@poligraf That hasn't been my experience in the least. In fact, quite the opposite. There is an unrivaled beauty in life that comes from weaving your own tapestry instead of allowing others to dictate a pattern to you.
dictating : that would depend on whether one approaches such statements as potentially descriptive of the nature of things, and thus as pointers, or as prescriptive, and thus as dictates…
my own experience has taught me, and actually still does, that « weaving one's own tapestry » can lead to such a place, and thus i don't see such warnings as dictates, but as helpful pointers, reminders, and/or validations of things i've recognized on my own… unrivaled beauty indeed…
The fundamental values of a true community are elsewhere: in love, poetry, disinterested thought, the free use of the imagination, the pursuit of non-utilitarian activities, the production of non-profitmaking goods, the employment of non-consumable wealth - here are the sustaining values of a living culture.
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.