Author: admin

Inspiring people and ideas

While there’s clearly a lot in life that can drag us down – this much awareness of our own countries’ struggles, alongside all the collective and individual difficulties the world’s weighed down with, can easily lead to a sort of paralysing despair – there are perhaps an equal number of things to encourage and uplift us. Maybe that’s too optimistic, but seeking out the inspiring things in life seems important.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s not a point, somewhere between despair and hope, where there’s a chance of engaging to make the difference between the two. This sense in which we might hold in each hand all the struggles and all the dreams then make a move that shifts that balance more towards resolution, awareness and transformation. This very human gesture of setting our intentions high. (Notes One)

Perhaps that’s one definition of inspiration? People choosing to embrace ways of life, of thinking, that might lead us all in good directions. It’s interesting to think that each one of us could be such a source of inspiration: that our everyday choices, attitudes and responses might serve as an example to all those around us in both the real and virtual world.

And I’d imagine we’d all be inspired by different things; given we each have our own priorities, concerns and areas of growth. Everyone focussing in different directions, wouldn’t we naturally find different people’s insights inspiring? Especially if we consider every aspect of life as being part of a spectrum from complete ignorance through to effortless mastery.

At any point along those many journeys, the thoughts or actions of different people may resonate most with our own particular situation and style of approach. As if we’re all exchanging perspectives as we walk our paths, grapple with challenges, and strive toward realising specific goals or concepts. Each person, perhaps, always being able to offer “something” that will help someone else. (Notes Two)

Which is my circuitous way of saying that perhaps few people are universally inspiring – those lone souls who are able to speak wisely to everyone, wherever they may be on their path. Maybe, in a strange way, we “need” to all be talking at once in the hope that, somewhere, our words may be able to help someone? Of course, we often do so in an online world filled with those aiming for the exact opposite.

How we’re supposed to navigate this new, connected, hyper-aware world is strange to contemplate: if we’re not to let all these influences simply wash over us, blending the good with the bad, how are we to set limits or chart a realistic, compassionate, constructive course? While no one answer may suit everyone, there must be some sort of balance to be struck. (Notes Three)

Identifying people and ways of thinking that resonate with your values, challenges and hopes may fit in there somewhere – those whose words or perspectives lift your heart with gratitude that people exist who are striving for better paths through life’s struggles.

Notes and References:

Instagram links for Nirrimi Firebrace (https://www.instagram.com/nirr.imi/); Jedidiah Jenkins (https://www.instagram.com/jedidiahjenkins/); Sophia Bush (https://www.instagram.com/sophiabush/); Rich Roll (https://www.instagram.com/richroll/).

Note 1: What we create by our presence
Note 1: Will things change if we don’t make them?
Note 1: “Minding the Earth, Mending the World”
Note 1: The human spirit
Note 2: Personal archaeology
Note 2: Complication of being human
Note 2: Finding flaws
Note 2: Can others join you?
Note 3: The thought surrounding us
Note 3: Sensitivity & the place for feeling
Note 3: Pace of change & getting nowhere fast
Note 3: Reading between the lines

In terms of Instagram, examples of such voices may be Nirrimi Firebrace, Jedidiah Jenkins, Sophia Bush, Rich Roll or many, many others.

Ways to share this:

Value and meaning in our lives

Isn’t the question of what it means to be human one of the first and perhaps biggest we ever ask? In a way, isn’t the whole of life – from youth to old age – our attempt at finding or creating answers to it? This world of theories, priorities, beliefs, practices, attitudes and actions that together make up our response as to what life is and how we should live it.

As if we are, in a way, the answer to our own question: “this” is how we’re living; the faces we’re offering one another; the things we believe matter most or think we can get away with. Society perhaps being the embodiment of our collective, inherited “answer” for how to live. Aren’t we forever being taught, explicitly and implicitly, how we should be valuing all we find around us?

Attempting to untangle the relationship between individuals and society is fascinating (Notes One). Presumably, society “must” be built around the personal and collective needs of individuals? All the things we require, plus all those activities that promise to make our lives better: progress, development, improvement. Everyone playing their part, it seems possible both sets of needs can be met.

Yet, for some reason, it often seems the world – society – doesn’t really value us that highly; that we’re forever trying to earn back or demonstrate our own worth. A topsy-turvy social reality where we’re expected to fight for our worth within these value systems of culture, wealth and security – our status, acceptance and peace constantly being reset in a never-ending climb against novelty, marketing and time.

