Month: April 2020

What we create by our presence

How often are we waking up in life thinking, “What am I going to contribute today? In what ways might I invest in and strengthen society through my attitudes and actions?” Not simply through work or payment, but through the manner in which we live our lives and the things we’re choosing to support. To what extent is our involvement in building up the fabric of society active and intentional?

Because isn’t that what all our moments play into? Each word, thought, decision feeding into the social, economic, interpersonal reality we’re all a part of (Notes One). Almost everything we’re choosing to do must strengthen certain aspects of society or, potentially, weaken them. Each choice becoming an example, an encouragement, a condonement of whatever courses of action we’re putting our weight behind.

Almost as if we’re all permeating the space around us with what we’re choosing or allowing ourselves to share with the world. Each person perhaps serving as a beacon by way of the example we’re setting and values we’re upholding throughout our lives. Everyone having encountered the world, its forms and opportunities, and decided what they’ll bring to life through their presence within it.

There must be countless opportunities each day to improve things – making more of life than what we came across; weaving something valuable into our shared existence; taking a stand based on a judgement of what’s best. Don’t all the small, accumulated actions and interactions of our lives inevitably add up to “something”?

Not to say we should just willingly “fill” society as it currently stands, adopting whatever ideas or assumptions might’ve been handed down to us, but that our engagement seems to make a difference (Notes Two). Undoubtedly, modern society still has a way to go in bringing essential ideals to life through the systems and structures surrounding us all; and perhaps an important part of that is our role in insisting upon them.

Don’t the choices we make all sit within and contribute towards this overall picture of a “reality” we’re all sharing? Much as that might now take the form of transactions within systems hidden from easy observation, they still all fit into something our actions are serving to sustain. Don’t we still need to “see” that picture and be clear on what matters within it? Even if it’s of a scale that humans before us never needed to imagine.

Maybe it simply comes down to what we think life’s about? This sense we might have of what matters, what’s acceptable, what’s admirable, and so forth. We perhaps each have different – often, personal – priorities guiding all these choices we’re making, but the sense of how it all comes together into something humans everywhere have to live with is both intriguing and daunting. What is it we’re all taking part in?

Once again, this has drifted a little from the course I’d imagined these thoughts might take. Ultimately, though, isn’t it true that we’re all offering life “something” through the choices we’re making?

Notes and References:

Note 1: True relationship within society?
Note 1: Having confidence in complex systems
Note 1: Mutual awareness and accommodation?
Note 1: Society as an imposition?
Note 1: Does anything exist in isolation?
Note 2: Shaping the buildings that shape us
Note 2: The stories that we hear
Note 2: Authenticity & writing our own story
Note 2: The thought surrounding us
Note 2: Whether we make a difference

For more thoughts on human creativity, there’s Living as a form of art.

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Understanding what we’re all part of

If we’re looking to understand life, where do we start? Maybe we look at things from the top down and bottom up; considering everything in the light of that fundamental division. Perhaps we look from the inside out and outside in – at what life means from those perspectives. It could be no “one way” of looking is entirely complete, but don’t we have to understand this reality somehow?

There are perhaps countless ways we could attempt to make sense of modern life: many lenses to look through, viewpoints to take, theories to spin around where we stand and what our priorities should be. Maybe there are as many perspectives as there are people? Each looking at life based on their experience, understanding and expectations of it and forming their own, personal judgements (Notes One).

How can we ever be sure, then, of being on the same page? This idea of everyone singing from the same hymn sheet as we strive towards the same vision of the life we’re hoping to create. Sometimes it seems we might all be standing on slightly different fracture lines within the same, one reality – each having experienced life differently, becoming aware of slightly different aspects of “how things are”.

Can any one theory or solution encompass all that our lives have exposed us to? Won’t each view of reality always be unique, significant, and personally lived? Each thread of humanity bearing within it an individually-experienced reflection of the world we all share. Each person perhaps hoping their existence matters to the others of their kind, as we’re all making choices that affect one another.

