Month: May 2018

Having boundaries

Lately I’ve been picking in a few different ways at the idea of boundaries – how they define us or allow us to express our choices; how they offer possibilities for growth through the potentially powerful limitation of options (see Notes One). It’s just a thought really, this concept of an edge where ‘we’ meet ‘the world’ and decide what we want to happen there.

On one level, it’s a question of identity: what makes one entity different from another. ‘Identity’ possibly coming down to our choices and the rules we live by (whether consciously chosen, inherited, or some blend of the two); this idea of a regulatory presence governing a space and bringing to it a sense of definition.

And when it comes to definition, I suppose we need an idea of our options and what they might ‘mean’ socially; a sort of acclimatisation to the human world of meaning. It’s clearly a vast world. Once we’ve tracked back historically or culturally in various directions we’re talking about a massive amount of options, interpretations and re-interpretations of what it means to be human (Notes Two).

Essentially, it seems we now live in these increasingly open and overlapping communities; often dipping from one to another to find what suits us best, allowing us to express or explore different aspects of our ‘personalities’. It’s quite a beautiful thing really, but almost inevitably risks both division and conflict.

I mean, humans tend to seek what we have in common in order to forge stable bonds through the constancy of identity and relationship. A large part of ‘society’ must be knowing where we stand and what it all means, for us and about us. Nations, historically, arising from what groups of people had in common, their shared outlooks and interests in life.

One of the beautiful challenges of modern times seems to be this free-flowing convergence of different ways of being. Challenging to the extent that it takes a strong yet flexible sense of self to not feel threatened by others making different choices. Communicating confidently yet tolerantly in a world of constant difference doesn’t seem to be coming naturally (Note Three).

It clearly ‘is’ challenging. Across the globe, in big and little ways, we’re struggling to understand one another, cope with life’s demands, and find ways to be more considerate and inclusive through our words and actions. And that’s opening doors to address our changing relationships to people, resources and infrastructure; whether we’re talking of technology or community.

Modern life’s fascinating in that we’re more connected than ever, yet local communities are struggling to ‘compete’. Community seemingly used to be this really living, vibrant reality where people connected culturally, socially, and economically. Arguably quite powerful places where life ‘happened’ as people found their roles within it (Note Four).

How our tangible communities might evolve to find their place within modern life may be confronting at times, but also an amazing opportunity to express our values by making meaningful changes to how we’re living.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Masks we all wear
Note 1: Limits having a purpose
Note 1: Codes of behaviour
Note 2: Meaning in culture
Note 2: People, rules & social cohesion
Note 3: Listening, tolerance & communication
Note 4: Community as an answer

For some different though not unrelated ideas around limits, power and modern life, there’s Pre-tech in film.

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Limits having a purpose

A garden can be said to exist by having a boundary and, within that, a single regulatory or guiding presence: some wall or line where the gardening ends and nature begins again. There’s this sense of creating a space where we have a role to play, where our actions can combine with the forces of nature to bring something else into being.

It’s a thought that’s interesting enough in terms of gardening itself – the vision we have; the tough choices we also have if we hope to realise it; ways executing our goals might involve as much death as it does life; and the alternative possibilities that must often fall away if our plans are to be successful. Nature can be a pretty powerful metaphor for understanding our agency in life (see Note One).

Beyond that, we could look more generally at how limits serve to define us. How youth holds meaning because it ends and arguably has to be used wisely. How those times we limit our options are the times something can happen, in relationships or work for example. How by saying “No” to some things, we’re saying “Yes” to others. Definition then acting almost as a doorway to growth, change, or power.

All these pinch points of the paths we take becoming the lives we lead and what matters most to us. We might question whether life has much meaning, much power, without decisions having been made (Notes Two). Whether we would be ourselves without the ways we’re different from others – our stories, wounds, insights, and all those things we express through our existence.

This sense of definition and expression can be intriguing: how any act of drawing a line creates both an identity and an opportunity to develop something further; carving out territory that can be worked over, taken in hand, or made into common ground. It might be our space, but we might also cultivate it for the benefit of others (Note Three).

Talking about gardens or individuals, the principles seem comparable. We make choices, play to strengths, tackle problems, bear fruit in some areas, and ultimately contribute to the world around us through our vigilance or oversight (Notes Four). We can develop a vision and make the best of what we have, investing time and doing what we can with our understanding, capacity and resources.

