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Any escape from cause & consequence?

Thinking about the things we say and do, it’s interesting to consider if anything’s without consequence. Even if we don’t “see it”, all these things effectively land somewhere, causing ripples that spread into the individual and collective lives of those around us. Words or actions perhaps exacerbating situations that then lead onto consequences for people we never meet.

It’s probably some version of “every action having an equal and opposite reaction” – that nothing’s really neutral, unnoticed or slipping into a void where it hurts no-one (Notes One). All we’re doing feeds into reality somewhere, be it one with a face or more impersonal and abstract systems such as global economics and its social impacts or the intricate balance of our own societies.

All the patterns of behaviour people are working so hard to map, predict and control must inevitably add up to complex social pressures and difficulties. Careless words, quick judgements, comedy brush-offs or distractions must all paint a picture of the distracted, atomised interactions filtering out through our lives. Doesn’t all this shape our attitudes, our feeling for what matters and what’s acceptable?

I’m struggling slightly to pull the threads of this thought together, but isn’t it true that everything we’re all doing travels out there somewhere? It’s not like none of it matters; it must all matter to someone. At some point, personal choices and collective trends presumably converge to create an impact that’s felt by one, if not many, people. Choices that, perhaps, get strengthened by seeing how everyone’s doing it and few seem to care.

We might be happily focused on our own reality – all the challenges we face, people we’re trying to please or impress, balls we’re juggling in our daily lives – and make many of our decisions either habitually or by way of the fact that any consequences truly won’t affect us or those we care about. It’s probably a “logical” position to take in terms of psychologically managing a modern life.

The attitude we’re showing toward others, the distant impact of our choice, the bigger picture of the world we’re helping create isn’t perhaps on our radar. Which, in many ways, might seem “fair enough”: bringing fully conscious awareness to all the systems that go into making the lives we lead is far from easy (Notes Two). Is it even possible to live in full awareness of everything that’s currently happening (plus, its historical context)?

Consequences can be so remote, invisible and disconnected. Take a small, but not insignificant, example: livestock worrying. It seems a picture of dog owners not fully taking responsibility for their pets in the UK’s green spaces; not, perhaps, knowing the knock-on effects of their interactions with sheep and cattle. Wild creatures that can then become stressed and unpredictable, causing devastating injury or loss of life.

Our action or inaction might seem unproblematic – the laws or warnings of others simply a meddlesome limit to personal freedom – but it could also be that consequences truly matter somewhere down the line.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Invisible ties
Note 1: What we create by patterns of behaviour
Note 1: Society as an imposition?
Note 1: What if it all means something?
Note 2: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 2: The idea of think globally, act locally
Note 2: How important is real life?
Note 2: Questions around choice

Perhaps standing alongside this quite nicely, “Minding the Earth, Mending the World” talked about the challenge of responding to life.

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Knowing who to trust

When we think of community, I’d imagine it’s some picture of togetherness, knowing one another and feeling engaged in the same project with similar ideas in mind (Notes One). That seems how the word’s often used: idealistic endeavours aiming to recreate what we feel we’ve lost and bring people together in the wake of tradition’s deconstruction.

This sense of people deliberately, consciously, intentionally coming together around a common cause or interest, getting to know one another along those lines, and collaborating in shared activity. Which, presumably, is how community arose: people realising they had more to gain from cooperation than would be lost in terms of individual liberty.

Now those overarching national and international communities are established, though, it seems we’re dissatisfied and seeking to reintroduce new elements. That mightn’t be quite the right reading of the situation, but something like it: feeling something’s lacking; wanting to connect, know and work together with others.

I’d imagine it’s only natural? Living alongside people you don’t know, have no connection with or way of getting to know must be psychologically stressful in some way. Historically, community seems to have been arranged so people knew where they stood; the scale and structure of it all perhaps making such a thing possible.

