Author: admin

Society as an imposition?

At some point, society almost inevitably gets to us – a point where we’re asked to do or not do something for the sake of others. This sense of consideration, compromise, constraint or contribution that essentially gets in the way of personal freedom. All the moments we want to act but need to decide against it out of communal obligation.

There are so many ways we’re asked to hold ourselves back out of consideration for the fact we exist within society: law, taxation, driving, how we behave in shared spaces. Rather than simply pursuing our own interests, we’re supposed to think of this wider social space and how all our conflicting interests need to somehow coexist there (Notes One).

It’s presumably the very foundation of human society? The sense of how to integrate individuals into social structures, the kinds of attitudes and behaviour patterns best suited to successful outcomes, and how we might best go about instilling those in people.

Society’s success surely rests on education? On understanding how things work and what’s required of us; initially, as children, then in an ongoing way as adults. On appreciating how values such as honesty, responsibility and altruism fundamentally underpin social realities. On seeing how individual choices and actions accumulate in constructive or destructive ways.

If we’re to be in a position to make all the decisions asked of us – be they interpersonal, financial, commercial or democratic – we must need to understand how things fit and what those choices ultimately mean? To make the best decisions for ourselves plus the broader realities we’re all now undeniably a part of, we need the ability to call up that “bigger picture” in our minds and let it shape our actions (Notes Two).

As individuals, we surely need quite a high level of social awareness? To see how we all fit, the roles we’re all playing, how others are served by our contributions and we, in turn, are served by the collective efforts of others. This sense for what a shared social system “is” and all that our detached, sometimes hidden, actions “mean” when they eventually converge to become “how things are”.

Because it’s fascinating to think how these things come together; all the habits, patterns and trends in our behaviour that effectively “become” our shared reality. It’s all these lines where the self meets community and something’s, often silently, asked of us: How are we going to act? Where are we going to draw the line of our personal and collective responsibility? Is that line to be local, national or more simply “human”? (Notes Three)

While modern humanity might be quite beautifully independent in many ways, society surely does both benefit us and need something from us all in return: that we fill it with our understanding and, based on that, limit our actions accordingly. Western society in particular – with its freedoms and marketplaces – very much seems to ask that we extend ourselves far enough to fully comprehend the implications of all we’re now offered.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Invisible ties
Note 1: Reading into social realities?
Note 1: Shared spaces & how things get done
Note 2: The sense of having a worldview
Note 2: Meaning within it all
Note 2: Right to look out for ourselves?
Note 2: Questions around choice
Note 3: The idea of think globally, act locally
Note 3: “Minding the Earth, Mending the World”
Note 3: The value of a questioning attitude?
Note 3: One thing leads to another

Ideas around the immense personal responsibility of freedom were also one focus of “Brave New World Revisited”.

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Effect, if everything’s a drama

In a world where our awareness of all that’s “wrong” is forever increasing, how are we to manage? Is a reality filled with constant revelations of human or systemic shortcoming on the global scale something the mind or heart can truly withstand?

Notions of “staying informed” clearly arose in times where that entailed relatively slow-paced news with limited scope. It’s presumably much more manageable to receive updates once or twice a day, delivered in fairly neutral and assertive tones. Ignorance is bliss, essentially: not being made aware of things you’re perhaps powerless to influence; retaining the psychological security to carry on with daily living.

These days, we live in another world of relentless, chattering drama. This incessant flow of voices all talking over one another trying to grab our attention and call us to some form of action (Notes One). And, in many ways, that’s a far better scenario: ignorance is a strange sort of bliss that evidently allows all sorts of things to go on away from the watchful eye of almost everybody.

But can we listen to it all? Are our minds capable of processing that much information? Even if we strip away all the frivolous or purely commercial activity, is this a volume of knowledge we’re able to take in and assimilate meaningfully alongside the challenges of everyday life? What kind of stress and strain is that going to place on our nervous system, cognitive capacity or general well-being?

