Author: admin

Society that doesn’t deal with the soul

With everything that’s going on in life, it’s strange to think no one’s really so concerned with what’s going on inside – our inner lives or, for want of another word, the soul. If we were to see all that goes on within us as significant, valuable and important, why is it treated as if it’s of no relevance or interest to society?

Isn’t it what we’re all living with? Our own memories, experiences, hopes and dreams. All those paths we’ve walked, people we’ve met, ideas we’ve entertained, and moments we’ve lived to this point. The perspective we’ve gained on life and expectations we have in mind about it must be a huge reality for every single person. From the human viewpoint, it’s perhaps all there is.

What do we have but our inner life? The ways society’s ideas affect us and make us feel about ourselves, others, and existence itself. The kinds of relationships we’ve tended to have, whether nurturing and life-affirming or something quite different. Isn’t everything we’ve encountered in life part of this inner landscape of lessons learnt, emotions felt, and habitual responses forged over time? (Notes One)

I’m not sure can we say that doesn’t matter, that we shouldn’t take things personally, when it’s conceivably all personal. Isn’t anything that deals with people “personal”? Any action, word or attitude that touches another can be seen as personal; much as we may claim it wasn’t intended that way. Everything that happens within society must – on one level – be personal in that it’s all happening to, for, by, or around people.

Yet aren’t we often being treated as mere physical objects? Interacted with on the abstract, hypothetical basis of ideas about “human nature” and how to “manage it” within modern communities. As if, in order to cope with this way of living, we reduce others to being simply concepts of humanity – not quite acknowledging them as real people so we can make it through the day.

Of course, there is a lot of overwhelm to modern life – this constant inundation of new information, hefty emotional content, and the difficulty of brushing up alongside relative “strangers” in both physical and virtual reality (Notes Two). Faced with that, it’s perhaps “natural” we prioritise managing our own lives and what matters most to us, rather than worrying unduly about everyone around us.

Which seems to mean no one’s really that bothered about soul, about the bigger human picture of how this is coming together. So, we’re treated fairly coldly; picked apart quite callously by industry calculations; pushed around almost carelessly by culture’s critical judgement. An “each to his own” mentality that seems, sometimes, to forget we’re all human with inner lives that matter (Notes Three).

While it seems impossible to actually deny the richness and beauty of the human soul, as captured within culture, philosophy or thought; it also seems we’re living in ways that aren’t fully taking into account the real value and significance of all our conscious experiences of existence.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Personal archaeology
Note 1: Complication of being human
Note 1: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 1: Going towards the unknown
Note 2: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 2: What’s the idea with culture?
Note 2: True relationship within modern society?
Note 2: Mastering life’s invisible realities
Note 2: Attacks on our humanity
Note 2: Is this the ultimate test?
Note 3: Absolute or relative value
Note 3: Treating people like sims?
Note 3: Where do ideas of evolution leave us?
Note 3: What it is to be human

Turning to those who are, in various ways, attempting to address the inner life, there is Literature that’s treating the soul.

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Making ends meet

When we talk of making ends meet, it’s often a statement related to individuals: how well we’re balancing desire with capacity and finding the financial resources to square away all the essential items that make up our lives. Beyond that, though, isn’t it also a description of society? A sense of how well personal and collective interests marry up into a workable whole.

Our personal lives clearly have a long list of requirements: shelter, warmth, food, clothing, transport, entertainment, technology, growth. All we need – or feel we do – in order to participate within society as worthwhile, respectable citizens. Don’t many of those things, and how we’re going about them, effectively become our identity, our sense of status or of self-worth? (Notes One)

At its most fundamental, it’s presumably a picture of everyone feeling healthy, cared for, and motivated to engage productively, constructively and responsibly in making things work. That, from this foundation of balanced preparedness – all our essential physical, emotional, psychological needs having been met – we’re in the position to participate in social realities with the secure, firm footing of personal independence.

I would’ve thought that’s what we’re looking for with society: people being able to stand on their own and respond to life from that place of calm self-assurance. But, these days, it really seems such security is difficult to find. Everything changing so quickly, the psychological – let alone financial or mental – demands placed on everyone to “keep up” are perhaps impossible to meet (Notes Two).