It’s a slightly obvious metaphor, but the thought of gardens only existing through being distinct from, yet related to, what surrounds them is quite fascinating. Only through boundaries do we gain control over that space and the potential to change it. Only by deciding what we want to happen can we weed out that which we don’t. Through definition, we gain the power to establish those rules.

What we make of things – what we let grow, what spills over, what we put into the world, and what all that can represent within our natural and social environments – must rest within our hands, in our response to what we find.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Gardening as therapy, the light and the dark
Note 2: Masks we all wear
Note 2: The need for discernment
Note 2: “Women who run with the wolves”
Note 3: Gardening & local environment
Note 4: Can we reinvigorate how we’re living?
Note 4: The creativity of living

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Masks we all wear

Fairly often in life we’re told to adopt roles, play the part, and craft how we appear to others. This idea of the image we’re presenting and how we wish to be seen; all those ways we might make an impression, hide our feelings or conceal our ‘imperfections’.

It reminds me of an exhibit I once went to on masks and how they’ve been used within drama, tradition or belief over the centuries to express different qualities and explore ways they play out. Essentially, looking at how this theatrical device can represent the traits valued or frowned upon by a community, using cultural conventions to reinforce prevailing standards for observers to then reflect upon.

Clearly there’s cultural and social value behind our use of masks: this sense of what’s considered important or praiseworthy; a sort of shorthand visual language for understanding society, where we stand within it, and how we might relate well to others. This drawing to ourselves – from the wealth of human experience – those things we feel most strongly about, that can represent us best in the eyes of others.

It’s this incredibly dynamic communication taking place between individuals and society: options are presented, paths we could walk, and we take our place among them (see Notes One). Like an ongoing social conversation where we’re all choosing our roles, our responses, within the overarching depiction of society and its values that is culture.

In that, do we simply choose a handful of things that define us best? Expressing who we are through what we choose to embody or align ourselves with; using how colour, form and cultural references interact to create new, personal meaning; pulling together our interests to form a sense of self. All the badges we wear or notes we strike from the options we’re offered; hopefully portraying ourselves in the best light.

By definition almost, that’s not truly “you” so much as a series of labels that suit or serve you well for now. It’s a complex mask that may, of course, help others understand us better; but at some point it’s likely to be constrictive or less than true. Masks can serve us in various ways, but never completely define us.

But life’s all about who we are, what matters to us, what we seek to bring into existence, and whether society recognises and reflects our true worth. In that picture, maybe culture’s the code we use, the options we have for finding our place (Notes Two): a reciprocal process of personal expression and social identity shaping how we relate to one another to create the daily drama of life.

Whether any mask can ever capture the richness of each one of us is another question entirely. Even if we were to choose all the ‘best’ masks from the full spectrum of available qualities, I’d still have thought that who we truly are would be a much more multifaceted reality emerging, as it were, from the changeable convergence of where those interests might meet.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Fashion, self & environment
Note 1: How many aren’t well represented?
Note 1: Romance, love & the movies
Note 2: Intrinsic worth over social identity
Note 2: What does art have to say about life?
Note 2: Missing something with modern culture?
Note 2: Culture selling us meaning

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Codes of behaviour

Within society, it can be insightful to consider where we get our ideas on ‘how to live our lives’. There are clearly many ways we could answer that: many different influences and sources for those ideas, and many arguments we could make about the relative weight of different factors in attempting to reach a definitive conclusion. Beyond that though, there’s simply the sense of what guides us (see Notes One).

Looking to the past, it seems many communities have attempted to draw together the ideas, values and priorities of their times to craft a set of principles whereby people could live ‘right’ in terms of their character and actions. I’m thinking here of the knightly codes of medieval courtly love and the like, or the Japanese counterpart providing practical and moral instruction for the warrior.

The “Code of the Samurai” was apparently committed to written form around the seventeenth century but, presumably, was based on beliefs and ways of living that had thrived and evolved over the preceding centuries. So, similar in a way to the more Western chivalric codes arising out of that time period and reaching us mainly through the Arthurian legends.

Leaving the history aside, it’s interesting to see how different cultures and times have sought to codify human personal, social and professional standards in order to help sustain a healthy, well-ordered society founded on some pretty finely-tuned moral principles. It can seem quite alien to the modern mind that these communities sought to elevate praiseworthy ideals and put them into practice (Notes Two).

