Author: admin

Do the “lies” blind us to truth?

How much of all we take in is really true? Not just in the sense of being a questionable overlay to reality in the shape of interpretation, opinion or argument, but actually a recasting of that reality through different eyes (Notes One).

There seem so many ways in which the information we’re receiving mightn’t be entirely true – all these subtle or dramatic representations of facts, their contexts or meanings. If we take it that, through our eyes or other senses, we’re constantly observing reality, taking it in, combining it with all we know and emerging with this evolving idea of life, how much of that picture is strictly going to be real?

Are we to look on our minds as faithful mirrors, having captured all that’s happened since our arrival on earth? All the lessons of youth and childhood, all the observations and developments of adulthood having lodged themselves up there as a reliable repository of all our knowledge, insight and understanding of “life”. This solid foundation on which to stand, view and judge anything we might encounter.

What if this is a space that contains as many lies as truths? Somewhere full of potentially mistaken lessons or facts that’ve changed so much in the interim that we might be wise to revisit, re-evaluate and revise what we have in mind. After all, how much of what crosses the threshold of our senses each day can truly be trusted? It seems entirely possible that the lion’s share of each day’s intake could quite easily be “lies”.

Not just in the sense of deliberate ones, but also because so much in life is now a convincing illusion: all these misrepresentations of reality in the form of social media, camera angles, make up, after effects, and so forth. Then, all the stories and films that run alongside reality, taking its forms, reworking its events, offering us perspectives we could never hope to have within real life.

Don’t we spend a reasonable amount of time absorbing vivid depictions of something close to reality that’s actually fiction? All these characters and retellings that come to life for us in ways reality itself rarely does: clear storylines with all facts present, if concealed, ready for us to uncover, disentangle and enjoy. This beautiful place where anything can happen and lessons can be learnt out of harm’s way.

The idea of what culture adds to reality seems such a fascinating question (Notes Two). Is this a place that helps us live our lives better through understanding things more clearly, or something to distract us from the humdrum state of existence? Does it help our sense of reality become more true or less so? Maybe we risk becoming desensitised, disinterested or disengaged with life itself.

Does it matter if our minds are so full of convincing, beautiful depictions of something close to reality that we find life itself dull, tiresome and frustratingly unclear? Especially now, when a realistic, constructive understanding and engagement with life seems so important.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Reading between the lines
Note 1: All that we add to neutrality
Note 1: Entertaining ideas & the matter of truth
Note 1: Going towards the unknown
Note 2: What’s the idea with culture?
Note 2: Reading into social realities?
Note 2: Culture as information
Note 2: The stories that we hear

The idea of what we believe and its effect on the lives we share was also part of Making things up as we go along.

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Diplomacy and knowing where we stand

Beyond the fairly simple premise of “say what you mean and mean what you say” there’s clearly a lot of ground for doing otherwise: for white lies, social niceties, saving face, protecting feelings, greasing the wheel, subterfuge, and so on. A whole world of options between truth and illusion where we might choose to set up camp and live our lives. How, then, can we ever know where we stand?

Maybe the world would be a hurtful place if everyone said what they really thought – something like the “honesty” we find online, veiled by cloaks of anonymity. If people don’t know or care for one another, maybe honesty becomes more of a weapon than a helpful tool for establishing a sense of certainty, truth or trust (Notes One).

Thinking about life, though – about thought and language, communication and meaning – what are we doing when we veil our honesty in these ways? If “to be human” is to see the world in thought and seek to make sense of it, what does it mean if much of what we’re hearing isn’t entirely clear? If, behind almost every word, there’s subtext or context essential to rightfully interpreting any given fact.

Maybe it’s simply communication: words and their meaning; the added envelopment of relationship, body language or tone; then our ability to decipher it all and arrive at the correct “reading” of whatever information we’re receiving (Notes Two). Unravelling all the layers of any statement to determine the intentions of the speaker and context into which they spoke, though, seems to be becoming increasingly difficult.