Thinking of life from the inside out, we might focus on what life’s like from each person’s perspective: the messages they receive, expectations placed upon them, labels they’re asked to live with, opportunities offered, and so forth. This sense of how “life” presents itself to each person and the meaning embedded in every aspect of that reality – the face the world turns towards them. (Notes Two)

Equally, we might look at our lives from the outside in, in terms of the messages we send through how we’re living. Don’t all our choices ripple out to create a discernible picture for those on the periphery? Our values and priorities effectively on display there through the way we’re acting with regard to those in different times, places or stations of life. (Notes Three)

If all that we do carries meaning and serves to either build up or take down structures within our lives, isn’t it important to understand what that picture is? What our actions “say” and “mean” from every side seems a fundamental part of reality. While it’s far from easy to figure out exactly what’s happening now and how it’s fitting together on the global level, isn’t it part of our responsibility to try? (Notes Four)

Understanding how we got here, what we were hoping to achieve, and how well that’s working out seems such an essential part of being human.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Absolute or relative value
Note 1: Making things up as we go along
Note 1: All that we add to neutrality
Note 2: Humans, tangled in these systems
Note 2: Imperfection as perfection?
Note 2: Society that doesn’t deal with the soul
Note 3: Being trusted to use our discernment…
Note 3: The picture data paints of us
Note 3: Values, and what’s in evidence
Note 4: Will things change if we don’t make them?
Note 4: Too much responsibility?
Note 4: Navigation, steering & direction

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Where do we get our ideas from?

Of all the ideas we have in mind, how sure can we be of where they’ve come from? How firm of a gatekeeper have we been over the years about all we’ve let in to set up camp there? Then, how clear are we of the ways they’re coming together? Of which ideas may combine into questionable or erroneous conclusions we may act upon. If our minds are the places we’re making sense of life and charting our way within it, surely it matters?

Isn’t it true that, all throughout our lives, things are pouring into our minds? Incredible amounts of information constantly flowing through our senses into this vast repository of all our experiences, observations, ideas, assumptions, theories, interpretations, and beliefs. Lessons of childhood merging with moments of adult life; the words of others often pressed in for good measure.

These days, there’s such a staggering amount of input we’re supposed to process, integrate and work with on a daily basis: this flood of words, images, subconscious messages, opinions, and attempts to influence. Our job, perhaps, being to filter through it all, weed much of it out, and only place the most reliable items on the valuable shelves of our mental space. (Notes One)

Often it seems likely those shelves are going to be cluttered and imperfect – that, along the way, things would’ve snuck through and earnt a place they don’t deserve. How are we to judge? Particularly when so much of “this” is specifically, intelligently designed to sneak past whatever defences we might’ve erected. Isn’t there a concerted effort, from various quarters, to shape our thinking and guide our behaviour? (Notes Two)

Sometimes it seems like a strange battle is raging over the contents of our minds, with so many “interested parties” hoping to change our ideas and thereby our actions. Perhaps as much of that’s well-meaning as the rest is dubious. Like this marketplace for human thought, where almost everyone’s trying to win you over, tempt you in, or otherwise induce you to buy into whatever they’re offering.

Maybe that’s too negative an image, but it’s often not seeming so far from the reality we’re faced with. Whether we’re talking of influencers or tribes or whatever else, our attention and belief seem like valuable commodities. Is it because, as humans, that’s where our freedom lies? This sense in which the ideas we take in and build our lives upon “become” the paths we’re walking.

The question of where we’re getting those ideas from and how well we’re managing them seems important. Hopefully education does us the wonderful service of providing a robust, reliable, yet flexible foundation of both ideas and the capacity to form them. Hopefully the conversations of media and cultural life help round out, strengthen and enhance our understanding of life. If not, how are we to stand against this? (Notes Three)

Otherwise it just seems we’re being constantly assailed with questionable, half-finished ideas that might do little more than create confusion, doubt and frustration.