It’s incredible to think how humans have never existed in a way that’s even remotely comparable to modern, Western society. This immediacy of interconnectedness and vastness of all we’re now drawn into: global economic systems with powerful, hidden impacts; conversations that cross all cultural boundaries with our fiery judgements of what’s acceptable in life (Notes Two).

How are we to stay sane in such a world? Even if we’d developed perfect awareness and communication skills within our national communities, bridging the gap between those limited interests and all the points they intersect with the economic or cultural concerns of others would be an incredible challenge. It’s mind-blowing to think of all that’s flowing together in the wonderful melting-pot of the modern world.

In light of that, do we simply plough on? Confident in ourselves as capable adults, we attempt to juggle all that’s thrown at us while tuning out every unnecessary distraction that’s coming along with it. Such a ceaseless onslaught seems almost impossible for anyone to manage long-term.

Especially considering the path we’re apparently taking: given the opportunity technology’s offering, everyone naturally wants to use it to their advantage. Every area of life – society, relationships, industry, news, culture – wants to be heard, leading to this strange reality of “who can shout loudest” or various other tactics for hooking our attention and distracting us from other things.

Are we in “boy who cried wolf” territory here? Might it be wiser to dial things down a little so we’re actually able to discuss those things that truly do matter?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Desensitised to all we’re told?
Note 1: Value in being informed
Note 1: Powerful responsibility of a media voice
Note 1: Who should we trust?
Note 1: And, how much can we care?
Note 2: Working through mind & society
Note 2: Right to look out for ourselves?
Note 2: What are our moral judgements?
Note 2: All we want to do passes through community
Note 2: Can others join you?

One seemingly quite wise approach to managing modern life could well be The idea of think globally, act locally.

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The insatiable desire for more

Is there any limit to how much we’re after? Any point at which we’ll feel we have enough? It sometimes seems seen as a sign of undeserved constraint: that we “should” be able to have more and, capacity somehow being aligned with worth, we’re worth less if we have less.

The insidious voice of industries built on such thinking’s surely crept into our minds over the years: all these adverts insisting we need something else to be enough. That is what it is, but as a psychological message it can’t help us much.

What is that feeling of needing something to complete us? It must be a form of dependency, of placing some part of ourselves outside our self then feeling we need it. It’s strange to think how much the West might be built upon everyone not being enough on their own.

Is that what this is? A psychological misdirection where we’re seeking our worth in material goods? Because, beyond meeting essential needs, there’s clearly this vast grey area of insecurity where money can be made. Once we’ve conceded to being incomplete in and of ourselves, we must be ripe for many kinds of exploitation.

It’s an interesting picture, the way human physical and psychological needs are woven into society. We’ve clearly developed systems with some degree of fit: our essential and non-essential needs dovetailing neatly into this world of commerce. The need for meaning, belonging and worth finding a place in the arguably economic narratives of media and culture (Notes One).

Because, truly, once you’ve accepted the idea of not being enough, where can you go from there? Won’t you find yourself in some perpetual search for wholeness? Seeking relief from the uncertainty of needing something we lack by looking to relationships, objects, substances, anything that’s able to plug this gap.

That kind of psychological wound presumably does create an insatiable need for resolution. If we’re constantly told we need one thing or another to keep up, fit in and be a valid part of the human community, how are we going to feel?

The idea of our lives holding meaning, finding recognition and respect in the eyes of others may be our most essential need. This desire in our psyche for belonging and worth, not as a luxury but a foundation for knowing who we are as humans (Notes Two).

It must tie into Schumacher’s comments on how “the modern economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy” – this sense in which tapping into the psyche is incredibly profitable but equally concerning when it comes to peace, harmonious coexistence, or overall sustainability (Note Three).

