December 2016 – EbbSpark

The challenge of community

Lately I’ve noticed various articles decrying the loss of community, be that the difficulties encountered by local businesses or the stripping away of local support systems and interconnections. It seems in many ways the traditional functions of community and local relationships are fading and being commodified into services or products. That may be slightly cynical, but it does seem distrust and the perceived security of the client relationship are replacing natural cooperation between people.

When I think about what community used to be, it seems it was a fairly static collection of people with a network of established relationships that people maintained and understood. It seems there was a hierarchy of sorts and also social convention that shaped interactions, creating trust. Much of life seemed mediated through community – celebration, the passing of time, social meaning, the processes of change.

Modern life seems to have stripped much of that back through social mobility, rising populations, remote and abstract economic activity, the changing structures of family and other social relationships, and the growth of technology. Much of the limitations and hierarchy seems to have gone, creating a slightly unnerving level of freedom but also the conditions for greater equality.

In our predominantly economic reality, it seems many of the old functions are re-emerging as business opportunities offering lifestyle, entertainment, maintenance, care, or security as services where I imagine much of that used to exist within the parameters of household, neighbourhood and community life. Even modern services such as counselling seem to replace natural social relationships and meaning, for example through the stability and honesty of social life.

Overall the sense of community seems to have drifted into a more isolated, transactional, problem-solving approach to modern life. Maybe it’s the lack of time, or the application of economic principles that outsource certain functions for efficiency, I’m not sure. But in essence it seems that human connections are disappearing and being replaced by economic ones.

Of course it’s harder to trust when community is now a large, changeable mix of people and social conventions are breaking down or undefined. And there are natural challenges to communication when so many aspects of life have changed so completely – that takes time, and time is something we don’t have in many ways.

As with everything, I’m not aiming to criticise so much as delineate what seems to be happening. Hopefully we can engage with these processes and begin to more consciously create and maintain these structures, rather than looking on local community as simply something that adds value to our real estate and quality of life. We are still groups of people living in places, and it would be nice if that human reality could be revived.

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Mental health relative to modern times

This is an interesting issue and one I want to do justice, so bear with me if you will.

It’s probably clear from topics I’ve chosen to write about and the way I do so that I don’t look at life “normally”. It’s been suggested I could write more punchily, give some slick solutions, engage more with the world of social media to grab people’s attention. But there are reasons I don’t, and essentially those reasons revolve around how I see life and human existence.

Posts about the Value of each human being, Happiness in modern life and Age, Image & Self Worth probably demonstrate that I look at life quite deeply, quite philosophically. Things I’ve written about Values and the economic and Trying to understand our times hint at how I see Western society as struggling and essentially needing change.

With this post, I want to look more at the mind as the part of us that seeks to make sense of reality and our position within it.

As I wrote in Spirituality since the 80s modern society essentially strips meaning out of life, yet we still exist within that as intelligent beings. We must look at the short-sightedness of economic activity and its environmental impacts; we must witness the dismissive attitudes towards so many human beings who are essentially no different from us; we must adopt a way of life – or resist one – that reduces our existence to financial transactions, self-branding, calculated and false human relationships, the unchecked amorality of technological progress.

That’s clearly a negative assessment of life, although it’s also pretty accurate, and I’m well aware of the wonderful opportunities modern realities offer us as well. As I’ve said in Media immediacy, I do see cause for hope through greater engagement with the challenges we face. As may be clear within Communication and the process of change, “Towards a New World View” and “Essays” by Emerson I have deep faith and interest in the value of each human life and our capacity to understand, to love, to overcome.

To me, we live in strange times where a kind of fatalistic and antagonistic materialism sets us against ourselves and others in a struggle to “win” at life. We have tools at our disposal now whereby we can connect with others as never before and master the material world in ever-new and ingenious ways. But we also struggle to stay human, to relate to others authentically, to listen and care, to take the time to fully understand in all our rush for progress. I’m sure we can. I’m sure we can pull back from the inertia of that and bring our humanity to bear more clearly. I’m sure we can find a way to manage things better and create more beautiful realities.

