Month: September 2020

Does technology oversimplify things?

For all the good technology does us, is there a danger of it oversimplifying things? Making the complexities of our lives seem deceptively simple to the point where we don’t fully appreciate all we’re engaged in. As if, no longer seeing things in their entirety, we might lose sight of all the ways in which our lives intersect and the value of all we exchange at those points. Don’t we need to understand what we’re doing?

The idea of us thinking things are “easy” and ploughing on along these channels that others have designed for us sometimes seems strangely disturbing. Aren’t we almost discouraged from understanding? This sense in which modern life has become so complex that the task of keeping up with it all – let alone mastering it – has become overwhelming or simply impossible. (Notes One)

Aren’t we being expected to defer to others in all this? To trust in the vision they have for us and the oversight or care with which they’re handling all the data being gathered around our existence (Notes Two). As if, in ways humanity’s never been asked before, we’re placing the lion’s share of “our lives” in the hands of commercial actors we’ve never met who, in all likelihood, don’t have our interests at heart.

Isn’t it also training us in certain ways of looking at things? The interfaces they’ve offered becoming “how” we look at life and the meaning we’re able to extract from it. The options for how we respond to life being limited and defined by whichever options they’re deciding to give. As if “all this” is a strange experiment in behavioural psychology and “what it is to be human” is the outcome being determined as a result.

Doesn’t meaning come out of interaction? From the ways we’re expressing ourselves, the choices we’re making, and the messages we draw from what others are offering. This sense in which “life” is one big conversation we’re all contributing towards, listening to and finding ourselves in – the meaning of it all being, perhaps, what we freely decide to make of our opportunities and our understanding. (Notes Three)

In that light, what does it “mean” if we lose sight of life’s increasing complexity and feel it to be deceptively simple? If we start “playing” at this as if it were all without consequence – as if all our choices don’t ultimately have a human face, directly or indirectly. If we’re not seeing, imagining or concerning ourselves with what each decision truly means, what kind of world are we then living in? (Notes Four)

Humans, in all their complexity, seem anything but simple. The details that make us unique, each with our distinct qualities and interests, seem such beautiful, delicate things to be communicating around. How are we to be sure that the truth of who we are is able to travel through this, unaltered, to other ears? What if it doesn’t, and we’re left unappreciative of the rich, intersecting diversity of all of our lives?

Notes and References:

Note 1: The thought surrounding us
Note 1: All we’re expected to understand
Note 1: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 2: Situations which ask us to trust
Note 2: The picture data paints of us
Note 2: “The way things should be” as an add-on
Note 2: Trust in technology?
Note 3: Attention as a resource
Note 3: Belief in what we cannot see
Note 3: Everything’s interconnected
Note 3: “Response Ability” by Frank Fisher
Note 3: Mastering life’s invisible realities
Note 4: Might we lose our social muscles?
Note 4: Lacking the human side of community?
Note 4: Can “how we relate” really change?

Ways to share this:

Does it all come down to money?

These days, particularly, is life all about money? This sense in which we’re all accumulating more or peddling away to simply break even. Isn’t it generally one or the other? Those “with” money tending to see it steadily increase while those without it seem destined to tread water forever within these rising tides.

Doesn’t it seem that costs will always be rising? There’s always something “more” we need, some new basic standard for security or status within this fast-developing world. As if we’re chasing something that will always be shifting just out of reach. Perhaps, a sure footing in life? A place where our worth, our social or material safety, is assured and we don’t have to fight to maintain it. (Notes One)

Of course, we must find ways for our genuine needs to be met, it just seems like the way we’ve being doing so might be quite seriously and dangerously flawed. How much of our psychological, environmental, social or international stability are we wise to be placing in the market’s hands? To what extent is the natural human need for acceptance, worth and status becoming a source of endangerment for us all? (Notes Two)

It just seems that the way we’ve been going about things has created as many destabilising forces within and between our communities as it has in all our personal lives. Aren’t we constantly seeking our worth and power on those terms? Needing the money to buy whatever things will make us appear valuable in the eyes of others. Wanting whatever freedom, leverage or influence money can offer us.