It’s perhaps easy to blame people for being short-sighted to the destructiveness of this way of living, but when our essential needs are so skilfully twisted into this never-ending need for the next thing it’s interesting to ask where such wounds come from and why others might think it wise to play upon them this way.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Language and values
Note 1: Cycles of mind & matter
Note 1: Economics & the realm of culture
Note 2: This thing called love
Note 2: What it is to be human
Note 2: Absolute or relative value
Note 3: “Small is Beautiful”

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Technology as a partial reality

At times it can seem that technology’s all there is: that it’s reshaping our personal and collective lives to such a great extent, winding its tendrils through every aspect of our existence, that we can no longer quite imagine life without it. And, given how much it’s effectively chipping away at real-world interactions and infrastructure, it could even be that we don’t quite have the ability to fully function without it anymore.

It’s fascinating, really, that we’ve developed a tool with an inclination to become our master – an almost intrinsic tendency to surpass or render us dependent on its existence. This externalisation of human functions, resources and understanding that conceivably risks us losing our own innate capacities through its use.

Because, essentially, it’s the sum total of human knowledge: the culmination of our ability to understand and encode that understanding into a system; the ways in which we’re handing over society, our lives and the fruits of civilisation to that external storehouse. It’s “where society had got to” codified, built, and filled with human existence, then taking on this life of its own (Notes One).

Presumably you can put “anything” into such a system and, that system having certain parameters, it would churn away, elaborate, and evolve into something different. It’s simply this logical outworking of inputs and outputs. But if what we’re putting “in” is human life and society, what does that mean? Did we fully understand the value, significance or delicacy of all we’ve been so willingly placing at the altar of technology?

It’s fairly easy to catastrophise about the risks of this, and perhaps equally easy to dismiss such reservations as futile. Arguably, it’s a wave we just have to ride and hopefully learn to master.

With any form of technological progress, that seems the situation: “we” have to engage and attempt to direct it, else “others” will and we’ll lose our place in the battle. Given modern technology’s tendency towards largescale systems of life-altering dominance, that’s conceivably a reality no-one can afford to ignore.

It’s incredible to think how societies developed over thousands of years then a switch was flipped and “all that” became this global system, this crystallisation of all we’d attained up to that moment. From then, everything began changing, compounding problems and reshaping the lives of pretty much everyone on the planet.

The differences it’s made are surely unfathomable? Ways we’ve been relating, communicating, organising ourselves. The scope of all we’re engaged in: directly impacting other lives where, previously, little interaction was possible. Global patterns, industries and traditions have been disrupted in subtle or spectacular ways which cannot be rolled back.

But, within all that, the realities of human life must be the same as ever? While virtual life might seem more real – more overwhelming, compelling or present – than everyday life, the substance of our existence is essentially unchanged: relationships with others and with nature; the lives we’re leading and impacts we’re having; the values we bring to life through all these choices.

Notes and References:

Note 1: How important is real life?
Note 1: Value in visible impacts
Note 1: The potential of technology
Note 1: Patience with the pace of change
Note 1: Information as a thing, endlessly growing
Note 1: “Response Ability” by Frank Fisher
Note 1: Trust in technology?
Note 1: Cutting corners
Note 1: Tools

Running, perhaps, in parallel to all this, there’s The difference humanity makes or Problems & the thought that created them.

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Knowledge, capacity & understanding

Being human is quite strange. We’re so influenced by environment, by one another, by ideas that might take root in the mind and grow. It’s truly as if “life” in all its forms enfolds us, leaves its mark, then sends us on our way (Notes One). How are we to deal with that?

Because, surely, there’s not “one way” to be human? We’re all so unique and no one narrative can yet encompass the whole world – any story told could be retold from any number of perspectives. Somewhere, maybe, there “is” a story that can handle us all rightly, but for now it’s not seeming so close to being told.

In the meantime, education’s apparently this place of correcting and shoring things up. We all have ideas of what society should be, the people and attributes needed to fill it, and that’s seemingly finding its way into the realm of learning (Notes Two). So many plans, projects and priorities shoehorned into this space, clamouring for attention. All being human, we – perhaps rightly – all have something to say on the matter.