Is human worth to be the foundation or the product of society? Do we have it as a given, or is this something we’re working our way up to each day? Shouldn’t the answers to such questions be baked into the very heart of society? Woven deeply within all we’re thinking, doing and passing on throughout each moment. Is our foundational assumption that life matters, or can that be questioned? (Notes Two)

Doesn’t the value of human existence need to be the solid, unquestionable bedrock of any healthy society? That life and all that happens to each one of us is meaningful. It seems strange to feel the need to argue that the value of our lives isn’t defined by the social, cultural or economic ideals currently surrounding us – what are those things if not society’s reflection of our worth? (Notes Three)

Taking it back to the individual, isn’t every instance of human life – beyond any flaws, wounds or mistakes – infinitely valuable, precious and filled with unique potential? Each member of humanity, while essentially the same, bearing within them the lived experience of their own path through the undeniably flawed world we created for ourselves (Notes Four).

Maybe it’s not possible to challenge or change this Western value system with its commercial estimations of our worth; leaving us all with the strange task of constantly having to insist on a recognition that could’ve been ours all along.

Notes and References:

Note 1: The self within society
Note 1: Authenticity & writing our own story
Note 1: Mutual awareness and accommodation?
Note 1: Values, and what’s in evidence
Note 2: Do we know what stands before us?
Note 2: Absolute or relative value
Note 2: Losing the sense of meaning
Note 3: The thought surrounding us
Note 3: Where do we get our ideas from?
Note 3: The value we’re giving to things
Note 3: Culture as information
Note 3: Society that doesn’t deal with the soul
Note 4: Personal archaeology
Note 4: Places of belonging & acceptance
Note 4: Understanding what we’re all part of

For thoughts around where we stand in the flow of time and our role in the process of change, there’s Will things change if we don’t make them?

Ways to share this:

Attention as a resource

Is anything more valuable than attention? While it’s a strange thing to see as a commodity, it’s increasingly seeming one of the most sought-after ones within modern life. Given how we talk of “paying” attention, though, maybe some have always been aware of the value of an attentive mind and the power it has over our individual and collective lives.

Isn’t it going to be true, on some level, that what we give our attention to grows? The fuel of our focus on any given thing serving to increase its importance in our lives – effectively giving it more power, more weight. Especially in this world of trends, views, likes and followers: the tangible size of an audience and saliency of a topic having become that much more clearly visible and contagious online.

Almost like there’s this battle for our minds happening on the global scale as everyone’s fighting to capture our interest; win our trust; direct our behaviour. And, perhaps it’s the fact that people – particularly in the West – are largely free to think and do as they please that has “created” this marketplace for ideas and patterns of influence? (Notes One)

Thinking about it, if our moments of freedom are “the things we believe and act upon” then power for directing things presumably rests in gaining our cooperative interest. The field of human psychology – social instincts, persuasive communication – having then become one of the most lucrative subjects to leverage and utilise for whatever ends we might have in mind.

It’s incredible to think how much is now vying for our attention each day; let alone the amount of strategic intelligence applied to finetuning those messages. If we’re being constantly assailed with thoughts about reality – be they optimistic, one-sided, empowering or filled with despair – how much does that impact the conversations we’re having, ideas we’re entertaining and attitudes with which we’re approaching life?

If all we take in is what’s eventually finding its way back out into reality through us, how are we to use the force of our attention? Do we just open the doors and let everything flow in; allowing all these images and emotions to fill the recesses of our minds? Whichever sources we’ve chosen becoming the channels through which we’re establishing our beliefs, assumptions and conclusions. (Notes Two)

There seems such intense interest, now, in gaining loyal followings then using those platforms to affect change. This sense in which so many actors – individuals or organisations – are gathering together those open to being guided by their influence, suggestions and ideas. Whether that’s used for commercial or social, constructive or destructive ends – the agenda behind it – perhaps making all the difference.

It’s strange to think that, the world over, people are trying to gain our ear and shape our thinking. Also, that people are cultivating audiences then giving others access to them – letting them borrow your voice. At every stage of spreading information or understanding, isn’t there immense responsibility to how we’re wielding the power we all have?

Notes and References:

Guardian article “Technology is driving us to distraction” by James Williams, 27 May 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/27/world-distraction-demands-new-focus

Note 1: Freedom, responsibility & choice
Note 1: Being trusted to use our discernment…
Note 1: Points of sale as powerful moments
Note 1: Reading between the lines
Note 1: Too much responsibility?
Note 2: Where do we get our ideas from?
Note 2: Information might be there, but can we find it?
Note 2: Is this the ultimate test?
Note 2: All that we add to neutrality
Note 2: Which voice can we trust?

