Month: November 2019

Making things up as we go along

How much in life are we essentially now just making up to suit ourselves? Deciding which beliefs, which attitudes, values and practices we’ll adopt in our lives and how closely we’ll adhere to them. This mini culture-of-self that might easily expand into a group culture or various conflicting group cultures. It’s fascinating how something once so tightly regulated became so individual, so unregulated.

Isn’t it that patterns of belief used to bind communities together in common feeling, celebration and attitudes toward one another? Knowing how to read things, how to judge them and how to respond must’ve made society so predictable and reassuring. Also, of course, limiting and subject to the wisdom or otherwise of those charged with establishing or maintaining such systems.

But all those little conventions surely helped soften the edges of social coexistence – everyone knowing how to act, what it meant, and why it mattered (Notes One). As if life were an opus and people, having all been distributed their parts, were able to come together as a harmonious whole. Don’t agreed-upon rules allow for that? Language, etiquette, driving all rely on shared terms, meanings, expectations and interpretations.

Now, it seems any notion of wholeness has been shattered into a billion little self-directed pieces. Each taking it upon themselves to be the decider, the judge, the actor in their own little dramas. All coming up against each other with perhaps very little understanding, interest or tolerance for how we might choose to live differently.

Some might be holding firmly to the ideas received from family or community; others, rebelling against any sense of being told what to do; many perhaps stand in the middle pulling different pieces together and striving to improve any perceived shortcomings. Everyone making things up for themselves and those around them, aren’t we all crafting our own responses to existence?

Which just seems amazing – that freedom, the responsibility of it all. Holding to received thought, you’re perhaps not quite responsible for what you’re part of; as if it’s an umbrella you’re simply standing under. Rejecting things on principle, to me, seems a strange method of finding wisdom in that you’re presumably just as likely to reject the perfect as the flawed. Maybe deciding for ourselves “is” the best path (Notes Two).

But it surely places us all in a strange situation where nothing around us is entirely clear. How can we know where we stand, individually and collectively? How are we to speak if our words might hold different meanings in another’s eyes? How should we act if we’re interpreted through others’ frames of reference with no opportunity to explain our beliefs or expectation they’ll be tolerant of our choices?

If shared culture and convention gave us the code for understanding one another and, therefore, the confidence of being understood, where are we now? If we’re all reinventing the wheel, mixing it up, and expressing individuality using those terms, what will it take for us to come together into something slightly more harmonious?

Notes and References:

Note 1: What keeps us in check
Note 1: The power of convention
Note 1: If society’s straining apart, what do we do?
Note 1: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 1: What really matters
Note 1: Invisible ties
Note 2: The need for discernment
Note 2: Passivity, or responsibility
Note 2: True relationship within society?
Note 2: Thoughts of idealism and intolerance
Note 2: Education as a breaking away?
Note 2: Ideas of agreement & mastery

Ways to share this:

Power and potential

In a certain sense, aren’t we more powerful than the mass of humanity has ever been? This power that comes with knowledge, with the connections of thought and where they can lead. Then, the power that connectedness offers on the more human level: the psychological reassurance of connecting with people rather than being alone and a potential for coordination we’ve never had before.

It’s somewhere between ‘knowledge is power’ and ‘strength in numbers’ – this sense in which ties with others and with information are simply empowering. It’s surely quite amazing we have these possibilities? That the worlds of understanding and relationship are now at our fingertips. All that humanity’s arguably been fighting for all these years is “here”.

Isn’t this what people had been working towards throughout preceding decades and centuries? All-encompassing insight. Drawing together all these disparate experiences and bodies of knowledge into a single conversation and place of reference. The dream of making everything available; exposing it all to the clear light of day; getting everyone on the same page around similar ideas (Notes One).

Knowing we’re not alone, that others hear our struggles and we’re all working together at a better world for everyone, may be humanity’s most beautiful dream – this picture of uniting the globe with common understanding, mutual concern, concerted action. Because don’t we now have the capacity for those things? If only thinking, relating and embracing others and their ideas weren’t so challenging (Notes Two).