Of course, it makes sense from a planning perspective: models of industry, social structure, and healthy human function all lead us to work back toward childhood to plant our seeds there. Taking current personal or collective struggles as starting points, we deconstruct them to develop theories of “what went wrong” and “how to redress it”.

But do the same conditions ever repeat themselves in life? Are we quite sure our analysis identified all the variables and our conclusions safely encompass all possible individual scenarios? Might we not, with the best intentions, actually be creating a raft of other problems by jumping into things this way?

These are questions without foregone conclusions. We all have “concerns” that truly do matter: we want to help others not experience the difficulties we’ve had, to eradicate suffering or prejudice from society, to have the world filled with more considerate, harmonious, inclusive wisdom. But is this the way to achieve that?

It’s essentially the question of education and what we hope to achieve by it (Notes Three). Now that external knowledge is easily accessible, expending energy memorising limited, ever-changing “facts” is perhaps a misuse of time. Looking to a future where mechanisation will likely outstrip human capacities in any number of fields, what will our lives become?

Maybe modern life’s simply shaking up all it means to be human? Knowing where we’ve come from, paths taken, challenges we’ve overcome and those we still face, seems undeniably valuable though – the sense of keeping in mind this journey from limitation to insight, as we’ve sought the best ways to organise our lives together.

Beyond “fitting into” the world as it is, seeing how and why it came to be that way is surely part of all it means to be human? Understanding enough of where our paths have left us, yet somehow feeling confident enough to pick up those reins to make good decisions for the future.

Notes and References:

Note 1: What it is to be human
Note 1: Personal archaeology
Note 1: The sense of having a worldview
Note 1: The struggle with being alive
Note 2: Do we need meaning?
Note 2: What you’re left with
Note 2: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 2: Different places, different ways
Note 2: Can others join you?
Note 3: The world we’re living in
Note 3: Can we manage all-inclusive honesty?
Note 3: Complication of being human

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Economics & the realm of culture

What does it truly mean that culture’s operated as a business? Of course, almost everything’s run that way – carved up, targeted, marketed, managed with an eye to profit and market share – but when it comes to human cultural life, what’s the end result of money being in the mix?

It’s one of these questions I hesitate to ask as we’re living in times where questioning the logic of marketplaces tends to be looked down on; but it’s strange to think that the world of meaning, belonging, identity, and social reflection would be subject to market forces (Notes One). Doesn’t culture needs to be inclusive, something everyone can access and find their place within? Or perhaps that’s too idealistic.

Maybe it’s just that the world’s become all about money? Everything, everyone, has a price and anything we do can be seen purely with financial eyes (Notes Two). It’s one way of looking at life, and, for now, it tends to seem like it’s the only way.

And maybe that’s largely down to technology having completely shaken up human industry, leaving people grappling with how to structure things in this new world of online distribution and direct audience engagement. Who’s to say what’s going on, really? So much has changed in the last hundred years or so that it’s perhaps too early to say where our feet are going to land (Notes Three).

It does seem it’s all about the money, though: brands, reach, influence, spin offs, merchandise. This reframing of culture through the lens of business, seeking whatever recipe or trend will be most profitable on the timescale we’re concerned with. The main focus seems to be commercial crossover or other avenues for generating greater revenue out of us.

Stepping back, though, we’re clearly social creatures who seek meaning and belonging; with culture being the part of society that meets those needs. It’s the stories we tell, the mirror we hold up, the place to rise above the everyday and feel part of something greater. It can be the food that nourishes both people and society, encouraging our growth toward something worthwhile and, hopefully, globally viable. Again, idealism.

But, stepping off those clouds, who’s in charge of this powerful social force? What values and principles guide the selection of stories we’re told? As an industry it might be working well, but does human society need more from its culture than commercial calculations or collaborations that essentially feed off our insecurities and concerns?

Maybe it’s pointless to ask such questions? This is the world we’re living in. Things changed. Culture that was seemingly once quite local, divided, exclusive and entrenched in traditional ideas swiftly passed over into something much more all-encompassing, free and inclusive. It’s easy to look back at “what we lost” or around us at “what’s gone wrong” but perhaps we’ve just been shifting into a world of new cultural realities.