Isn’t technology stripping a lot out? These bare words travelling out there alone, devoid of all that might’ve been meant to go along with them. The warmth and humanity of their origins potentially lost as they make their way into others’ psyches and take on whatever coating is placed upon them there. Don’t we risk being trapped in prisons of our own making? Viewing everything in the light of our own mind. (Notes Three)

As with many things in modern life, what seems simple has sometimes become strangely complicated. Conventions such as diplomacy having arisen within or between specific communities, groups or cultures, there must’ve been a reasonable amount of agreement as to their usage – a sort of unspoken code. Conversations also tending to take place behind closed doors, between known individuals.

Now, so many conversations seem to be these open, fluid events where people speak or listen from vastly different perspectives, backgrounds, agendas and sides. Without a firmly established set of conventions guiding these interactions, everyone seems free to take from them what they will and combine it all with the pre-existing contents of their minds however they see fit. (Notes Four)

I’m not sure where this train of thought is headed, but presumably we can’t really know where we stand? Communication might have got a lot “easier” and “freer” in recent decades, but the idea of understanding what it all means doesn’t seem at all straightforward.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Plausible deniability
Note 1: Is honesty actually the best policy?
Note 1: Seeing, knowing and loving
Note 1: Value in visible impacts
Note 2: What we say & what we mean
Note 2: Sensitivity & the place for feeling
Note 2: Reading between the lines
Note 2: What is it with tone?
Note 3: Joining the dots
Note 3: Does being alone amplify things?
Note 3: Conversation as revelation
Note 4: Social starting points for modern ways
Note 4: The sense of having a worldview
Note 4: Codes of behaviour

On the flipside, the value of “lying” was also one element of Is telling people what we want to be true a lie?

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The picture data paints of us

Taking it to be true that humans have never lived as we currently do – that modern technology and all that comes along with it are a new reality on the face of the earth – it seems reasonable to wonder where that’s likely to lead. Isn’t it that people, as a whole, have never had this kind of power or lived under this kind of scrutiny? How it’s going to affect us and the systems that’ll be created out of it can’t be unreasonable concerns.

Often, there seems a kind of inevitability to it all: that certain people or organisations have cast this web around us and we’ve little opportunity at this point to complain or seek to challenge the ideas they may have in mind for us (Notes One). As if our lives are now in their hands, to do with as they please – weaving those lives into whatever configuration they choose while using their intricate knowledge of us to make that possible.

Data seems such a powerful thing. Our lives effectively having been ushered into this alternative reality, before we were fully aware of the risks, and turned into a series of interactions, connections and moments where our every move, decision, thought can be observed, collated and understood even better than we might really know ourselves.

So much of “all we do” being habitual or based on patterns beneath our awareness, anyone tracking and analysing the trail we leave in our wake stands to piece together a picture of us “we” may never truly see. Pulled together, our data must present quite an overview of all we’re imprinting on reality through our existence – a fuller sense of “how we are” than many of us, perhaps, possess.

It’s a knowledge of human nature no one before us seems to have had: a real-time observation of almost everything everyone everywhere is choosing to do with their time. It must be an incredible “picture” of humanity, our concerns and the countless details of our lives. Even as we’re being tempted and distracted in all these new ways, people are watching and learning from the choices we’re all making. (Notes Two)

That certain entities have this intensely personal yet incredibly systemic overview of “humanity” is quite astonishing to contemplate. What are they planning to do with this knowledge of us? What’s it like, psychologically, to live our lives knowing that “someone” is watching all that we do and dreaming up visions for our future? As if we’re all being folded into systems which have their own designs for our lives.

Given how data would only be gathered if it’s seen to be useful or valuable, it doesn’t seem possible to view “all this” as neutral; this observation of us must be being used to inform projects people have in mind for “the world”. That human activity would be “captured” this way, mapped out to such a degree, and used to shepherd us all into some new future surely demands a lot of trust?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Whether we make a difference
Note 1: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 1: Treating people like sims?
Note 1: Shaping the buildings that shape us
Note 2: Freedom, responsibility & choice
Note 2: Pace of change & getting nowhere fast
Note 2: Is this the ultimate test?
Note 2: Trust in technology?
Note 2: All in such a rush

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What’s the right mindset for news?