Isn’t it often leading to questionable ethical decisions? All the ways we’re buying into situations that cause harm, directly or indirectly, to others through what we’re empowering by way of our payment (Notes Three). As if we’re driven to make poor choices or allegiances on purely economic grounds – justifying them in terms of whatever savings, assets or gains we might’ve made through the transaction. As if that’s all that counts.

And, all the while we’re seeing worth and value through the lens of money, it seems unlikely things will really change (Notes Four). As if, in all reality, our decisions now simply come down to money and will be judged wise or reasonable on those grounds alone. Is it true? Can everything be cast in financial terms and made to look admirable in that light? As if there are no other values capable of standing up against this.

What would life be like if we took money out of the equation? If, in all the places “money” is the deciding factor, we had to justify our choices some other way? As if money were just the finishing touch to quite a different chain of reasoning, where other values had to make their presence felt and be the considerations that determined the course of our actions.

Instead of being guided by merely economic interests, could we find more harmonious, less damaging ways of meeting all our needs?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Value and meaning in our lives
Note 1: Who gets to define us
Note 1: Market forces or social necessities
Note 1: Making ends meet
Note 2: Living in luxury, on what grounds?
Note 2: Solving all the problems we’re creating
Note 2: Economy as a battleground
Note 3: What we create by our presence
Note 3: Attention as a resource
Note 4: The insatiable desire for more
Note 4: Advantage people don’t want to concede
Note 4: Values on which we stand firm?

Ways to share this:

Valuing people more

What do we see when we look at others? Are we always weighing up, assigning labels and relating accordingly, or is there more to being human than simply determining our relative strength, power or worth? Do we stand together, or apart? All in one group, moving forwards, or everyone out for themselves, ready to elbow others out of the way at the slightest opportunity.

Don’t the ideas we have in mind about “what life is” make a huge difference to how we live it? Sometimes it seems we’re just setting ourselves against it all: looking out on life with judgement and criticism instead of acceptance or interest. Rather than being happy for others, feeling that anything they have is something we don’t – chalking up all our differences and making them grounds for competition.

Are “other people” always either rivals or allies? People helping our cause or standing against us somehow. As if “life” is gathering together those who serve our interests and fighting against those who offer no clear advantage. Fighting or, perhaps, rejecting: treating them as if they’re not there; of no interest to us; not part of our world. As if we’ll only acknowledge, respect or admire those on “our” side. (Notes One)

Isn’t it a mindset of seeing life as a battle? This idea of us against the world where anyone not thinking the same or pursuing our aims is essentially an opponent. As if we’re each assembling tribes of like-minded people. The only world that exists for us being the version that affirms us, all of our views, and our goals. As if life’s a team sport where we’re all on different sides.

Is it the only way of looking at life? To find those who see life exactly as we do and ignore all the others – or, convert them to your way of thinking. As if life’s not enriched by our differences. As if they don’t provide a fuller, richer, more multifaceted sense of reality that would ultimately serve us all well. Don’t we “need” to see reality from all sides if we’re to understand everything it means to be human? (Notes Two)

Sometimes it just seems a strangely limiting perspective. As if we’re trying to insist there’s only one way to be human, and it has to be ours. Why see things that way when, by our very nature, we live such different lives within different places, governed in different ways, managing different resources, believing different things, standing in different relationships to different people. Isn’t it all just one large web of “humanity”?

How, then, “should” we value others? Why would we ever compare, contrast and judge one way to be best? Wouldn’t society, globally as much as locally, be better off if we valued all human lives more? If everyone were loved, protected and never taken advantage of for personal or collective gain. If, rather than seeking to get ahead, we genuinely sought to treat all others with the respect they also deserve.

