Month: September 2018

Does anything exist in isolation?

There are conceivably these webs of causality that trail around the globe, linking abstract or disparate realities through time and space into these intricate relationships of meaning and consequence. It seems true of history, geology, human civilisation in all its forms. This sense in which all things are related, building upon one another and what’s gone before into this complex picture of what life is.

Like the butterfly’s wing, in that small and seemingly insignificant actions can develop into something far more note-worthy. Yet the nature of our thinking seems to be that we take things in isolation, wanting to forget that’s never really the case (see Notes One). As soon as we’re taking anything out of the realm of theory it’s having to make its way through convoluted realities we may or may not see coming.

And I’m aware writing this that it’s a thought we’re often encouraged not to think. Arguably, it might make us feel depressed and powerless at the nature of existence: the complexity of these collective interwoven systems we can barely hope to understand, let alone influence. But if it’s true that everything’s connected and all our actions ‘come home’ somewhere, might it be a mistake not to think about it?

These days, those complex interconnections are in many ways becoming more apparent: technology, in attempting to remaster them, is effectively also bringing them to light alongside the realities they’re creating for the natural, political, and interpersonal world (Notes Two). It might not be at all easy to wrap our head around these systems we’re all part of, but it doesn’t seem something that’s wise to ignore.

It’s undeniably challenging to approach that modern reality of an interconnected world with no-where to hide. The past or present, all their good intentions and questionable courses of action, are laid bare for scrutiny from all angles. The world can be a relentless critic, especially given there’s no shared moral code at that level: we often act within our community, but might be judged by quite other standards.

Which I imagine is why modern life can seem this incredible tremor underneath everything everyone held to be true? It’s this re-evaluation of how we’re living. We’ve been acting in ways that impact others emotionally, socially, economically; with consequences often conveniently invisible or justifiable through the single lens of personal or national perspectives. The internet questions that security by asking how we relate to the whole.

How we might build the kind of understanding that can navigate such a world is an intriguing thought (Notes Three). Each society or culture has its narratives, its beliefs about what matters and what’s acceptable within the scope of its reality. Attitudes that might be firmly or loosely held, malleable or vehemently insisted upon. The complexity of a person or society aren’t easy to unravel.

Dealing with that complexity – embracing it, even – and working through all it takes to understand, appreciate, accommodate, and cooperate with one another can seem, at times, overwhelming or compelling.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Strange arrogance of thought
Note 1: David Bohm, thoughts on life
Note 2: Cutting corners
Note 2: The web and the wider world
Note 3: Ideas around education & responsibility
Note 3: What’s a reasonable response?
Note 3: The philosopher stance

Thoughts around the standards we live by were explored in both Codes of behaviour and What is acceptable?

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Cutting corners

Talking about technology is one of those almost funny modern conversations where the topic somehow seems a little tired, worn out or stale despite the fact it’s quite clearly at the cutting edge of human civilisation. It’s as if we have nothing to say, no answers, no real agreement over what’s going on, how to manage it, or where it’s leading. Yet, we also have very much to say as it’s affecting our lives so deeply.

Maybe it’s that we’re getting exhausted by grappling with this ever-changing force that’s reshaping so much? Maybe it’s that we’re feeling powerless; resigning ourselves to the fact that ‘this is how life is’ and we must adapt to its demands and the world it’s creating for us. Maybe it’s that, so much happening simultaneously, it’s practically impossible to pin down and work through it all to reach common ground (see Notes One).

Or maybe I’m misreading it? To me, these conversations spin and churn with often intense energy, concern and emotion, yet never quite connect that purposefully with reality. As if we’re expending a lot of energy trying to keep up with something we don’t quite understand. We see and feel the impacts, and our brains naturally want to see what’s going on so we can respond well to what life’s throwing at us; but it seems it’s almost too much, too diverse and widespread in its manifestations to elicit simple, universal answers.

Because, in many ways, modern technology’s simply changing everything. It’s taking how society was and developing new solutions or systems to manage, improve, streamline, reorganise, speed up, coordinate all these patterns of activity that make up our lives. Which is essentially taking complex realities and reducing them into something simpler, more integrated or accessible.

In a certain light, it’s cutting corners: taking processes that were once known, embodied, and understood and placing them behind closed doors for our convenience or enjoyment. Any tool likely exists to make things easier that way, to cut corners and save us time and energy for other things.

