Hypochondriacs are anxious about their health. They make ‘illness mountains’ out of ‘wellness molehills’. However, we all make mountains out of molehills for issues in life that bother us personally . We are all somewhat obsessed about something, and so the hypochondriac’s cure really applies to us all.
Obsessions, both trivial and ominous, overtake the mind when emotion, or more precisely fear, pushes thought to irrational extremes. Nudging thought back toward the golden mean is difficult, especially when in the throws of emotion. The mind needs a model of moderation for guidance.
Some who judge other people’s immoderation are actually using the battle they have with their own immoderation as a reference. Many of these folks use various religious ideals of moderation as a reference for this ‘battle’. Alas, no universal standard of moderation is possible. Moderation is utterly relative, i.e., moderation for one person is often immoderate for another, and vice versa. Moderation is relative to one’s individual nature—custom made to fit their battlefield alone.
The ‘non-locality’ exemplified in Schrödinger’s cat (google [Schrödinger’s cat – wiki]) makes a interesting model of moderation, if one accepts the principle of mysterious sameness, as chapter 56 calls it. Reality isn’t this or that; it is both this and that. Alas, we are neurologically set up to experience reality as polar contrasts — ying vs. yang, good vs. bad, life vs. death, etc. You could say biology hoodwinks all living beings into seeing differences much more acutely than similarities. Perceiving difference serves survival by arousing interaction with the environment. This works well in the wild; less so in civilized circumstances.
Seeing the mysterious sameness inherent in Schrödinger’s cat, and other paradoxes, allows me to peek through and see reality as a whole. The more I can feel that both sides share the same coin, the less any obsession can get a toehold in my mind. The paradox we think we see is an artifact of our linear dipolar thinking. Dipolar perception enhances, if not causes, obsession. Once you get the hang of it, Correlations (p.565) helps diffuse dipolar thinking.