As with almost every project, perhaps, reality’s a little more flawed. If technology’s an enshrined understanding of the systems, ideas and functions of human existence, how can we be sure our understanding at that point was perfect? And, if it wasn’t, are we to proceed with imperfect ideas or somehow work to rectify them? If our thinking’s informed by all this, though, where can we stand to correct it? (Notes Three)

Might it not be that modern life risks becoming a caricature of misunderstood, original truth? Our starting points codified, brought to life in new ways, and evolving into strange contorted echoes of fundamental human realities. In technology as much as thought itself, isn’t it true that a false premise might lead to wildly inappropriate outcomes?

Without fully understanding where ideas, theories and solutions have come from there’s presumably a danger we’ll lose the capacity to judge, course-correct or interact wisely with what’s around us. Doesn’t letting things shape our lives without a solid sense of the reality behind it risk us being limited by the design of it all – incapable of challenging the pace of “progress”? (Notes Four)

Modern living’s perhaps easier and more difficult than ever: if we can do and know almost anything, so many boundaries having been removed, it’s effectively up to us all to thoroughly understand what we’re choosing. Do we have the strength – the mental bandwidth – to grasp all that’s going on? And, if those capacities become weakened through reliance or deference to technology, how are we to decide which paths to take?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 1: How ideas find their place in the world
Note 2: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 2: True relationship within society?
Note 3: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 3: The value of a questioning attitude?
Note 4: Technology as a partial reality
Note 4: Mastering life’s invisible realities
Note 4: Detaching from the world around us

Ways to share this:

Goods & the wisdom in scarcity

Sometimes I wonder if scarcity doesn’t contain its own form of wisdom, in how it effectively focuses in on what really matters. Whereas, with novelty and excess, it’s almost as if we lose that “line” between what we truly need and everything else that’s on offer.

Isn’t there a sense of indulgence to being in a position of “plenty” in that we’re free to make quite frivolous, unnecessary choices? Once essential needs have been met, aren’t we – almost by definition – in the world of excess? Living in that space, how are we to decide which non-essential items we want most? What sort of yardstick do we use for that?

Could it genuinely be true that less is more? That choosing what matters is better than chasing what doesn’t. Of course, seeing what matters isn’t always easy: we all have interests, desires, and expectations of what’s going to make us feel our life’s worthwhile, admirable or otherwise satisfying. What are we ever looking for in the things we seek to own? (Notes One)

Somehow, it also seems that the more we have the less we appreciate it. As if acquisition itself only makes us desire more. Do we become desensitised to the value of things, chasing instead the thrill of wanting, pursuing and attaining the next? Maybe, having many things, we’ve too little time to recognise their worth, or the stress of managing them starts outweighing any pleasure they give.

Strange maths is surely going on here? This balance of desire, attention, distraction, fear of loss, and the never-ending search for more, newer, better… How are we to judge what we truly need out of “all this” if, in all honesty, we don’t really “need” any of it? It seems an odd sort of basis for society, this unfettered pursuit of whatever our hearts desire (Notes Two). Aren’t we notoriously insecure and suggestible?

The calculations behind society may be fascinating to consider but impossible to unpick. To what extent is the West actually built on the pursuit of more? More knowledge, more understanding, more skilful realisation of laudable aims may be justifiable; but “more stuff” seems a pretty questionable foundation. What’s the social, psychological and environment cost to that? (Notes Three)

What if, with all our freedom and choice, we’re missing the point of where value lies? In a world of scarcity, we’d likely value our belongings quite highly – those resources and assets that serve us in building, maintaining and shoring up what truly matters in life. Moving out of that world, how do we re-establish a sense for what’s really needed? If we just follow our heart, where does it lead?

Perhaps what I’m asking there is: what guides us? Can we recreate wisdom in the world of plenty and somehow re-discover that “edge” where our choices are, again, necessary and constructive? Rather than chase whatever we’re after, could we engage with the freedom markets offer to act wisely for the good of society in all the ways that’s conceivable?