What I find interesting with that, though, is the question of whether we still know what was on all those corners. And, whether that’s important or not. We’re being ‘saved’ from having to do or understand all these things, and that gives us this whole new raft of opportunities for how we might live and relate to the world around us. But, do we actually know what we’re doing? Is there value to knowing what we’re doing? (Notes Two)

It’s like those who’ve lived through the shifts within banking: from very manual back-office cash handling through gradual mechanisation, as once intensely personal and considered relationships drifted through this process of digitalisation into quite different, impersonal estimations of our worth or capacity.

Those who fully understand what’s going on can act very confidently within it; but to those who interact mainly with deceptively simple interfaces the risks and realities of what lies behind them can be hard to comprehend.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Technology & the lack of constraint
Note 1: Desensitised to all we’re told?
Note 1: Cost and convenience
Note 2: Where would we stand if this were lost?
Note 2: Is anything obvious to someone who doesn’t know?
Note 2: Market forces or social necessities

In a strange way, this relates to What if it all means something? which also touched onto ideas of understanding, intention and consequences.

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Tools

The sense in which ‘being human’ is linked to the development and use of tools seems one of these age-old markers of our development: that humanity began looking at the environment, their relationship with it, and how best to work with that effectively and productively.

It’s this idea of human mastery, agency, and ingenuity in the face of physical existence: that, as thinking beings, we looked around us and began seeking ways to better achieve our aims or streamline the practicalities of life. Whether that’s an axe, an arrow, a plough or some form of computing, the principle’s essentially that of understanding context, intention and outcome in order to improve upon our methods.

But, with technology, those questions of agency and intention seem altered in the present day. I’m not sure that in the past anyone was concerned about the psychological risk of axe design, or woke up late at night to compulsively check their tool shed. Which is this sense of how tools have a design, they have workings and demand a certain way of thinking in how we approach them if they’re to be used wisely (see Notes One).

It just seems almost deceptively simple to view modern technology as a natural, unquestionable extension of humanity’s working relationship with tools. As if nothing’s fundamentally different here. Because the foundations of tech are a very specific way of thinking, and embracing that means working along those lines and effectively being shaped and defined by those channels of reasoning.

These are some of the most powerful tools ever wielded by humans. We can directly abuse people on the other side of the world as they sit in the relative safety of their own home. We can collectively respond to advertising and form these instantaneous waves of profit surging toward the company or individual of our choosing. We can spark volatile emotional outrage or despair through media reporting.

The responsibility of that, in terms of personal as much as natural consequences, is almost unfathomable. We’re rapidly shifting the structures, patterns and forms of societies; dismantling long-established traditions and infrastructures and sweeping in with our versions of those functions based on someone’s finest, commercial understanding of how things need to work.

And really there’s not much choice but to go with the flow. Change happens, and you either jump on board or risk getting left behind. Much as individuals, social realities, governments, essential services, and commercial entities are all grappling with the right form for modern life to take and how best to rise to the challenges and opportunities of technology, there’s really no going back.

Obviously though, we’re experimenting with the very fabric of society and human existence. This is a tool with highly effective applications throughout every avenue of life; its impacts ripple through our shared realities in ways we might not yet fully realise. Whether that’s exciting or daunting might depend on our capacity for navigating uncertainty and risk. Also, on our understanding of human and social realities themselves.

Notes and References:

Note 1: “Response Ability” by Frank Fisher
Note 1: The web and the wider world
Note 1: Where would we stand if this were lost?
Note 1: Pre-tech in film
Note 1: The potential of technology

Some of the ideas here were also picked up in a slightly different way back in Intrinsic values on the paths for change?.

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Can we solve our own problems?

Something I find interesting to consider is the extent to which modern society attempts to create our problems as much as solve them. This way in which economic realities are characterised mainly in terms of supply and demand, so it’s logical we might generate needs in order to justify the existence of products. This circular reasoning where we’re pumping lots of energy into deflating the human psyche as a source of fuel.

Of course, humans have genuine needs. As individuals or societies, we have these requirements for shelter, food, clothing, security, and the infrastructure essential for living as a human community. Those overlays of organisation, social etiquette, and the cohesive qualities of a cultural life offering us bonds of meaning and belonging (see Notes One). There’s this sense in which humans have problems: logistical challenges we need to overcome.

And I’m not entirely sure where in the arc of modern civilisation we abandoned the fulfilment of merely essential needs and began wandering off into other territories in search of profit, but it seems to have happened somewhere along the line. Rather than simply pursuing progress, innovation, knowledge, and the dissemination of those fundamental requirements we’ve clearly taken some quite different paths.

