Author: admin

All we’re trying to uphold

Thinking of all life is and how it comes together, what is it that our actions serve to uphold? This idea that, in countless small ways, everything we do feeds into various systems that, together, weave this picture of all our lives “are” and the meaning we feel we’re creating through it all. As if, somehow, we’re always creating something by way of our understanding and our action.

Ideally, I’d imagine “life” were structured and communicated in such a way that we each understood perfectly what all our choices were playing into. This sense of our ideas and decisions weaving in harmony with our surroundings to create exactly what we all need. That, at any place where competing desires converge on a single point, we’d know how to make that judgement for the best outcomes. (Notes One)

Yet, it also seems that understanding goes in waves: that, at times, we might forget the reasoning, the causality, the consequences that brought any given piece of tradition, advice or convention into existence and decide we’ll go our own way. If we’re not seeing the results of our actions – the impacts on ourselves, others or the systems we all form part of – how are we to limit ourselves for their sake?

If we’re not seeing, at least in thought, what everything we do “means” for our surroundings, isn’t it natural we focus on our own concerns? With consequences hidden behind inscrutable screens, the idea of understanding what we’re doing seems to become a little strange: as if, from our perspective, actions might seem totally normal while simultaneously contributing to looming problems out beyond our awareness. (Notes Two)

At the core, it must come down to this idea of grasping what our lives are – our place within reality – then acting consistently from that understanding and from whatever values we have underpinning it. As if life, in its way, is philosophical: based on insight, belief and the will to carry those ideals through into our actions. (Notes Three)

Because, even if we’re not seeing things that way, don’t our actions uphold it all anyway? Everything – perhaps quite unconsciously – plugged into all those systems everyone’s lives are embedded within as all our social, cultural, interpersonal, economic, emotional and natural impacts ripple out around us each day. Aren’t we all these incredibly independent starting points for everything that is being set in motion?

Seeing the significance of every area of our lives is daunting, though, especially when things so often seem to “need” our conscious engagement in maintaining or improving them. Almost as if we’re in battle with our natural inclinations toward self-interest and ease, forever needing to place ourselves in others’ positions or extend our understanding to see what’s happening behind the scenes in the world around us. (Notes Four)

Within the increasingly global relationships making up our lives, how are we to truly grasp the nature of what we’re involved in and make sure we’re actually upholding all that we genuinely believe to be valuable?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Life as adjustments in meaning
Note 1: Holding back, for the sake of others
Note 1: Learning all we need to know
Note 2: Wisdom the world no longer gives?
Note 2: How much everything is connected
Note 2: Any choice but to take a stand?
Note 3: Pieces of the puzzle
Note 3: Being conscious of our constructions
Note 3: Belonging & believing
Note 4: Conversations we agree to have
Note 4: Somewhere between ideals & realities
Note 4: Threads, becoming a united whole

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Winning the lottery…

To what extent are we generally wanting to be free of things? Looking for release from “this way of life” or seeking some greater meaning or recognition than currently seems offered. This sense of “life” as something to be endured while cobbling together enough ideas capable of making us feel it’s worthwhile and our presence here is valuable not only to us but also to others.

Isn’t life, in its way, all about value? All that’s gained or lost in how we spend our time. How much we’re appreciating the efforts of others within the vast interconnected network of our collective existence. The differing levels of recognition people get for their situations in life. This complex balance of how any given thing is valued within our overarching sense of reality.

And, in that, it seems hard to say circumstances aren’t largely shaped by birth: by all we step into through no fault or effort of our own. As if the ties of blood are those carrying an incredible amount of weight in the life any one person might lead. Aside from the genetic or financial aspects, there’s that whole sticky coating of the social, cultural and emotional environment we’re all met with.

Aren’t we quite literally born into all the circumstances society contains? Each person standing in a slightly or dramatically different spot and experiencing what life’s like from there. As if humanity “appears” within these structures then lives through the opportunities, judgements and realities presented – this lived experience of all it currently is to be human.

I’d imagine we all hope life will be fair and meaningful: that the faces turned toward us would be a reasonable reflection of our true worth as it’s allowed to unfold and find its place. That we wouldn’t be boxed in by unrealistic notions of human value based on circumstances almost entirely beyond anyone’s control. That the value-system we’re living within makes sense, from all angles.