Progress is funny, then, in that we seem the one’s funding it through buying these things, yet the minimal standards required to keep up with it all must be a huge burden – all these new products to evaluate, learn about, and somehow find money for. Markets might have a lot of good things going for them, but sometimes it seems the quantifiable stress and waste it’s all generating could outweigh many supposed benefits.

It’s almost as if industry runs ahead – fuelled by the desire for profit, excitement of competition, or ingenuity of our finest minds – and we’re all chasing the tail of trying to catch up and be whatever a modern human’s supposed to be (Notes Three). Like this artificial conversation spun out above our heads, speeding ahead of anything the human mind can truly comprehend or piece together into a meaningful whole.

It’s interesting to consider the impact it’s all having. Because, industry has its “ends” – it’s targets and sense of where things are headed. This commercial vision of a better world that’s harnessing our power of invention to rework the idea of human life, society, and our position on this planet. Working on those levels, the scope this has for reshaping our lives is potentially limitless.

And, within it all, live the humans trying to tally up our hopes for life with the space this world has in mind for us. How well we’re currently balancing genuine human needs with these other, commercial ones can be a strange thing to contemplate.

Notes and References:

Note 1: How we feel about society
Note 1: Things with life have to be maintained
Note 1: Attacks on our humanity
Note 1: This thing called love
Note 2: What’s not essential
Note 2: Freedom, what to lean on & who to believe
Note 2: Goods & the wisdom in scarcity
Note 2: The insatiable desire for more
Note 2: Letting go of “who you are”
Note 3: Those who are leading us
Note 3: Do we really need incentives?
Note 3: Treating people like sims?
Note 3: Life’s never been simpler…

Thinking about how we got here, One thing leads to another mused over paths the West’s taken and where we now stand.

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What if solutions aren’t solutions?

What if, despite all our finest efforts and ideas, we don’t yet have the answers? If, looking to either past or present, the plans we dreamt up and systems we’ve set in motion simply don’t lead where we thought they would? Perhaps they even create further problems or unintentionally compound the ones we’ve been struggling to resolve. Isn’t it possible that our understanding might’ve gone off-track in deeply significant ways?

If so, we might throw all our energy at things and never achieve what we hope; forever frustrated at the constant re-emergence of new, old or simply different problems. It could be we’ll spend years unpicking and redressing our problematic solutions. Because, if we’re not on the right path or looking at situations the right way, how can we expect our answers to be the right ones?

Could it be that we’ve taken a few left turns and shifted the conversation to places we won’t ever find truly suitable solutions? Drifted into looking at “how things are” slightly askew – from the wrong sort of angle to see where they fit or the path out of it all to something better. Don’t we need to see and interpret things correctly if we’re to be in the position to find answers? (Notes One)

But then, is it worth thinking that way or is this the kind of existential doubt that’s best left alone? Isn’t it better to “know” than plough on with subtle or dramatic misconceptions of reality? Isn’t our understanding always worth pulling into question, just to be sure we’re not digging holes we’d rather be getting out of?

Maybe it’s a depressing thought; but it might also be inspiring. It’s almost a relief to think that none of the ideas we’ve been throwing around are actually capable of containing the human spirit – bringing out the best in us, discouraging the worst, letting everyone contribute all they’re able and no one hoard more than they personally “need”.

If everything on the table’s still imperfect, then seeing our thinking as potentially flawed or incomplete could perhaps help awaken more open-mindedness. It’s the kind of realisation that could serve as a prelude to more deliberate re-engagement in forging the kind of life we’re all looking for (Notes Two).

Might we not choose to live forever delving deeper into the nature of the human and the world? In a state of seeking greater understanding and constant improvement; of things being flexible and responsive, rather than set in stone; society shifting around us in a beautifully choreographed dance of “life” as we all play our active role in making it “work”.