Notes and References:

Note 1: What’s not essential
Note 1: The insatiable desire for more
Note 1: Attacks on our humanity
Note 2: “Small is Beautiful”
Note 2: One thing leads to another
Note 2: Social starting points for modern ways
Note 2: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 3: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 3: Things with life have to be maintained
Note 3: At what cost, for humans & for nature

Ways to share this:

Losing the sense of meaning

In life, do we see “meaning” as something to be given, found or created? What difference does it make? Is there any need for meaning at all? It generally does seem we look for it on some level – asking what things say about us or what matters within the bigger picture. Maybe, because we “can” think, we naturally seek to piece our perceptions together in meaningful ways?

And, in that, are we seeing this meaning as coming from the top down or bottom up? Don’t our actions hold meaning? Looking to the everyday, if we’re treating all people – all life – with respect then doesn’t that come to mean that all life’s worthy of respect? It’s like our actions speak for themselves, declaring what we consider valuable, admirable or otherwise deserving (Notes One).

In a way, we perhaps create meaning by upholding it: bringing values to life because, looking objectively, we feel they should be there. Otherwise, are we just waiting for it to be confirmed? For an external belief system to be proved “right” so we have grounds for confident action. If we’re not deciding for ourselves what’s meaningful, what’s capable of telling us how to think?

Maybe, somewhere, there “is” a sense of meaningful truth – a perceivable values-based reality we could accept as valid. As if values themselves might help us find their true state and right form. Perhaps honesty, kindness, love, patience, compassion, understanding and courage “are” their own kind of truth? A faithful acceptance, adherence and belief in the value of life.

Thinking about it, those qualities all tend to serve others and wider realities; guiding us to extend ourselves truthfully and gently into those spaces beyond the self. Rather than act out of personal interest, such “virtues” are pointing us outward into our relationship with the world. Is that where meaning lies: in the balance between the self and the world?

Until recently, values seemed to come from the top down – from the constriction of tradition or other belief. People being firmly held in place by commonly held notions of right and wrong in every area of life. As a gesture, it’s perhaps as reassuring as it is limiting? Knowing so clearly “what (not) to do” takes a weight off; but it’s tying you into this rigid, prescriptive, overarching structure.

Finding a system that can offer individual freedom plus adequate preparation for the responsibility that entails could well “be” a description of “Western society”. If we’re taking the edges off every area of life to leave it up to each of us to judge, can we be sure where that’ll lead? How well instinctive self-interest can blend into a world that includes everyone is a daunting question (Notes Two).

Effectively, it now seems down to us to create meaning out of our lives. Is it possible to find all these delicate lines between us and others – the past, present and future – to ensure the ideas we’re bringing to life are true reflections of its actual worth?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Do we need meaning?
Note 1: What keeps us in check
Note 1: Thoughts of idealism and intolerance
Note 1: Any such thing as normal?
Note 1: This thing called love
Note 1: Invisible ties
Note 2: Authenticity & writing our own story
Note 2: True relationship within society?
Note 2: Mastering life’s invisible realities
Note 2: “Quest for a Moral Compass”
Note 2: Questions around choice

Offering something of a parallel, The power of convention looked at what carries meaning and how we position ourselves in relation to others.

Ways to share this:

Literature that’s treating the soul

Modern bookshops sometimes seem inundated by literature that, for want of a better term, concerns itself with soul – the inner life of beliefs, attitudes, feelings, struggles and so forth. As if there’s been this void created by the fairly recent rejection of both belief and tradition; all of us now left to drift unaccompanied and undirected within life’s ocean.

A void into which is poured this tidal wave of advice, theories and strategies for making the best of a modern life (Notes One). Instead of moral authorities and wise leaders we have this wealth of self-help conversations promising to tell us all we need to know. It’s fascinating, really, how deconstructed our sense of meaning has become.

We might choose to listen to those sharing their life story as a case study, a body of material from which they’re drawing lessons we may find helpfully universal. We might listen to the “experts” who’ve distilled all they’ve learnt through life into a basic philosophy, way of thinking or set of labels for dealing with things.