Notes and References:

Note 1: What does community mean?
Note 1: Frameworks of how we relate
Note 1: Where do ideas of evolution leave us
Note 1: Seeing, knowing and loving
Note 1: What should be leading us?
Note 2: Humans, tangled in these systems
Note 2: Living as an open wound
Note 2: Can “how we relate” really change?
Note 2: Value and meaning in our lives
Note 2: These ideas we have of one another

Ways to share this:

Choosing our focus & Gretchen Rubin

How are we supposed to relate to life, to others, to ourselves? As intelligent creatures, it seems fascinating that we stand within complex realities and decide what to make of them. Also, that the choices we make are subtly yet significantly impacting the world we’re living in while becoming the example we’re offering others. As if, as humans, we stand within reality and shape it (Notes One).

In light of that, what stance are we taking? How much are we accepting the world around us, its demands and obligations, and fitting ourselves to whatever it’s asking of us? How much are we thinking for ourselves what each thing means, how it all comes together, and whether we believe the arc of whatever spin’s being woven round the raw facts of reality? How we’re using our minds and judging our surroundings must matter.

There are various ways we might break down the complexity of being human into workable “models” that could help us live better (Notes Two), but one quite clear and versatile one seems to be Gretchen Rubin’s “Four Tendencies”. In its essence, this focusses on the relationships we have with reality, with ourselves and with others – looking at which kinds of obligations, outer or inner, we’re inclined to meet and let guide us.

It’s the idea that some will “uphold” whatever expectations are placed on them; some “rebel” against them; some “oblige” the expectations of others; and some “question” all outer expectations to see if they merit becoming inner ones. As a model for how humans stand in their world and the sorts of thought that convince us to act, it seems fairly comprehensive and purposeful.

Isn’t it about belief? About how much we trust our own judgement or that of others. How much we need to draw into question or whether we’re willing to go along with what’s around us. Almost a depiction of how we stand in relation to community: whether we believe in the steps which brought us here and trust those currently charting further steps on our behalf.

Maybe that’s “always” where we stand? Within structures – increasingly, of our own making – we seek to carry forward, strengthen, reimagine or cast aside. Don’t the things we agree to “become” life itself? The choices we make, ideas we accept and attitudes we express becoming the consequences we create and influence we’re having on others. (Notes Three)

In that, it’s perhaps interesting and important that we think about what we’re doing and how well we’re working alongside each other toward realising our highest ideals. If we’re pushing against one another, communicating in ways that don’t achieve what we hope or inspire others to similar outcomes, what are we doing? Presumably we’d mainly be causing stress and conflict between anyone who sees life slightly differently.

Finding ways to understand life and how best to work within it seems so fundamental. Hopefully we’re able to trust the wisdom of what’s around us, and ourselves for our ability to navigate it.

Notes and References:

Gretchen Rubin on the Four Tendencies: https://gretchenrubin.com/books/the-four-tendencies/about-the-book/ & her early thoughts on our world’s current situation: https://gretchenrubin.com/2020/03/coping-with-covid-19-four-tendencies.

Note 1: Understanding what we’re all part of
Note 1: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 1: Complication of being human
Note 1: Integrity and integration
Note 2: Ideas of agreement & mastery
Note 2: “Living Beautifully” by Pema Chödrön
Note 2: “Women who run with the wolves”
Note 2: “How to win friends…”
Note 2: “The Measure of a Man”
Note 2: Codes of behaviour
Note 3: What we create by our presence
Note 3: Will things change if we don’t make them?
Note 3: Losing the sense of meaning
Note 3: Situations which ask us to trust

Thinking of the influence we seek to have over other people was also one focus of Treading carefully in the lives of others.

Ways to share this:

Why assume there’s only one set of values?

In terms of modern communication, why does it seem we assume there’s just one set of values? As if there’s only one “right” answer and, more often than not, it’s our brain that’s coming up with it. Maybe it’s an outcome of education? That we’re trained to believe such answers exist and feel our sense of worth or achievement as being attached to finding them. A sort of intellectual self-assurance.

Or, is it an outcome of Western thought? Building out from the security of knowledge that’s come from science and other forms of academia as they’ve dug down into the “truth” of physical reality to enable our various technical exploits. This strange assurance that comes from the certainty of that form of knowledge: facts, causality, logic, conclusions. As if there’s not more at work in life than that.