Thinking about what it means to be human, what are we to make of all the information now at our fingertips? Looking back to what “news” used to be, it really seems modern life’s expecting a lot from us in terms of processing large volumes of data, opinion and argument. Something few before “us” ever needed to deal with.

If we imagine that news was generally a fairly sporadic or local affair, the amount we’re now faced with seems almost incredible to comprehend (Notes One). In the place of limited, deliberate voices speaking about current affairs, we’ve got countless sources, agendas and perspectives vying for our attention at every moment. Our picture of the world constantly shifting, changing, updating.

What are we supposed to make of it? Given how much of all we’re told is about things we’ve got remarkably little influence over, what kind of outcome can we hope for? Beyond awareness and concern, we might attempt to shape our economic or political decisions in such a way that they become constructive forces for change. Within our social circle, we might try to spread awareness and shape others’ thinking.

Often, though, it seems almost paralysing: an inundation of insight into events far beyond our control that can easily leave us feeling completely powerless, resigned and frustrated at the state of this world (Notes Two). Becoming aware of everything, the world over, from every side is a momentous task; piecing together how separate events and attitudes feed into wider patterns can be as enlightening as it is depressing.

How are we to hold, in our minds, an ever-changing picture of events – from the local and personal all the way up to the global – then transform that into constructive, purposeful responses within our everyday lives? Sometimes it seems more likely to make us feel our own existence to be futile and insignificant compared with all that’s happening and our inability to affect change on the levels at which problems exist (Notes Three).

If we’re taking in information about things that we’re powerless to change, what’s happening “within us”? All this thought, concern or anger sparked by what we take in presumably wants to go somewhere. Learning about things in our local environment, avenues for involvement may be clearer; when news is remote and complicated, we’re perhaps just left with this ball of fruitless emotion.

Is it that we’re supposed to receive things with the right kind of feeling? Accompanying this mental reflection of life with sentiments appropriate to the situation so we stand “rightly” in relation to reality. Rather than gleefully or despairingly observing what bears little direct relation to us, bringing compassionate interest to the whole human community and all the ways our lives touch upon others.

Maybe awareness is simply a slow-burning sense of us all being present with the world’s journey? This ongoing discussion we’re all part of that, hopefully, extends the right thoughts and feelings towards those involved while strengthening and underlining our values in the process.

Notes and References:

Note 1: What is the public conversation?
Note 1: Reading between the lines
Note 1: Information might be there, but can we find it?
Note 2: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 2: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 3: Whether we make a difference
Note 3: Too much responsibility?
Note 3: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 3: What it is to be human

Alongside such thoughts, there are some parallels to “The Measure of a Man” from back in 2018.

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Sensitivity & the place for feeling

When it comes to being human, are we best off leading with our heart or our head? Living through the heart, there’s perhaps a risk of losing our selves by being so caught up in the lives of others. Existing too much in our heads, we perhaps become detached from all that life means from the human perspective. Finding some kind of balance between the two can be exhausting.

At times it seems we’re encouraged to mainly be rational – as if that clearer form of knowledge is something sturdier and more reliable to build our lives around. In many ways, perhaps it is? This objective, reasoned voice of observation that can happily and confidently deconstruct events and assign everything its place as cause, effect or solution (Notes One). The whole of life neatly pinned down, defined, predictable.

Yet the mind can often seem cold by not also assigning the proper feeling to all its assertions. It can sometimes seem disconcertingly easy to run events through the channels of our minds and emerge with crystal clear theories about everything; perhaps overlooking the fact that each item in our chains of thought relates to somebody or some situation that might be crying out for more compassionate awareness (Notes Two).