Looking around, it must’ve been that people could understand and relate to the people, activities and industry surrounding them. Life must’ve made sense. They could “read it”, even if they didn’t like the story (Notes Two). Because, clearly, the past’s been far from perfect and its disruption may be just the right way to unsettle and deconstruct the faulty thinking and solutions it imposed.

Despite the imperfection of it all, though, people presumably feel safer with what they know? When you look around and know who people are, where they “fit” into the social picture, and the values they’re living by. It’s a risk to trust blindly, to assume that’ll work out. But what are we to do when there’s no real way of getting to know people that way?

Community once had all these activities whereby people came into contact with one another in non-threatening ways: common spaces of interaction or celebration where people rubbed shoulders and took the edge of their isolated, individual lives. These days, it could be said we’re more isolated than humans have ever been; despite the fact we’re also more globally connected than has ever been possible.

It’s a strange predicament: knowing remote strangers better than neighbours. And it’s wonderful, in many ways, that we can unite beyond the boundaries of distance, forming these previously inconceivable bonds and communities. Modern community’s a beautiful thing; if not without its challenges (Notes Three).

Are we heightening personal affinities at the cost of immediate relationships? What does it mean – in the human sense – to not know, understand or care for people around us? And, how safe can we know ourselves to be if we don’t have the time or opportunity for genuine interest in those we share space with?

Notes and References:

Note 1: What inspires collective endeavours
Note 1: Human nature and community life
Note 1: Relating to one another
Note 1: Community as an answer
Note 2: Stories that bind us
Note 2: Where do ideas of evolution leave us?
Note 2: Reading into social realities?
Note 2: Society as an imposition?
Note 3: The insatiable desire for more
Note 3: Social starting points for modern ways
Note 3: Does being alone amplify things?
Note 3: Overwhelm and resignation

Taking this in a different direction, Detaching from the world around us talked of relating ourselves to nature & Seeing, knowing and loving talked of how our inner lives reflect that world more generally.

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Thoughts of idealism and intolerance

Fairly often, here, I find myself musing over how pursuing something in the world of thought often seems to come at the expense of real-world realities (Notes One). How it’s apparently so easy to attach ourselves to the thought of perfection in any given direction, then berate everyone for not having yet achieved it

Idealism clearly gives us something to work towards: a sense of what’s possible, the value of pursuing it, and how life, eventually, could be. It’s perhaps providing us with the goals, priorities or beliefs that motivate and guide our behaviour – the stars that light our path, the vision of all that could be, the hope of somehow getting everything and everyone aligned so the dream can become a reality.

But how much can get folded into a desire for perfection or steps in its direction? What kind of actions and attitudes can we justify toward others in walking that path? “Can” we be intolerant, judgemental and force others to accept our conclusions simply because we believe we’re “right”? What happens if, in pursuing our ideals, we’re behaving poorly?

It just seems that reality is so flawed, so jumbled up with commercial interests, inherited patterns of behaviour, and the simple reality of human nature (Notes Two). We’re all nestled into these systems that’ve been shaping us since the day we were born; telling us what to think and how to act with heavy doses of moralising, fear and expectation.

Unearthing, from that, the reasons we do the things we do, why things are this way, and what alternatives there might be isn’t easy. It’s bringing all our personal lives plus our collective life to full awareness (Notes Three). It’s also, often, asking that we extend ourselves beyond the national and international to the systemic and planetary perspective – the heights of idealism.

And that’s great. There’s real value in idealism; but it’s not without problems (Notes Four). Sometimes it just seems we’re all getting beaten round the head with how things should be; how we should be; all the ways we’re wrong and need improvement. It’s the conversation of advertising, of news, of social media, and, increasingly, of everyday life. We might argue it’s for the best, but at what cost?

I just wonder whether it’s the best path: all this criticism, blame, insistence. Rather than pushing our thoughts into another’s space, could we not take time to understand them, their perspective and how life brought them to it? We’re seeming so intolerant lately; telling but never asking, assuming we know where people stand, why they’re simply wrong, and what they should think or do instead.