These ‘codes’ – seemingly a few steps from religion, much as they might’ve been informed by such beliefs – essentially seeking to uphold things like honesty, courage, integrity, devotion and self-sacrifice, while reminding people of the social structures and relationships their actions serve to sustain. Giving people an understanding of society and their roles within it can clearly create some quite beautiful cultural legacies.

But then, turning to the present, we seem to not really have such things; only a lot of disparate and often conflicting ideas in their various forms. There’s culture of course, although in the West it no longer seems to have that strong moral or social voice; then our economic narrative, although values seem to have found a strange home there (Note Three).

Maybe it’s a spiritual conversation, this territory of inner morality and social ethics? One modern form might be Paulo Coelho’s “Manual of the Warrior of Light” which can be seen as a fairly non-denominational approach to the question of how to live. It’s not truly comparable, but draws on that tradition of adopting a code of behaviour so there may be a place for it here.

Anyway, it’s just a fascinating thought: whether a modern code’s possible and how ideals, principles and standards might serve to regulate shared existence as much as personal interactions. Rather than drifting on with a slightly ill-defined jumble of ideas and opinions, could a clearer sense of principles be capable of guiding society?

Notes and References:

“Code of the Samurai” by Thomas Cleary, (Tuttle Publishing, USA), 1999

“Manual of the Warrior of Light” by Paulo Coelho, (Harper Collins, London), 1997

Note 1: Learning to be human
Note 1: The way to be
Note 1: Meaning in culture
Note 1: What is acceptable?
Note 2: Dystopia as a powerful ideal
Note 2: The idea of self reliance
Note 3: Language and values

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Dystopia as a powerful ideal

Utopias obviously stand up there as these pinnacles of idealism: places where all our ideals find their place and become a reality. It’s a beautiful concept, but clearly problematic when you attempt them in practice. That said, much as it might be difficult to bring ideals into existence, does that mean we should give up entirely?

They might serve a valuable purpose within society, giving us something to work towards and a set of principles against which we might weigh our options and assess what’s best. Although they do tend to jostle, almost forcing us to decide between them at times: economy or environment; collective concerns or personal ones; and so on.

Any project based on simple one-sided conclusions about the nature of reality or the best way forward seems dangerous: prioritising any one thing usually happens at the cost of disregarding others. We may seek ‘solutions’, but reality is exceptionally complex and, given we’re dealing with human existence, it seems impossible to justify any such path (see Notes One).

Society’s also a project: it has a set of ideas and ideals at its foundation, placed there by the ‘great minds’ who discussed options and how they hoped or expected it all to work out. In a way, that’s simply a process of thought. People decided ‘these ideals are valuable, this is what we should be working towards, and this is how we’ll do it’. But whose ideas are that perfect?

If the execution of that process was flawed, or the ideals themselves not quite in the best balance, where does that leave us? Do we still understand the reasoning behind how we got here, and are we able to change course without pulling everything off the rails and starting over?

We may’ve been handed the project of Western society as if it were the definitive answer to our problems, but that’s a lofty claim and I’d be pretty impressed if anyone managed to get that right first time. In which case, being flexible in understanding society’s component parts and responsive to how it’s working in practice might be better than rigidly holding to old ways of thinking (Notes Two).

Which brings me to my point about culture: faced with this, people may well despair at ideals being so flawed in practice that they seem an impossible illusion that’s not worth fighting for. It’s a ‘reasonable’ conclusion in a way, and one that’s been explored in various cultural forms over the years (Notes Three), but is it wise to embrace images of the downfall of society and its flawed leaders?

Yes, society’s showing itself to be imperfect and we’ve a lot to work through; but a simple rejection of all that went before hardly seems the best way forward. Much as that emotional reaction and picture of a failing society may both be valid, are we right to be fatalistic about that scenario? Might we do better to remain engaged with the ideas, people and practicalities we now stand within?

Notes and References:

“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, (Vintage Classics), 2007 (originally 1932)

“W ou le souvenir d’enfance” by Georges Perec, (Denöel, Paris), 1975

Note 1: Complexity of life
Note 1: Convergence and divergence
Note 2: The conversation of society
Note 2: Education with the future in mind
Note 2: Dealing with imperfection
Note 3: “New Renaissance”
Note 3: “Brave New World Revisited”

This clearly spills out into many other areas, some of which have already been touched upon within the theme of Change.