Maybe it’s all about perspective? Finding ways of looking at life that “fit” and seem capable of matching up to modern society’s slightly crazy realities. Aren’t we asking, “What should I think about all this? How should I respond?” It’s like we’re seeking helpful thoughts – some cobbled-together worldview able to encompass everything in a meaningful, constructive way (Notes Two)

Because – between the economic realities forever telling us we’re not good enough and the cultural ones feeding us unrealistic expectations or interpretations of “life” – where are we to find attitudes that nurture the soul? What “is” the best picture of humanity, society and the purpose of our lives? Is there a perspective comprehensive enough to accommodate us all?

Taking culture to be the place we’re talking about life, assigning meaning within complex social realities, and imagining ways of being that might prove helpful in navigating this world, what are we being offered and which options are we taking onboard? That seems one way of looking at this: reflections on life that we’re choosing to accept and work with inwardly (Notes Three).

So, how does “the soul” – that space of perception, meaning, feeling, thought and decision – live these days? What recognition and respect are afforded to the inner life as we’re making our way through reality? How well are our lives framed by modern culture – what kind of ideas is human life being surrounded and informed by within this increasingly frenetic, lurching global conversation?

It’s philosophical, but where “can” we stand in understanding and responding to life? How much are we focussing on superficial, ephemeral realities destined by their very nature to pass and fade? Historically, traditions have discouraged people from trying to create permanency out of the physical; perhaps what we’re struggling with now – in our undeniably materialistic world – is effectively the same?

Trying to make sense of our place in life and what it all might mean, though, is quite a beautiful aspect of being human.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Spiritually committed literature
Note 1: “Brave New World Revisited”
Note 1: “The Measure of a Man”
Note 1: “Women who run with the wolves”
Note 1: “Living Beautifully” by Pema Chödrön
Note 1: “The Obstacle is the Way”
Note 1: Matt Haig’s “Notes on a Nervous Planet”
Note 1: Krishnamurti’s “Inward Revolution”
Note 1: The idea of self reliance
Note 1: Podcasts as models of transformation
Note 1: Ideas of agreement & mastery
Note 2: The sense of having a worldview
Note 2: Complication of being human
Note 2: Mastering life’s invisible realities
Note 3: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 3: Stories that bind us
Note 3: Emotion and culture’s realities

Ways to share this:

Is telling people what we want to be true a lie?

How often are we told things that aren’t entirely “true”? Say, for example, that women are equal to men. Theoretically I believe it’s absolutely true; but, in practice? In reality so much is set up within society, culture, relationships and economic structures that it’s not “really” true even if it should be. Does it make life more difficult if we’re told such hopeful lies?

It’s something I think about a lot (Notes One), as finding a powerfully honest understanding of reality that helps formulate useful responses to it is probably what matters most to me in life. If we’re not truly grasping what’s actually going on, how are we supposed to interact wisely and constructively with all that’s crossing our path?

And, coming back to the hopeful lies train of thought, might it not be true that believing things that haven’t yet found their way into the realities of life potentially makes things more difficult? If we’re all head-in-the-clouds believing theories are the same as facts won’t “reality” come as a bit of a shock? It seems to risk us becoming angry, disappointed, depressed, frustrated, and vengeful. Haven’t we been betrayed, on some level?

On the level of thought, perhaps – having believed a conceptual fact to be a reality, taken what we were told and expected life to fit those perspectives (Notes Two). Telling people something we hope will become true or believe should be true just doesn’t seem entirely realistic to me; and it seems to set us all up for some kind of fall.

But I also see that changing how people think is an important step in changing how things are. So, if we’re hoping to change how things are then changing how people think is presumably a logical strategy: we can get in there and plant seeds of change so these people, at least, will start to expect something more from society. I’d imagine that’s the thinking behind telling children, particularly, hopeful lies.

Perhaps it’s this idealistic mask we place over realities? The “how things should be” approach to perceiving what’s actually around us. As if the dissonance and discomfort that’s bound to create will awaken the indignation needed to bring those ideals to life. It seems such an intriguing, convoluted and potentially risky path to change – won’t it create a lot of anger?

