Month: October 2019

Tempting justifications of self

Is there something to the human perspective, to human psychology, that makes us choose and defend our own stance in life? As if, seeing things through our own eyes and making sense of them with our own brain, it’s a flow of thought we can’t have broken.

Maybe we need the psychological security of feeling our perception and logic to be flawless? The fundamental reassurance of not bringing ourselves into question or admitting any errors. It seems “reasonable” the mind would like to know it can trust itself; that our view of life and what we take things to mean is something we can rely upon (Notes One).

In terms of the self, don’t we seek similar security? The recollection of our past and the plans that carried us through it “needing” to be this coherent, unbroken, upward arc of our growth, agency and wisdom. Don’t we rely on our storyline plus the accompanying narration of our thinking, conclusions and interpretation of meaning to feel good about ourselves?

The mind seems funny like that: seeking to place ground beneath our feet. Ways of thinking surely reinforced by modern culture’s emphasis on evidence-based assessment: we “are” what we’ve done and what we say we’ve learnt from it. The spin we put on life is powerful (Notes Two), as we strive to turn everything to our advantage and shift focus until we’re somehow the key actor and star of the show.

Especially in today’s “cancel culture” where making a mistake can see people’s “existence” effectively wiped out. Isn’t that a kind of “death”? This ostracisation of shame, labels and blame, where we assume a mistaken word or action speaks “the truth” of a person. Condemning people without allowing them the grace of emerging with deeper understanding seems problematic in a fast-moving, blended culture.

Doesn’t social judgement create personal insecurity similar to before? That risk of losing ground and feeling our sense of self is on shaky terms with our community. As individuals, our standing in relation to others could be akin to that inward feeling we have about the integrity of our experience and what it “says” about us: if our storyline’s compromised, who are we? (Notes Three)

How human is all this, though? To expect or claim perfection. To contort situations so we emerge victorious regardless of truth or consideration for others. What are we pushing aside or pushing under with this way of thinking? Is it self at the cost of truth, of others, of everything? How far can we go in justifying our behaviour simply because it’s ours? Does our culture even let us do otherwise?

It’s just a strange situation when identity, self-worth and social standing are tied to this thinking. Defending or rationalising ourselves, our conditioning, seems an odd way to go about living: aligning thought – truth – to our own, necessarily limited experience. Could we not, somehow, shift to a place of allowing humans to be flawed? Learning, evolving, moving beyond a simply personal understanding of life.

Notes and References:

Note 1: The value of a questioning attitude?
Note 1: Caught in these thoughts
Note 1: David Bohm, thoughts on life
Note 1: The sense of having a worldview
Note 2: Ways thought adds spin to life
Note 2: Complication of being human
Note 2: The struggle with being alive
Note 2: Letting people change
Note 3: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 3: Humans, judgement & shutting down
Note 3: The way to be
Note 3: All we want to do passes through community

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Advantage people don’t want to concede

We’re all born into such different situations, all dealt our hand of fundamental realities we have to live with. Society’s structure then determining how things play out; pre-existing cultural ideas and prevailing attitudes shaping any chance of moving much beyond our starting points or limitations.

Idealistically, society would work to even that out: offsetting “fate” somehow to ensure all have an equal chance to thrive and progress despite any obstacles we’re facing. In reality, it doesn’t often seem to work that way. Maybe because people perceive “assistance” as being in someway “unfair”? Maybe life’s moving at such a pace it’s hard for anyone to keep up.

It’s also, perhaps, “natural” that people don’t want to concede an advantage. Individually or collectively, it’s arguably not in anyone’s best interest and seems an unlikely path to take. What’s the incentive? Only loss, I’d imagine: handing back a strong suit or changing the rules of a game they looked likely to win. How many people do that?

We’re probably all quite caught up in the status this world’s offering; enjoying things and counting on them continuing. Personal identity seems so tangled in culture’s symbols and the sense of self we’ve gained through our position in society (Notes One). In the West, particularly, we have such luxury in our freedoms, opportunities and excesses – effectively, we do as we please.

But how much of “that” is based on inequality? What amount of our way of life is founded on pushing others down, even within our own communities? Whether economically or culturally, advantage as much as disadvantage seem like relative concepts: we are prettier, more stylish, or better able to afford a certain lifestyle “than” others. Doesn’t status only exist by way of comparison?

In that sense, it just seems unlikely people have much incentive to improve things. We’ve developed this combative, competitive approach to life that pretty much depends on there being these pervasive divisions (Notes Two). It’s a system that leads, almost naturally, to questioning whether we’ve placed the “right” values at the core of modern community.

Maybe that’s the aim of “progressive” elements: to address such attitudes and provide means for redressing ongoing disadvantages. Asking that we stop and re-evaluate how things are working must be important at this point, as what if we’re ploughing on in ways that lead toward a dangerous building up of social resentment and disconnection? Unless we tear each other apart first with angry idealism. (Notes Three)

Still I just wonder if we can go far enough in eradicating the imbedded inequalities of birth or capitalism. Especially when we’ve built life around profiting from natural endowments and superficial enhancements. Isn’t our culture – our sense of meaning, worth and success – largely based on deconstructing appearances and placing ourselves slightly or dramatically ahead of others?

Is this a way of life that can actually “work” the world over, or does it have limits? Maybe we need new ideas, new ways of thinking about human worth and its value within society.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Culture as what we relate to
Note 1: People, roles, reading that rightly
Note 1: What it is to be human
Note 2: Those who are leading us
Note 2: Where do ideas of evolution leave us?
Note 2: Do we really need incentives?
Note 3: Thoughts of idealism and intolerance
Note 3: Complication of being human
Note 3: What’s not essential

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