There may not be much time for conversation these days, but without it I’m unsure how well idealism is going to play out. Presumably, all these battle lines are effectively our ideals and how we’re attempting to bring them to life? And, if that’s the case, what’s really the best attitude to take toward anyone on the other side of those lines?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Would we be right to insist?
Note 1: Humans, judgement & shutting down
Note 1: The value & cost of our words
Note 2: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 2: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 2: Dystopia as a powerful ideal
Note 3: All we want to do passes through community
Note 3: The idea of think globally, act locally
Note 3: Can we manage all-inclusive honesty?
Note 3: Economy as a battleground
Note 4: Ideals & the pursuit of them
Note 4: Imperfection as perfection?

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Involvement in modern culture

What’s the difference when we participate in something as opposed to observing it? One’s obviously more active, as we’re placing ourselves into an experience; the other, more a sense of sitting back to take things in. This watching, deconstructing and passing judgement, however, seems one of the main hallmarks of modern cultural experiences.

Rather than taking part in all these activities – singing, dancing, acting, movement, creativity – we’re, more often than not, watching them. It’s clearly enjoyable watching others take risks, learn new things and demonstrate what’s possible. But it can’t be the same as experiencing them ourselves.

Which comes back to basic questions around culture: is this about performance or participation? Should only those who are the best at something attempt it? Is this human activity something that can only be done at the peak of perfection, or is there also value in our stumbling attempts to get to grips with it all?

Isn’t culture – art, in general – about perception, expression, balance, gesture, interaction, intention? Isn’t this about creativity, about what we see and understand then what we add? Also, the social connection of where all this activity “sits” within society: the conversations it sparks; structure it provides; rhythms of anticipation and retrospective enjoyment (Notes One).

That, as ever, tended a little toward idealism, but my point was to try and fathom the reality of what all this actually “means” for us as individuals and a community: what function does culture serve and what’s our involvement in fulfilling that function? If we’re tending toward sitting back, picking apart those who’ve pushed themselves forward, surely that’s quite a Colosseum approach to cultural life?

Although, maybe that’s fine? It simply is what it is: culture as collective observation. We’re watching the shows that are put on, enjoying and discussing all the ways they’re depicting our lives and the potential of human experience. But that’s presumably only one half of culture? The other being that more active participation in the social life of community: dances, games, festivals, sports, theatre, etc.

Didn’t it used to be that culture was more involved? Not just sitting alone in our rooms or alone among the crowds on buses listening through our earphones. Didn’t people used to “go” to shows and events within the local community, meeting people and taking part in shared activities? Not just luxury high-end culture, but run-of-the-mill moments within any given town.

It just seems we’ve drifted into quite an isolated, passive existence. Perhaps, largely, due to the facilitation of technology? It’s made all these things possible; often editing out the inconvenience or burden of actually trying to achieve things alongside others. In so many ways, it’s making our lives easier while cutting us off from the nourishment and joy of human connection (Notes Two).

Figuring out how we might be able to graft back in the kinds of activities that used to serve this purpose seems interesting; as it’s perhaps not so compatible with the more heartless scrutiny that’s been taking its place.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Reference points for how we’re living
Note 1: Missing something with modern culture?
Note 1: The creativity of living
Note 2: The potential of technology
Note 2: Cultural shifts & taking a backseat
Note 2: Technology as a partial reality
Note 2: Patience with the pace of change

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What we create by patterns of behaviour

When we put together “all that we do” – all the annual seasons of nature, finance and culture, with all we arrange around them – it’s interesting to see how it all goes into making up our individual and collective lives. These daily habits of living that become our patterns of consumption, activity and conversation.

All of our choices effectively coming together into these vast, interwoven systems that now spread through, and far beyond, our local and national boundaries. It’s all so personal and so connected: every decision we actively or passively make rippling out and, somewhere, meeting the shore of another’s life. Perhaps that’s always been the case; but never quite like this (Notes One).

In so many ways, the personal feeds into the collective: habitual responses weaving together to form society, all its struggles and its strengths (Notes Two). Conceivably, every little thing “counts” and adds up to quite substantial differences within that reality. All the subtleties of our awareness, intention and attitude toward one another surely soften the edges of common life or serve to roughen them up?

