauty.” I simplified them further to “Be good, be true, and be you.” Today, we handle and use them through the very similar/related ideas of equality, justice, and liberty. “All men are created equal…” “…and liberty and justice for all.” The human brain has two most basic elements - cognition and emotions. Yes, there are 100s of known areas and parts in the brain already. Some say we have a “right brain” and “left brain”? Maybe yes and maybe no. The ancient philosophers knew of reason and passion. The limbic system of the brain regulates our emotions and the prefrontal cortex and the frontal lobe self-regulate our rational thinking. These are the two elements of the brain that we have “known” through the whole of human history. Opennessence envelopes their capacities by way of the “open-heart” and the “open-mind” — “Be open-hearted and Be open-minded.” So add a little “pursuit of happiness” to all of this and your simple set of six virtues is complete. “Be open to happiness.” Happiness is what the ancient Greek’s called eudaemonia (good-spiritedness). Today, it is popular to call it human flourishing, or “flow,” or even just positive psychology.

OPEN-handed

These values/virtues were made simple so 5-year old kids can learn and understand them and use them for their entire lives. By “placing” them in the fingers, kids “have them with them” everywhere they go. The Sumerians counted their aforementioned dozen(s) by using their thumb to count the three sections on each of the other four fingers on that same hand. They counted their “amount of dozens” on the other hand’s five fingers - 1 dozen (12), 2 dozens (24), 36, 48, 60. Man has always used his body for counting and measurement. An inch is the width of thumb, a foot is …a foot, and a fathom is the distance between your fingertips when your arms are extended outward. If you cannot fathom [understand] something, it is because it is beyond the distance of your greatest reach. It is “beyond your reach” — the literal become mental. Therefore, you could not “experientially” understand (fathom) it because it is bigger than you are. This is a literal illustration of the idea “man is the measure of all things.” With these open-handed virtues, we can run our lives and our societies. The word “freedom” means the “domain of the free.” It is by definition, and more literally its etymology (its origins), a state of being totally unrestricted. It is etymologically the same as anarchy [also the situation where no one is an “arch” or over and/or in control you]. BUT, only when freedom is accompanied by at least some responsibility to “create good” — or better yet a common civic good — is it truly a representation of the original “classical liberty” the original thinkers understood it to mean. Freedom must be coupled with a “social responsibility” that will constrain some of its most dangerous urges. The values and/or guidance to “be good” and “be you” often counter-balance each other in very positive ways. And when these virtues need help in staying in balance with each other justice (or “be true”) will help them. The Greeks called truth veritas.

A-meri-CAN

We can do it. We can be virtuous and both work for the civic state and our own conscious self. The great Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith first wrote about the self-regulating “invisible hand” in his masterpiece book on morality — A Theory on Moral Sentiments. Smith was not blindly motivated by a purely freewheeling capitalism. Instead, he had a nuanced or subtle understanding of the other virtues in additional to individual self-interest — “be you.” He wrote extensively about the moral imperatives of all entities of a civic society. The preamble of the US Constitution twice mentions “the General Welfare.” These OPEN virtues are a chorus that harmonize into a sound civic state. Open inclusivity is the most efficient way to harness all of the resources of a civic state and a culture. There is no honor in winning a race where the winner merely disqualifies all of their other competitors. Sometimes societies just try to disqualify classes of people, especially ones from outside the majority’s “tribe.” Racism, sexism, and systems of exclusivity harm both those individuals and the state and society as a whole. Opennessence itself, and the open-handed virtues it implies, should both guide the state and its individuals. All stars are symmetrical and their light beams/rays are as well - 4 or 6 or 8 or 10 or 12. Somehow, we culturally and inaccurately gave stars 5 points as we projected our bodies and humanity into our view of the sky — our 5 fingers became the 5 points on a star. Once again, we twinkle back and forth between the 12 / 2 ( = 6-pointed star) and the 10 / 2 ( = 5-pointed star) systems. Opennssence is 12 reasons why the 6 open-handed virtues can help you to be A-meri-CAN.