Month: June 2020

Social trends, educational realities

With all that’s going on within society – all the attitudes, trends, patterns, ideas, and problems – it’s interesting to consider how it’s working its way into and out of the classroom. Because, if we take it that schools are both a social microcosm and a starting point for many of the things we’ll face in the future, it can hardly be without consequence how well such realities are being resolved, integrated or otherwise dealt with.

Doesn’t everything filter into the classroom? The general attitude we have towards learning, teachers and peers. The capacities we have for paying attention, regulating ourselves or getting along with others. The atmosphere of focus or flippancy; cooperation or disruption; respect or disregard. Many of these qualities seem able to make or break the tasks of education; perhaps, rendering it next to impossible (Notes One).

Sometimes it seems incredible, all that’s currently flying round within society: all the novelty, distraction, criticism, aggression, silliness. Precisely when “life” seems to need our serious, disciplined, intentional engagement in solving the many, many difficulties we’re facing, it’s almost as if the very opposite is what’s most in evidence around us. (Notes Two)

Obviously, the world’s changed a lot in a short space of time (Notes Three). So many of the things – like tradition, convention, expectation – that seemingly used to hold us in fairly harmonious coexistence appear to have fallen away. In their place, we seem to have this strangely insistent self-interest of each wanting to express themselves with little evident concern around shared realities or the interests of others.

Isn’t everything we do both mutual and collective? This sense in which we’re “all” individuals within something bigger than the sum of our parts – all our lives coming together into this “thing” we call community, society or the world. The idea of how we might successfully integrate the unique personality and challenges of each one of us into a workable whole is beginning to seem an increasingly difficult prospect. (Notes Four)

If educators aren’t faced with classrooms of children respectfully engaged with the task of learning and appreciative of the opportunity it represents, how can it work? Of course, if people aren’t seeing “education” as valuable or worthwhile within the world as it now stands, maybe it’s only “natural” this becomes the situation: arguably, the kinds of things being taught aren’t what the future will demand.

Maybe, as much as the world’s changed, how we prepare for it must also change? This sense in which education and society are almost reflections of each other, as we distil down what’s truly essential (Notes Five). How clear are we, though, on the essentials of “being human”? It seems crucial we are; unless we’re happy to simply follow the paths laid out into society’s many marketplaces.

With so much of our future, individually as much as collectively, placed in the hands of education, isn’t it important we get to grips with its potential for either resolving or enhancing the many problematic aspects of modern reality?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Education as a breaking away?
Note 1: Respect, rebellion & renovation
Note 1: What are we primed for?
Note 2: Desire to retreat, need to engage
Note 2: Visual language and spaces
Note 3: How quickly things can change
Note 3: All in such a rush
Note 3: Power and potential
Note 4: What you’re left with
Note 4: The self within society
Note 4: Mutual awareness and accommodation?
Note 4: Integrity and integration
Note 5: Where’s the reset button & can we press it?
Note 5: The incredible responsibility of freedom

Ways to share this:

Who gets to define us

Within modern life, where are standards being set? Sometimes it seems there’s such a circularity to it all – needing money to live, yet peddling against a never-ending tide of shifting targets as we attempt to prove or maintain our worth in the eyes of others. As if we’re stuck in a cleverly designed loop that’ll simply consume all our energy, churning away through limited resources and finite time.

Aren’t the ends quite neatly tied up? The industries profiting from our belief in these standards being the same ones often establishing – and, forever changing – them. As if we might spend our whole lives chasing this illusion of worth, belonging and admiration, always finding it drifting out of reach as we approach. Like a mirage, an oasis, a hope that leads us to believe there’s a destination. (Notes One)

It’s almost as if every aspect of our being has been broken down and set against conveniently unattainable goals. Aren’t many of them mutually incompatible? Like beauty and cleansing, or indulgent versus healthy lifestyles. As if industries are literally propping themselves up by solving or creating each other’s problems. This house of cards approach to human needs where we’ll never quite achieve balance.