Notes and References:

Note 1: The self within society
Note 1: Being trusted to use our discernment…
Note 1: Information might be there, but can we find it?
Note 1: The thought surrounding us
Note 2: Do we really need incentives?
Note 2: Which voice can we trust?
Note 3: Passing on what’s important
Note 3: How ideas find their place in the world
Note 3: Culture as information
Note 3: What is the public conversation?

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How quickly things can change

In life, does change happen fast or slow? Everything generally being made up of tiny actions and choices, it can easily seem there’s this inertia to “how things are” and changing them would require a lot of insistent effort. That life drifted into “this way of being” over decades and centuries, building up all these habits and thought patterns that would be hard to shift. But, is that really true?

Thinking of the – probably unscientific – notion that it takes twenty-one days to change a habit, there’s this idea that “all it takes” is a consistent window of conscious intention. That deliberately focussing on something over a period of time would effectively train us in a new way of being and make that our default behaviour.

But, beyond individual habits we might hope to make or break, what about complex situations and patterns of thought? If our lives – individually or collectively – are essentially made up of many small actions and agreements, how are we to conceive of changing things on that level?

Each item on our list would presumably have its logic, its reasoning or justification for doing things that way. All coming together in some form of “big picture” that’s perhaps full of contradictory ideas: a strange mix of tradition, preference, belief, fear, and social or cultural expectations. Why we do things the way we do them seems a deeply personal reality to unpack.

I’m not even sure “how” you attempt to change the items on that list? How you’d pull one out, dust off the logic originally surrounding it and decide to do differently. You obviously “can”, but we’d be living within a shifting reality while changing our beliefs about it: unpicking the threads, discarding their origins, choosing new ideas. Where can we stand to do that? (Notes One)

So, in some ways, change might be easy – you just change something – but deciding what to do instead doesn’t seem straightforward. Do we choose an alternative simply because it’s there; because others are doing it; because it’s deemed popular; because we like the idea of it? Between all the options we’re presented with, which path should we choose?

Because, in reality, things can change very quickly. With the current situation, all our habits pretty suddenly had to change as society ground to a halt for its own preservation. Whether that lasts or things pick back up where we left off remains to be seen. How easy would it even be to create meaningful, lasting changes within the systems we currently have?

That said, haven’t recent decades given almost every aspect of life new form? Technology having shifted us into different ways of operating or thinking about things, it’s interesting to imagine how much has changed in that time: all we might’ve lost or picked up by way of its daily insistence (Notes Two).

Within it all, how clear are we of the picture that’s being created, ideas informing it, or overall meaning of the changes taking place in our lives?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Being trusted to use our discernment…
Note 1: Passing on what’s important
Note 1: The value of a questioning attitude?
Note 1: Personal archaeology
Note 1: One thing leads to another
Note 2: Pace of change & getting nowhere fast
Note 2: Can “how we relate” really change?
Note 2: Mastering life’s invisible realities
Note 2: Trust in technology?
Note 2: Shaping the buildings that shape us

Somewhere alongside all this Things change, over time asked slightly different questions about the process of change.

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Do the “lies” blind us to truth?

How much of all we take in is really true? Not just in the sense of being a questionable overlay to reality in the shape of interpretation, opinion or argument, but actually a recasting of that reality through different eyes (Notes One).

There seem so many ways in which the information we’re receiving mightn’t be entirely true – all these subtle or dramatic representations of facts, their contexts or meanings. If we take it that, through our eyes or other senses, we’re constantly observing reality, taking it in, combining it with all we know and emerging with this evolving idea of life, how much of that picture is strictly going to be real?

Are we to look on our minds as faithful mirrors, having captured all that’s happened since our arrival on earth? All the lessons of youth and childhood, all the observations and developments of adulthood having lodged themselves up there as a reliable repository of all our knowledge, insight and understanding of “life”. This solid foundation on which to stand, view and judge anything we might encounter.