Maybe the justification is that we followed an economic model capable of generating both the funds and the competition needed to drive innovation. Money essentially becoming this driving force to motivate people toward developing the ingenuity and expertise to keep pushing humanity forward. This highly effective carrot and stick approach of personal reward through social status and greater economic freedom.

Human motivation’s an interesting question. Do we participate in society because of its threats and incentives, or because we believe in it and hope to contribute toward the collective human community? It’s a slightly different, though not unrelated, question that must conceivably wend its way out through education into the underpinnings of social structures themselves (Notes Two).

Returning closer to the point though, why is it we now have a system that seemingly relies on highlighting more problems? Is that progress, or is it an active chipping away at natural human insecurities to create markets ripe for exploitation? What is all this built upon? Surely its built upon some fanciful combination of human nature and nature itself: psychological patterning alongside finite natural resources (Notes Three).

But then, industry presumably cannot ever truly solve the problems it claims to be there to address if, in doing so, it’s putting itself out of business. Almost by design commercial activity has to create an insatiable desire for more, as a secure customer base must be the ideal. Secure in the sense of being insecure; unstable; incomplete; chasing these illusory answers to every problem.

This sense of designing a system that feeds off human nature seems such a contortion of the ideal of meeting our needs. As individuals seeking belonging, meaning, purpose in life, it seems we’re directed toward this self-perpetuating activity we can never escape. Is that really the only way forward?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Human nature and community life
Note 1: Economy & Humanity
Note 1: Culture selling us meaning
Note 2: Obligations and contributions
Note 2: Respect, rebellion & renovation
Note 2: Fear or coercion as motivators
Note 3: Is sustainable design an impossibility?
Note 3: Life and money, seamlessly interwoven
Note 3: The motivation of money
Note 3: At what cost, for humans & for nature

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Busking as a gift

In life, moments can stop you in your tracks. Perhaps moments of shock, of complete confusion as to what people were thinking or the ‘wisdom’ informing certain actions or patterns of behaviour. Perhaps moments of beauty, of recognition that there’s wonderful potential dwelling within us as humans nestled into society.

In all life’s richness, there must be many moments that can offer up either reaction: nature’s generally pretty good at it; human nature also; and then there’s culture (see Notes One).

Sometimes I wonder what culture is (Notes Two). Although, of course, it can be defined with activities neatly categorised under its subheadings: ideas, customs, attitudes, beliefs; language and social behaviour; arts and intellectual achievements. Doing so, you’d likely get a pretty thorough ‘picture’ of culture as the thoughts we weave around life, the social and artistic activities we’re engaged in.

It’s just this absolutely massive picture. These days, there’s not only the ever-evolving richness of our own modern culture, growing seamlessly, as it does, from our understanding of the past; there’s also this ever-present awareness of the diversity of other cultures, and all the ways that’s feeding into this constant flow of human innovation and creativity.

It’s also now so individualistic: each wanting to define ourselves, to be a cultural phenomenon in our own right as this personality, brand or character in our life’s drama. From this limitless global palette, we can each craft a personal response through where we stand on any given issue. Surely a picture of both richness and division? Everything, and our thing.

Trying to distil complexities into more simple solutions is interesting. Because, watching someone play saxophone to a crowded shopping street, it’s clear that music in particular has this power to unite beyond our inevitable divisions (Note Three).

Everyone has their preferences, their memories, their cultural and generational experiences of genres or artists. A skilled musician can, apparently, blend references from the past and present, from different cultures, times and places, into a joyful and coherent flow with a quality all of its own. Things can be blended into beautiful celebrations of the present moment.

Anecdotally, live music has that capacity for engulfing everyone in this cloud of experience: uniting people through their own unique yet shared moment of emotion, memory, anticipation. The air can tingle with this mix of intention, recognition, appreciation that’s invisible to the naked eye.

And, of course, the musician plays because they want to. Likely because they love music, its performance, the atmosphere it can create. But I’d imagine if they thought only of themselves they’d be less successful? These things need an audience, and if you alienate rather than include you’re probably not going to create that social space people want to be part of.

Which is coming down to this question of what we’re creating through culture, through our social behaviour and those attitudes embodied within it all: how we blend things, the reality that’s becoming, and how well individual inclinations might meet within common spaces.