Seen in another light, then, money and technology presumably have democratic potential? Provided we engage with it all wisely.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Definition, expression & interpretation
Note 1: Culture as what we relate to
Note 1: Can we overcome purely economic thinking?
Note 1: Art, collaboration & commodification
Note 2: Values on which we stand firm?
Note 2: The motivation of money
Note 2: The worth of each life
Note 3: All that’s going on around us
Note 3: The potential of technology
Note 3: Patience with the pace of change

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Complication of being human

All that goes into making each of us who we are is incredible to consider: all the relationships, words, messages, experiences, wounds, hopes, and other things that might’ve marked us deeply, shaping our views of self, life, society, others, and the worth of it all. It’s honestly amazing to think of all that human beings have been through; each person surely mattering, as one within the greater whole of humanity.

Now that there’s so many of us here, our lives so closely yet remotely intertwined through the wonders of modern communication, industry and transportation, the idea of all that’s going on must be bordering on the inconceivable (Notes One). We’re all impacting one another, all feeling the strain of traditional structures and relationships being wrenched apart as technology reconfigures our ways of being.

Yet, within all that, we’re still human. Society might be shifting around us, its imaginary tectonic plates forging this new landscape within which we’ll still have to live; but, inside, we’re presumably the same as humans have ever been? All of “that” is simply the world we meet, the place we find or craft ourselves in response to how we’re seen and what seems the best way of navigating things.

It’s truly fascinating how, as humans, this self-aware consciousness is poured into the world around us. This strange, reflexive process of meaning, thought, and all the decisions that shape our lives (Notes Two). How we interpret the world and seek our way within it surely “becomes” the self: the life we lead and ways we’re interacting with those around us. As humans, the world acts upon us and we respond.

How is “that” ever going to be easy? Who’s likely to have been surrounded by people, institutions and situations that contained unquestionable wisdom and, equally importantly, knew how to convey it meaningfully to others? We’re all so different, with different priorities, feelings, concerns, insecurities, and frameworks for understanding life. It’s hard to imagine “one sentence” we’re all going to grasp the same way.

Communication’s not easy. All you can do is try to put your understanding clearly into words and hope it carries, unaltered, to another. Yet, in reality, our worlds of meaning are surely so different? If life gives each of us our own, uniquely personal understanding of things then, despite living in the same world, our thoughts about it can bear remarkably little parallel.

And, in a way, isn’t “life” all about hoping to be understood, accepted, loved? Hoping to find our place, have our perspective acknowledged, and feel that we belong and hold value within the broader context of humanity. Hopefully we find that within family, community and culture, as, otherwise, it seems life can become quite difficult (Notes Three).

Really, it just seems we’re all going to be “complicated” and difficult to unravel; and, while we’re undeniably intelligent, knowing the causes mightn’t lead directly to solutions. Everything being so nested, reinforced and personal surely makes any kind of human resolution far from easy?

Notes and References:

Note 1: One thing leads to another
Note 1: The idea of think globally, act locally
Note 1: The difference humanity makes
Note 2: Culture as what we relate to
Note 2: What you’re left with
Note 2: Personal archaeology
Note 2: The struggle with being alive
Note 3: Do we know what stands before us?
Note 3: What it is to be human
Note 3: Love of self

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Reading into social realities?

As a thought, it’s interesting how everything around us tells a story. Potentially, one of awareness, wisdom, consideration, value, kindness; but also, perhaps more often, the opposite. It’s this sense in which all we do paints a picture, our words and deeds effectively embodying our understanding of life, society, humanity, and the place we all have within that (Notes One).

Clearly that’s a potentially overwhelming view of life: reading meaning into it all; wondering at people’s thought processes, beliefs and motivations; extrapolating out to what such attitudes mean for society at large, all the ways they must be felt by countless individuals throughout the days, weeks and years of all our lives.