What if this is a space that contains as many lies as truths? Somewhere full of potentially mistaken lessons or facts that’ve changed so much in the interim that we might be wise to revisit, re-evaluate and revise what we have in mind. After all, how much of what crosses the threshold of our senses each day can truly be trusted? It seems entirely possible that the lion’s share of each day’s intake could quite easily be “lies”.

Not just in the sense of deliberate ones, but also because so much in life is now a convincing illusion: all these misrepresentations of reality in the form of social media, camera angles, make up, after effects, and so forth. Then, all the stories and films that run alongside reality, taking its forms, reworking its events, offering us perspectives we could never hope to have within real life.

Don’t we spend a reasonable amount of time absorbing vivid depictions of something close to reality that’s actually fiction? All these characters and retellings that come to life for us in ways reality itself rarely does: clear storylines with all facts present, if concealed, ready for us to uncover, disentangle and enjoy. This beautiful place where anything can happen and lessons can be learnt out of harm’s way.

The idea of what culture adds to reality seems such a fascinating question (Notes Two). Is this a place that helps us live our lives better through understanding things more clearly, or something to distract us from the humdrum state of existence? Does it help our sense of reality become more true or less so? Maybe we risk becoming desensitised, disinterested or disengaged with life itself.

Does it matter if our minds are so full of convincing, beautiful depictions of something close to reality that we find life itself dull, tiresome and frustratingly unclear? Especially now, when a realistic, constructive understanding and engagement with life seems so important.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Reading between the lines
Note 1: All that we add to neutrality
Note 1: Entertaining ideas & the matter of truth
Note 1: Going towards the unknown
Note 2: What’s the idea with culture?
Note 2: Reading into social realities?
Note 2: Culture as information
Note 2: The stories that we hear

The idea of what we believe and its effect on the lives we share was also part of Making things up as we go along.

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Diplomacy and knowing where we stand

Beyond the fairly simple premise of “say what you mean and mean what you say” there’s clearly a lot of ground for doing otherwise: for white lies, social niceties, saving face, protecting feelings, greasing the wheel, subterfuge, and so on. A whole world of options between truth and illusion where we might choose to set up camp and live our lives. How, then, can we ever know where we stand?

Maybe the world would be a hurtful place if everyone said what they really thought – something like the “honesty” we find online, veiled by cloaks of anonymity. If people don’t know or care for one another, maybe honesty becomes more of a weapon than a helpful tool for establishing a sense of certainty, truth or trust (Notes One).

Thinking about life, though – about thought and language, communication and meaning – what are we doing when we veil our honesty in these ways? If “to be human” is to see the world in thought and seek to make sense of it, what does it mean if much of what we’re hearing isn’t entirely clear? If, behind almost every word, there’s subtext or context essential to rightfully interpreting any given fact.

Maybe it’s simply communication: words and their meaning; the added envelopment of relationship, body language or tone; then our ability to decipher it all and arrive at the correct “reading” of whatever information we’re receiving (Notes Two). Unravelling all the layers of any statement to determine the intentions of the speaker and context into which they spoke, though, seems to be becoming increasingly difficult.

Isn’t technology stripping a lot out? These bare words travelling out there alone, devoid of all that might’ve been meant to go along with them. The warmth and humanity of their origins potentially lost as they make their way into others’ psyches and take on whatever coating is placed upon them there. Don’t we risk being trapped in prisons of our own making? Viewing everything in the light of our own mind. (Notes Three)

As with many things in modern life, what seems simple has sometimes become strangely complicated. Conventions such as diplomacy having arisen within or between specific communities, groups or cultures, there must’ve been a reasonable amount of agreement as to their usage – a sort of unspoken code. Conversations also tending to take place behind closed doors, between known individuals.