Can thought exist without feeling? Are we fully human if we’re not dipping down into the realm of emotion to check how well our ideas are working out on that level? As beings who “can” feel, perhaps it’s important we find a way to bear those messages in mind as we’re going about our lives. What would it “mean” if we listened only to the head and cared even less about the feeling of the heart?

But then, what can we do if feeling threatens to overwhelm us? Drowning our capacity for reason with the emotive reality of what each aspect of everything “means” from countless perspectives. If each choice we make ripples out into the social, systemic environment we all share, we may risk paralysis by delving too deeply into the uncontrollable world of others’ emotions.

Equally, might it not be that our own emotion overwhelms us? The frame of mind with which we approach life perhaps getting reinforced by the expressions of hope or despair we’re tuning into in the world around us; our feelings amplified, for whatever reason, to the point where our ability to see otherwise gets clouded over (Notes Three).

In every area of life – personal, social, international, global – it seems things can touch us too deeply or not enough. The challenge perhaps being to find that balance between letting life in too much, too little, or just enough that we’re able to make sense of things without losing our steady resolve to respond both compassionately and intelligently (Notes Four).

Who’s to say which way’s best? If “being human” is to have feelings about reality and be sensitive to the feelings of others, maybe such qualities simply need to find a respectful and constructive home within our lives.

Notes and References:

Note 1: The thought surrounding us
Note 1: All that we add to neutrality
Note 1: How ideas find their place in the world
Note 1: Strange arrogance of thought
Note 2: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 2: What if solutions aren’t solutions?
Note 2: Whether we make a difference
Note 3: Does being alone amplify things?
Note 3: Emotion and culture’s realities
Note 3: It resonates, but should it be amplified
Note 3: Desensitised to all we’re told?
Note 4: Being trusted to use our discernment…
Note 4: And, how much can we care?
Note 4: Reading between the lines

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All that we add to neutrality

In life, how much is anything really neutral? We might say facts and statistics are just that – neutral observations of reality – but aren’t they usually wielded within that reality for a certain purpose? Doesn’t our mind tend to coat them with interpretations, implications or conclusions that, almost immediately, filter back into the world without such a clear sense of neutrality?

Tracking back to the idea of our thoughts, in some way, reflecting reality (Notes One), there seems to be this sense in which we each observe life and take those observations as being, simply, true. Whatever we’ve been told each thing “means” and wherever we’re been told it “stands” within our society becoming what it is, for us, in terms of fact.

Is life that simple? Whatever culture, tradition, education, the media, or everyday life tells us about the artefacts, events, practices, beliefs, and assumptions making up our lives can clearly be seen differently from other perspectives. Yet whatever worldview we inherited or developed for ourselves seems to dictate how we’re seeing each element and the place it’s been assigned (Notes Two).

Aren’t we perhaps “seeing” life through the lens of whatever ideas we’re holding about it? Giving everything its meaning, its significance, its purpose. Stacking everything up in line with the conclusions, justifications and narrative arcs we’ve been told “fit” with the perceptions we’ll make of society. Any given fact potentially being brought in to support any number of agendas or causes.

As if our neutral observation of reality immediately receives this overlay of meaning we’ve learnt to apply to it all. Then, of course, the emotion we have in response – the enjoyment, indignation or despair at our expectations being confirmed, denied or otherwise challenged by the course of events. (Notes Three)

Our view of life naturally containing our own hopes and sense of what’s acceptable, events are rarely neutral in how they almost inevitably suit some while coming at the cost of others. In the give and take of society, maybe nothing’s really neutral in that the world we’re living in shapes everybody’s lives: every word, attitude, choice or policy rippling out with personal and social consequences (Notes Four).

Neutrality may exist in the idealistic world of thought, with all its facts, theories and statistics, but “in reality” it seems that what we make of it – how we respond and apply those ideas – might be the determining factor in whether these things are good or bad. Maybe facts are only part of the picture? The other part being brought to the table by us through what we choose to do and how we bring our ideas to life.