Attempting to imagine the cumulative effect of each person’s way of being can easily hurt the brain. Even trying to imagine the thoughts running through a single individuals mind based on the evidence of their actions seems a bit much some days. If “everything that happens” is telling a story about our general level of awareness, it’s perhaps not a book we’re inclined to read.

But can we truly turn a blind eye? If the narrative of modern society is one of people looking out for themselves without demonstrable concern, attention or interest in others, it just doesn’t seem sustainable long-term. And, even if we don’t actively “read” all that’s spread out around us, do we not pick up on it anyway? Like having a TV on in the background; its messages seeping in regardless.

Some days the overall theme seems to be one of not really caring. About others, their existence, their peaceful enjoyment of space, their very presence in life. Often, it’s seeming that we see one another as obstacles, each living their own personal movie where all these other human beings simply don’t feature. Treating others as irritating inconveniences doesn’t seem very human though.

Society, after all, is a grouping of humans. It’s this picture of cooperation for mutual benefit, safety, enjoyment. It’s the sense in which working together is more efficient and productive than all going it alone. It’s ways we might harmoniously share resources and infrastructure so that, ultimately, the opportunity serves us all. And, hopefully, it’s the degree of individual and collective forethought that makes such a thing possible.

Why exactly social relationships might be fading is strange to consider (Notes Two). Where do we “get” the sense for society? Is this from history, convention, education, culture, example? Is it the structures of society itself? Those systems, interactions and choices that effectively define our lives. The attitudes with which we’re all carrying out our respective “roles” within the bigger picture of community?

Or maybe I’m reading things wrongly? Maybe the story’s written between the lines, in the quiet resolutions people make behind all the drama playing out. It just seems there’s so much simmering intolerance and carelessness; this drifting lack of awareness, understanding or bandwidth building to a place of almost everyone having a very short fuse. Something, surely, has to give?

Notes and References:

Note 1: The power of understanding
Note 1: Invisible ties
Note 1: Do we need meaning?
Note 1: The philosopher stance
Note 2: All that’s going on around us
Note 2: Ideas that tie things together
Note 2: If society’s straining apart, what do we do?
Note 2: One thing leads to another
Note 2: In the deep end…

Looking at all this from a slightly different perspective, there’s What it is to be human or Problems & the thought that created them.

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The struggle with being alive

It’s almost as if we’re poured into this. We “meet” the world in the faces it turns towards us – family, peers, culture, community, education, social systems all merging together into the sense of meaning we have of life. What we become surely depends, in large part, on what we meet? Then, what we make of it.

And, of course, we’re not the same. What hurts one deeply might be a nothing to someone else. The meaning things hold in our eyes must be fairly unique: the unrepeated convergence of our own perspective; the way experiences merged into all we believe, know and feel so deeply (Notes One).

Who are we to say the experiences of another don’t count? Isn’t everything that touches on the shore of our islands meaningful? All that comes to tell us how the world sees us and how much it cares.

If people are told they are “wrong” – their understanding of life, the way they’ve crafted their identity around it – what does that mean? Life, conceivably, is the meaning we find within it and how we attach that to the personal self. Each living through this, taking part, finding our way. (Notes Two)

Sometimes, despite the best intentions, people can miss the point of their own worth or misunderstand the ways of the world. It’s possible. In subtle ways, we can believe that our views, our thoughts and being, don’t matter as much as assuming the “right” veneer.

People can become buried rather than alive inside. Disconnected. Feeling it doesn’t matter what we carry within us, as the world isn’t interested. If “life” doesn’t connect with us, doesn’t draw “us” out or seek what we have to offer, it’s perhaps natural we withdraw in self-defence?

What exactly are life, youth or education? Is this simply performance? Wanting others to be “like us”, we draw them into the drama of our own lives – offering them parts to play, assigning roles, accommodating  interests somewhat as we’re all subsumed into the ongoing narrative of pre-existence. To some extent, yes.