And maybe that is what it is? A market, filled by our quite natural demand for approval and acceptance. Don’t we all want to feel we belong? That others look on us with respect and consider us part of this community. Aren’t we looking to culture to understand how we should judge – which things are worthy of praise? This code for how we should “read” the world and act within it. (Notes Two)

How else do we know what to make of one another, or what choices best define us? Maybe we need these reference points to know what our options “mean” or “say” about us as people. But it’s interesting to imagine who’s setting these standards; and, what they really mean. In terms of life and how we choose to live it – the impacts we’re having and values we’re living by – what kind of options are we given?

Sometimes it just seems almost everything dovetails into commerce: beauty industries defining beauty; porn industries defining relationship; modelling industries defining appearance. As if product, demand, need and solution are all tangled together into these compulsive, addictive cycles. As if we’re chasing “self” or “love” in the pursuit of such things (Notes Three).

It’s intriguing how meaning and profit merge together. How we seek identity or definition through crafting our image, our brand, out of what’s available. Each curating our sense of “who we are” by drawing, so knowingly, from the options presented. All these personal statements as we highlight our own take on life through the unique combination of our choices.

Isn’t it an interesting way to be spending our lives – our chance at life – on this planet? This sense in which we’re seeking meaning, purpose or self-esteem through these almost entirely commercial offerings. As if that’s where our worth lies.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Value and meaning in our lives
Note 1: Solving all the problems we’re creating
Note 2: Visual language and spaces
Note 2: Places of belonging & acceptance
Note 2: Culture as what we relate to
Note 3: This thing called love
Note 3: Markets, and what they might mean
Note 3: Where do we get our ideas from?

Of course, there’s circularity to nature as well, but it doesn’t seem to operate quite as we do: Appreciating other ways of being.

Ways to share this:

Anger, and where we direct it

Of all the anger we often, quite rightly, feel in life, how much ever finds its rightful target? Aren’t a lot of our irritants remote and inaccessible? These distant, near-imaginary people we can never hope will appreciate the pain they’ve caused. Or, problems closer to home we mightn’t be able to resolve. Sometimes it just seems we’re stuck with many un-addressable things, and a lot of stagnant emotion.

Maybe it’s “modern global reality” or “life with technology”, but it seems that anger can easily be misdirected. That we might be angry about events far beyond our control, leaving us with potentially futile free-floating emotions of little productive use. Our indignation sparked off by systemic, conceptual flaws we ourselves are relatively powerless to fix.

Or, the words and sentiments of others can enrage us – all this content that’s churned out each day as people from vastly differing backgrounds join in this one, fairly unregulated conversation. Aware as we may be that words can cause incredible harm and erroneous ideas can grow to troublesome proportions away from careful observation, we perhaps hope to eliminate them before damage is done.

Within all that, aren’t we generally left with a lot of directionless, unresolved emotion? Almost as if we might start to live with this undercurrent of anger – or, sadness – at the state of the world and the people living within it. This simmering resentment, despair or frustration that often seems to be just below the surface, ready to burst into flame at any relatively minor infringement that happens around us. (Notes One)

Aren’t we aware of a great deal, these days? The ins and outs of politics, international affairs and individual lives being thrust before us at every moment. So much analysis, so many updates and topics we’re conceivably meant to keep track of and follow along with as concerned citizens and members of humanity. So much we could – probably, should – choose to care deeply about. (Notes Two)

As humans living within arguably quite flawed social systems, where are we to direct our anger? Do we fight one another, or those in positions of authority? Are our battles ideological or practical? Is it the people currently at the helm of potentially misguided ships that merit our frustrations – those shaped by and defending it – or the ones struggling under the difficulties that set in motion?

Are we to get angry at the causes or manifestations? Given how they blend together as what we simplistically call “life”, it’s perhaps impossible to separate the two: isn’t it all flowing through the complex fabric of our everyday realities? Seeing what truly caused something – where blame actually lies – mightn’t be straightforward. Like a game of pass-the-parcel where “someone” ends up seeming to be in the wrong.