We so often look at “problems” and propose confident solutions, but what if they’re not? What if anything logically carved out and imposed, instead of intrinsically lived, is destined to fall short? We might seek clear, conclusive, lasting outcomes from relatively short-term projects – hoping to resolve everything once and for all – but maybe life’s more of an ongoing game of insistent awareness and creativity.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Caught in these thoughts
Note 1: Is this the ultimate test?
Note 1: On whose terms?
Note 1: Which voice can we trust?
Note 1: Ideals & the pursuit of them
Note 2: What it is to be human
Note 2: Authenticity & writing our own story
Note 2: True relationship within society?
Note 2: The idea of think globally, act locally
Note 2: Losing the sense of meaning

Finding honest, constructive ways to address life’s many powerful contradictions was also the focus of “Minding the Earth, Mending the World”.

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Going towards the unknown

Of all the things that exist in the world, how many can we say we already know and understand? And, how many of those ideas we have in mind could we claim to be completely true and flawless? It just seems the world’s so vast, so full of different ways of seeing and interpreting the realities we find around us – how could we ever say our knowledge of it is now complete?

These days, however, it seems we’re often told knowledge is easy: it’s at our fingertips, and even children will confidently proclaim they understand things far more complex than many adults truly have a firm grasp around. We’re wielding logic, facts and conclusions as if life’s simple with everyone in agreement on how we’ll interpret it all.

In reality, though, aren’t words still open to interpretation and their meanings subject to ever-shifting definition? Any form of communication perhaps always being a case of somehow managing to convey what we mean and establish agreement around every term we’ve used along the way (Notes One). When our worlds were more limited it may’ve been that meanings were commonly held, but it’s not seeming so true now.

Words, after all, are simply representative of our ideas – standing in the place of complex, integrated, ever-changing realities. Now that all our experiences of reality are being pooled into this one, virtual conversation, how are we to claim the words we’re using carry the same meaning at the point they’re received? Can we be sure of having communicated effectively if our intended meaning never reached the other’s mind?

What I’m trying to say is, communication’s far from easy. There are so many grey areas, projections and preconceived notions around what everything means. And now there’s so little time, so many people to talk to, and so much at stake it’s not looking to get any easier. Hasn’t communication generally been one of humanity’s bigger problems? Finding ways to share understanding and reach agreement having, perhaps, taken up most of our time.

Maybe there aren’t that many people who truly “are” skilled at communication? At conveying ideas, explaining perspectives, exploring differences, listening openly, letting others reach their own conclusions about where they now stand. Isn’t it essentially a question of how we’re approaching things? Things meaning people, experiences, ideas, beliefs and attitudes. Whether we’re tolerant of diverging viewpoints, or not. (Notes Two)

Often now, everything seems like a battle; people and their ideas, something to defeat or eliminate. What does it mean to make “conquering” part of how we relate? To judge, attack, belittle, sweep aside or downplay the thoughts and experiences others have in mind. What would it mean, instead, to approach people with attitudes of openness, curiosity and acceptance? Perhaps, even, to approach life and knowledge itself that way.

If much in life, despite what we might think (Notes Three), is truly unknown at this point, how we go about forging relationships with all we’ve not yet come to understand is perhaps crucially important.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Social starting points for modern ways
Note 1: Tone in public dialogue
Note 2: Tempting justifications of self
Note 2: Humans, judgement & shutting down
Note 2: Thoughts of idealism and intolerance
Note 3: Convergence and divergence
Note 3: Is anything obvious to someone who doesn’t know?
Note 3: Seeing, knowing and loving
Note 3: Knowing who to trust
Note 3: Spirit as the invisible

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What’s the idea with culture?

Looking at life, large chunks of time seem to be immersed in what’s called “culture” – all the shows, movies, podcasts, literature, productions, songs and performances that, grouped together, become this world of stories we tell, voices we listen to, and experiences or characters we’re letting populate our minds. It’s fascinating, really, because what does it all mean?

It’s not quite reality, but seems related to it and considered worthwhile as an activity. Is this to help us understand life, society, and the relationships we stand within? Is it intended to inform us about the nature of our world and kinds of attitudes that might serve well in navigating it? A sidebar within “real life” where we can safely learn essential lessons.