Notes and References:

Note 1: The human spirit
Note 1: Nature speaks in many ways, do we listen?
Note 2: Masks we all wear
Note 2: Cultural shifts & taking a backseat
Note 2: Truth, illusion & cultural life
Note 3: Music and its power to inspire

Casting an eye to how we come to understand those things which are new to us was the focus of Seeing, knowing and loving.

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Meaning within it all

Looking to education, it’s often said we should be drawing out what’s in the person – their unique talents, insights, experiences, concerns. Which, of course, must be an important part of that process. But is it all there is to it?

It’s a comment often arising alongside reflections on the root of the word, educare: to lead, bring out or develop potential. But what’s the picture there? Is it of children living as in a dark cave, needing to be led into the light of day? Is that a picture of ignorance into enlightenment? Or are the child’s capacities metaphorically in that cave, to be coaxed out and strengthened?

Doesn’t the picture we have in mind make a world of difference? It’s this age-old debate between innate capacities and the need for socialisation into the adult realities of environment; which, in practice, leads to compromises as we effectively hedge our bets (see Notes One).

Even if that’s the case, could the answer actually lie in that middle ground anyway? Yes, we bring ourselves with us as we navigate life; but we must also understand how our world came to be as it is. Maybe we need that balance of integration there.

Just as young people aren’t blank slates within some hypothetical environment, there’s a backstory to society. We bring our complexities to life, the product of our formative interpersonal, emotional, and physical development; and likewise, the world we’re in has its complex, imperfect, but valuable past.

Much as education works better if we engage the experiences and interests of each child in the process of learning; surely, we need to honestly unpack the world’s realities? Knowing how we got here: decisions that were made, their foreseen or unforeseeable consequences, the aims in mind, and an impartial appraisal of where things stand must give a surer footing for deciding what’s next? (Notes Two)

At times we seem keen to discount the past; sweep it away and walk forward with what we have. Personally, I’ve always tended to look for meaning: to understand why things happened, what lessons are there to be learnt. But that’s tricky. With an individual or society, the convergence of factors at play is almost impossible to gain certainty over. Yet we all emerge from such a past.

While it might be tempting to just forget that, put it in the ‘too difficult’ pile and get on with the relentless demands of life, what does it mean to do so? To forge on with what we have, working our way into the best spot we can then battling to hold our ground economically, socially, emotionally and psychologically.

What is it to detach from the past? To take the good, forget the bad, and cast aside the intentions, insights and experiences of previous generations. It’s not quite a picture of people emerging into a full, compassionate, yet evaluative understanding of their world; learning to relate authentically, respectfully and considerately to what surrounds them; then working together in making that better.

Notes and references:

Note 1: Education with the future in mind
Note 1: Ideas around education & responsibility
Note 1: The social metaphor of education
Note 2: Able to see what matters?
Note 2: The idea of self reliance
Note 2: Dealing with imperfection
Note 2: Common knowledge

Thoughts around attitudes to the past, among other things, were the subject of Respect, rebellion & renovation.

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Tuning out from environment

I’ve talked many times here about nature, our relationship with it and all that it offers. Beyond our more obvious physical dependence upon it for resources such as air, water, warmth, light, and food; there’s also the other, psychological, sustenance it provides by way of beauty, wonder, and reassuring metaphors around renewing life (see Notes One). But I’m aware such musings can seem anachronistic.

There’s obviously immense splendour to the natural world; as well as many other qualities like humour, poignancy, danger, or scientific value. All these ways that nature can pop up within modern life, whether as light relief from the strain of how we’re living or alongside growing concern around the risks attached to that lifestyle in terms of natural resources and environmental impacts.

And maybe those broad simplifications of modern ‘interest’ in nature hint at our altered relationship to this world around us? At how we’re now looking to this as a backdrop, a commodity, a venue for social or sporting pursuits, an aspect of carefully-curated personal style. Is the world around us simply ‘a setting’ or something we pull into frame as a prop within our lives? Or is that a slightly detached way of viewing it?

Looking to the past, communities generally lived in very close harmony with the natural world: patterns of work, cultural traditions, food and clothing often stemming from the resources of any given place and time. People would structure their lives around the seasons and their harvests, making use of all that was available and paying close attention to the signs and relationships within nature.

Even fairly recently we seem to have had a much closer connection with our environment; often working closely with it and knowing the names, timings, and details of the lives of its plants and animals. There seems to have been this close observation of interest, admiration, wonder, respect, and gratitude for both the beauty and opportunity nature affords us.