However we look at it, our choices generally accumulate into discernible patterns on the larger scale. And it seems we’re frighteningly predictable – quickly making almost anything a habit, even if much of it’s slipped in beyond our conscious understanding. It’s like we’re forever seeking this formula for “how to live” through all the systems, rhythms and routines of our existence.

Life may well “be” our patterns of behaviour: the rhythms of the human lifespan, the activities we place within it, then the filtered-down reality of our everyday tasks. Weaving within them, the rhythm of our own personal character and attitude toward it all – toward others, the responsibility of our choices, and the power of influence we’re bringing to bear on the world around us.

As humans, then, we’re perhaps standing somewhere between the strong “pull” of habitual subconscious behaviour and the burdensome clarity of thought (Notes Three). If we were to live completely from our rational mind, life would surely become quite draining? Every decision actively requiring conscious attention might seriously hamper things. But operating out of unexamined habit doesn’t seem that much better.

What is the right balance? Because, given the nature of modern systems, the human, social and natural costs of our actions seem to be skyrocketing – everything’s so coordinated and fast-paced that damage can be done before we’re even aware. If we’re not alert to the dangers or realities of choices we’re making, might we not inadvertently contribute to problems we’d never knowingly take part in?

And many seem to be investing heavily in bypassing our conscious attention to guide those choices. With all the social and psychological research behind technology, whole swathes of human activity potentially become quite controllable. Some of that might “innocently” fall within the realm of manufacturing demand, but that’s not all that’s going on.

A little off track, my point’s really that – aware or not – all our choices inevitably add up to something.

Notes and References:

Note 1: The idea of think globally, act locally
Note 1: Having boundaries
Note 1: Social starting points for modern ways
Note 2: Reading into social realities?
Note 2: Society as an imposition?
Note 2: Right to look out for ourselves?
Note 3: Questions around choice
Note 3: Ways thought adds spin to life
Note 3: One thing leads to another

Alongside all this, “The Tipping Point” very much considers this question of individual power within collective realities.

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Any such thing as normal?

Does normal mean something that’s commonplace or something that’s healthy? In terms of personal or social development, it could be said that “normal” represents what’s wholesome, ordered, leading in a wise direction. But if we’re taking the word to mean that which is fairly widespread and therefore considered normal, it could mean something unwise becomes the norm sheerly due to numbers.

As a question, it’s surely tapping into whether “acceptable” is determined from the top down or the bottom up? Normal in the sense of being “correct” seems handed down from the world of thought or tradition: certainty in a specific course of action. The other meaning’s perhaps more democratic in that if we all decide for ourselves then whatever emerges, statistically, becomes a new norm.

And, these days, it seems everything’s getting pulled apart this way – tradition and reasoning torn down by personal choice. In a world of free thinking and free will, we effectively all choose how we’re going to live. The very idea of “normal” must now be this constantly fluctuating commodity as influencers and marketers forever seek the next trend that’ll reshape our collective landscapes.

With the pace of that, it’s almost as if normal doesn’t even exist. As soon as anything’s solid enough to become a reality it’s then a label we perhaps don’t want to wear – who wants to be defined, pinned down, hemmed in by those kinds of commitments? The way we’re now using the self, the brand, is fascinating if not slightly surreal.

Modern life is strangely “knowing” – we’re so aware of what we’re doing and all these theories of personal identity and influence. It’s a strange way to be human, curating yourself from the outside in (or, the inside out). And it clearly fits well with consumerism, with this idea of what we buy and own defining us.

Aren’t we being actively encouraged to live this way? To present an image of who we are, where we stand, what we have to say. From the wealth of human civilisation, we dip into those things we feel suit us to create our own individual response. It’s this sense of a personal culture: our own self-defining statement about how we, uniquely, see and experience this world.