Now, so many conversations seem to be these open, fluid events where people speak or listen from vastly different perspectives, backgrounds, agendas and sides. Without a firmly established set of conventions guiding these interactions, everyone seems free to take from them what they will and combine it all with the pre-existing contents of their minds however they see fit. (Notes Four)

I’m not sure where this train of thought is headed, but presumably we can’t really know where we stand? Communication might have got a lot “easier” and “freer” in recent decades, but the idea of understanding what it all means doesn’t seem at all straightforward.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Plausible deniability
Note 1: Is honesty actually the best policy?
Note 1: Seeing, knowing and loving
Note 1: Value in visible impacts
Note 2: What we say & what we mean
Note 2: Sensitivity & the place for feeling
Note 2: Reading between the lines
Note 2: What is it with tone?
Note 3: Joining the dots
Note 3: Does being alone amplify things?
Note 3: Conversation as revelation
Note 4: Social starting points for modern ways
Note 4: The sense of having a worldview
Note 4: Codes of behaviour

On the flipside, the value of “lying” was also one element of Is telling people what we want to be true a lie?

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The picture data paints of us

Taking it to be true that humans have never lived as we currently do – that modern technology and all that comes along with it are a new reality on the face of the earth – it seems reasonable to wonder where that’s likely to lead. Isn’t it that people, as a whole, have never had this kind of power or lived under this kind of scrutiny? How it’s going to affect us and the systems that’ll be created out of it can’t be unreasonable concerns.

Often, there seems a kind of inevitability to it all: that certain people or organisations have cast this web around us and we’ve little opportunity at this point to complain or seek to challenge the ideas they may have in mind for us (Notes One). As if our lives are now in their hands, to do with as they please – weaving those lives into whatever configuration they choose while using their intricate knowledge of us to make that possible.

Data seems such a powerful thing. Our lives effectively having been ushered into this alternative reality, before we were fully aware of the risks, and turned into a series of interactions, connections and moments where our every move, decision, thought can be observed, collated and understood even better than we might really know ourselves.

So much of “all we do” being habitual or based on patterns beneath our awareness, anyone tracking and analysing the trail we leave in our wake stands to piece together a picture of us “we” may never truly see. Pulled together, our data must present quite an overview of all we’re imprinting on reality through our existence – a fuller sense of “how we are” than many of us, perhaps, possess.

It’s a knowledge of human nature no one before us seems to have had: a real-time observation of almost everything everyone everywhere is choosing to do with their time. It must be an incredible “picture” of humanity, our concerns and the countless details of our lives. Even as we’re being tempted and distracted in all these new ways, people are watching and learning from the choices we’re all making. (Notes Two)

That certain entities have this intensely personal yet incredibly systemic overview of “humanity” is quite astonishing to contemplate. What are they planning to do with this knowledge of us? What’s it like, psychologically, to live our lives knowing that “someone” is watching all that we do and dreaming up visions for our future? As if we’re all being folded into systems which have their own designs for our lives.

Given how data would only be gathered if it’s seen to be useful or valuable, it doesn’t seem possible to view “all this” as neutral; this observation of us must be being used to inform projects people have in mind for “the world”. That human activity would be “captured” this way, mapped out to such a degree, and used to shepherd us all into some new future surely demands a lot of trust?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Whether we make a difference
Note 1: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 1: Treating people like sims?
Note 1: Shaping the buildings that shape us
Note 2: Freedom, responsibility & choice
Note 2: Pace of change & getting nowhere fast
Note 2: Is this the ultimate test?
Note 2: Trust in technology?
Note 2: All in such a rush

Ways to share this:

What’s the right mindset for news?

Thinking about what it means to be human, what are we to make of all the information now at our fingertips? Looking back to what “news” used to be, it really seems modern life’s expecting a lot from us in terms of processing large volumes of data, opinion and argument. Something few before “us” ever needed to deal with.

If we imagine that news was generally a fairly sporadic or local affair, the amount we’re now faced with seems almost incredible to comprehend (Notes One). In the place of limited, deliberate voices speaking about current affairs, we’ve got countless sources, agendas and perspectives vying for our attention at every moment. Our picture of the world constantly shifting, changing, updating.