Who’s to say why we think the way we do? In part, it must be trained. Also, probably, absorbed somehow from the cultural environment we’re living in – that we pick up the tone, the combative moves we’re seeing evidenced around us. As if, even with our minds, we’re breathing in the surrounding atmosphere: ways of thinking seeping into how we ourselves start to see the world and interact with it.

Sometimes it seems “thought” itself has a sort of arrogance, that it somehow tends to become a personally-wielded weapon in our intellectual landscapes (Notes One). As if, in human hands, thinking becomes another source of conflict as we defend whatever ideas we have in mind. Our version of reality – with all the assumptions, colourings or emotions we’ve attached to it – becoming something we must personally defend.

More philosophically, there’s this sense of the West having sought to create or uncover universal values: this long and complex process of thought whereby those before us wrangled over the philosophical foundations for human existence and how, then, to organise our lives upon them (Notes Two). Those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and so forth having become the ground on which such societies are now built.

How is it, though, that the heritage of all that thinking has become this strangely aggressive or intolerant conversation we’re now living with? How can principles of universal humanity lead to such conflict? As if, having been told “this is right”, we now go into fight all these intellectual battles on thought’s behalf – insistently defending ideals in ways that occasionally appear to undermine those very values themselves. (Notes Three)

Not to say there aren’t universal values, but how are we to go about establishing them? It doesn’t seem we can just superimpose “one way of thinking” over the entire planet. Isn’t change always a journey? Everyone emerging from whatever ways of thought led them to this point, isn’t the ideal of agreeing upon any common set of values going to involve adjustment, discussion and growth? (Notes Four)

Maybe there are no answers, though? Maybe it’s simply for us all to engage in this challenging process of dialogue and mutual understanding.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Joining the dots
Note 1: The sense of having a worldview
Note 1: Caught in these thoughts
Note 1: Is there any end to the power of thought?
Note 1: Strange arrogance of thought
Note 2: The incredible responsibility of freedom
Note 2: “Quest for a Moral Compass”
Note 2: Mutual awareness and accommodation?
Note 3: Things we give voice to
Note 3: Anger, and where we direct it
Note 3: Thoughts of idealism and intolerance
Note 3: Can others join you?
Note 4: Values, and what’s in evidence
Note 4: Knowing the value of what you have
Note 4: Can there be beauty in communication?
Note 4: Conversation as revelation
Note 4: The value & cost of our words

Ways to share this:

How are we supposed to choose?

Between all the choices we’re presented with in life, how are we to decide which paths to take? Is it a fair question? As if our role here is to choose between, weigh our options, and reach personal conclusions in the face of it all. If we take that as our role, though, what are we to make of all this freedom? Given how so much in life now seems to be laid at the feet of our decision-making powers, it seems hard to say it doesn’t matter.

Isn’t it that, in every aspect of our lives, we’re faced with endless choice? All these options for what we might think, feel or believe; how we might act, look or present ourselves; which things we’ll buy into socially, economically or culturally (Notes One). As if “life” is us, standing in a room, choosing which things we’ll draw towards us and make our own; decisions that then ripple away to become realities for the world around us.

Sometimes it seems overwhelming, the amount of choice we have. As if we’re just swimming in a sea of options, struggling to see what’s best given the constantly shifting tides around us. How are we to see where our choices “sit”, what they really “mean”, and where they will “lead” for the realities we all share? Don’t we need to be clear on those things if we’re to make informed and responsible decisions? (Notes Two)

Within an essentially consumer society – everything carved up, packaged, and presented for our consideration – aren’t our choices of central importance? Each “thing” being a vote, an empowerment, a validation of what’s been offered and all that’s behind it. As if “society” parades all its ideas before us and we select which ones we’ll put our weight behind.

How much do we understand what it all means and all it entails in terms of social, economic or environmental forces? What are our choices feeding into within the inscrutable workings of this modern global system? If we’re given endless choice but very little insight into how it all comes together where might such freedom lead? Are we not responsible for all that our choices set in motion? (Notes Three)

This sense in which we now live in a world we don’t fully understand seems so important: if we have the power to choose but not the knowledge to make informed decisions isn’t that risky? What if the costs we’re saddling future-humanity with are something we wouldn’t want to pay? Isn’t it “wrong” that we might be “spending” assets which aren’t ours to trade?