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Living as an open wound

How many people in life are wounded? In big or little ways, it seems many might be living out of a slightly or severely damaged sense of self; impacting their choices, relationships, and feelings about their life and life itself. What can be done about that? In many ways we can’t do nothing, but figuring out what it is we should do is immensely hard.

And, of course, we may well want to forget about it and get on with enjoying our own lives. It’s tempting to say we’ll just leave them to it, that it’s not our problem and they can deal with it. There’s logic there: it’s clearly not easy addressing what are almost invariably complex problems stemming from original wounds now compounded by all the attempts someone’s made to live life despite them.

Surely all those times people turn away from or label them must further impact the wounded soul? Even from well-meaning people, recognising they’re out of their depth and unable to offer much to the situation, that could be perceived as a sign you’re not worth ‘dealing with’. More darkly, there are those who – in different ways – might prey on the wounded and lead them into even darker places.

In so many ways, wounds can be left unattended or taken advantage of: wounded individuals kind of languishing at the sidelines of a society that’s happy to rush ahead without them. And that’s not to judge, because who wants to deal with a problem that’s not their own? Who wants to form a relationship with a difficult person rather than an easygoing, confident one? It’s understandable; it’s the life we want for ourselves.

But then, if the ‘healthy’ leave the wounded to their obviously limited devices, they may be left in the hands of others who exacerbate or manipulate that pain for their own ends. For those inclined to think that way, imbalanced people are easier to ‘control’: once you know which buttons to press, which issues cut to that core of their being where they feel desperate, lost and alone. Not a cheerful picture, but maybe pretty close to reality.

What’s the answer there? We might say that ‘hurt people hurt people’; and that may well be true. We might say ‘it’s not our problem’; but that’s only partly true. As a society, if people are being wounded and there’s no real system for redressing it then, almost inevitably, it’ll become a social problem. We might want to turn away for an easier, happier life of our own; but if we do the problems will surely grow.

How we might help, bring greater understanding to our interactions, and hold the belief that anyone broken can and should be ‘healed’ are serious issues for society. Also, maybe it’s more a question of degree: many people have areas in life where they don’t feel ‘good enough’ and act out of that discomfort. While it may be more urgent for some, psychological wholeness seems important for us all.

Notes and References:

The way to be
Ways of living & those who suffer
Human nature and community life
What we bring to life
Does it matter if others suffer?
Conversation as revelation
The worth of each life

With all of this, I do personally believe we each have the capacity to make a difference – whether we’re the one suffering or those who encounter them, it’s surely always possible to heal and make changes – as explored in The human spirit.

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The creativity of living

Writing about life as much as living it, it’s easy to get tangled in details or lost in possibilities: we live in strange times where almost anything’s possible yet the realities of life can also be more constricting than ever. Life can seem quite overwhelming with all its choices, paths we could walk, and differing opinions we’d encounter along the way. What can we make of that?

Coming at it from a few different angles, I’ve at times mused over life being comparable to art or thought (see Notes One): ways we perceive reality then craft our best response to it. Other times I’ve looked at things more systemically, asking about human agency and the impacts we have (Notes Two). But life cannot be reduced to simple recipes, appealing as that prospect might be.

I mean, as expressed in many of those posts, life is what we make of it. We’re essentially these agents or actors capable of ‘reading’ situations and responding to them as best we can; those actions then filtering into that world around us – creating, sustaining or reinforcing the various systems making up human society and our footprint on the planet.

We could look at that and say we’re not free, that we have no real choice in many of the factors that shape us; or we could conclude that we are, that we have freedom in our response to it all (Notes Three). Clearly a long-standing argument about the nature of our existence, and not one I really plan to delve into too much here.

My point though is that, for me, there’s a certain creativity to how we might live: that we could look, understand as best we can, then decide our response so as to bring something more to life. If we conceive of art as a response to life – a perception, interpretation, and an answer in some form or another – then potentially that could help shape our lives in new ways.

Rather than life being a mechanistic set of reactions, formulas and predictable trains of thought, we could approach it more creatively if we wanted to. Often we do, in a way, but it’s often recast as personal branding, image, and so forth – that commercial conversation sneaking into questions of human identity, expression and belonging.