Paths to change, though, are probably never going to be easy (Notes Three). Changing all the systems, thinking and assumptions that underpin our social structures and cultural ideas is such an incredibly ambitious and important project. Isn’t working towards a time when reality will reflect our finest ideals a sort of projecting ourselves into the future? Casting our minds forward with this picture of how things could be.

Change probably always needs such a vision – a conceptual sense of how things could work and why it’s so essential they do. In that light, perhaps it’s really the case that “hopeful lies” might be serving a valuable function as we walk that path.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Frameworks of how we relate
Note 1: Thoughts of idealism and intolerance
Note 1: Do we need meaning?
Note 1: This thing called love
Note 2: Caught in these thoughts
Note 2: Which voice can we trust?
Note 2: How ideas find their place in the world
Note 2: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 3: The world we’re living in
Note 3: All we want to do passes through community
Note 3: Making adjustments
Note 3: Patience with the pace of change

Walking another path, somewhere alongside this, there’s Is honesty actually the best policy?

Ways to share this:

Education as a breaking away?

Is there a sense in which growing up “has” to mean breaking away from what went before? Does identity have to be defined “against” what we wish to be free of? It’s one way of creating boundaries – pushing away from what’s around – but is it the only one?

It’s surely a “natural” way of gaining a greater sense of self: separating from what’s formed us to decide for ourselves how we’ll be. Looking to nature, moving beyond limitations also seems natural – life perhaps “being” this path of preparing others to rise above current levels and meet the future well. In all these ways, it could be natural we push back (Notes One).

Whereas in the past young people might’ve lived more under the wing of their ancestors, looking to them for the model and guidance for how to live, we seem to have turned all that on its head. As opposed to respectful engagement and integration with what went before there’s now a great deal of challenge and criticism. And maybe that’s “right”, in a way; if how we’ve been living was somehow mistaken (Notes Two).

But defining ourselves by rejecting what’s around us also seems quite strange and divisive. Identity’s a funny concept – this place where inner meets outer and something gets created. Our own unique blend of who we feel ourselves to be, formed out of the options society’s currently offering. We pull some bits toward us and push others firmly away, taking our place in reality that way.

It’s where private realities encounter the world and we get drawn into its play with form – a place of labels, assumptions, and all the ways we claim to know who someone “is” from what’s on the outside. A life-consuming game, and not one that everyone’s interested in playing. It can’t be the only way to be human?

The sense of where we stand in life and what life “means” surely matters? Having some idea of what it is to live “well” – what our freedom represents within the bigger picture. Doesn’t that come from what’s passed onto us? All the things previous humans felt were important for further generations; the skills, values, facts and activities deemed essential (Notes Three).

Education must be a fairly crucial process for a thinking species if we’re to successfully pass on that capacity and all it’s gained for us over the years. Isn’t rejection and disrespect for learning – for the people and paths coming before – a strange statement within the “conversation of society”? If, with our words and relationships, we’re forming links in the chain of humanity then what does it mean to break with that process?

How is it we come into life and take our place in the adult world? Isn’t life largely our attitudes to one another, to society and the thinking behind it? Isn’t “that” what we have to engage with, somehow? Anticipating rebellion surely carries a strange sense of contradiction: why impart important truths if they’ll only be discarded?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Complication of being human
Note 1: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 1: What it is to be human
Note 1: Masks we all wear
Note 2: On whose terms?
Note 2: How ideas find their place in the world
Note 2: Old meets new, sharing insight
Note 2: In the deep end…
Note 3: True relationship within society?
Note 3: Knowledge, capacity & understanding
Note 3: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 3: Meaning within it all

Ways to share this:

True relationship within society?

Much as we might talk of six degrees of separation between individuals, we could probably now draw in the ties between any two people on this planet. Whether it’s links of trade or development between governments and businesses or our respective representations in an increasingly globalised culture, there’s perhaps fairly little that separates us in terms of the impacts we’re having and ideas we have in mind about one another.