In the words of Aristotle, “to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

Notes and References:

Note 1: Does anger ever, truly, help?
Note 1: Humans, judgement & shutting down
Note 1: Is telling people what we want to be true a lie?
Note 2: Where’s the reset button & can we press it?
Note 2: Reading between the lines
Note 2: What’s the right mindset for news?

Finding a good balance between the fierceness of thought and tenderness of emotion was also one element of Sensitivity & the place for feeling.

Ways to share this:

Can there be beauty in communication?

Thinking of how, in life, we’re all reflecting our experience in thought, coating it in words, then sharing them with others, how beautifully is that coming together? Is it a jangling, mismatched cacophony of firmly-held positions and battles for the crown, or a delicately balanced dance between the varying perspectives we each inevitably have of life?

Sometimes it seems we’re simply humans, gathered around our one complex reality, trying to adequately capture it in words. As if thought, as this idealistic notion, could somehow inch its way into every aspect of life to the point of being considered “truth”. That we live our lives through thought seems fascinating: each person converting experiences into words we can pool by communication. (Notes One)

Presumably, it could be a beautiful thing? An incredibly purposeful dance as we each offer our perspective and receive others’ insights; learning, as we go, to appreciate reality through other eyes. Between us all, it’s possible we could build up such a multifaceted picture of all it means to be human: all these different ways of being, paths walked and priorities we’ve had over the years.

As if each person could somehow voice, completely truthfully, how they see things and what it all means. Reality, then, reflected through the unique constitution of all our characters and personalities – each offering up what life’s like from their starting point, with all they’ve been through along the way and all they’ve made of whatever came before them. Difficult as most paths might’ve been, isn’t it valuable to hear? (Notes Two)

Maybe that’s what culture offers us? The more beautiful take on what we’re all attempting each day: the give and take of voices, actions, values, backgrounds and gestures; the conflict or resolution of differences; the interplay between what we all bring and what’s working itself out within society and our thoughts about it. This symbolic reflection of our lives and how we might be living them. (Notes Three)

In that, there clearly can be beauty – even in the darkest subjects. Isn’t it about the balance? About letting people be; giving their words and gestures space to land. This delicate interaction between each person, all that drives or concerns them, and the respect they’re given within the bigger picture. Don’t we all need to speak? To have the space to express ourselves, feel our perspective honoured, and offer others the same.

Achieving that kind of balance, these days, seems extraordinarily difficult. How much time do we have to create space for truly opening up to one another? How many venues do we have where people can meet and experience all the added nuance of tone, body language, and everything else that’s stripped out with technology? How often are we alone; hoping to connect? (Notes Four)

Finding ways to communicate authentically that work for us all – somehow transposing the old dances into new, modern ones everyone can take part in – may not be as easy as some people imagine, but where are we without it?

Notes and References:

“How to have a Beautiful Mind” by Edward de Bono, (Vermilion, London), 2004.

“People Skills” by Robert Bolton, Ph.D., (Touchstone, Simon & Schuster), 1986 (originally 1979).

Note 1: The thought surrounding us
Note 1: Joining the dots
Note 1: What is the public conversation?
Note 2: Understanding what we’re all part of
Note 2: Personal archaeology
Note 2: Making things up as we go along
Note 3: Culture as information
Note 3: Navigation, steering & direction
Note 3: The stories that we hear
Note 4: What is it with tone?
Note 4: Modern challenges to relationship
Note 4: All in such a rush

Thinking of life as a dance between us all was also the focus of Mutual awareness and accommodation?

Ways to share this:

Solving all the problems we’re creating

How many of the holes we’re chasing to fill in life aren’t really there? These manufactured lacks or shortcomings we’ve been compelled to feel the need to plaster over – never feeling we’re quite “enough” without the next thing. Striving after such goals may be what modern economy is built around, but is it any kind of foundation for living within a finite landscape?