Whether the obscurity of our choices comes from technology’s distracting interface or the hidden nature of our global realities, isn’t it important we use our freedom wisely? If we’re being presented with more choice than is manageable, perhaps we need to define our own parameters to ensure we’re not overlooking the essential. If our choice is between options we’re not happy with, maybe we should be demanding new paths.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Freedom, responsibility & choice
Note 1: What we create by our presence
Note 1: How much is in the hands of the market
Note 2: Pace of change & getting nowhere fast
Note 2: All we’re expected to understand
Note 2: Being trusted to use our discernment…
Note 2: Understanding & staying informed
Note 2: What if it all means something?
Note 3: “Response Ability” by Frank Fisher
Note 3: Writings on Education
Note 3: “Paradox of Choice”
Note 3: Interdependency

Ways to share this:

Can there be joy in contracts?

We might look at contracts as cold and boring or tiresome things, but aren’t they also a powerful sense of mutual commitment? This sense in which two or more parties have agreed to uphold something with a specific end in mind. Isn’t there almost a joy to the notion that humans might freely commit to tie themselves into the terms and conditions necessary to bring something worthwhile to life?

Looking, in broad brush terms, at the development of Western society, it seems that contracts, character, bonds, obligations and trust were always quite central ideas: this sense in which society was conceived as an agreement, a contract between citizens and the machinery developed to govern their lives (Notes One). That the conflict of times past would be replaced by the relative peace of clear terms.

Isn’t it all woven into notions of trust? That the ideas behind “all this” were right, trustworthy, and would lead to a better world. That society was filled with people whose word could be trusted, who would uphold their commitments and do all they could to permeate society with the kinds of thinking and attitudes that would serve it well. That we were in this together, and our path paved with mutual concern. (Notes Two)

Don’t laws, idealistically, aim to delineate how this ambitious contract should work? Sketching out all the areas where we must rein ourselves in and bear the interests of others firmly in mind. This delicate web of mutual regulation whereby the existence of each individual is respected, protected and, hopefully, enhanced. The fine print for exactly how our lives can come together in a vision of perfect harmony, perhaps.

Of course, we’re perhaps not entirely conscious of that – this being an almost invisible, largely unspoken contract we’re essentially born into rather than something we’ve read through and decided to sign up for. A sort of inherited engagement we’re loosely aware of unless we choose to delve more thoroughly into its limitations.

Maybe that’s the thing? There “could” be joy in contracts, provided we feel they serve us well. If people are feeling this particular inheritance isn’t offering them much opportunity, maybe it’s only natural they’d rail against it and seek to redress the terms. If people, through no fault of their own, inherit an impossible hand in life, what are we to ask them to make of it? (Notes Three)

Getting back on track, though, aren’t contracts – in principle, at least – beautiful pictures of reciprocal commitment? Of individuals engaging to take part in a dance of give and take for the sake of everyone’s ultimate benefit. Although, perhaps only if terms are freely entered into and benefits are real and mutual.

If advantages are storing up on one side while obligations stack up on the other, can that be fair? If things are leading into a future that benefits some while coming at great cost to others, might it not be that the original spirit of this may have gone terribly awry?

Notes and References:

Note 1: “Quest for a Moral Compass”
Note 1: Contracts, social or commercial
Note 1: The self within society
Note 1: Obligations and contributions
Note 2: Situations which ask us to trust
Note 2: Codes of behaviour
Note 2: Mutual awareness and accommodation?
Note 3: Value and meaning in our lives
Note 3: Humans, tangled in these systems
Note 3: Advantage people don’t want to concede
Note 3: Desire to retreat, need to engage

Thinking of contracts as akin to the realities our lives all form part of, there’s also Systems, their power, whose hands?