But then one thing leads to another and it’s all compounded: wounds, mistakes, errors in judgement become our lives, met and often exacerbated in every encounter. Walls get higher, deeper, stronger. Heels dug deeper in confusion at the messages we’re receiving from life. Alone, we might doubt everything.

It’s interesting, really. From an early age so much seems set in motion that can easily spiral into something more lasting: labels can stick, behaviour or communication patterns becoming how we’re seen, how we relate to others, and how we see ourselves. Limitations in skill or understanding can become “the self” (Notes Three).

How can we break that? Can we come to see our personal development as almost inevitably flawed, yet, somehow, wrap that reality in a greater understanding? Can we create wholeness – healing – by somehow letting go of all that’s harmed us, then dust ourselves off to get on with “life” in this equally flawed yet insistent world? Hopefully, we can.

Notes and References:

Note 1: What it is to be human
Note 1: Personal archaeology
Note 1: What if it all means something?
Note 2: Absolute or relative value
Note 2: Do we know what stands before us?
Note 2: The dignity & power of a human life
Note 3: What you’re left with
Note 3: Living as an open wound
Note 3: We’re all vulnerable

On the flip side of all this, there’s This thing called love, Love of self & Problems & the thought that created them.

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What it is to be human

I’ve talked before about life, about the strangeness of how we’re here and capable of understanding the world around us – intelligent beings “reading” that reality and responding in our own, unique way (Notes One). It’s a wonder that children have, but one that’s not often met with rational validation.

Of course, it’s not so intelligent to sit in a state of wonder while the world spins on without you. There’s logic to how we “get on with it” and go about making the most of our own, particular situation – embracing our agency, participating in shared existence, capitalising on opportunities. It’s the stuff of life, essentially.

Hopefully, of course, that “life” engages us in meaningful and purposeful ways: each of our contributions feeding into healthy, sustainable, responsible, caring social realities. Hopefully the world we’re interacting with values us rightly, treating us with respect and calling up the best rather than worst of our nature.

There’s obviously subtext there, as that’s far from the world we’re living in. I’m not sure quite how, and I’m pretty sure it’s largely unintentional, but, somewhat inexplicably, “society” doesn’t seem to really care for its humans. More often, we’re attacked, made to feel inadequate or manipulated beyond our capacity for reason (Notes Two).

And that’s perhaps related to the question that’s “always” been behind social projects: how to bring out the best in people, arrange community in such a way that it “works”, and give individuals true freedom without losing sight of our basic self-interest (Notes Three). Is there a way we can all be free, healthy and safe?

It comes down to this fundamental sense of what it is to be human: we’re all alike, yet all different. In a world of limited space and resources, we draw lines and we fight. Yet, intellectually, we “know” we’re the same – all one big group of humans – so there’s this dissonance, this justification and insistence on taking our own side.

There’s really no answer there, it’s a concept we either accept or we don’t. But, in reality, we do have to live through it: as thinking beings we see these things and have to accept, change or otherwise make peace with life’s undeniable injustices.

All the ways our words, actions and attitudes carry meaning; upholding systems of thought that assign to others lower worth than they inherently deserve. That’s surely the world around us? Imperfection. Inadequate ideas baked into the social, cultural, political, economic structures that shape our lives (Notes Four).

As humans, it’s surely quite rational that we look around us and say “No”? That we would find it difficult to live in a world that represses human worth in all the big and little ways we treat one another. It all counts, all adds up, all paints a picture of what it is to be human. And we – with our wonderful, capable minds – stand within it all; more often than not, struggling to reconcile our own sense of self-worth with the ways of this world.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Some thoughts about ‘life’
Note 1: What are we thinking?
Note 1: The power of understanding
Note 2: Fear or coercion as motivators
Note 2: What would life be if we could trust?
Note 3: The conversation of society
Note 3: Plato & “The Republic”
Note 3: “Quest for a Moral Compass”
Note 4: Imperfection as perfection?
Note 4: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 4: Caught in these thoughts
Note 4: Finding flaws

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