Isn’t it that economic activity generally goes hand in hand with marketing? All those intent on convincing us we need whatever it is they’ve been tasked to sell; making us believe our lives are somehow incomplete or far short of what they could’ve been without it. All these promises around how easy, admirable and satisfying our existence will become. Filling us in on all these problems we never knew we had. (Notes One)

Surely, it’s a chase we’ll never win? There’s always going to be more: the next development; the next sign of change on our path through this human condition; the next desire fluttering up as we seek to feel better about ourselves. As if “all this” is built around telling us what we’re missing; this constant effort at undermining any self-worth or peace we might have.

Almost as if the human psyche is an endless source of demand; easily swayed by ideas of not fitting in, standing out or living up to our potential. Is it because we’ve built society on competition? Setting us all against each other for a limited amount of praise or wealth. Making everyone feel that if we don’t keep up, we’ll fall behind and drop out.

As if life’s a treadmill we can’t step off or we’ll lose our place in this race. As if our acceptance and belonging is tied to this pursuit of things and the status they’ll give us in the eyes of others – social identity and worth, somehow, having been tangled up in all we can buy. As if the value of any human life can take on the form of a financial calculation (Notes Two).

Isn’t it natural that we want to belong? To be accepted, recognised, heard, understood, loved by others of our kind? Don’t we want to matter to people? To feel ourselves reflected considerately in their eyes and words. To feel valued within our community, as much for our contributions as for our very presence. As if the frame of our life is held respectfully alongside all others. (Notes Three)

And, while we’re chipping away at personal security with all these suggested shortcomings, how many other problems are we serving to set in motion? We might never actually be able to set straight all the things we’re damaging or destroying in the world around us – all the communities, ecosystems, resources and livelihoods being disrupted for relatively short-term gain.

Unravelling the delicate, elusive line between all we really need in life and all that’s grown up around those requirements seems important, if we’re not to upset the balance our lives truly depend upon.

Notes and References:

“Happiness” by Steve Cutts, November 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk

Note 1: Markets, and what they might mean
Note 1: Values, and what’s in evidence
Note 1: Making ends meet
Note 2: Mathematics of life
Note 2: Worthless, or priceless?
Note 2: Value and meaning in our lives
Note 3: What does community mean?
Note 3: Can “how we relate” really change?
Note 3: This thing called love

An interesting representation of all this can also be found in Steve Cutts’ animation “Happiness”.

Ways to share this:

Markets, and what they might mean

If everything in life now exists as a marketplace – whether it’s ideas, perspectives, products, lifestyles or paths – what does that mean? Are all our options now simply something to compare, weigh up and piece together into the kind of person we want to be? As if “life” is now choices and our role is to freely decide, between them all, which things matter most to us.

Sometimes it seems as if the world’s been taken apart and put back together upside down – as if our values and reasons for living are, somehow, inverted. Isn’t there a circularity between our needs and motivations? Those needs, particularly the psychological ones, seeming almost limitless, perhaps we’ll be peddling forever, churning through these finite resources, in the hope of somehow feeling satisfied and worthwhile. (Notes One)

If markets are “there” to meet our needs, yet, to justify and expand their own existence, they begin manufacturing shortages we never knew we had, might we not be chasing those imaginary targets forever? Never quite reaching the goalposts, as they inevitably inch further and further down the path in front of us. Led, like the Pied Piper, into some sort of prison of our own making.

Because, what are we really seeking? How much of the “choice” laid before us is truly necessary, or are we dealing here with the relative merits of various forms of luxury? It just seems there’s always something else – some new item, development, standard we should be chasing. As if, in our desire to belong, fit in or be admired by our peers, we’ll forever be seeking the next thing in an endless race to nowhere.

Isn’t it all rather meaningless? As if we’re just churning through “things”, saying they give our lives meaning, when all we’re actually doing is exchanging our time for money, and money for things. Are we really just trading in the hours of our existence? Maybe I’m reading it wrong.

Of course, there’s meaning behind many things: behind expressing who we are and showing we care enough to maintain our appearance; behind taking part in the long human conversation of forms, colours, trends and the significance assigned to them; behind sharing experiences, be they meals or events, and discussing afterwards what we made of them (Notes Two). Life perhaps “is” all these activities we partake in.