Ways to share this:

Giving others space to be

If life’s some sort of dance of the spaces and rights existing between us, how aware are we of those mutual obligations? Isn’t our sharing of land, opportunities and resources all some sort of delicate balance? This sense in which “life” is almost always some form of give and take as we interact with one another throughout the course of all our lives. Yet, how often are we honouring the perhaps unspoken rules governing it all? (Notes One)

It just seems that humans have “always” existed in some version of that dance – societies having been ordered in various ways, around various principles, following various rules or priorities in terms of how this thing should “work”. As if “the dance” just changes as communities decide to arrange themselves in different ways, around different values or visions of what they hope to achieve by way of the discipline involved.

In that, isn’t there always a delicate line between self and others? This boundary where discipline or commitment comes into play and we don’t take a step that we “could” because we understand why we shouldn’t: that, in doing so, we’d be stepping into the space reserved for others. Don’t we come upon such lines all the time in life? All those times we have to preserve others’ rights by limiting our own.

Maybe it’s a physical line, where taking more than our share or not taking care over shared resources creates problems for others. Maybe it’s an intellectual line, where we need to respect others’ freedom to think or believe as they choose. Maybe it’s interpersonal, in how we afford one another the space to live, to be, to express themselves and not meet with another’s judgement. (Notes Two)

It just seems such a fundamental part of society: the frameworks we have around each other and how we’ll coexist. If we’re not thinking of others, won’t that accumulate to almost unfathomable sources of stress within daily life? If, at every turn, we’re coming upon situations where it’s clear we’re not all abiding by the same sense of how “this” needs to work, won’t we start to feel frustrated or disengaged from it all?

Whether disengagement stems from modern life, technology, overwhelm, migration, or any combination of other sources, isn’t it problematic just the same? If we’re not on the same page in terms of “how we’re relating to others” won’t our communities be strained in countless cumulative ways? All these niggling scratches where evidence suggests people are thinking differently, of themselves or not of you. (Notes Three)

We might spin this in terms of intolerance, social awareness, aggression, empathy or any manner of other phrases, but isn’t the core principle the same? This sense in which we sorely need to define and respect the spaces around ourselves and others – human beings – if we’re to see life in such a way that allows us all to enjoy it as best we’re able while contributing all we have to offer one another within community.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Mutual awareness and accommodation?
Note 1: Integrity and integration
Note 1: Situations which ask us to trust
Note 2: These ideas we have of one another
Note 2: Solving all the problems we’re creating
Note 2: What we create by our presence
Note 3: Lacking the human side of community?
Note 3: Might we lose our social muscles?
Note 3: Can “how we relate” really change?

For some early thoughts from a few years’ back, Having boundaries discussed the value of the lines between us.

Ways to share this:

Valuable insights actors can offer

Musing lately over the roles culture plays in our lives (Notes One), it still seems intriguing that we live in a world where fame has such power: this spotlight modern culture places on certain people, and the ways in which individuals are using the focus of that attention. Almost as if celebrity is the world’s new, popularly-elected monarchy of spokespeople and role models for how we should live.

In a way, it also seems that celebrities stand at this vortex of all our projections and concerns: the issues and preoccupations of society becoming the characters they then play. Culture, conceivably, being the place society reflects on itself, aren’t these the people working through our dramas in all these symbolic ways so we’re then better placed to choose our own path?

As if “culture” is exploring issues on our behalf. Those working within it having mastered the expressions of human being in order to speak clearly and compellingly to their audience. Actors, particularly, being those best able to let others take over their being and use that skill to convey emotions, intentions, thoughts, doubts or conflicts in ways we’ll relate to, believe in and allow into our souls.

Almost as if these are people who’ve mastered the art of “being human” and can put it on for effect. Those who know how to deliberately convey inner states in ways we, the audience, will recognise and understand. Those who can bring stories to life and “become” the representation we have in mind for any given character or idea. Reviving archetypal stories in new ways so we can work with them. (Notes Two)

In that light, those taking on these roles on society’s behalf must be strangely well-informed about being human. Both in the sense of having greater than average clarity around their emotions, gestures and inner states, and in the sense that they’re being asked to delve into all the core struggles, themes and aspirations of modern humanity.