It just seems strange, at times, the kinds of thinking so tightly woven round us: the kinds of judgements we’re making of others and ourselves, often stemming from the encouragement of commercial interests; the kinds of lives people have placed before them; the kinds of stories, characters and behaviour held up as admirable. It may be something we stepped into, but what if it’s not helpful?

Sometimes I wonder if ideas aren’t simply mistaken – if the elusive victory isn’t to shift our thinking to something that values everything more realistically. Could we not genuinely see everyone’s existence as valuable? Each person being born into circumstances which generally need resolving somehow, for the sake of society as well as the individual.

Much as lotteries themselves almost seem like a hope tax for those seeking escape from society – the chance to live as the lucky few are able – could we not structure things so people felt more rightly valued for whatever their lives actually are? As if we all formed part of an appreciative and purposeful state of coexistence.

Notes and References:

Threads, becoming a united whole
Life as adjustments in meaning
Self-love as a social foundation
Being conscious of our constructions
How would we like to live?
Value and meaning in our lives
Does it all come down to money?

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Progress, at what cost & to whom?

How is it that we really “see” life? This strange conglomeration of humanity that’s living such different lives in different places yet still all forming part of this one, increasingly global society. What “is” the bigger picture of the lives we all lead, the activities we’re engaged in, the meanings we weave about it, and ways it feels, as a human, to live on earth alongside so many others of our kind?

Often, it’s seeming quite a depressing sense of seeing one another as competitors rather than allies – pushing people down to step ahead and ensure “our own” advantage. As if, inherently seeing life as division, we’re mainly concerned with not losing out. It must be that the ideas with which we “approach” reality make quite a significant difference to how we see and respond to it?

It just seems we’re pulling in two directions: wanting to rush ahead and achieve all that is possible while struggling to allow for others to truly catch up. That fundamental desire for progress, perhaps? To draw on the skills, insights and capacities that exist within the human community to make the most of this current period of opportunity – this one, rolling lifetime we’re all living through.

Isn’t there the risk of a two-speed society? The pace of progress having created all of these expectations that perhaps only the truly wealthy can afford; the rest struggling to tread water and feel worthwhile within that strange picture of escalating perfection. Aren’t our notions of individual worth closely tied into keeping up with it all? With all the experiences, belongings and appearances money can buy.

Almost as if “progress” is this weight added to the mass of humanity as the entry-level costs of social participation forever rise. How can this world sustain our ongoing consumption and waste? All the things we feel we need. How long can the human mind juggle all the demands being made on our time and engagement? All living in this strange world, mediated by the machinations of technology and the minds of its makers.

Sometimes it seems we’re just chasing the coat tails of progress while living through the whirlwind of its repercussions. Striving to attain the unattainable – destinations that will forever be shifting just beyond most people’s reach. As if “progress” is this myth we’re inspired to pursue, despite the fact it’s built around unsustainable notions of constant differences setting us apart.

Although, it does seem those “in charge” have their visions for how this world will look and the roles we’ll have to play in things; as if “all this” is simply some grand experiment being conducted at the level of “humanity”. Where – so much being determined by birth, while only a few can rise to lead others towards their version of progress – the bulk of society is perhaps just being carried into a future that’s little improved.

Of all the lifetimes humanity has lived through, this one sometimes seems strangely divisive in the ways it’s carving us up.

Notes and References:

How much everything is connected
Seeing what things mean
Responsibility for the bigger picture
Bringing things into awareness
Do markets create strange social forces?
Gaining clarity on the choices before us
Lacking the human side of community?
What should be leading us?
Charting our own course
Somewhere between ideals & realities

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Holding back, for the sake of others

In many ways, isn’t life always a question of the balance between us and others? Society as this fundamental concept of a place naturally filled with people all wanting to survive, belong, press forward, explore what they’re capable of and live meaningful, harmonious lives alongside one another. “The human” being the basic building block around which community is built and the whole system, somehow, has to revolve.

Sometimes it can feel like a dance – this wonderful choreography of everyone understanding their role, all they play into, and the nature of those moments where their existence regularly touches up against that of others. This idea that we might all grasp the meanings, the significance of each interaction, the issues playing into these decisions we’re making and ways it all comes together as a unit we might hope to comprehend.

More often, it feels like a battle – a place no one’s really willing to give an inch if that might mean “you” get ahead in some way while “they” miss out. This strange ongoing conflict between individuals and the collective nature of our existence. As if, having absorbed scientific notions of competition, we began seeing one another as threats to our own survival or advantage in almost every context of our lives.