Not to say that’s entirely disappeared, but it certainly seems to have faded out or be doing so fairly dramatically. The sense in which we often now live in essentially urban environments, without the immediate proximity of industries such as farming, seems to be giving rise to generations of people with very little by way of that living relationship and understanding of the natural environment.

Rather than existing within nature, ordering our lifestyles and celebrations around it, acting in respectful cooperation with it and seeing it as an indispensable resource for our continued enjoyment of life, our attitudes now seem so casual and distant. Presumably this relationship needs to be mutual? A sense of tending, preserving, enriching that which gives us what we need?

So much has changed in the last hundred years or so, and perhaps “this” is the least of it; but I don’t see how we can logically justify such detachment from our environment when we are almost completely dependent upon it. Reducing nature to frivolous self-service or casual disregard is surely pretty questionable?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Intrinsic value of nature
Note 1: Why are we like this about the weather?
Note 1: Nature speaks in many ways, do we listen?
Note 1: “Ecological Intelligence”
Note 1: Gardening as therapy, the dark
Note 1: Aesthetic value of nature
Note 1: Living the dream

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Where would we stand if this were lost?

What do we stand to lose, as people? Presumably that’s the line of reasoning for assessing any form of risk: what’s at stake; how easily could we replace it; what would it cost to do so; and, can we afford that? This idea of imagining what might happen and somehow making our peace with it, financially as much as personally. Turning it round to look at modern society, where does that reasoning lead?

Because it seems we’re quite clearly shifting toward running most, if not all, of our essential social functions through the medium of technology (see Notes One). Naturally, I’d imagine. Every civilisation probably took its tools and turned them toward the problems of life; reconfiguring their existence to some extent around what was becoming possible. In that light, technology is simply the most recent manifestation of progress.

But then, it’s evidently a tool that operates on a scale the world had never seen: reconfiguring international patterns of communication, commerce and cooperation; redistributing resources, products and functions; shifting ideas at an astonishing pace, and conceivably changing how we are as people in ways no one can entirely predict. Possibly the first tool humanity’s ever had the luxury of wielding that has such huge reach.

Our previously distinct, relatively isolated communities are seemingly now merged by many visible and invisible means; creating countless sub-communities and common interests that transcend our national borders to interlink us all in ways we might not fully realise. The complex reality of this modern, global community is fascinating to contemplate, much as we no longer actually see the impacts we’re having on others (Notes Two).

What does it all mean? What is it that we’re deconstructing on the local or national scale and confidently rebuilding on this global one? What way of thinking about life are we transposing there, as we effectively reshape all these corners of the planet with our activities? What ideals or beliefs around the value of human life and the significance of our existence are we using as the foundation for all this?

And what does it mean that we’re so often removing local infrastructure such as high street retailers, accessible offices, and other tangible functions and services around which our physical communities were built? Surely, at the core of it all, we’re still humans with a sense of place, belonging, warmth, interaction, and the value we add through our actual physical presence and contribution? (Notes Three)

Within all this, our choices are inevitably adding up; potentially chipping away at some quite fundamental aspects of what makes us human and connects us meaningfully, purposefully, respectfully with one another. All these small shifts and compromises must be changing things in countless untold ways as society gradually takes on these new forms.

What are the forms, functions and values underpinning this way of life and how we’re going about things now? What are we taking apart in the physical world and shifting into this other, virtual one? And, where does that leave us?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Market forces or social necessities
Note 1: Technology & the lack of constraint
Note 2: Value in visible impacts
Note 2: Community as an answer
Note 3: At what point are we just humans?
Note 3: “Wisdom” by Andrew Zuckerman
Note 3: Obligations and contributions

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What we know to pass on

Do we know what’s important in life? Say, the ten most essential things we really must know? Or even, with regard to any given piece of information, whether it’s important for others to know it as well? Whether each little fact, insight or comment actually counts much at all. We must all carry a lot of baggage in life, a great deal of information and resources of various kinds, but does it even matter?

Diving right in there, we’re clearly inundated with advice. Pretty much as soon as we’re born, and potentially every single day since, we’re being told things: expectations; warnings; instructions; little hard-won pearls of wisdom; random tips about zips; more thorough guidance on how the world works; whole bodies of knowledge imparted through formal learning. All this, and more.

As if everyone’s filtering through all the stuff they’ve been given and chucking a tonne of it at you, just in case. We must do it on a personal level, almost without thinking: all the statements, judgements and choices we make forming this stream of information about how we see life. Then it’s happening in this more coordinated fashion through media, education, government, and entertainment (see Notes One).