I’m not talking about strategic gestures in how we craft a self out of the opportunities of modern life, but a genuine creative response to the challenges of existence. This sense that we might look at life, look at our resources, and decide what we want to make of it: where we want to make our mark, the themes or areas we personally wish to focus on, and how we might collaborate with others in doing so.

All of that seems to contribute to this, slightly imaginary, conversation around life and the agency of human existence. It’s one reason arts are arguably important for civilisation, and possibly one option for finding our way within the complexities of life.

Notes and References:

Note 1: What makes a good life?
Note 1: Thoughts on art & on life
Note 1: What is real?
Note 2: Right to question and decide
Note 2: What we bring to life
Note 3: Krishnamurti’s “Inward Revolution”
Note 3: The idea of self reliance

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What we bring to life

When it comes to life, how are we supposed to evaluate it? We could look to statistics: the number of friends we have, the volume of interactions in any given timeframe, the amount of money in the bank, or countless other formulas for how we’re doing. That’s one approach. And, of course, it tells us ‘something’ about a person in relation to society. But that may not be all there is.

It’s something I’ve talked about at various times in writing here (see Notes One), and that’s largely because it seems so important. We can indeed look at society and human activity statistically, but surely we get a very different picture than if we were to look at it from a human perspective. In that light, what is it that we, as humans, bring to life?

Because it really seems that ‘the modern way of looking at things’ seems to create confusion or overwhelm and, in doing so, possibly obscures some fundamental thoughts about life, human worth, and the project of existence. I’m going to leave that sentence in its slightly confused state because, to me, there’s truth in that: we have so many conversations going on at once, so many contradictory or conflicting principles at play in the things we do, that it’s hard to pick out what we’re really saying about life.

We might be encouraged to judge others, cast people aside, or care more for ourselves than the remote impacts we’re having elsewhere. We may struggle to bear in mind all the systems we’re part of and ways our words, actions and attitudes create realities others have to deal with. There might be so much going on that it’s too much to handle and easier to ignore (Note Two), but does that make it the right path?

In making our choices in life – from the myriad of options, and under fairly intense time pressures and social coercion – we may well choose to put ourselves first, to allow a ‘reasonable’ or ‘practical’ degree of compromise, or be swept along with various trends and make that a justification in itself. And all that sends messages out through the example we offer, standards we set, and the ramifications for others.

From that perspective, we’re all making a difference through how we live: in our relationships and interactions; with our insights, contributions or criticisms; by our very presence and the journey we’re all making. Through living, we make the world around us a different place. What it is that we’re doing on that level may be harder to quantify and slower paced, but it’s arguably no less important or real (Note Three).

It’s interesting to consider, because it could be that ‘how we’re living’ – while viable and maybe even admirable economically – really isn’t working so well in a human sense (Notes Four). If society and modern culture are judging our ‘worth’ wrongly then surely people will feel unappreciated, despondent, and maybe even angry. After all, what is life and human existence?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Worthless, or priceless?
Note 1: How we feel about society
Note 2: Value in visible impacts
Note 3: What is real?
Note 4: The conversation of society
Note 4: Economy & Humanity

Turning to literature, “Brave New World Revisited” had some interesting insights around these topics.

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Seeing, knowing and loving

If beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, then that implies some relationship between what we hold within us and what we’re able to appreciate in the world: that we only truly see that which we’ve come to understand. It’s just an idea, of course; but an interesting one.

That we might each have within us an inner landscape of sorts – formed through our encounters with the world, and from which we then understand ourselves, the world, and our position within it – is something touched on previously (see Notes One). It’s probably a philosophical question: the sense of how meaning, identity and knowledge arise between humans and their environments.

In so many ways we can only recognise that which we’ve been taught to know: to understand and appreciate its value, purpose or meaning within human society. Arguably the process of education is one of familiarising young people with the history, artefacts and priorities of their culture – bringing them to an appreciation of these things and equipping them with the insight and skill to be able to apply that knowledge in new ways.

It’s an interesting practice: that we might be shown things and simultaneously instructed as to their importance. That kind of social conditioning where one generation attempts to impart what’s deemed essential to those who follow. It applies to education, but maybe also to media, culture, belief, and even to economic realities. We pass things on, often loading them up with implied significance and a dose of moralising.

I’m not sure what space there is in that picture for the possibility we might’ve been mistaken about some things. Clearly we can only pass on what we know, and maybe what we know isn’t quite right at times or isn’t working out as we’d hoped. The certainty of any kind of knowledge maybe questionable, but society does need to be grounded on a degree of common understanding.