Maybe it’s even “strange” that we try to coexist? Independent and ultimately quite self-centred creatures aiming to share all these undeniably limited resources within a finite space. Almost as if we’re destined for conflict and inclined toward seeing things from our own perspective – how else are we going to get our needs met in this aggressive battleground we’ve laid out for ourselves?

How are we ever to overcome our own, quite natural, self-interest and decide to act differently? It seems to require such trust to leave space for others: to not take something, say something or do something so that opportunity remains available. Almost a gesture of “getting out of our own way” to create valuable breathing space within society. Letting others take what they need, rather than all taking what we want.

Isn’t it becoming an increasingly difficult balance? All these paths drawing us off in all these directions, leaving so little common ground or time to get to know others, their needs, and how “all this” affects them. As if we’re all encouraged to plough on with our own interests, shoving others aside or leaving them in our wake.

Like in conversation, where we might easily dominate with our own concerns or ideas rather than listen and make space in our soul for another’s being to come to life in all its complexity. Don’t we have to silence ourselves? Creating room for other thoughts, struggles, feelings, priorities and dreams to take the place of ours.

My point being that we could go about things differently. Working from the concept of the human being, aren’t ideals such as tolerance, love, kindness, restraint and hope as much a part of our nature as this desire to push all others aside?

Notes and References:

Authenticity & writing our own story
Situations which ask us to trust
Mutual awareness and accommodation?
Rich complexity of human being
Giving others space to be
The power of understanding
Appealing to human nature or the human spirit
Self-love as a social foundation
Somewhere between ideals & realities

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Culture, thought & coexistence

In life, what are we supposed to think? It must be this basic step behind existing as thinking beings: that we have a certain set of ideas in mind against which we’ll interpret all we come across. Like a lens or backdrop of unquestionable thoughts which colour everything we see and how we will see it. This underpinning language we speak that ensures we’re all, more or less, on the same page.

What is that worldview? It must be that many of us, especially now, are walking around with quite different ideas in mind – looking out at the world differently and responding to it in different ways. As if we’re all starting to speak an increasingly personal language; perhaps struggling to relate to those operating from slightly or dramatically different perspectives. Isn’t it all about communication?

If culture’s a language – a broadly accepted and agreed upon set of ideas and their meaning – how can we now talk to others? Sometimes it must seem we’re simply in different worlds, seeing different things and drawing them together into quite a different sense of what’s going on and what matters most. This disconcerting feeling that we each have somewhat different realities within our heads.

Looking to the past, it seems convention once gave societies much simpler, more controlled versions of events: accepted narratives that may have served to unite people in one, broadly coherent conversation. As if, stuck on the railroads of established thinking, we could at least move forward together. Limitation or control perhaps giving strength and direction to whatever path we were walking.

Not to say we might be better going back to that; but where do we go next? In place of certainty, it seems we now have doubt and argument: all struggling to have our version heard and, hopefully, accepted. As if “meaning” is now built from the consensus of he who shouts loudest or crafts the most powerful case.

What happens to society if we all go our own way? As if the contents of our thinking don’t shape the reality we share. Won’t we fall out of step with one another? Perhaps ignoring those we can no longer speak with so easily; imagining that fear of rejection might coerce them to give up their own ideas and join us. Culture, then, as a battleground carving us all up into new tribes by our thinking.

Aren’t our ideas a frame for understanding the past and approaching the future? The story we accept and make our foundation – an overarching backdrop into which everything else must fit. How’s that to work if we’re all choosing our own perspective? Globally or personally, are we ever right to push our take on events over that of others? In many ways, it seems such a recipe for conflict.

Given we share space, within which our ideas bear consequences, what kind of conversation is this to be? Within our own heads or between us, the ways we approach reality must carry quite considerable weight.

Notes and References:

Seeing what things mean
Threads, becoming a united whole
Living through the changes
Somewhere between ideals & realities
Channels of information
Being conscious of our constructions
Can each be true to themselves?
The thinking behind technology
Deepening understanding
Life as adjustments in meaning

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The courage & pain of change

Thinking of how things change, it seems such a complex process fraught with risk, courage and, potentially, pain. Isn’t it almost always a case of rejecting something we previously thought to be true? This mysterious process of examining our own behaviour, our thinking, to reach the point of somehow deciding to do differently – extricating ourselves from the ideas which formed us to choose our own.