Almost this condensed version of reality, offering what we’d eventually figure out ourselves by way of living. Following others’ examples or learning from their mistakes; seeing things portrayed and exploring values people might choose to live by; developing this common “code” for what’s deemed admirable, dangerous or justifiable presumably lets us see our community’s thinking more clearly.

All these masks and metaphors through which social meanings are communicated – a valve or flow of ideas, reflections and estimations of the worth we might hold in others’ eyes. The ways things are presented perhaps subtly shaping our own thoughts about life and filtering out into the conversations, interactions and relationships of the real world (Notes One).

Isn’t it true there’s this two-way flow, this reciprocity between culture and reality? It’s where we might find ourselves, our options for expressing who we are from within the definitions on offer. It gives us this shared sense of what those choices mean – how we might or must interpret the image and behaviour of others. This sense of deciphering where each person stands within our collective narratives.

Within all that, there seems a lot of scope for influencing both individuals and society. If we’re “reading” the world around us – and, acting within it – based on what we’re experiencing culturally, there’s this sense in which culture’s doing this constant dance of forms and meanings with the society it purports to serve. Isn’t the hope that, somehow, a community will operate “better” as a result of all this?

But, these days particularly – with the opportunities technology offers and inclination to capitalise on any given trend – it’s seeming questionable where things are headed (Notes Two). If culture’s a sort of mirror that sets itself up to reflect our realities while also distorting or adding something to them, how responsible are we being with all we’re taking in and making our own?

If these are the references we’re allowing in to shape how we’re living and interpreting the world (Notes Three), can we really not consider where they may lead? We might look to culture for the latest trends or conversations, forming our sense of identity and belonging around what we find there, but letting too many of these things trickle out into society, unfiltered, doesn’t exactly seem wise.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Culture as reflection
Note 1: Culture as what we relate to
Note 1: Definition, expression & interpretation
Note 1: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 1: Stories that bind us
Note 2: Economics & the realm of culture
Note 2: All that’s going on around us
Note 3: Reading into social realities?
Note 3: Making things up as we go along
Note 3: Do we know what we’re doing?

For some slightly more timeless thoughts around the question of culture, there’s Plato & “The Republic”.

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Is this the ultimate test?

With everything that’s going on these days, it’s fairly tempting to predict that we’re pretty close to “ruining” what we have on this planet – the chance at living. If harmonious coexistence with one another and the life-systems of the natural world are essential factors in ensuring our survival then, given how we’re doing on those fronts, things aren’t seeming entirely hopeful.

It’s just interesting to contemplate all the insight we now have, all the power to shape our future, yet all the rabbit holes we’re being drawn into that might easily threaten any stability that remains (Notes One). It’s incredible how greatly things have changed in the last hundred years or so; and, how quickly we seem to be starting to see it all as normal.

Isn’t “normal” a sense of relationships, meaning, engagement, causality? Having a realistic understanding of where we stand in life and what all of our choices, thoughts and actions really “mean” for the world and every living creature within it (Notes Two). Isn’t “that” the picture of normal, healthy, sustainable existence – the perfect example of which perhaps being that of nature, before we overstepped our boundaries.

Where, then, do we stand now in relation to the world around us? How aware are we of all our lives depend upon and all that our decisions – conscious or otherwise – are bringing into effect? Modern life, in so many ways, is demanding so much more of us. Much as the assistance of technology is superficially making our lives easier, the ramifications it has for us all, individually and collectively, are incredibly difficult to quantify.

If life’s a question of knowing ourselves – who we are, our worth and relationships – and interacting wisely so nothing valuable is lost and everything essential is allowed to remain, how are we to establish that in the face of these challenges? And how much, at this point, is effectively the human psyche run amok over the planet? Our greed, insecurity or intolerance stretching out to make themselves felt the world over.

In a way, modern life seems to be testing us on every level: throwing every conceivable temptation or distraction our way; hiding traditional forms of regulation, such as consequence or social scrutiny; pressing all the buttons guaranteed to drive us crazy with anger or despair. Isn’t this unrelenting demand for awareness and presence of mind asking something more of us all?