Maybe, then, it’s more a question of where our focus is? Whether we’re focussed on “the thing”, “what we’re told it means” or “what it really means.” If we’re believing things will give us something they never can – worth, acceptance, value, purpose, meaning – we may be engaged in a fruitless pursuit. If we know our worth and understand the true cost of what we’re doing, maybe there’s no problem. (Notes Three)

As long as we’re not looking for something markets can never give – as long as we know the true value of everything involved – maybe it’s true they’re an incredible opportunity to meet all our needs and solve all our problems.

Notes and References:

Note 1: The value we’re giving to things
Note 1: Goods & the wisdom in scarcity
Note 1: The beauty in home economics
Note 1: Cycles of mind & matter
Note 1: What’s not essential
Note 2: Involvement in modern culture
Note 2: The stories that we hear
Note 2: Meaning in a world of novelty
Note 3: Ethics, money & social creativity
Note 3: Points of sale as powerful moments
Note 3: Losing the sense of meaning
Note 3: What we create by our presence

Ways to share this:

Things we give voice to

In life, what are we giving voice to? Of all we hear, think or witness, which sentiments are we wrapping up with our words and sending out there to form part of it all? Given we’re perhaps completely free to respond however we see fit, it’s interesting to consider how we’re choosing to use our voice within whatever situations we’re finding ourselves. Doesn’t it, potentially, make a huge difference? (Notes One)

Sometimes I wonder why we’d ever choose rudeness – what we imagine that adds or achieves. This gesture of throwing punches; putting people down; pushing them off balance. What purpose does it serve between us? Maybe it’s simply a form of idealistic attack or defence, this intellectual or personal sparring that’s seeming so commonplace now.

There must be a fine line between “people” and “ideas”, though: a subtle distinction between who someone is, the ideas their experience has led them to accept, and the life of those ideas themselves (Notes Two). It’s just seeming an increasingly blurry line. The lives we lead and ways of thinking that run alongside them – the theories, conclusions, beliefs, reactions – perhaps merging too closely for us to confidently split them apart.

Almost as if “our life” within any given society dictates our ideas, our concerns, our words and conversations. As if the circumstances of birth and opportunities of environment inevitably “shape” the thoughts that will appeal to us and attitudes we’ll have toward things. As if it’s all “there” and we simply step into our role, play our part, defend what we have or fight for what we don’t.

Do we just pick up what we find around us and give voice to that? Whatever ideas, prejudices or trains of thought surrounded us, taking up those threads and continuing the conversation on from whatever side we happen to choose. Attitudes about gender, assumptions around justice, beliefs as to life’s meaning or worth all becoming part of “our” conversation as we lend our voice to those time-worn ideas. (Notes Three)

Maybe we have no choice? Maybe all we can do is accept the ideas society hands to us and make them our own, somehow. Seeing life through the lens they offer us, casting everything in their light, and drawing somewhat similar conclusions. Ideas themselves existing within a certain set of theories on life, though, isn’t there almost an inevitability to where they’ll lead us? Potentially, into the same battles, divisions and gridlock.

So, while “saying what we think” may be an inalienable human right, the question of how we’re using it seems important. It’s amazing to think we have such freedom: that, of all we meet in life, we can choose to give voice to any number of beautiful ideals, values or sentiments. We can serve to defuse negativity or add to it; speak for the powerless or drown them out; shine light on hope or on despair.

As humans, isn’t the choice over how we’ll respond on the level of words an incredibly powerful opportunity?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Questions around choice
Note 1: What we create by our presence
Note 1: The difference humanity makes
Note 2: Joining the dots
Note 2: Frameworks of how we relate
Note 2: The thought surrounding us
Note 2: Going towards the unknown
Note 3: On whose terms?
Note 3: Where do we get our ideas from?
Note 3: All we want to do passes through community

Ways to share this:

Understanding & staying informed

How much in life depends on our ability to understand what’s really going on? Sometimes it seems that, in a way, the sense we make of the world around us and decisions we make in light of that knowledge is “effectively” where the realities of life are being upheld. Almost as if the ideas we have in our heads – these reflections of the world outside – are what we’re acting on and bringing to life through our choices (Notes One).