In our relationship to the world and all that’s living within it, maybe the meaning we’re assigning things makes all the difference? As if the thoughts we have in mind alongside the bare facts of existence are the level at which important distinctions are being made – choices that, perhaps, step away from neutrality before feeding back out into our lives.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Ways thought adds spin to life
Note 1: What is real?
Note 2: Culture as information
Note 2: Passing on what’s important
Note 2: The sense of having a worldview
Note 3: Effect, if everything’s a drama
Note 3: We may as well laugh
Note 3: Does anger ever, truly, help?
Note 3: And, how much can we care?
Note 4: Joining the dots
Note 4: Humans, tangled in these systems
Note 4: How important is real life?
Note 4: The difference humanity makes
Note 4: Living as a form of art

Earlier thoughts around the idea of neutrality were also the focus of What’s neutral? back in 2018.

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Modern challenges to relationship

Looking at the relationships between us, what’s the nature of modern life? It’s perhaps impossible to compare “how things once were” with “how they now are”, but it certainly seems that the way we communicate, relate and deal with people has changed fairly dramatically in recent decades (Notes One). Timeless human functions of relatedness taking on all these new forms and expectations.

So much now seems strangely confident and strangely resigned: these being our communicative options, this is simply the way things are going to go and what it now means to be human. As if going with this flow is the non-negotiable path of human evolution; the only means by which we can exist within our community.

Which is fascinating, in the sense that social relationships aren’t ever these straightforward interactions. The ties between us, the understanding of who any particular individual “is”, the unique way we each see and experience life are often so complicated, so hidden, and so unknown even to ourselves. Life being, in its way, this unravelling of all that’s made us who we are and all we, in turn, are making of it all (Notes Two).

Yet modern communication methods make everything seem so simple, so convenient in how they dovetail into this one device we all need to have. Not wanting to operate that way, aren’t we excluded from society, its services and conversations? As if “that” is where and how life’s now happening; without any parallel activity back in the real world.

Relationships often then seem almost a function of self: a set of connections with those we feel define, enhance or support our chosen way of being. As if our social ties have become this conveniently affirming group of all those we agree and want to move forward with; everyone else either evolving along with us or falling by the wayside.

The echo-chamber offered by technology – whether in terms of information or relatedness – rapidly confirming our own ideas to the point where our tolerance for anyone operating differently might disappear. As if we’re curating this world where only those who agree with us are allowed to exist and everything else is ignored, disengaged with, or converted to our way of thinking. (Notes Three)

Is that all other people and their perspectives are? Something that should conform to our ideas on life. As opposed to each person being their own, unique expression of humanity as it works its way between the various threads that make up our lives within society. This idea of “others” being but actors in another’s starring show; either agreeing to the part on offer or getting brushed off stage.

Sometimes it just seems modern ideas around communication suit some more than others. That the complexity of human life and community are being ushered in directions that leave some very little space to “be” and be recognised for who they actually are. As if there’s now strangely little opportunity for truly appreciating how we all are as human beings.

Notes and References:

Note 1: What does community mean?
Note 1: Joining the dots
Note 1: Pace of change & getting nowhere fast
Note 1: Can “how we relate” really change?
Note 1: All in such a rush
Note 2: Complication of being human
Note 2: Imperfection as perfection?
Note 2: Personal archaeology
Note 2: This thing called love
Note 2: Mutual awareness and accommodation?
Note 3: Making things up as we go along
Note 3: Absolute or relative value
Note 3: Social starting points for modern ways
Note 3: Places of belonging and acceptance
Note 3: Frameworks of how we relate

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Being trusted to use our discernment…

As humans, particularly those living in the West, isn’t a lot of faith being placed in our capacity for judgement? In every area of life, it seems we have so many choices to make, so many temptations placed on our path, so many distractions to hold us back from fully focussing on any given thing. Yet, still, it’s our choices that are setting so many things in motion.

