Author: admin

All that we carry around with us

Until we figure it out, are we destined to be carrying things round with us? All the experiences, lessons, words, judgements, relationships, hopes, expectations, regrets, wounds, feelings and memories bound up within us or bubbling to the surface at a moment’s notice. As if life is all “in there” – every moment lived, all we experienced then or experience now as we revisit things.

As if “to be human” is to have our lives furled up within us: everything leaving its mark as it touches our consciousness, just as we, through our actions, are making impressions on the world. Isn’t it all there? Likely to be sparked off by all we innocently encounter each day as sights, scents, words or situations prompt things to rise once again to the surface. As if we live in both the present and in unbidden recollections of the past.

And doesn’t it tend to compound? As, each time we encounter something “similar”, we impose our remembered conclusions on “it” just as it’s adding further layers of confirmatory experience to our past. We “must” meet life with all we’ve “learnt” to that point: reading and reacting to things based on whatever we’ve known as true so far.

This sense in which we already have something in mind – our thoughts and emotions are primed to respond in certain ways, stemming out of all our lives have given us. As if we’re all loaded guns, stacked high with all the positive or negative experiences we’ve accumulated over time as we’ve lived alongside others in an imperfect world. (Notes One)

It’s incredible to imagine all anyone’s been through: all the formative childhood experiences, systemic exchanges, cultural pressures, affirmations or rejections at the hands of others. All that’s passed through each mind in light of each day’s events as the sense of their own worth is reflected, upheld or denied by the environment surrounding them.

What are we to make of it all? As individuals living through it, how are we to manage the strange billowing up of “life” yet respond to the present in ways that resolve rather than compound our struggles? Collectively, how are we to manage living alongside others who are going through such difficulties? Responding, hopefully, in ways that don’t make matters worse. (Notes Two)

Is it possible to make “life” a path of resolution? For us not to be leaving negative impressions and always be allowing their release. Otherwise, might this not simply compound forever? Layer upon layer of hurt people hurting others or responding in hurtful ways. Everyone punishing everyone else for any pain they’ve suffered and conclusions they drew about their own value, that of others or the value of life itself.

Sometimes it seems “society” – in all its systemic and personal complexities – is like a bomb we need to defuse. As if the past, with all its layers, has left us holding so many things we now need to resolve, let go of and heal if this isn’t to only get worse.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Does anything exist in isolation?
Note 1: Value in visible impacts
Note 1: The struggle with being alive
Note 1: All we want to do passes through community
Note 1: Complication of being human
Note 2: We’re all vulnerable
Note 2: Living as an open wound
Note 2: It resonates, but should it be amplified
Note 2: Personal archaeology
Note 2: Imperfection as perfection?

Ways to share this:

Tuning out the static

Of all that’s thrown at us all day, how much do we truly need to tune into? How much of “this” is the vitally essential information that’s serving to keep humanity informed of itself – in the best position to make wise decisions regarding its future? How much is something else entirely? Something we never asked for that serves little purpose beyond cluttering up airwaves, testing our patience or weakening our resolve.

Isn’t it feasible that the bulk of what’s assailing us each day is almost completely irrelevant? Just what various parties have deemed potentially profitable enough to offer up, on the off-chance people might be persuaded to buy into it – chancing their arm to see if there’s demand they could stoke up and fulfil. Isn’t that what the marketplace “means”? That anyone can offer us absolutely anything they dream up. (Notes One)

Leading to us now being surrounded by all of these options we’re supposed to consider. Our role, apparently, being to choose between whatever’s on offer: listen, weigh up, consider, evaluate, then commit to any number of products, services or ideas that might take our fancy or convince us of their worth. All our decisions then becoming the realities of our world, the consequences we’re setting in motion.