It’s intriguing really, given how much commonality seemingly used to bind people together: shared experiences, beliefs and lifestyles helping forge the bonds of identity and feeling that defined communities. Orienting ourselves around the same basic structures, people knew what they had in common. Lives following similar arcs must offer people plenty to bond over; as opposed to the division of endless choice (Notes One).

In a way, though, belief in normality is perhaps an illusion? All we’re doing is living, relating to what surrounds us, and charting our paths within it. Society, culture or advertising might inundate us with countless options to keep redefining ourselves but, within it all, we’re all just seeking ways to express who we are and find a place in this crazy world.

Notes and References:

Note 1: What is acceptable?
Note 1: Letting go of “who you are”
Note 1: “Paradox of Choice”
Note 1: What does art have to say about life?
Note 1: All we want to do passes through community
Note 1: Definition, expression & interpretation
Note 1: Ways thought adds spin to life

Looking at the substance beneath constant change was also the focus of Patience with the pace of change & Meaning in a world of novelty.

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Ideals & the pursuit of them

Talking about life, how clear are we on right and wrong? Often it seems we start with a strong statement but after a few tweaks and prods the whole thing begins to unravel. It’s as if we’re all somehow compromised by the complexity of the systems we’ve been drawn into – somewhere along the line, we didn’t see the line we were crossing and ended up trying to defend a flawed standpoint.

And these days it really seems the lines are blurred to the point of being almost invisible. Perhaps that’s the nature of modern systems and the technology that’s often mediating them? That we don’t fully see how things work, all the connections and consequences trailing in our wake. So much now being hidden away, ambiguous and subject to interpretation, truth and clarity can be hard to find (Notes One).

On paper, it’s seemingly easy to draw the clear lines that make life look straightforward. Each valuable principle or quality can neatly map out the paths to realising our vision: kindness, honesty, courage, love, generosity, forgiveness, patience. Reality, of course, is far more muddled. In all the pressures of life, pursuing ideals can’t be easy or people wouldn’t have written so much about it (Notes Two).

Modern life, particularly, seems to be very morally ambiguous: understanding all the systems we’re living within then standing back to form a clear judgement of our involvement is a pretty demanding task (Notes Three). All these things really sprouted up around us all at a disarming speed, leaving us in this strange situation of trying to catch up and grasp all these complex ethical questions we’re now part of.

As consumers free from the constraints of tradition, it’s arguably down to us all to determine our course of action. In terms of freedom, that’s such a heavy burden: choice; information; understanding; discernment; courage. When so much is aiming at undermining our conscious awareness and distracting us from using our common sense, seeing the wood from the trees is far from easy.

It’d surely be rare to find someone who was walking a completely unassailable moral line through it all? Someone with no blind spots, no areas where they’re unwittingly ignorant of what’s truly going on. Someone who never made a false move on the spur of the moment having misread the signs or misunderstood the wider context of the decision they were facing.

So often, though, it seems we shoot down a moral stance based on some other ethical shortcoming – as if we cannot listen to someone’s views on nutrition if they had their eye off the ball with regard to fuel, clothing production, commercial monopolies, modern social conventions and so forth. As if we’ll only listen to someone with those impeccable credentials.

But, with all the moral lines crisscrossing through the realities of modern life, where “is” the right place to stand on every given issue? Surely every situation’s throwing up a new challenge to find the line and make the right response.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 1: Technology as a partial reality
Note 1: In the deep end…
Note 2: “Quest for a Moral Compass”
Note 2: Plato & “The Republic”
Note 2: “The Measure of a Man”
Note 3: The value of a questioning attitude?
Note 3: What are our moral judgements?
Note 3: One thing leads to another

Ways to share this:

Frameworks of how we relate

How do we see the world? The ties between us, the meaning of things, the feelings and attitudes we’re extending toward one another and the very act of existence can be such a mystery at times. We’re here, with our thoughts and the ability to communicate them, yet how clear are we on the “what we’re doing and why” of life?