Maybe this is realism, maybe it’s idealism, or we could label it as depression but it seems a “sign of the times” and I believe there are deeply real, important messages nestled within it all – within how the human being responds to modern society and how, for some people, what they see and what it means can seem pretty unbearable.

The reason I’m linking here to most of what’s come before is that this view of life is at the core of what I’m trying to do here. I’m not giving you my answers, because they don’t really matter. I’m giving my questions, my thoughts on what I see, and also my belief that everyone can think for themselves and should.

We aren’t really encouraged to question what’s going on, and it’s getting pretty difficult to understand with all the distractions and pressures of today, but I suspect it may be worth our while.

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Attitudes to elder members of society

This may be a strange confession, but I often find myself feeling slightly envious of older people.

When I see an older couple dressed to take in a show, the man carefully tripping by his lady’s side and proudly holding her arm. Or an older gentleman greeting someone with a subtle nod or gesture. Sometimes in a supermarket when the chivalry extends to modern interactions with shopping trolleys and lane etiquette. Often when I see someone aging well – wearing beautiful shades for their colouring, somehow expressing both the grace of age and the playfulness of their youth in how they style themselves, or when the twinkle of someone’s eye lets you know they know far more than you’d imagine and that an intriguing personality resides within.

In part, I think it’s how they’ve time travelled from a different era. Elder generations have lived through so many different realities with style and character, and that’s often quite beautiful. It’s also connected to what I was trying to say with Age, Image & Self Worth – that there’s more to human nature than meets the eye. Overall though I just love self-expression and truth, so the blending of honest aging with the human values more evident in how we used to live was probably always going to be a winning combination.

Then I see elderly people seeming anxious in public, as if they feel alone and full of worries and uncertain who to trust or where to turn. Which I can well imagine – the pace of life and the way people relate has changed so much in their lifetime, and the tone of the news must seem frightening to those already feeling isolated and less able.

There also often seems a tone of condescension in how these people are spoken to, which concerns me at times as to me it’s more an attitude of respect or reverence that seems due. OK they might not understand about iPhones or Twitter, but technology is more an overlay of human activity not a reason to see someone as irrelevant or less human. They may talk more slowly, more deliberately, and look at life with different eyes – focussing on smaller realities, subtleties, concerns – but that may be how they see things.

Of course, there’s a communication challenge – younger generations live at a new pace and communicate differently apparently; modern life is demanding and incessant, so finding the time needed to connect across these boundaries is hard; and we don’t seem to live in a culture that prizes the art of conversation but rather the efficacy of whatever it is we are doing.

I would just love for society to genuinely value all aspects of life and give a real voice to that without falling back on stereotypes that discount the subtle strengths different generations offer.

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Animals in human society

While I’m not writing anything really seasonal this year, it seems a reasonable opportunity to think about the position of animals within our society – not in a dietary way, but looking at the roles we give them, what they offer us, and the relationships we create.

It’s fascinating in a way how different cultures and societies form different connections with animals – traditional or sacred relationships, closer or more remote bonds. We could say in the West it boils down to “are you a dog person or a cat person”; the persistent cultural stereotypes over mice, foxes, sheep, donkeys; or the instinctive reverence and mystery of the whale, the elephant, the lion.

Clearly many animals represent or embody various qualities and traits – the majesty and power of the horse; the innocence and hope of the lamb; the playful wisdom of the dolphin. I guess that’s also true of nature more broadly, but it seems many people are drawn to certain animals and the qualities they express.

More practically, it seems there’s always been a history of assigning certain roles and tasks to different animals; for example transportation, scientific discovery, medical assistance, land management and agriculture, or as sheer power in manual labour. I wonder at times at the extent to which modern society is in fact built upon the assistance afforded us by the animal kingdom, as it seems they played a part in many historical breakthroughs and phenomena.