Isn’t it fundamental to the tasks of education and the media that we come to a reasonably full understanding of “life”? Building up a picture that’s as much made up of “where we came from” as it is “where we hope to be heading” and “how well we’re doing on our path to getting there”. This sense in which, if we’re not grasping all those elements rightly, we’re not perhaps in the position to correct our course.

Maybe that’s the reason “being informed” is held up as one of the essential tasks of responsible citizens? Not just to bolster newspaper sales or give us all something to talk about or argue over, but that we need to be engaged – with our hearts and minds as much as our active participation – in ensuring everything’s going in the best directions (Notes Two).

As if, as the humans making it up, society needs us to walk alongside it with the full capacity of our being: following things with our heads; feeling empathy for all those impacted by or involved in events; adjusting our behaviour to support, rather than pull against, what’s needed. Everyone purposefully involving themselves in working towards the ideals of a community seems quite beautiful, in many ways.

But is that what’s actually going on? How thorough an understanding of all the issues affecting society do we actually have? And, given the increasingly global nature of our lives, activities and conversations, how well-informed are we about the complexities of other communities and all they’ve been trying to bring about through their lives?

If every society’s working on its own version of “life” – dealing with its own struggles, heritage and vision – and we’re all attempting to cooperate within this new global space, surely it matters that we understand where we’re each coming from? Communities must have their own wounds, issues, preoccupations and internal forces at play, just as each person does at the individual level. (Notes Three)

Within it all – the personal dramas and collective problems – how are we to find a productive balance where the task of “understanding” isn’t too overwhelming and the paths to constructive engagement are clear? And, considering we probably have limited capacity to take things in and care deeply about them, how are we navigate this strangely distracting, volatile, emotive world of “information” we’re living within? (Notes Four)

Developing a thorough yet flexible enough understanding of this world – where things fit, why they matter, how best to respond – seems an incredible task for the future to rest upon.

Notes and References:

Note 1: What we create by our presence
Note 1: Connecting truthfully with life
Note 1: The philosopher stance
Note 2: Value in being informed
Note 2: Being trusted to use our discernment…
Note 2: In the deep end…
Note 3: Living as an open wound
Note 3: Conversation as revelation
Note 4: Attention as a resource
Note 4: What is the public conversation?
Note 4: Effect, if everything’s a drama

Thinking further about the value of understanding what we are doing, was one aspect of Cutting corners.

Ways to share this:

Learning from the past, looking to the future

Thinking broadly as much as specifically about our life on this planet, isn’t culture what helps us find our place and chart our path? All those ways people over the years found to convey, pass down and illustrate their concerns about life, its meaning and how we might best respond to the challenges it presents. This beautiful, ongoing human conversation of which we’re all part.

It’s incredible to think how long meaning’s been passed on this way: how many fires people have gathered around to hear the tales of their culture, the characters and events those before felt wisest to reiterate to the point they were etched firmly in the consciousness of those carrying forward any given way of being. Stories that, hopefully, help guide us safely and remember our journey. (Notes One)

Out of all the communities, cultures or places people have ever lived there emerges this amazing repertoire of all that’s been dreamt up or written down over the many, many centuries of human existence. All those times people sought to convey what they’d been through or struggled with as they sought to move forward, individually or collectively. All these warnings and ideals that’ve been shared.

Any story has something to teach: some configuration of society or aspect of relationships we might learn from, honing our sense for all it means to be human and how best we might let that come to light. Some might emerge from people living under experiences of oppression, scrutiny or control. Some from imaginary worlds where such experiences live within different forms.

As humans, maybe we need stories to remind us who we are, where we’ve come from, and where we hoped to be heading? This sense in which our lives are part of a long, long line of people trying to make the best of the world as they found it. This notion that “culture” can keep us on track by way of focussing our minds and emotions. The past, perhaps, helping us make sense of the present and look clearly to the future.