I suppose in our thoughts we relate ourselves to the world around us? Very quickly, we begin piecing together what things mean and how to interact with them – people, animals, nature, words, stories, environments. We’re looking at the world, testing the boundaries, and deciding how we’re going to live in relation to it all (Notes One). It’s the stuff of youth, of education and of culture.

Through our words and gestures, we’re surely conveying these fundamental ideas we have about life: the value of others, ways we might act, and what’s acceptable in terms of kindness. How we are in the world is, in a way, a picture of all we’ve learnt to believe about it. Our understanding is perhaps this frame through which we interpret and respond to things.

So, what is that meaning? What ideas do we have about how things should be and how we might best respond to help shape things in healthy and constructive ways? I mean, if our choices – our words, gestures and actions – impact the realities around us, then how we’re responding must forever be reshaping our social world, in particular. How are we using this power we all have? The power to affirm or negate.

It seems that, in looking at things, we have the choice to recognise or ignore whatever it might be. As if the whole of our world passes before us while we’re choosing which things we like, want, appreciate or understand. Each person, effectively, being this point of acceptance or rejection as we’re making our way through life.

Which is just interesting: that we change the world through our responses. And, clearly, we all have many ideas in mind as to “how things should be”. We’re pretty well-trained in the arts of judgement, criticism, labelling, diagnosis and advice – perpetually deconstructing and setting things straight within the confines of our own mind (Notes Two).

Do we, then, go through life evaluating other people? Choosing only to reflect that which we know enough to appreciate, affirm or accept (Notes Three). Like selective mirrors, only responding with recognition to that which we personally want to create. Of course, that would mean we’re limited by our own understanding: only reflecting what we already know.

It’s a train of thought that’s reminding me of Goethe’s ideas around meeting people, “when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be”. Written in quite different times, it’s still raising this question of social conditioning – how well are we understanding reality, potential, and what we can hope to achieve by way of our responses?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Complication of being human
Note 1: Knowledge, capacity & understanding
Note 1: Culture as what we relate to
Note 1: The struggle with being alive
Note 1: What you’re left with
Note 2: Pick a side, any side
Note 2: What are our moral judgements?
Note 2: Do we know what stands before us?
Note 3: Mirrors we offer one another
Note 3: Conversation as revelation
Note 3: Seeing, knowing and loving
Note 3: Invisible ties
Note 3: Humans, judgement & shutting down

Somewhat related to all this is Doing the right thing, we erase consequences.

Ways to share this:

Is cultural sensitivity still a thing?

Thinking back, it seems a lot of thought once went into travel – seeing new places, meeting new people. The world was large, relatively unknown, risky and time-consuming to get around. Doing so presumably took planning, intention and a sense for making the most of the opportunity. Also, perhaps, of getting to know others and how humans live in other parts of the globe.

Because we surely all live quite differently? Even within the same street, town or country each home operates by its own rules, standards and patterns of behaviour. All the subtle ways in which things are done; the reasoning and history behind every choice we’re habitually or consciously making. The rhythms and meaning to all we’re doing.

Within the basic formulas of human existence – home, family, community, food, celebration – there’s all this innovation in how we might go about things. Behind almost everything we do there’s this variation of style, tradition, belief, thought, intention. The lives we weave together effectively carrying that understanding out through all our actions to form the societies that hopefully enrich and sustain us (Notes One).

If we look at different places as embodied ways of being – all the ideas and practices people are, in some way, inspired to uphold – the world’s almost this delightful workshop of all the ways we might live our lives as human beings. The concepts of family, home and community life might be timeless, but how we do these things can clearly withstand our endless differentiation.

But, now, we’re so easily able to travel around, taking ourselves and our ideas about life to these other places. And, for some reason, alongside that “ease” seems to have come this sense of our superimposed personal experience being perhaps more important than the pre-existing realities of our desired location.

Maybe it’s part and parcel of individualism? That personal experiences are more significant than the collective, external, historical narratives of other people or places (Notes Two). This sense in which we’re all writing our own stories, showcasing our own style and interests, creating our own brand through the portfolio of our online existence and so forth.