What does it mean, then, if we’re surrounded by increasingly questionable things? Options that might significantly destabilise whatever delicate balance still exists within our natural, social or international environments. Patterns of behaviour that potentially serve as risky examples to others – making it seem as if “all this” is a healthy, viable way of existing alongside one another on a finite planet. (Notes Two)

If we’re living within a world of unwise options, what are we to make of that? Do we relent and go along with whatever seems popular at any given moment? Letting the power of collective approval guide us; in the hope of fitting in or not being left behind. As social creatures, it seems a fairly potent incentive. Where does it lead, though? There’s no guarantee such paths are headed in good directions. (Notes Three)

Meanwhile, isn’t there considerable cost to the stress of living our lives in a cloud of constant inducements? All these temptations and distractions expressly designed to make us doubt ourselves and seek something to fill all these newly-created gaps. Our environment, apparently, taking any opportunity to make us feel insecure and desperately in need of something else – be it love, approval or peace of mind. (Notes Four)

Isn’t constant chatter draining? This cognitive burden of filtering out “the unnecessary” or listening through it in case something important hides within. It must wear anyone’s patience pretty thin to be expending huge amounts of mental energy each day just trying to listen out for what matters. Weeding out a million problematic items for every essential one we manage to catch. Worrying, perhaps, that we missed it.

And, what if “this” undermines our capacity to take the right things seriously or judge wisely in their regard?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Attention as a resource
Note 1: The stories that we hear
Note 1: Points of sale as powerful moments
Note 2: The value we’re giving to things
Note 2: At what cost, for humans & for nature?
Note 2: Freedom, responsibility & choice
Note 2: The insatiable desire for more
Note 3: “Brave New World Revisited”
Note 3: How much is in the hands of the market
Note 3: Passing on what’s important
Note 3: All we concern ourselves with & encourage
Note 4: Visual language and spaces
Note 4: Who gets to define us
Note 4: Solving all the problems we’re creating
Note 4: Desensitised to all we’re told?

Ways to share this:

Appealing to human nature or the human spirit

In life, can’t we always choose to go low or high? These two basic options that lie open before us as the paths we might take. Is it possible to ask which is strongest or more reliable? Which might be the firmer foundation for guiding human affairs? Which may be most accessible or appealing as a means of attracting attention? Also, if our collective paths are shaped by such cumulative decisions, where this is likely to lead?

Sometimes “human nature” seems this voracious, self-absorbed source of almost limitless desire. That, left to our own devices, we’d simply want more and more – this basic addictive, compulsive, uncontrollable instinct we have to get ahead, set ourselves apart, look better and possess more than others. As if, beneath the veneer of civilisation, we’re only truly concerned with “us”, however limited or expansive that notion is.

There certainly seems to be that element to us: the drive to survive and hold status or power within our community. This extrapolation of evolutionary theory that places us just ahead of the animals, endowed with more complex brains and destined to use them for our advantage. As if that’s the only option available to us: wield this latest tool as our weapon in that ancient battle. (Notes One)

It’s clearly a powerful force. Sometimes it seems almost anyone can be motivated by self-interest to make decisions against any values they might otherwise hold dear (Notes Two). As if, when push comes to shove, human nature “wins” and any attempt to shift to higher ground is lost. Isn’t it a persuasive motivator? This sense in which any decision can be presented in terms of what “you” stand to gain or lose from each option.

Aren’t we quite controllable, though, when we operate on those grounds? Given how anyone can be profiled, the balance of their interests mapped, to give a clear sense of which buttons, carrots or sticks will inspire them to act any particular way. Looking to human nature, we do seem predictable. We also seem to find it morally justifiable that people would behave that way – as if we can’t really expect anything more.

That said, it seems we still admire those who act on other grounds: whose self-interest is overcome by concern for other principles, people, values and causes. People who, despite any suffering or loss they incur, chose to act in the interest of others to dismantle systems, ideas or prejudices that aren’t serving humanity as a whole. Those motivated, perhaps, by the ideals running underneath the realities of all our lives. (Notes Three)

Isn’t it admirable? That anyone would cast themselves off to fight on behalf of others. That human nature could be set aside in such beautiful ways that rightly inspire us to expect more from ourselves. It seems one “ideal” of human existence: that we’d look beyond the self to the whole.

Why, then, does modern society seem to so insistently and successfully appeal to the other side of our nature?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Systems, their power, whose hands
Note 1: Where do ideas of evolution leave us?
Note 1: Is this the ultimate test?
Note 2: Values, and what’s in evidence
Note 2: The picture data paints of us
Note 2: Values on which we stand firm?
Note 3: Dealing with imperfection
Note 3: “The Measure of a Man”
Note 3: The human spirit

Thinking of how we’re all essentially free to choose whichever paths we like in life, there’s also The incredible responsibility of freedom.

Ways to share this:

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?

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