The value, power and significance our attention has, personally and at the level of society, was also the focus of the Guardian article “Technology is driving us to distraction” back in 2018.

Ways to share this:

Where education stands within society

When it comes to learning about “life” – where we stand, all we’ve been through, how society works, which qualities we’ll need throughout our years – it’s interesting to consider where our ideas come from (Notes One). As, while there may be limitless ways of approaching life and choosing to live it, won’t the decision over “which” paths to take and things to hold in mind essentially “become” what society then “is”?

Isn’t education, in a way, leading young people onto the paths we want them to walk? Telling them tales that hopefully make sense of the world around them and help them identify, uphold and pass on all the things that matter within that landscape. Bringing together a comprehensive, balanced, compassionate understanding of “life” as it currently stands along the path humanity’s been walking.

Distilling all the knowledge, understanding, insight and vision of human heritage down into accessible, digestible, compatible nuggets of wisdom that might grow up alongside the next generation of adults seems a beautiful task. This hope of, somehow, conveying where we’ve come from and what we’re aiming for – each of us always a step, a link in many long chains – so that everything’s responsibly taken in hand.

Yet, between all the voices and agendas, how much agreement do we have over any of these things? Aren’t everyone’s priorities, concerns and interests increasingly incompatible? Sometimes it seems “education” is simply the meeting point of countless causes: economic, governmental, cultural, social, personal, global, spiritual, environmental. This vortex of passionate, heartfelt concern within which children live.

Because, of course, we know youth is “the moment” where the future’s set in motion and foundations are laid that can take lifetimes to unravel, rework and set straight (Notes Two). So much happens there to shape each individual’s self-esteem, social confidence and general engagement with charting their “best path” through life.

Given the power formative experiences have in shaping our lives, it’s perhaps hardly surprising everyone has something to say: don’t we all want to fix problems, smooth out differences, create systems that work for everybody? Bringing all that together in workable ways doesn’t seem straightforward, though (Notes Three).

If the task of education is to stand between the interests of state, business, family, culture and the individual and mediate some kind of respectful agreement between all parties, how’s that to work? Attempting to “redress” social or cultural backgrounds seems to step between children and their families; an interesting place for anyone to try to stand.

As times get more fraught, the question of how it’s all going to play out seems important. If children are to exist at this strange vortex of cultural, economic, technological, political and familial forces, how are they to broker some kind of understanding over which voices to trust or paths to follow? (Notes Four)

We might all have something to say about life’s priorities, but the idea of who we choose to become and how well it’s coming together into a healthy, harmonious society doesn’t seem easily resolved.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Where do we get our ideas from?
Note 1: Knowledge, capacity & understanding
Note 1: Ideas around education & responsibility
Note 1: Common knowledge
Note 2: Personal archaeology
Note 2: Living as an open wound
Note 2: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 2: Modern challenges to relationship
Note 2: The self within society
Note 3: Mutual awareness and accommodation?
Note 3: Understanding what we’re all part of
Note 3: The thought surrounding us
Note 4: Which voice can we trust?
Note 4: Passing on what’s important
Note 4: The stories that we hear
Note 4: Pace of change & getting nowhere fast
Note 4: Reading between the lines

Looking to the timeless nature of such concerns around the ideas we have in mind was one focus within Plato & “The Republic”.

Ways to share this:

Appreciating other ways of being

Thinking about life, isn’t it simply the interplay of various different ways of being? A whole world filled by forms expressing their “life” in all these beautiful, unique, purposeful ways. Everything, generally, working together for mutual advantage while producing all of the varied landscapes and ecosystems that are supporting and enriching life on this planet.

It seems incredible to imagine all the life forms, all the activities and interactions coming together and layering up to create this world we see before us – all of the years that have gone into bringing us to this point. The very fact we have such diversity, such beauty, such resources to draw upon in our lives now being the result of countless periods of persistent growth, development and cooperation on the part of nature.

Even before looking at how the generations preceding us enriched our lives by their efforts, there’s this sense in which the very ground beneath our feet and air filling our lungs are the product of far-reaching cosmic realities and minuscule chemical processes. The whole planet, in a way, working in astonishing harmony to provide an environment in which humanity can exist.

Not to say, necessarily, that nature exists “in order” to give us life, but that it almost undeniably “does” – the results of nature’s activity being the climate surrounding us, wildlife we hear, plants we tend, creatures we observe, and food we consume. Doesn’t almost everything that comes to us arise out of nature before becoming part of our lives?