Then there’s the more recent “employment” of animals as domestic companions, in a way more as a lifestyle choice and for social or emotional support. Dogs that encourage us to walk in nature more and initiate countless social encounters with strangers. Cats offering us their independent presence, their grace and playfulness. Birds, rabbits, iguanas or other creatures that fascinate, amuse and soothe us. Plus the roles these domestic creatures cast us in to take proper care of their needs, to train them to fit our lifestyle and within society at large, to understand them better. It seems in all this that animals are still woven closely into human living.

This post seems to have less of a point than most so far, but it’s hard to grasp what this human/animal bond is – there’s clearly an ongoing connection as our existences are so intertwined, but we often seem largely dismissive or sentimental over their significance. To me, there’s a mystery to it all and maybe that’s part of the reason we struggle to understand our responsibilities and entitlements when it comes to how we treat them.

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“Essays” by Emerson

I wasn’t sure where to begin with Emerson because he explored so many rich and powerful thoughts. In the end I’ve chosen a topic I’ve had many conversations about lately and one that also crops up in relation to modern life: Friendship.

A recent study into perceptions of friendships highlighted some of the challenges of social media and recognising reciprocity. To this I would add the greater mobility of our lives now – moving to new places, changing jobs more frequently, the overwhelm of things calling for our attention, and the practical inability to manage and maintain so many demands and friendships.

It’s an area of life that seems to have evolved of its own devices – life’s changed at a dramatic pace and existing notions of social etiquette seem to have been contorted to fit new realities. Work friendships are often circumstantial and indeed in any situation we find ourselves it is often expedient to create the illusion of friendship to smooth our experiences. There’s almost an unspoken code that we all know it’s an act.

Maybe that’s “modern life”, but to me such an instrumental approach seem a wasted opportunity to get to know another human being and quite a strange social reality. As with everything, there’s a balance, and the pace of life now may “demand” an economising of social connection in order to get things done, but the way Emerson spoke of Friendship resonates with me more strongly:

“Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen.”

“Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man. Let us not have this childish luxury in our regards, but the austerest worth; let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foundations.”

“Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside.”

There’s a lot more to the Essay but, to me, it’s essentially describing a more fundamental perspective of knowing who you are and relating that to the mystery of others. Emerson seems to have been looking to what it means to be truly human, which seems an interesting challenge we are now facing.

I know that modern life and professional connections in particular don’t really lend themselves to that level of connection, but it would be nice overall if the social fabric of our times was a little more honest and authentic.

Reference: ‘Friendship’ in “Essays” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, Bungay, Suffolk) originally published in 1841. A copy of this essay is available online at www.emersoncentral.com/friendship.htm.

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Value of each human being

Following Age, Image & Self Worth, it seems timely to offer my general philosophy around humanity.

Fundamentally, in my eyes every single human being has equal worth for who they are, the path they are walking, and their views of all that. That may sound obvious or trite, but I find it hard to accept another view of existence. How can we judge our experience to be more important than another’s? Obviously we can, our society and culture set us against one another in this way fairly constantly in some kind of Darwinian contest. But essentially I’m not sure how we rationalise making our own concerns more pressing than those of everyone else.

Clearly I am idealistic – I’m arguing for absolute equality based on the philosophical premise that we are all ‘one human’ and therefore worth the same. I know realistically some people are “worth” more – practically-speaking, that their lifestyle costs more to maintain and they’re in the socio-economic position to do so. Some are born with advantages while others are not, but I would tend to assert that having good fortune bears with it a responsibility to address the causes at the root of the inequalities.

What I’m struggling with is that our society seems based on some people always being worth more than others. Democratically we have more parity, but it could be argued education and lived reality don’t leave us on an equal footing there either. The premise of inequality seems woven through society – how we’re different, subtle judgements, which inconsistencies to conveniently ignore.

At root, it seems to come down to economics – opportunity, earning power, socioeconomic structures – which seems inherently based on inequality. So maybe all the laudable efforts to remove these barriers are ultimately unlikely to succeed while the system remains as it is.