Yet, as thinking beings, how can we do otherwise? It seems strange that, despite our capacity to think for ourselves, we might never challenge what we were handed; that “being human” might simply mean carrying forward whatever ideas were already here. Still, it can’t be easy to raise yourself above the thinking surrounding you and decide to think differently: where do we stand to do so?

Almost as if we’re in this sea of ideas – those informing the systems supporting our existence; those predominating within our culture or society; those people with influence over us felt worthy of passing on – and need to somehow see clearly what it is “we” should do. Isn’t that what we offer, as humans? Our understanding; our judgement; our choices between available options.

In that, how are we to stand against what went before? To decide that, in our eyes, things seem different and, despite standing on the shoulders of the ideas and individuals that brought us here, we feel other paths are those we should now be taking. Maybe that’s simply progress? Seeing reality with fresh eyes.

At this point it does just seem we stand within potentially flawed thinking and the compounded problems that’s created – this whole inertia of “how things are” that’s often falling short of our ideals. As if we’re standing in this fast-flowing river of strange choices as our global world merges and our ideas must rise to match it.

How are we to navigate that convergence? Consider things from all perspectives while heightening our own awareness of our thinking, where it came from and what its aims were. Isn’t that what the modern world asks of us? To broaden our horizons, put ourselves in others’ shoes, and see how everything looks from there.

On any level, though, change – abandoning old ideas to weave in new ones – is confronting. Inevitably, there’s resistance in going against the grain of expectations or explaining yourself to others. Then, the loneliness of feeling misunderstood or cast aside by those not seeing the value of your path. And, frustration at the weight of this collective challenge before us and difficulty in getting even one person to shift their thinking.

While trying to make reality match our ideals takes courage, isn’t it also fairly likely we’d be hurt by the process? That, knowing what people are like, we may feel disappointed we tried. That, our desire for improvement upsetting the balance, we’ll come upon that immovable mountain of others, perhaps naturally, digging in their heels. If we’re convinced things matter, though, perhaps it’d also be best to find a way through.

Notes and References:

Somewhere between ideals & realities
Any choice but to take a stand?
Ways of living in the world
Gaining clarity on the choices before us
Bringing things into awareness
Will things change if we don’t make them?
What we create by our presence
Is telling people what we want to be true a lie?
The value of a questioning attitude?
Respect, rebellion & renovation

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Life as adjustments in meaning

Imagining life as this intersecting network of all the lines of meaning established between us – all the places where things meet and judgements are made over the social, cultural, economic or deeply personal elements of any existence – how are we ever to find the right balance within it all? The mind may happily assign labels and values to everything it sees, but to what extent is that picture it’s creating truly real?

Sometimes it just seems we’re comparing things that cannot be compared in this impossible conversation that never quite touches reality. As if, looking from all these angles, we’re not yet bringing things together with an overarching meaning that actually works. All our perspectives, more often than not, jutting up against each other in an impasse we cannot resolve.

Especially now we’re drifting into such a personal sense of life’s meaning: each person developing their own culture, their own value systems and priorities, their own idea of what’s right or best. How often are we really talking about the same things on the same terms? Are we “right” to shut down anyone not seeing things as we are? Where does it lead?

There seem so many times where the messages we receive about something’s worth stack up strangely against how we might feel about its real value. Times we’re left with the jarring dissonance of our views being misunderstood, undervalued or cast aside by those we’re with. Say, over the environment, the balance of the social with the economic, the value of self, or any number of other valid concerns.

It pervades every conversation: words are spoken and the assumptions beneath them – the nuanced shades of tone or subtle assessments of any given item’s value – speak volumes about how things are seen, treated, admired or dismissed. Listening, all you might hear is the discordant jangling of things that aren’t being thought through or valued rightly within the everyday conversation of modern society.

Maybe it’s something we just have to live with: the thinking that lives in the systems surrounding us filtering into the minds of those living within them. What choice do we have? Many ideas don’t seem open for renegotiation. We might look for our meaning or worth in how we’re reflected in the eyes of society, culture or the minds of our peers, but I’m not entirely sure those are set up to value things fairly.

Seeing life as a web of the personal “meeting” all that’s around it – these inherited systems, ideas and judgements of anything’s worth, power or consequence – might we not simply drift toward those sharing our views, speaking less and less to those who think differently, until our thinking becomes unchallenged? Living in our own world, our own version of reality, where meanings are agreed upon.