Isn’t there very little we don’t have some kind of idea about? Whether those thoughts come from education, the media or culture, there’s this sense in which our views on life are formed and we’re carrying these preconceived notions about how things work, who people are and what we should think about them (Notes One).

Then, in terms of trade, aren’t we pretty much all now connected in some shape or form? Don’t our consumer decisions all converge to represent significant economic, social and environmental realities all across the globe? These waves of consumption and production dramatically shifting the power, influence and oppression of different segments of this global society we’re all living within (Notes Two).

It’s fascinating how our relatively separate and limited national societies rapidly expanded into this truly global, interconnected reality. Something that presumably used to be very real, lived, known and understood having become this vast, slightly abstract, hidden sense of community that’s having such considerable consequences on so many levels.

Hasn’t community always been based on relationship? This sense of how people are connected; ways their lives and activities intersect to provide all that society needs; the stories we’re told to ensure we understand and stay committed to that collective reality (Notes Three). Society being formed of distinct individuals, it’s surely important we value the roles we’re all playing within that larger picture.

So maybe it’s only natural we struggle to understand and, therefore, appreciate how we fit into this new picture. It’s a difficult reality to get your head around; particularly when life’s changing for everyone in important, distracting and often painful ways (Notes Four). And isn’t appreciation almost always based on understanding, on truth?

In order to see what’s going on, don’t we need to open our minds beyond our preconceived notions – to suspend our own ideas and put ourselves in another’s shoes to really see where they’re coming from and what life’s asking of them? Yet, these days, the self looms so large on almost everyone’s horizons. The pace and nature of modern life seems to insist we take, develop and hold to our own perspective on things.

Standing in true relationship to one another seems such a beautiful thing: seeing and appreciating who people are, the values they’re living by, what motivates and inspires them beyond any superficial labels placed upon them. But getting to know people takes time and interest; things we don’t actually seem to have.

Rather than dividing ourselves up into mutually incomprehensible groups, couldn’t we somehow extend ourselves to connect meaningfully with the humanity beneath it all?

Notes and References:

Note 1: How ideas find their place in the world
Note 1: Frameworks of how we relate
Note 1: Powerful responsibility of a media voice
Note 1: Culture as what we relate to
Note 1: Seeing, knowing and loving
Note 2: What we create by patterns of behaviour
Note 2: Interdependency
Note 3: Community – what it was, what we lost
Note 3: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 3: Mastering life’s invisible realities
Note 3: Knowing who to trust
Note 4: Does being alone amplify things?
Note 4: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 4: Life’s never been simpler…

Ways to share this:

On whose terms?

Isn’t it true that conversations happen using terms as they’re set? Civilisation, generally speaking, being this process of picking things up at the point previous generations handed them over. Life as this long, ongoing “conversation” humanity’s been carrying forward through its ideas, beliefs and activities over the years.

That in mind, it’s interesting to consider what’s happening with modern society. We’ve got the entire wealth of civilisation at our fingertips. And we’re gleefully pulling all its visual or philosophical reference points into new and original relationships – this endless potential for juxtaposition and re-presentation (Notes One).

But there’s also this sense that we’re not happy with the past: constantly re-evaluating and reinterpreting it as we revisit our history with the eyes, ideas and sentiment of the modern day (Notes Two). In many ways that’s fair enough – our path’s often been murky and not what we’d hope for when looked at with the ideas it’s led us to.

The experiences, knowledge and capacity history leaves us with is such a questionable inheritance. What are we to make of where we stand? How are we to pick up words with all their history or handle the powerful fruits of those dubious actions? It’s understandable humanity’s most recent generations struggle to reconcile the facts and responsibilities they’ve been handed (Notes Three).

Yet, somehow, we still need to talk about where we’re headed. It doesn’t seem we can just discard what’s brought us here, throwing out this old, tainted terminology and completely redefining everything. Much as we might want to, it doesn’t quite seem the most respectful, sensible course of action.

People might’ve been living in questionable and unsustainable ways, but it’s never easy to see where blame lies. Where do ideas and beliefs come from? How much were people encouraged to trust rather than question the authority around them? Looked at from the limited national perspective that was all we once had, how were people to judge realities they couldn’t see?