Our society seems to be this race for self – get what you can, make yourself secure materially and socially, succeed in the eyes of others. But it really seems to me that we are all the same, and that this race is an illusion of sorts. Who are we beating? How can we judge others and make ourselves better? What if we had to look in the eyes all the people actually oppressed by the lifestyles we lead?

I’ve tried to rewrite this many times, as I’d intended to write a human-centred post but it kept drifting into something more system-based. I see a truth in it though. I see the faces of people I’ve met who stand firmly on the less-advantaged side, and I see that they are no different and deserve much better.

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Age, Image & Self Worth

It seems in Western culture that people are valued less and criticised more as they age, and purely on superficial factors – often on standards of beauty associated with attributes of youth. We do not seem to value so much the wisdom, experience and understanding that living offers us or the natural human face of that process.

I understand in a way that our culture praises what can be described as youth/beauty. I write it that way because it seems that youth ‘has’ beauty, which is then emulated and passed off as beauty itself. But what is beauty? Youth isn’t beauty, but youth often has what we judge as beauty. Maybe it’s the life force, the innocence, the relationship of inner qualities meeting outer forms, an honesty in that. I don’t know. I’m pondering. But youth is not beauty, and believing it is creates a mask out of youth that makes the truth hard to grasp.

Essentially, what I am saying is that I feel our society is mistaken in confusing youth with beauty and peddling that to us all. I don’t feel that fighting the process of aging in order to maintain a youthful figure or hair colour should be the main path to beauty and it seems quite a damaging attitude for a society to adhere to. By all means, pursue those things out of regard for health or general aesthetics but in and of themselves they do not make a person beautiful or more worthwhile.

Obviously an aside could be taken here regarding the economic drivers behind these attitudes or how beauty in a way becomes a preserve of those with funds to wage this battle and therefore another source of social division. But I’ll leave it there.

For me, beauty is the continuance of the truthful relationship of the inner and the outer that I stumbled on above: as we age we understand how we are and why, we make choices based on our values and priorities, we hopefully come to a happy self-expression in the image we present to the world and how we feel about it and our selves. There’s a truth there, a personal engagement with the process of living, an authenticity and originality. No one expression can be judged better than another if they are all expressions of inner truth.

Clearly this is quite a philosophical take on image, but aging is a natural part of human existence – we are young, we age, we decline physically. Why do we praise certain parts of that cycle and disregard the attributes of others? Given that we’re all going to go through this, surely it’s sensible to have a society that values its members throughout their entire lives.

To judge people and put pressure on them to conceal signs of the natural process of living seems an assault on the individual – as if you have to fight your self, conceal your true nature in order to have worth in the eyes of others.

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Spirituality since the 80s

Moving away from more topical concerns, the focus of this post is modern spirituality. In essence, it seems that spirituality and religious or philosophical concerns loomed large throughout much of recent history even up until the Eighties. I use that date as a slight watershed because there are many texts running into that decade that seek to address the challenges of spiritual experience but then the tone seems to shift (possible reasons for this and whether or not it’s connected with shifts to a more technological or materialistic society is a different matter).

Broadly speaking, from the Enlightenment it seems there was weighty public discourse around belief, religion, responsibility, ethics, meaning and so on. Even through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century debate continued around the moral basis for human activity. Then I suppose from that point Western society became caught up in progress and conflict and rapid social change, including a loosening of these sorts of discussions.

Not to be critical of that, because the process of exploring diverse belief systems and questioning your own seems a beautiful process that can lead to greater tolerance and understanding. There are some wonderful books from the 80s and beyond that seek to chart these waters and find a voice for hope and meaning in modern life, some of which I will pick up here at a later date (Spiritual Emergency, The Aquarian Conspiracy, Towards a New World View, New Renaissance, among others). In a way I see this as a dialogue of progress through the twentieth century as thinkers sought to grasp how humanity meets modernity.

Then it seems, interestingly, that society has taken a path of meaninglessness (that’s not a judgement, but the philosophy of materialism is essentially that there is no deeper meaning to life) while religion seems to have undergone a hardening of sorts in response to modern times and spirituality has often become an emotive or sentimental retreat, an escapism in a way, or a handy tool for calming the modern mind.

