Month: August 2022

What we have to “add” to existence

Thinking lately about life and what it might mean to be human (Notes One), is it simply that we participate? That, somehow, we pick up the ideas or patterns of behaviour we find around us and, by either carrying forward or challenging them, serve to create that world we’ll then be passing on to others. All links in these chains as we agree to go along with things or choose, perhaps, to do otherwise.

Either way, it seems “reality” comes to meet us, as humans: encircling us with all the details of life and all the thoughts those with influence over us have felt it important to convey. As if “life” presents us with its artefacts and its ideas – with all the theories, conclusions and ways of acting those before us had seen as worthwhile, useful, admirable or right. The world of human thought shifting in to become our own thoughts on life.

Isn’t it true that we can only know what we’ve been told or observed for ourselves? The thoughts we’re living with serving as this straightjacket or sketched map with which we can then approach life in our own way. Our ideas perhaps becoming a stifling, inflexible source of constant stress, disagreement and conflict, or a curious sense of reality being, in many ways, known while also being a mystery we’re all still working out.

Increasingly, it seems that coming at life with preconceived notions is causing a lot of problems – this idea that our theories are perfect, if only others would listen and fall into line. All these ways in which we’re insisting others come round to our way of thinking; as if any one of us has that fully perfected roadmap to an unproblematic, peaceful and harmonious future.

Given our increasingly global realities – this conversation of ideas, struggles, products and ecosystems we’re all more tightly woven into – isn’t it unlikely that any pre-existing body of thought “can” truly match the complexity of all that’s now coming together? Thoughts generally emerging from the communities in which they developed, how “can” they ever inclusively embrace realities beyond that awareness? (Notes Two)

Maybe it’s simply that we’re being asked to expand our awareness? To understand how closely our lives have been connected and see all the ways our choices inevitably affect one another. How, through life, our decisions reflect our humanised understanding of what life is: all the roles we all play in maintaining, developing or improving what it is to be human and form a part of humanity’s presence on this planet. (Notes Three)

In its way, isn’t life a philosophical question? A sense that we’re all essentially the same, participating in this one complex reality of sustaining – hopefully, enriching – our own shared existence as well as that of the Earth. That, as humans, we all form part of “this” as, taking things up in our thought and our action, we serve to carry forward what we’ve decided are the best possible paths ahead into our collective future.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Life as an interplay of ideas, humanity & reality
Note 1: Trusting in thought, or yourself
Note 1: The stories we put our weight behind
Note 1: Gatekeepers in our lives
Note 2: If environment shapes us…
Note 2: Being conscious of our constructions
Note 2: Ways of living in world
Note 2: Living through the changes
Note 3: Pieces of the puzzle
Note 3: Somewhere between ideals & realities
Note 3: Holding back, for the sake of others
Note 3: Any choice but to take a stand?

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Life as an interplay of ideas, humanity & reality

Where is it that we stand, as humans? Within all the living realities weaving their ways around us, reflected by our capacity for thought, is it that we’re the ones making decisions? Seeing our versions of that picture and, based on that understanding, choosing what our responses will be. As if “to be human” is to see and to choose.

Not that it’s that simple. Afterall, we exist in realities within which others have already made their choices: systems created by and designed to serve certain interests; bodies of thought we’re asked to accept; assumptions or patterns of behaviour that shape us all before we’re truly able to challenge them. In many ways it seems we emerge in a world crumpled by thought before we’ve the capacity to wield it. (Notes One)

Yet isn’t “life” something we could hope to understand? A picture woven out of history, science and culture into which our own lives are placed; through which our own choices play their part in bringing new realities into existence. That, coming into a world we “can” understand, we have – by various historical paths – been offered this responsibility to decide based on our own grasp of that picture and all its importance. (Notes Two)

How are we supposed to “see” that picture? That complex interplay of global realities into which humans and their ideas have been charting their course over the last few thousand years. How are we to see the truths from the lies, given how much imperfection tends to be peppered through any given person’s experiences, ideas and actions? How are we to draw out the valuable threads and deal with the mistaken ones?

In many ways, it just seems we live our lives within both thought and reality – standing somewhere between the two as we live partly by habit and partly by intention. That so much of what we do is simply carried forward subconsciously as this unexamined tide we once emerged within. As if, all appearing at various points within pre-existing trains of thought, we picked them up to make of them who we are.

Are we, then, merely here to witness the outplaying of the ideas we see around us? To observe all that’s happening and the consequences being set in motion. As if there’s a certain inevitability to the logic of all that’s weaving its way about us. Our actions simply drawn into this flow of “how things are” as the momentum of tradition or expectation sweep us along with their global ramifications. (Notes Three)

Is life to be a story we actively write or passively read, after the fact? Not that it’s easy to understand enough to foresee all the interwoven consequences of our every choice, but can we let uncertainty lead to paralysed resignation? Sometimes it just seems we’re caught in this stream of thought unable to really see what it is we can do about it – the right path, along which we can hopefully find answers to all these problems.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Relationships & our place in life
Note 1: Channels of information
Note 1: Do we need to understand the past?
Note 1: Conversations we agree to have
Note 2: Acclimatisation to a world of meaning
Note 2: The thinking behind technology
Note 2: Culture, thought & coexistence
Note 2: Threads, becoming a united whole
Note 3: Doing the right thing, we erase consequences
Note 3: Passivity, or responsibility
Note 3: Wisdom the world no longer gives?
Note 3: All we’re trying to uphold

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