Isn’t that their role? To stand between the outer world of our systemic, idealistic, practical problems and the inner world of how we, as humans, might deal with the challenges that presents. If culture’s where we reflect on our lives, actors seem to be those “able” to convey what it is to be human: representative, somehow, of humanity’s struggles and hopefully inspirational in terms of how we might handle them (Notes Three).

Actors presumably then “are” strangely well-placed to offer valuable insight into “what it is to be human”. Particularly if they’re acutely aware of the way they’re serving society and the kinds of experiences they’re helping bring to life: delving into the concepts at play, the humanity finding a way between them, and the crux of any decisions being made “must” give actors a strangely heightened sense for our struggles.

Not to say that necessarily translates into addressing us on any other matter of their choosing (Notes Four), but it does seem they stand at a fascinating and insightful point within modern society.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Who we’re listening to
Note 1: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 1: Navigation, steering & direction
Note 2: The stories that we hear
Note 2: Do the “lies” blind us to truth?
Note 2: Learning from the past, looking to the future
Note 3: Emotion and culture’s realities
Note 3: Culture as what we relate to
Note 3: Living as a form of art
Note 4: Which voice can we trust?
Note 4: Inspiring people and ideas
Note 4: All we concern ourselves with & encourage

Ways to share this:

With our words, do we cast spells?

When we speak, how far away do our words stand from reality? Are they a faithful reflection of “how it is” or do they cast everything in the light of how we feel, how we’re interpreting things, or what we think matters? As if our words might wrap our more objective observations within cloaks of despair, hope, criticism, distrust or freedom. Placing spin on reality as we reframe it with all the complex contents of our minds.

Isn’t it a powerful force? The commentary with which we accompany life. The thoughts we’re allowing ourselves to voice, expectations we have, and assumptions we mightn’t question seem to carry such weight as they travel out into the world. All these ideas which we, as humans, have thought and decided to send forth as an example or affirmation for others. (Notes One)

Once out there, don’t they stand to impact, influence or injure almost anyone around us? Becoming this humanly-voiced statement of how others see things – or, you. The ways we frame things in our minds becoming the way we present our thoughts to others as we offer up our conclusions around the value of everything that’s crossing our path.

Knowing how others see things seems significant. This sense in which, through communication, we’re letting others know what we think: revealing our perspectives, our values, our criticisms through all the subtle nuance of our words. Doesn’t it give others an idea of what matters to us? A fairly clear picture of how we, as a human, are looking at life and directing our concern or attention within it (Notes Two).

In that, aren’t we always “adding” something to reality? Not just stating a fact, but loading it up with the implication of all it means for us. As if, in everything we say, our words speak the relative significance of the world in our eyes: the seriousness with which we approach any topic, emotion accompanying our language and its delivery, and deliberation or haste with which we’re treating our subjects all carrying discernible meaning.

Almost as if we’re each these transmitters of “value” as we reflect reality through the “lens” of the human being – coating everything with the meaning we’ve assigned it and relaying that to anyone within earshot. And that doesn’t seem neutral (Notes Three). It must serve to confirm what we feel is acceptable, appropriate or admirable. It must impact others’ judgements of people, situations or themselves.

Maybe words are cloaking reality with our view of it? Some, perhaps, bearing the burden of words spoken by anyone not truly understanding where they’re coming from; haunted by any misconceptions with which others might’ve labelled them. Situations in nature or society perhaps being weighed down by all the many ways we’re not valuing things rightly or acting well.

As much as our words might uplift and bring good things to life, can’t they also become oppressive prisons? Flawed reflections of reality that trap us until we can somehow break free of their power.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Frameworks of how we relate
Note 1: The thought surrounding us
Note 1: These ideas we have of one another
Note 1: Powerful responsibility of a media voice
Note 2: Attention as a resource
Note 2: All we concern ourselves with & encourage
Note 2: Understanding what we’re all part of
Note 2: Seeing, knowing and loving
Note 3: All that we add to neutrality
Note 3: What we create by our presence
Note 3: Ways thought adds spin to life
Note 3: Conversation as revelation

 

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