I will return later to this, but it just seems intriguing how our way of living has essentially stripped meaning from life yet we still live within it all as humans who seem to intrinsically seek meaning and understanding. Clearly belief still carries weight in current affairs and it seems it cannot be dismissed out of hand, but the place it holds in human society is fascinating.

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Media immediacy

Related slightly to the Trying to understand our times post, my concern here is about how we are living blow-by-blow as diplomacy and democracy are tested as they haven’t been in a fair while. The last time things in the West were so heated, information was delivered by a much slower form of media and one that operated by pretty different codes of responsibility in terms of truth and also its likely impact.

It seems we are being constantly tossed and turned between conflicting and often contradictory opinions while waiting for actual facts to emerge, and I wonder at the psychological and social impact of masses of people being deeply emotionally affected by what often seems to be merely opinion or conjecture (possibly for the sake of revenue or political advantage).

I’m a fan of facts and of trusting in and using the proper channels within democratic society to express concerns and ensure proper paths are taken. These systems are here and built on the ideological foundations of previous generations; now they are being tested and can hopefully be refined and strengthened to support our societies in taking informed and responsible directions.

It seems we are being encouraged to indulge in immediate reactions and emotive responses, and while these are valid in a way and tell us many useful things about what matters most to us all, it may be time to take a step back from that cycle rather than keep perpetuating it with our fears and uncertainties.

As discussed earlier in a post on Communication and the process of change, this seems a time to be calmly listening to others, understanding more fully, and articulating clear intentions for the values and priorities of our societies.

No one seems to really know where things are headed right now, but if we believe in the values of our way of life and are committed to finding constructive ways forward I see hope in that.

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“Towards a New World View”

This post refers to the text “Towards a New World View: Conversations on the Leading Edge” edited by Russell E. DiCarlo, published in 1996.

Clearly this isn’t an overly recent book and it isn’t one that seems to have much of a following from what I can gather online, but it’s a nice starting point for considering how we live and the kinds of reasoning behind that.

The book takes a conversational format and explores what was ‘new thinking’ back in the late nineties and still remains pretty far from generally accepted ideas today. Russell E. DiCarlo interviews people from across the fields of human activity – history, philosophy, medicine, psychology, science, business and education, among others. He takes an intelligent, open minded, curious, informed approach to exploring these areas of interest and enquiry, and in doing so he raises so many fascinating and beautiful questions and possibilities.

For me, as I say, it’s a great starting point for looking at what ideas, assumptions and beliefs underpin an individual world view and how we might go about taking a more conscious role in crafting how we look at the world and our existence within it.

With books like this published before the widespread advent of technology, what I find particularly valuable is that the impending transformation of society is anticipated but discussed within a time where people still engaged mainly with more tangible ideas and approaches to life. Often with writing after the spread of technology this sense of groundedness disappears, as people respond to specific realities or try to understand the rapidly-changing phenomena of modern life.

As with podcasts, the interview format adds a beautiful human dimension to this quest for knowledge – between the lines of the questioning, the exploration of ideas and the paths these conversations take, real human beings with genuine concerns and insight and an often passionate faith in the potential of the future emerge. It comes across as a real celebration of humanity and also models a wonderful form of communication – a process of mutual discovery rather than an attempt to convince.

There are also firm calls to more awakened engagement with our way of living and the risks and pitfalls that could be approaching. There are conversations around crisis and chaos and the breakdown of civilisation, but also of potential paths to take through that – I see much of this as building bridges from where we were to where we are and where we are hopefully heading.

Overall it’s deeply empowering: that we all have a role to play, that our participation in life matters and that if we open our minds and loosen our rigid judgements there can be room for a very inclusive and progressive future.

I haven’t done it justice, but I love this book simply in terms of raising reasonable questions many of us may not have thought to ask.

Reference: “Towards a New World View: Conversations on the Leading Edge”, Russell E. DiCarlo, Publisher (UK) Floris Books. A selection of interviews also seems to have been made available through the healthy.net website.

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