The question of how we might then move beyond received knowledge to explore what’s unfamiliar or new is also fascinating (Notes Two). That process of familiarising ourselves with what was previously unknown – going into personal uncharted territory and finding means to evaluate what we meet there – seems an interesting one to try and prepare for.

After all, if we mainly value what we know and understand, then presumably there’s a lot in life we may not see for what it truly is. Having a flexible enough sense of identity and worldview so as to be able to confidently encounter the unknown is a fairly challenging educational target, but unless we have that we’re arguably destined for conflict and disagreement (Notes Three).

And, looking from the personal angle, it’s quite a beautiful idea: that to know someone for who they are, the paths they’ve walked and struggles they’re overcoming, is often what it means to truly love a person. That relationship between being able to see something, understand its worth, and appreciate it for what it is seems so essential to the human journey.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Mirrors we offer one another
Note 1: What are we thinking?
Note 1: Aesthetic value of nature
Note 2: Krishnamurti’s “Inward Revolution”
Note 2: Convergence and divergence
Note 3: Listening, tolerance & communication
Note 3: The way to be

Continuing on with that thread of ‘human worth’, there’s Worthless, or priceless?

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Convergence and divergence

The human mind seems capable of going in one of two general directions: focussing on the details or allowing quite an expansive openness. That’s clearly a generalisation, but as a basic model of how we approach life it’s an interesting perspective to consider and one explored by E.F. Schumacher in “Small is Beautiful”.

Within the context of education, Schumacher suggested we need some concept of “a hierarchical order” if we hope to make sense of the world and “recognise a meaningful task for [our] life on earth”; especially if you conceive of that task as attaining “a higher degree of realisation of [our] potentialities, a higher level of being … than that which comes to [us] ‘naturally’”.

Essentially, saying that metaphysical models which place us within a larger reality enable us to find a purposeful sense of our position in life; something stripped out of many modern ways of thinking. What we believe about life and how that affects the lives we lead are fascinating – if contentious – topics (see Notes One).

Stepping slightly aside from that, Schumacher then explores the idea that “the nature of our thinking is such that we cannot help thinking in opposites”: “all through our lives we are faced with the task of reconciling opposites which, in logical thought, cannot be reconciled”, requiring us to transcend “the level of being on which we normally find ourselves.”

Simplifying somewhat, convergent problems are then those that are both useful and satisfying in the sense that once resolved “the solution can be written down and passed on to others, who can apply it without needing to reproduce the mental effort necessary to find it.” It’s the premise of Western civilisation, the heart of maths and sciences, and the thinking behind countless hacks, recipes and pre-packaged solutions.

On the other hand, “Life is being kept going by divergent problems which have to be ‘lived’ and are solved only in death”. Here we find realities such as family, relationships, economics, politics, or education; areas of life where, if convergent thinking’s applied, “there would be no more human relations but only mechanical reactions”.

It’s an intriguing proposition to consider: that while the convergent approach serves us well at times, adopting it too broadly might impoverish civilisation by distancing us from complexities of life, morality and emotion. But the reassuring convergence of reading or puzzles can apparently soothe the mind strained and wearied by life’s ongoing, unresolved challenges. Balance appears to be the key.

Life then emerges as this journey of divergent problems which “as it were, force man to strain himself to a level above himself” to find a place where opposites can be overcome or reconciled. Problems without easy answers though, as neat solutions “invariably neglect one of the two opposites” therefore not quite meeting up with reality.

As a picture of life, thought and approaching the challenges of both (Notes Two), this may be fairly reasonable: how we think about different ‘problems’ could well affect our likelihood of resolving them.

Notes and References:

“The Greatest Resource – Education” Chapter Six from “Small is Beautiful. A Study of Economics as if People Mattered” by Dr E. F. Schumacher (Abacus edition, Sphere Books, London) 1974.

Note 1: Writings on Education
Note 1: Power in what we believe
Note 2: David Bohm, thoughts on life
Note 2: Communicating divergent experiences
Note 2: Mindfulness, antidote to life or way of being
Note 2: How do we find a collective vision?
Note 2: Complexity of life

For a recent embodiment of this, Steve Cutts’ animation “Man” explored humanity’s place in nature and the problems we cause, leaving us with that question of how all-encompassing solutions might ever be reached.

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