But then, evolution’s arguably “always” a question of how best to move forwards. Can we do so by becoming dependent on externalities; letting the “ease” of life now blind us to its inevitable complexities; feeling the justifiable uncertainty of no longer understanding our lives or precisely what they mean? How do we stand against “all this” and become more human, not less? (Notes Three)

Of course, it’s not at all easy to encapsulate the challenges modern life’s presenting us with, let alone agree on ways of addressing them. But can we afford not to try guiding things in slightly more life-affirming directions?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Power and potential
Note 1: Mastering life’s invisible realities
Note 1: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 2: Any escape from cause & consequence?
Note 2: How do ideas find their place in the world
Note 2: Things with life have to be maintained
Note 2: True relationship within society?
Note 3: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 3: Losing the sense of meaning
Note 3: Imperfection as perfection?
Note 3: Questions around choice
Note 3: Cutting corners

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Living as a form of art

If we take creativity to be a process of looking at what’s around us, understanding the materials we’re working with, then crafting our own unique response based around that perception and skill, how dissimilar is it from the process of life itself? Aren’t we always encountering the world and adding something new of our own making? In that sense, maybe living’s simply an act of creativity.

That said, it’s perhaps something more commonly associated with the visual aspects of our lives – the style we’ve given our existence by way of our chosen clothing, interiors, belongings, gestures, and activities. In a world of consumerism and branding, it’s as if everything’s now just the palette of options from which we’ll portray ourselves as we wish to be seen.

It seems we have this natural desire to express ourselves through our surroundings, pulling towards us those things we feel resonate and pushing away whatever we’re not seeing as admirable or true for us (Notes One). It’s a fascinating interplay of self, society, culture and economics – all these subtle relationships of meaning or judgement that often shape who we feel ourselves to be.

But is it the only place creativity has in our lives? This tool in the hands of business, churning out ever-new options to define ourselves by and creative ways of influencing our behaviour. Sometimes it seems art’s just becoming this “coating” for the psychological calculations of industry, this smoke-and-mirrors deflection from the other agendas at play that makes everything seem desirably palatable.

Presumably it doesn’t have to be that way? The idea of “how we live” being an artistic endeavour seems quite capable of leading to wonderful places of beautiful, all-encompassing expression through every little thing that we do. As with anything, though, if we insist on it being “ours” and “self-defining” we’ll perhaps inevitably end up in these conversations of identity, conflict and criticism.

Beyond questions around the appropriation of art for commercial ends, there’s clearly a case to be made for it being an essential human function (Notes Two). Don’t we “tend” to see in images and metaphors? Reading meaning into the world around us and all the imagery we’re taking in – the human propensity for stories, drawings and movies – seems like it’s almost timeless.

Maybe what I’m saying is that the creative mindset seems a fundamental part of being human: our capacity for thought perhaps echoed by our capacity for vision as we see what’s there but imagine what might be possible (Notes Three). Finding meaning in life, creating meaning in our lives, making a difference to the world around us all seem like they could simply “be” these acts of imagination, creativity and hope.

As with most of my writing on art, there’s this sense in which I’m grasping for something I can’t quite touch. It seems undeniable that we’re creative beings, forever bringing new things to life through every choice we’re making, but where it’s all headed at this point is a challenging and daunting prospect.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Seeing, knowing and loving
Note 1: Definition, expression & interpretation
Note 1: Masks we all wear
Note 2: Thoughts on art & on life
Note 2: Humanity & creative instincts
Note 3: Art as a way to subvert or inspire
Note 3: Do we know what we’re doing?
Note 3: Creative vision in finding solutions

Somewhere alongside this, Things with life have to be maintained also talked of our roles in relation to the world around us.

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Making things up as we go along

How much in life are we essentially now just making up to suit ourselves? Deciding which beliefs, which attitudes, values and practices we’ll adopt in our lives and how closely we’ll adhere to them. This mini culture-of-self that might easily expand into a group culture or various conflicting group cultures. It’s fascinating how something once so tightly regulated became so individual, so unregulated.