It might be our inclination to brush such wonder aside and move on to higher things, but is it wise to underestimate the value of nature? Are we right to see it mainly in terms of its capacity to sustain or withstand our activities? Viewing this planet as a series of assets we have a right to plunder, exhaust, scar and drive to the brink of instability seems a strange way to be treating our home.

Why is it that writing about nature often drifts to the negative? As a topic, it clearly touches onto the wonder, hope and beauty nature offers as much as it does the unfathomable risks of disregarding its deeper significance for our lives (Notes One). As if thoughts around nature are a double-edged sword of incredible richness and incredible danger.

Without the admiration, though, how are we to be inspired to protect it? Don’t we need to appreciate things if we’re to involve ourselves in maintaining a garden or defending a landscape? If we don’t “see” the unique wisdom of each separate being – following its trail to gain broader insight into the intricate fabric of the lives making up our own – it seems unlikely we’ll care enough to limit our own pursuits (Notes Two).

For some reason, humans wield such incredible power on this planet: the power to sustain, preserve, enrich and work alongside nature or do the opposite. Isn’t it important we appreciate the gift of life and choose to play our parts wisely?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Beauty and wonder in nature
Note 1: Aesthetic value of nature
Note 1: Living the dream
Note 1: Gardening as therapy, the light and the dark
Note 1: Nature & the fulfilment of potential
Note 2: Things with life have to be maintained
Note 2: Having a sense for being alive
Note 2: Intrinsic value of nature
Note 2: Detaching from the world around us
Note 2: Seeing, knowing and loving

Ways to share this:

Observing life & stepping outside of reality

When we view life from behind a lens, aren’t we not then “in” reality? We’ve taken this step back to see what stands before us with different eyes – eyes of posterity, performance, evaluation. All the times we’re choosing to stand apart from the moment, observing it differently to capture things a certain way, it’s almost like we’re no longer “there”.

Sometimes it also seems that pictures loom larger than memories: the lived experience of events rivalled by images that drown out the complex awareness of many perspectives with the compelling evidence of one. The slow, faded recollection of a moment replaced by a series of snapshots that might eventually crowd out the other, less photogenic aspects of our lives. As if photos are clearer and more reliable.

Humans, now, being the first to live with this constant presence of photography, I’ve heard it said it’s changing how we act, perceive and present ourselves. It’s incredible to think that little more than a lifetime ago people rarely saw images of themselves; whereas, now, the incidental events of each day can so easily be posed, captured and shared.

It must make a significant difference to how we are? Perhaps shifting our focus from the inside – our presence, contribution and understanding in each moment – to a preoccupation with how we look from the outside. As if we risk becoming actors, creating the illusion of something our lives might no longer contain. Empty shells, conveying the image we want others to see.

There can be such disparity between how things look and how they are on the inside (Notes One). Something can seem impressive, but contain nothing within. Completely unremarkable things can hold great inner value. Maybe it’s a mistake to get blinded by appearances? Especially given how easy it now is to create images that bear staggeringly little relationship to reality.

But perhaps it’s also too easy to imply that we’re becoming superficial, self-obsessed or distracted. As with many aspects of modern life and the technology woven through it, we probably just have the opportunities people before us were wanting: capacity, convenience, simplicity, control (Notes Two). Maybe people have always sought to capture their memories, share their experiences, and give others a window into their lives.

Essentially, then, photography seems like a form of communication: people sharing their perspectives to let others see the meaning things hold when, for a moment, we view life with their eyes (Notes Three). This beautiful act of self-revelation as we offer up our insights to one another, filling in the gaps of mutual understanding to grasp a little more of the reality we’re all part of.

As with writing, perhaps we’re just wanting to reach out, open the door on what matters to us, and create common ground by offering our take on things. How closely our words or images track alongside the truth of reality – and, how well such processes integrate into the lives we’re leading – seem just some of the challenges modern life’s presenting us with.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Absolute or relative value
Note 1: Oh, to be young again?
Note 1: Masks we all wear
Note 2: All in such a rush
Note 2: Modern challenges to relationship
Note 2: Pace of change & getting nowhere fast
Note 3: What does art have to say about life?
Note 3: Going towards the unknown
Note 3: Living as a form of art

Ways to share this:

What we create by our presence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes and References:

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

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

Ways to share this:

Understanding what we’re all part of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes and References:

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

Ways to share this:

Where do we get our ideas from?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes and References:

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

Ways to share this:

How quickly things can change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes and References:

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

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

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