If we’re being given this much freedom to decide for ourselves what our lives are going to be – which things we’ll buy, initiatives we’ll support, places we’ll go and activities we’ll encourage – it’s intriguing to think how we’re supposed to prepare ourselves for that level of responsibility. How are we to be sure each person’s truly capable of making the “best” decisions for themselves and the system at large? (Notes One)

It hardly seems an insignificant thing, given that each life is conceivably composed of the countless decisions making up our days. How are we to maintain our awareness of every single option and how it fits into all the systems evolving around us at such startling speed? How are the precepts and instructions of anyone’s childhood to “meet” the shifting realities of modern living?

The tasks of education, the media and culture presumably take on a slightly different light if we conceive of them as preparing, supporting and maintaining each individual’s active understanding of both their society and its place in an ever-changing world (Notes Two). If each person is to emerge with a thorough yet flexible understanding of “reality” capable of informing every decision they’ll make, those tasks seem quite weighty.

To be able to judge, don’t we need to understand? Not only our own position, but also the broader context in which we stand. Not only what each option means for us, but also what it means more widely within our social reality. If every decision we make feeds into the bigger picture of all that’s surrounding us, our understanding of that world seemingly needs to be quite vast if we’re to conceive of every possible ramification.

Yet, Western society seemingly trusts us all to develop and exercise our discernment. Where will that “project” go if we’re not deserving of such trust? If we act obliviously or carelessly of the consequences of our actions. If we think only of “us”, at the cost of the broader context we’re all undeniably a part of. Where’s society headed if we’re mainly using our freedom to please ourselves in the short-term? (Notes Three)

If society were filled with people who truly understood it, from every perspective, and cared deeply about what life was like through those eyes, everything could presumably be trusted to go relatively smoothly. If everyone knew the significance of their every role and contribution, the necessity for regulation could conceivably disappear.

All the while we don’t quite understand thoroughly enough or judge in the light of such compassionate understanding, the sense of where society’s standing sometimes seems quite precarious.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Freedom, responsibility & choice
Note 1: The need for discernment
Note 1: Doing the right thing, we erase consequences
Note 1: Too much responsibility?
Note 2: The stories that we hear
Note 2: What is the public conversation?
Note 2: Passing on what’s important
Note 2: What keeps us in check
Note 3: The self within society
Note 3: Having confidence in complex systems
Note 3: Mutual awareness and accommodation?
Note 3: The value we’re giving to things

Turning this around the other way, to look at who we’re asked to trust within modern society, was one focus of Concerns over how we’re living.

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The thought surrounding us

Isn’t it true that, in many ways, we’re constantly surrounded by thought? Our own thoughts of what things are, what they mean, and how it all ties together, then all these other thoughts people have had or are having around us. This idea that “everything” is either the product of thought or its subject, as humans weave their minds over and about everything that falls in our path.

Maybe it’s “obvious” that, as thinking beings, we would be casting those minds around our environment, but it’s still strange to think that every moment of every day we’re being assailed by ideas, statements and interpretations. This never-ending tide of meaning that flows over us with all we see and hear throughout the day (Notes One).

As if everything’s a sort of embodied thought: something someone once dreamed up, created, distributed to help serve our needs. Life then becoming this landscape of all those things that were here before us – nature, environment, history – plus all those we’ve added since. Realities we’ve come to take up, make our own, build our lives around and upon.

Then, of course, all of the more explicit “thought” that’s thrown our way each day through conversations, encounters, news, social media, and the like (Notes Two). All these voices expressing their thoughts, forming their conclusions, casting their judgements or recommendations in our direction. Each of us drawing on our own frame of reference to speak into other lives and tell those people what to think – what it all means.

Beyond the arguable confusion of now having so many of humanity’s artefacts finding their way into our lives, aren’t we also now living within the strangely critical atmosphere of other people’s perspectives? This ceaseless commentary of everyone judging and labelling everything we’re being shown. As if life itself now has this overlay of articulated human thought we’re all perhaps contributing towards or listening to.