Isn’t it that patterns of belief used to bind communities together in common feeling, celebration and attitudes toward one another? Knowing how to read things, how to judge them and how to respond must’ve made society so predictable and reassuring. Also, of course, limiting and subject to the wisdom or otherwise of those charged with establishing or maintaining such systems.

But all those little conventions surely helped soften the edges of social coexistence – everyone knowing how to act, what it meant, and why it mattered (Notes One). As if life were an opus and people, having all been distributed their parts, were able to come together as a harmonious whole. Don’t agreed-upon rules allow for that? Language, etiquette, driving all rely on shared terms, meanings, expectations and interpretations.

Now, it seems any notion of wholeness has been shattered into a billion little self-directed pieces. Each taking it upon themselves to be the decider, the judge, the actor in their own little dramas. All coming up against each other with perhaps very little understanding, interest or tolerance for how we might choose to live differently.

Some might be holding firmly to the ideas received from family or community; others, rebelling against any sense of being told what to do; many perhaps stand in the middle pulling different pieces together and striving to improve any perceived shortcomings. Everyone making things up for themselves and those around them, aren’t we all crafting our own responses to existence?

Which just seems amazing – that freedom, the responsibility of it all. Holding to received thought, you’re perhaps not quite responsible for what you’re part of; as if it’s an umbrella you’re simply standing under. Rejecting things on principle, to me, seems a strange method of finding wisdom in that you’re presumably just as likely to reject the perfect as the flawed. Maybe deciding for ourselves “is” the best path (Notes Two).

But it surely places us all in a strange situation where nothing around us is entirely clear. How can we know where we stand, individually and collectively? How are we to speak if our words might hold different meanings in another’s eyes? How should we act if we’re interpreted through others’ frames of reference with no opportunity to explain our beliefs or expectation they’ll be tolerant of our choices?

If shared culture and convention gave us the code for understanding one another and, therefore, the confidence of being understood, where are we now? If we’re all reinventing the wheel, mixing it up, and expressing individuality using those terms, what will it take for us to come together into something slightly more harmonious?

Notes and References:

Note 1: What keeps us in check
Note 1: The power of convention
Note 1: If society’s straining apart, what do we do?
Note 1: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 1: What really matters
Note 1: Invisible ties
Note 2: The need for discernment
Note 2: Passivity, or responsibility
Note 2: True relationship within society?
Note 2: Thoughts of idealism and intolerance
Note 2: Education as a breaking away?
Note 2: Ideas of agreement & mastery

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Power and potential

In a certain sense, aren’t we more powerful than the mass of humanity has ever been? This power that comes with knowledge, with the connections of thought and where they can lead. Then, the power that connectedness offers on the more human level: the psychological reassurance of connecting with people rather than being alone and a potential for coordination we’ve never had before.

It’s somewhere between ‘knowledge is power’ and ‘strength in numbers’ – this sense in which ties with others and with information are simply empowering. It’s surely quite amazing we have these possibilities? That the worlds of understanding and relationship are now at our fingertips. All that humanity’s arguably been fighting for all these years is “here”.

Isn’t this what people had been working towards throughout preceding decades and centuries? All-encompassing insight. Drawing together all these disparate experiences and bodies of knowledge into a single conversation and place of reference. The dream of making everything available; exposing it all to the clear light of day; getting everyone on the same page around similar ideas (Notes One).

Knowing we’re not alone, that others hear our struggles and we’re all working together at a better world for everyone, may be humanity’s most beautiful dream – this picture of uniting the globe with common understanding, mutual concern, concerted action. Because don’t we now have the capacity for those things? If only thinking, relating and embracing others and their ideas weren’t so challenging (Notes Two).