It’s fascinating really, this massive intergenerational conversation between all these interested parties. Each one having their own agenda in terms of how they view “you”, the hopes or expectations they have for your existence, and all they plan to achieve through communicating with you in these ways. Then there’s the whole global, instantaneous, commercial edge we now have on top of it all.

What are we supposed to do with that? How are we to discern the essential from the non-essential? If we’re presented with twenty facts and one of them is crucially important – a piece of information that, if we live our life by it, will make everything so much easier – but the other nineteen flashy, appealing ideas dancing round it are almost completely useless, how are we to know?

And if we’re the ones passing on information, how do we compete with a world that’s acting this way? If we’re trying to communicate something that seems really very important and life-changing, but we look around and see this crazy, screaming world of distracting commercial novelty, what can we do? Do we start yelling, or dressing up our ideas so they stand out better?

Of course, we all think ‘our way’ is right and we’re the ones who should be heard. It’s just getting a little overwhelming, both in terms of volume and then what’s apparently ‘required’ to operate effectively in that space (Notes Two). And if this is information to live our lives by – knowledge, advice on well-being, awareness of current affairs – is it not also risky?

Who knows where the answer lies. Possibly with personal discernment in evaluating our own contributions. Maybe in disengaging slightly from channels offering little more than distraction. Perhaps by focussing in on what matters and shifting a calmer conversation to that place?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Seeing, knowing and loving
Note 1: Able to see what matters?
Note 1: Respect, rebellion & renovation
Note 1: What’s a reasonable response?
Note 2: Concerns over how we’re living
Note 2: The need for discernment
Note 2: Testing times

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Truth, illusion & cultural life

One of obviously many things I find both interesting and important is the ways in which culture blends into our personal and social realities: how stories told there often merge into our ideas of life, how to be or relate, the things we buy and lifestyles we seek to emulate. Through that, we’re seemingly seeking meaning in life through social participation, identity, and those cultural moments we’re choosing to align ourselves with.

In many ways, it’s beautiful. This dance we all do as humans? The ways we’re constantly watching what’s going on, deciding how we feel about it, then going out of our way to transform ourselves in the light of what we perceive as valuable or admirable. It’s amazing really, the creativity of the human mind in playing with all the visual markers thrown our way by cultural institutions (see Notes One).

That last sentence clearly twisted somewhere in the middle. Unintentionally, but sometimes my words take on a life of their own. There’s truth to it though, as I do feel our very human creative and social inclinations are being drawn into quite another world. Whether that’s intentional, and the degree to which it’s a healthy, fulfilling, constructive way of operating as a society is perhaps something only time will tell.

It seems to me that culture’s the place we weave our narratives around our lives. Narratives that sometimes pick up threads from the present or imagine threads from the past, pulling social or historical realities into this other realm to explore them further. Narratives that sometimes take themes or issues from our world then cast them in new lights, often in hypothetical or imaginary worlds that arrange our pieces in different ways.

Culture seems to have this wonderful way of rearranging things: bringing in fresh meaning through juxtaposition, through placing the familiar or unfamiliar in unusual relationship, drawing our inner world of connotations into strange or inspiring places. Now life’s happening on this global scale, there’s conceivably almost endless forms such activities could take by pulling in threads from every time and place (Notes Two).

But, with regard to reality, are we in danger of casting truth aside in preference for neater, more compelling or convenient narratives? History and society being complex, weighty and often dark, it may be appealing to simplify or offset that by re-working things to suit modern sensibilities or agendas. Within that, where does truth stand? Only by knowing the truth would we see the illusion.

If society’s something we have to understand, then filling our minds with potent yet unrealistic ideas could be seen as problematic (Notes Three). If we can grasp the ‘code’ – ways social realities are being represented, plus their true form – then presumably the reworkings of culture are without such great significance: we would see them for what they are.

As with anything, maybe the answer lies in our understanding? In knowing what we’re looking for, what we’re needing, and what it is that’s being offered through these channels.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Meaning in culture
Note 1: Cultural shifts & taking a backseat
Note 1: Revisiting the question of culture
Note 2: History’s role in modern culture
Note 2: Entertaining ideas & the matter of truth
Note 2: Will novelty ever wear off?
Note 3: Plato & “The Republic”
Note 3: Playing with fire?

Picking back up that earlier thought of humanity’s beautiful dance, there was The creativity of living.

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