What are we supposed to make of it? Given how much of all we’re told is about things we’ve got remarkably little influence over, what kind of outcome can we hope for? Beyond awareness and concern, we might attempt to shape our economic or political decisions in such a way that they become constructive forces for change. Within our social circle, we might try to spread awareness and shape others’ thinking.

Often, though, it seems almost paralysing: an inundation of insight into events far beyond our control that can easily leave us feeling completely powerless, resigned and frustrated at the state of this world (Notes Two). Becoming aware of everything, the world over, from every side is a momentous task; piecing together how separate events and attitudes feed into wider patterns can be as enlightening as it is depressing.

How are we to hold, in our minds, an ever-changing picture of events – from the local and personal all the way up to the global – then transform that into constructive, purposeful responses within our everyday lives? Sometimes it seems more likely to make us feel our own existence to be futile and insignificant compared with all that’s happening and our inability to affect change on the levels at which problems exist (Notes Three).

If we’re taking in information about things that we’re powerless to change, what’s happening “within us”? All this thought, concern or anger sparked by what we take in presumably wants to go somewhere. Learning about things in our local environment, avenues for involvement may be clearer; when news is remote and complicated, we’re perhaps just left with this ball of fruitless emotion.

Is it that we’re supposed to receive things with the right kind of feeling? Accompanying this mental reflection of life with sentiments appropriate to the situation so we stand “rightly” in relation to reality. Rather than gleefully or despairingly observing what bears little direct relation to us, bringing compassionate interest to the whole human community and all the ways our lives touch upon others.

Maybe awareness is simply a slow-burning sense of us all being present with the world’s journey? This ongoing discussion we’re all part of that, hopefully, extends the right thoughts and feelings towards those involved while strengthening and underlining our values in the process.

Notes and References:

Note 1: What is the public conversation?
Note 1: Reading between the lines
Note 1: Information might be there, but can we find it?
Note 2: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 2: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 3: Whether we make a difference
Note 3: Too much responsibility?
Note 3: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 3: What it is to be human

Alongside such thoughts, there are some parallels to “The Measure of a Man” from back in 2018.

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Sensitivity & the place for feeling

When it comes to being human, are we best off leading with our heart or our head? Living through the heart, there’s perhaps a risk of losing our selves by being so caught up in the lives of others. Existing too much in our heads, we perhaps become detached from all that life means from the human perspective. Finding some kind of balance between the two can be exhausting.

At times it seems we’re encouraged to mainly be rational – as if that clearer form of knowledge is something sturdier and more reliable to build our lives around. In many ways, perhaps it is? This objective, reasoned voice of observation that can happily and confidently deconstruct events and assign everything its place as cause, effect or solution (Notes One). The whole of life neatly pinned down, defined, predictable.

Yet the mind can often seem cold by not also assigning the proper feeling to all its assertions. It can sometimes seem disconcertingly easy to run events through the channels of our minds and emerge with crystal clear theories about everything; perhaps overlooking the fact that each item in our chains of thought relates to somebody or some situation that might be crying out for more compassionate awareness (Notes Two).

Can thought exist without feeling? Are we fully human if we’re not dipping down into the realm of emotion to check how well our ideas are working out on that level? As beings who “can” feel, perhaps it’s important we find a way to bear those messages in mind as we’re going about our lives. What would it “mean” if we listened only to the head and cared even less about the feeling of the heart?

But then, what can we do if feeling threatens to overwhelm us? Drowning our capacity for reason with the emotive reality of what each aspect of everything “means” from countless perspectives. If each choice we make ripples out into the social, systemic environment we all share, we may risk paralysis by delving too deeply into the uncontrollable world of others’ emotions.

Equally, might it not be that our own emotion overwhelms us? The frame of mind with which we approach life perhaps getting reinforced by the expressions of hope or despair we’re tuning into in the world around us; our feelings amplified, for whatever reason, to the point where our ability to see otherwise gets clouded over (Notes Three).