As with almost every project, perhaps, reality’s a little more flawed. If technology’s an enshrined understanding of the systems, ideas and functions of human existence, how can we be sure our understanding at that point was perfect? And, if it wasn’t, are we to proceed with imperfect ideas or somehow work to rectify them? If our thinking’s informed by all this, though, where can we stand to correct it? (Notes Three)

Might it not be that modern life risks becoming a caricature of misunderstood, original truth? Our starting points codified, brought to life in new ways, and evolving into strange contorted echoes of fundamental human realities. In technology as much as thought itself, isn’t it true that a false premise might lead to wildly inappropriate outcomes?

Without fully understanding where ideas, theories and solutions have come from there’s presumably a danger we’ll lose the capacity to judge, course-correct or interact wisely with what’s around us. Doesn’t letting things shape our lives without a solid sense of the reality behind it risk us being limited by the design of it all – incapable of challenging the pace of “progress”? (Notes Four)

Modern living’s perhaps easier and more difficult than ever: if we can do and know almost anything, so many boundaries having been removed, it’s effectively up to us all to thoroughly understand what we’re choosing. Do we have the strength – the mental bandwidth – to grasp all that’s going on? And, if those capacities become weakened through reliance or deference to technology, how are we to decide which paths to take?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Culture as a conversation across time
Note 1: How ideas find their place in the world
Note 2: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 2: True relationship within society?
Note 3: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 3: The value of a questioning attitude?
Note 4: Technology as a partial reality
Note 4: Mastering life’s invisible realities
Note 4: Detaching from the world around us

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Goods & the wisdom in scarcity

Sometimes I wonder if scarcity doesn’t contain its own form of wisdom, in how it effectively focuses in on what really matters. Whereas, with novelty and excess, it’s almost as if we lose that “line” between what we truly need and everything else that’s on offer.

Isn’t there a sense of indulgence to being in a position of “plenty” in that we’re free to make quite frivolous, unnecessary choices? Once essential needs have been met, aren’t we – almost by definition – in the world of excess? Living in that space, how are we to decide which non-essential items we want most? What sort of yardstick do we use for that?

Could it genuinely be true that less is more? That choosing what matters is better than chasing what doesn’t. Of course, seeing what matters isn’t always easy: we all have interests, desires, and expectations of what’s going to make us feel our life’s worthwhile, admirable or otherwise satisfying. What are we ever looking for in the things we seek to own? (Notes One)

Somehow, it also seems that the more we have the less we appreciate it. As if acquisition itself only makes us desire more. Do we become desensitised to the value of things, chasing instead the thrill of wanting, pursuing and attaining the next? Maybe, having many things, we’ve too little time to recognise their worth, or the stress of managing them starts outweighing any pleasure they give.

Strange maths is surely going on here? This balance of desire, attention, distraction, fear of loss, and the never-ending search for more, newer, better… How are we to judge what we truly need out of “all this” if, in all honesty, we don’t really “need” any of it? It seems an odd sort of basis for society, this unfettered pursuit of whatever our hearts desire (Notes Two). Aren’t we notoriously insecure and suggestible?

The calculations behind society may be fascinating to consider but impossible to unpick. To what extent is the West actually built on the pursuit of more? More knowledge, more understanding, more skilful realisation of laudable aims may be justifiable; but “more stuff” seems a pretty questionable foundation. What’s the social, psychological and environment cost to that? (Notes Three)

What if, with all our freedom and choice, we’re missing the point of where value lies? In a world of scarcity, we’d likely value our belongings quite highly – those resources and assets that serve us in building, maintaining and shoring up what truly matters in life. Moving out of that world, how do we re-establish a sense for what’s really needed? If we just follow our heart, where does it lead?

Perhaps what I’m asking there is: what guides us? Can we recreate wisdom in the world of plenty and somehow re-discover that “edge” where our choices are, again, necessary and constructive? Rather than chase whatever we’re after, could we engage with the freedom markets offer to act wisely for the good of society in all the ways that’s conceivable?

Notes and References:

Note 1: What’s not essential
Note 1: The insatiable desire for more
Note 1: Attacks on our humanity
Note 2: “Small is Beautiful”
Note 2: One thing leads to another
Note 2: Social starting points for modern ways
Note 2: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 3: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 3: Things with life have to be maintained
Note 3: At what cost, for humans & for nature

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