In that context, travel can become less about respectfully coexisting and learning the subtleties of another culture and more a chance to glean whatever “we” want most from the opportunity. That said, it’s perhaps always a subtle interaction of both? Going somewhere, we bring our own perspectives and relate them to all we find around us – comparing, contrasting and noticing how things are done.

Attitudes we bring to life, though, surely paint a picture for others? Approaching people and places with respectful interest is quite different from striding roughshod through other lives, traditions and conventions. Which is maybe just one challenge of modern life: to skilfully, somewhat sensitively coexist within this much-smaller world.

With all the ways we’re now brought together – so often treading on one another’s toes – do we insist on our own way of being, defer to theirs, or some creative interblending of the two?

Notes and References:

Note 1: The conversation of society
Note 1: Social starting points for modern ways
Note 1: Shopping around for a society
Note 1: Human nature and community life
Note 1: Society as an imposition?
Note 2: The struggle with being alive
Note 2: Right to look out for ourselves?
Note 2: What inspires collective endeavours
Note 2: Do we know what stands before us?
Note 2: Having boundaries

Ways to share this:

The value & cost of our words

How are we using the words we speak? So often it seems we talk along the grooves of personal patterning: our general attitude to life, the kinds of things we say in response to it. Some have this basic gesture of defiance, challenging everything in a perpetual battle stance. Some draw everything down into the gutter, while others drag it up to the stars or into an ivory tower of contemplation. Each, perhaps, coming at a cost.

We’re here for such a limited time, and how we’re choosing to apply our words to situations or direct them towards others doesn’t seem insignificant. As much as we’re these centres of observation, we’re equally transmitters of what we have to say about it all. We can choose to fight everyone to make our perspective victorious, or we could make more companionable or constructive contributions (Notes One).

Of all the attitudes we could take – all the responses we might consider as our options – why choose aggression? Why shoot someone down with a kneejerk denial of what they’ve offered up? What is this fighting gesture that’s creeping into so many everyday conversations, this verbal equivalent of a slam down?

It’s probably justified as an intellectual gesture more than a social one: that we’re fighting in the realm of ideas, theories or beliefs rather than people (Notes Two). But isn’t communication always social? Thoughts – plus all the experiences, hopes and feelings that come along with them – travelling between us as we seek common ground, understanding, belonging, engagement.

As with anything, there’s the question of what we add and what we’re taking. Given we’re operating in both those realms of ideas and of people, how well are we navigating? Are we sacrificing social connections in pursuit of intellectual victories? Are we abandoning intellectual honesty in search for personal power or attention? Do we even know what we’re doing?

Writing this in the context of media, I’ve clearly drifted toward the personal. But, presumably, similar thinking applies? So often it seems we go for cheap shots or limited victories rather than pursuing real truth or harmony. What’s the cost of derailing things with a personal attack? They may be effective weapons in some ways, but also easily deflect us from other matters.

Maybe what I’m really writing about is responsible, skilful communication: the way – individually and collectively – we’re employing our words to engage with others and shape the realities around us.

Collectively, the media “leads the way” in terms of the conversations we’re inclined to have and stances we take within them. Journalism clearly has its “voice” in addressing and contextualising modern life; hopefully directing our attention in reasonable, realistic, balanced ways so we’re able to understand and uphold what’s valuable within our communities (Notes Three).

With all this, though, there’s surely that same line to be drawn between social realities and intellectual ones? Between the personal gestures of our words and the idealistic statements we’re hoping to communicate, we have quite a tricky balance to strike.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Can others join you?
Note 1: Who should we trust?
Note 1: Invisible ties
Note 2: Pick a side, any side
Note 2: Conversation as revelation
Note 2: What we say & what we mean
Note 2: Making adjustments
Note 3: Ideas of justice & vengeance
Note 3: Powerful responsibility of a media voice
Note 3: Effect, if everything’s a drama

Musings around balancing idealism with reality were also the focus of Imperfection as perfection?

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