In every area of life – personal, social, international, global – it seems things can touch us too deeply or not enough. The challenge perhaps being to find that balance between letting life in too much, too little, or just enough that we’re able to make sense of things without losing our steady resolve to respond both compassionately and intelligently (Notes Four).

Who’s to say which way’s best? If “being human” is to have feelings about reality and be sensitive to the feelings of others, maybe such qualities simply need to find a respectful and constructive home within our lives.

Notes and References:

Note 1: The thought surrounding us
Note 1: All that we add to neutrality
Note 1: How ideas find their place in the world
Note 1: Strange arrogance of thought
Note 2: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 2: What if solutions aren’t solutions?
Note 2: Whether we make a difference
Note 3: Does being alone amplify things?
Note 3: Emotion and culture’s realities
Note 3: It resonates, but should it be amplified
Note 3: Desensitised to all we’re told?
Note 4: Being trusted to use our discernment…
Note 4: And, how much can we care?
Note 4: Reading between the lines

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All that we add to neutrality

In life, how much is anything really neutral? We might say facts and statistics are just that – neutral observations of reality – but aren’t they usually wielded within that reality for a certain purpose? Doesn’t our mind tend to coat them with interpretations, implications or conclusions that, almost immediately, filter back into the world without such a clear sense of neutrality?

Tracking back to the idea of our thoughts, in some way, reflecting reality (Notes One), there seems to be this sense in which we each observe life and take those observations as being, simply, true. Whatever we’ve been told each thing “means” and wherever we’re been told it “stands” within our society becoming what it is, for us, in terms of fact.

Is life that simple? Whatever culture, tradition, education, the media, or everyday life tells us about the artefacts, events, practices, beliefs, and assumptions making up our lives can clearly be seen differently from other perspectives. Yet whatever worldview we inherited or developed for ourselves seems to dictate how we’re seeing each element and the place it’s been assigned (Notes Two).

Aren’t we perhaps “seeing” life through the lens of whatever ideas we’re holding about it? Giving everything its meaning, its significance, its purpose. Stacking everything up in line with the conclusions, justifications and narrative arcs we’ve been told “fit” with the perceptions we’ll make of society. Any given fact potentially being brought in to support any number of agendas or causes.

As if our neutral observation of reality immediately receives this overlay of meaning we’ve learnt to apply to it all. Then, of course, the emotion we have in response – the enjoyment, indignation or despair at our expectations being confirmed, denied or otherwise challenged by the course of events. (Notes Three)

Our view of life naturally containing our own hopes and sense of what’s acceptable, events are rarely neutral in how they almost inevitably suit some while coming at the cost of others. In the give and take of society, maybe nothing’s really neutral in that the world we’re living in shapes everybody’s lives: every word, attitude, choice or policy rippling out with personal and social consequences (Notes Four).

Neutrality may exist in the idealistic world of thought, with all its facts, theories and statistics, but “in reality” it seems that what we make of it – how we respond and apply those ideas – might be the determining factor in whether these things are good or bad. Maybe facts are only part of the picture? The other part being brought to the table by us through what we choose to do and how we bring our ideas to life.

In our relationship to the world and all that’s living within it, maybe the meaning we’re assigning things makes all the difference? As if the thoughts we have in mind alongside the bare facts of existence are the level at which important distinctions are being made – choices that, perhaps, step away from neutrality before feeding back out into our lives.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Ways thought adds spin to life
Note 1: What is real?
Note 2: Culture as information
Note 2: Passing on what’s important
Note 2: The sense of having a worldview
Note 3: Effect, if everything’s a drama
Note 3: We may as well laugh
Note 3: Does anger ever, truly, help?
Note 3: And, how much can we care?
Note 4: Joining the dots
Note 4: Humans, tangled in these systems
Note 4: How important is real life?
Note 4: The difference humanity makes
Note 4: Living as a form of art

Earlier thoughts around the idea of neutrality were also the focus of What’s neutral? back in 2018.

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