It must matter? This almost timeless journey so many humans formed part of – upholding things and carrying them forward in big and little ways over the vast panorama of history (Notes Two). Sometimes we might look back with too much nostalgia, but the idea of honouring our path to the place we now stand seems significant.

Finding that balance between remembering while looking ahead is perhaps “always” challenging: what to let go of; what to hold firmly; what to aspire towards. This sense in which humanity is forever walking forwards, perhaps needing to leave some things behind in order to take the next step, but also needing to retain the vision of where we’re going and all we must take with us.

Writing this in the context of ancient cultural sites having recently been destroyed for the sake of mining, it’s hard not to question how well we’re handling the heritage that was placed in our hands.

Notes and References:

Guardian article “Rio Tinto blasts 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site to expand iron ore mine” by Calla Wahlquist, 26 May 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/26/rio-tinto-blasts-46000-year-old-aboriginal-site-to-expand-iron-ore-mine

Note 1: The stories that we hear
Note 1: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 1: Navigation, steering & direction
Note 1: Do we know what we’re doing?
Note 2: History’s role in modern culture
Note 2: “Quest for a Moral Compass”
Note 2: Truth, illusion & cultural life
Note 2: Things change, over time

Exploring slightly similar notions of culture and the passing of time was also part of Visual language and spaces.

Ways to share this:

Integrity and integration

Are we better off looking at life in terms of “being true to ourselves” or “valuable members of society”? Perhaps there’s simply a balance to be struck between them, as pursuing one at the cost of the other seems far from perfect: prioritising self without regard for social realities must be questionable, while playing our part seems fruitless if we’re never truly who we are.

If we were just to “fit in” – assuming whatever roles or obligations are asked of us in any given situation – aren’t we little different from machines? Fulfilling whatever programming those who designed us had in mind. All our actions being dictated by the needs of “society” seems a strangely top-down way of imagining the purpose of a human being: dreaming up systems, then assigning the parts we have to play. (Notes One)

Yet, if we don’t think at all of the collective nature of our lives, it seems unlikely we’d act wisely from that perspective. Aren’t we “naturally” quite self-centred? Our first priority, perhaps rightly, being our own survival or enhancement – whether that’s “us” as a person or as the community of family, friends or peers we’re feeling identified with. Our circle of interests, especially when under pressure, generally seems quite limited.

Having a sense for what each individual brings to life seems important, though: that we’re all filled with our own experiences, viewpoints, traits, concerns, and talents. Everyone being this completely irreplaceable version of “human” through having lived their lives their own unique way and brought out of that their own insights and capacities. The lived faces of all these systems we share.

If “to be human” is to stand in this world and make choices within it, finding the workable balance between personal integrity and collective integration seems the mystery we’re each presented with. Won’t there be countless “lines” where those interests are conflicting and, potentially, mutually incompatible? All these points where we have to let go of “self” for the sake of “others” or “cohesion.” (Notes Two)

Maybe “our role” is always to stand in that place between the individual and the collective? This sense in which we’re all unique, all human, yet all need to make space for everyone else if our ideals are to become a reality. Understanding where we stand – what our actions and interactions play into – then responding in ways that bring our vision of “what matters” to life seems one interpretation of human existence. (Notes Three)

Who’s to say, really? Maybe our role is whatever we choose to make it? We can stand within the collective realities that enrich and sustain our own mindfully or carelessly. We can let society define our lives so completely that we lose the sense of who “we” actually are. We can rail against the impertinence of anyone, individually or systemically, asking anything of us, or recognise the value in cooperation. (Notes Four)

While, by our nature, we exist in number, finding this balance between “us” and “everyone else” seems strangely elusive.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Treating people like sims?
Note 1: The difference humanity makes
Note 1: Value and meaning in our lives
Note 2: Society as an imposition?
Note 2: Authenticity & writing our own story
Note 2: What holds it all together
Note 3: The self within society
Note 3: What we create by our presence
Note 3: In the deep end…
Note 4: The incredible responsibility of freedom
Note 4: Common sense as a rare and essential quality
Note 4: Being trusted to use our discernment…

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