It hardly seems surprising that modern life would be mentally draining in ways previously unknown: living within this proliferation of things and opinions is daunting even in theory. Being surrounded by objects from all times and places – some carrying great meaning, some cheaply produced for the chance of a profit – is a lot to filter through and make sense of. As are all the many, many voices speaking at us each day.

If we take it that it all “means something” – coming out of somebody’s idea of life or some trend within society – trying to piece together the bigger picture of all that’s going on in the world, what people are buying into, and where it’s all leading can seem so overwhelming (Notes Three). And we can’t really say it doesn’t matter, as if enough people believe and act on these things the future becomes a different place.

Being human – capable of thought – within a modern world so full of questionable ideas can’t be easy: each of us, perhaps, tangled in trains of thinking that sorely need us to smooth out and correct them somehow.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Visual language and spaces
Note 1: How ideas find their place in the world
Note 1: Do we need meaning?
Note 1: Attacks on our humanity
Note 1: How much do intentions matter?
Note 2: What is the public conversation?
Note 2: Humans, judgement & shutting down
Note 2: Which voice can we trust?
Note 3: Joining the dots
Note 3: Power and potential
Note 3: Complication of being human
Note 3: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 3: All in such a rush

In a similar vein to all this, Problems & the thought that created them mused over understanding, creating and resolving our problems.

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Mutual awareness and accommodation?

Society, in a number of ways, seems like a dance: the spaces around us, the interactions, the give and take, the moments we meet and then move apart. All these ways our lives intersect and something’s exchanged between us, be it goods or greetings or whatever else we have to offer one another in life. Community, in its own way, being this dance of individuals working together for the overall effect it produces.

If we conceive of society as a gathering of people for a common purpose, it must be that we all have our parts to play as well as points where we benefit from all others are doing. The coordination of it all seems quite staggering, really; especially in the West, where so much essentially rests on personal freedoms and market forces (Notes One).

Doesn’t it all depend on a degree of awareness? That we understand the value of what we’re engaged in and the responsibilities we have within it all. That we grasp these invisible lines and interactions between us, knowing how to operate so the whole “thing” runs smoothly, harmoniously, even beautifully. If we don’t see that picture – or, believe in it – what will that mean?

Taking it down to the everyday, even how we move together in space seems significant. Especially now, with the added requirements of social distancing for the preservation of our communities, but also more generally: how aware are we of others within the spaces we share? If daily life’s a dance of sorts – everyone skirting round one another to access communal resources – how smoothly does the whole thing go?

Some seem very skilled at it: seeing others coming, reading intentions, anticipating the pinch points of proximity, and accommodating one another with almost effortless grace, respect and recognition. At other times, there’s this sense that “others” are seen as obstacles to be ignored, walked through, or treated as if they shouldn’t be there. As with many things, swinging between the extremes doesn’t seem that uncommon.

It may be a small thing, but isn’t it indicative of our social awareness more generally? If the “concept” of society is one of individuals living together in mutual respect and freedom, how we make room for one another seems the bedrock of that understanding – this basic gesture of granting one another the space we need to live without feeling our presence is a cumbersome irritant to others.

Isn’t society underpinned by this idea of how we’ll live alongside each other? All its conventions or regulations guiding us to interact in ways that embody this philosophy of mutual recognition – expectations of how we will act within our shared physical, social or virtual spaces (Notes Two).

Almost as if society’s an outworking of the premise of individual equality and freedom: the lines between us, in various ways, being where those principles come into play and “demand” we accommodate one another. Maybe the success of this “dance” is the picture of our appreciation of what it’s aiming to achieve?

Notes and References:

Note 1: What does community mean?
Note 1: Having confidence in complex systems
Note 1: Authenticity & writing our own story
Note 1: “Quest for a Moral Compass”
Note 1: The self within society
Note 2: Losing the sense of meaning
Note 2: Social starting points for modern ways
Note 2: Picking up after one another
Note 2: Common sense as a rare & essential quality
Note 2: The power of convention

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