Civilisation arguably walks a moral path from limitation through expansion to increased awareness – crossing lines and moving forward we “can” turn around and see that path with fresh eyes (Notes Four). Not to say that anything bad is ever justifiable; but isn’t life itself a journey of growth toward greater understanding? Aren’t we always, hopefully, learning and gaining perspective from where we stand?

The present day seems this strange awakening of global consciousness: we’ve explored it all, terrible as many routes have been, and now “have” this insight into humanity’s position on this planet. We receive the entire body of ideas people have spun around the world as they came to understand it.

How best to work with the words and realities we’ve inherited seems important. Rather than turning on one another, maybe it’s wise to handle our inheritance cautiously? Respecting and understanding what’s brought us here while still actively, compassionately involving ourselves to resolve the many undeniable problems we’re left with. Perhaps we can redefine and reshape society on far better terms.

Notes and References:

Note 1: How ideas find their place in the world
Note 1: Meaning in a world of novelty
Note 2: The world we’re living in
Note 2: Entertaining ideas & the matter of truth
Note 2: The value of a questioning attitude?
Note 2: Old meets new, sharing insight
Note 3: Can we manage all-inclusive honesty?
Note 3: What it is to be human
Note 3: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 4: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 4: “Quest for a Moral Compass”

Ways to share this:

The power of convention

If we were to break society down to its simplest form, isn’t it mainly about eating? Putting meals on the table, securing food sources, providing nourishment to those we love, sharing things politely and fairly. It perhaps naturally follows that “Table manners are as old as human society itself, the reason being that no human society can exist without them.”

Isn’t food, in many ways, society’s foundation? This regular requirement that serves to structure our days, guide our activities, and give our lives both purpose and meaning. Ways people have regulated these things is quite fascinating – isn’t it all an expression of how we stand in relation to one another and to nature itself? (Notes One)

There’s this whole world of ritual woven around food: ways things are done, how we should act, what it means if we don’t. Knowing ‘all that’ is surely a large part of what it means to navigate our social world? Understanding its forms, meeting expectations, taking part in this complicated dance of human interaction to ensure important principles stay alive.

It’s like the language of society. Rather than making things up, we learn what’s gone before, grasp its meaning, and adapt it if needed while ensuring nothing essential is lost. Convention perhaps offers the starting point for innovation: knowing what’s expected and why, we can know what it means to change or drop things altogether. Isn’t it important we know?

Reading “The Rituals of Dinner” by Margaret Visser, it’s intriguing to hear all the ways people create and carry forward meaning. She paints a picture of convention as a form of communication that helps us interrelate and engage with the values at the heart of our community. That we might be enacting meaning with every encounter is a beautiful idea of what life could be.

All tradition perhaps carries this sense of how groups pass on meaning and structure, linking the past through the present into the future (Notes Two). Inherited practices might seem a senseless burden, but maybe it’s true that “if we stop celebrating, we also soon cease to understand; the price for not taking the time and the trouble is loss of communication.”

If shared realities are “communication with others” and “it is only the individual who can personally mean what is going on” then isn’t this dance what’s expressing our appreciation of the ground on which we stand? So many essential human and social values seem deeply embedded in these things.

Recently, though, “old manners are dying and new ones are still being forged… Sometimes we hold the terrifying conviction that the social fabric is breaking up altogether… backsliding from previous social agreements that everyone should habitually behave with consideration for others. At other times a reaction against the social rituals of our own recent past leads us to lump all manners together as empty forms, to be rejected on principle.”

Might the place convention holds within society and meaning woven into its rituals be important to keep in mind?

Notes and References:

“The Rituals of Dinner. The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners” by Margaret Visser, (Penguin Group), 1991.

Note 1: Things with life have to be maintained
Note 1: Common sense as a rare & essential quality
Note 1: Frameworks of how we relate
Note 1: The difference humanity makes
Note 1: What we create by patterns of behaviour
Note 2: Social starting points for modern ways
Note 2: Any such thing as normal?
Note 2: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 2: Different places, different ways

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