If the self, the mind, is our way of understanding society and where we stand, how are we to balance our own sense of worth, value or potential with all these ideas that are hemming us in?

Notes and References:

If environment shapes us…
Seeing what things mean
Threads, becoming a united whole
Deepening understanding
Working through mind & society
Is there any end to the power of thought?
The struggle with being alive

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Self-love as a social foundation

While there are clearly many things that could occupy our time or thoughts in life, how well’s any of it really likely to work out if our existence isn’t built on foundations of self-worth? Wouldn’t everything be on shaky ground if people were forever seeking the security of feeling we had the right to occupy our space and share our thoughts? As if we’d always be seeking something to lean on.

Almost as if our psychology might be inextricably bound up with the idea of love: the acceptance, nurturing interest and recognition of feeling that “we” are worthwhile; our innate qualities valuable; our very existence important for the world around us. That we’re not just some accident of consciousness so much as developing beings worthy of the utmost reverence.

As individuals, don’t we need space to be who we are? To unfold ourselves, understand what life is, and find opportunities for exploring and expressing our true nature while we contribute to building up this vast social world we’re born into. Hopefully, a space of curious understanding rather than oppressive control – somewhere we can unravel, discover and grow.

What’s it like to feel you’re never enough? That you just don’t have whatever is being deemed valuable: money, looks, youth, style, intellect, humour, confidence. There’s always going to be “something” we don’t have; something that’s simply not part of who “we” are and all we have to offer. Aren’t we all different? It seems only natural.

And who’s to say the world around us values rightly? That all we’re encouraged to admire truly deserves praise. As much as it might be lucrative for people to feel perpetually insufficient – especially if, holding to these impossible standards, we spread such thinking by way of our criticism – it seems likely this world could then be torn apart by our frustration at perceived imperfections.

Few people or attributes really seem that easily perfected, either. Chasing ideals or beating ourselves and others up for not yet having reached them seems such a recipe for disaster: that we might torture ourselves with idealistic notions, making “that” the pre-requisite for approval, love or respect. If humans are – and, generally always have been – flawed, what happens when society is arranged this way?

My point being that the human psyche seems to find a strange sort of home in the modern world – a place where all its flaws or struggles are somehow labels for how much we’re worth and ways others will judge us. As if, all around us, these impossible ideals forever taunt us with our quite natural imperfection or incompleteness. As if we’re never quite enough because we can never “be” everything. We’re just “us”.

Treating ourselves with nothing but love, wouldn’t we accept nothing less of others? From our own secure foundation, naturally seeing others with the same respect. This reciprocal recognition of innate human worth, where all our inevitable flaws are simply steps on the path of realising whatever might truly be valuable and worthwhile in life.

Notes and References:

What’s at the heart of society?
Looks, human life & all its worth
Can each be true to themselves?
Belonging & believing
Integrity and integration
All that we carry around with us
Value and meaning in our lives
How would we like to live?
Love of self

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Can you be social when you’re alone?

Is it possible to be sociable while you’re alone? Wouldn’t it almost be existing in a bubble of our own projection? Any connectedness or relationship only, perhaps, a figment of our imagination. Not that it “has” to be that way, but don’t our own thoughts have a tendency to occupy our minds a lot more than anything else?

Increasingly it seems we might live within realities of our own making – caught up in the narrative of our own personal movie, where each of us is the leading character and star of the show. As if “everything else” simply plays whatever role we’ve cast it in our storyline, rather than having an independent existence in its own right. This sense in which “life” is what we make of it: what we believe things mean for and about us.

Perhaps, as self-conscious beings, we have little choice? Naturally, our point of view seems likely to be our own: our situation, our concerns, our path, our relationships, our interests, our struggles, our feelings. The mind – the mental space – serving “us” by orienting everything else in relation to our own existence and understanding.

That we live in our own consciousness, our own perceptions and interpretations of their meaning, while the world, refracted through that lens, becomes our own version of events. In that, how much can we ever really know anyone else? Get past our own idea of “who they are” to meet with the reality of another being who’s just as complex as us.

Given the depth of human experience, how are we to go beyond that surface and create a sense of “who someone is” that’s flexible yet realistic enough to withstand any tendency to label, reduce or oversimplify the fluidity of all anyone actually is? Or, overcome our perhaps equally natural inclination to mainly view others in relation to ourselves: who they are to us, how much we have in common, or what we could gain.

Sometimes it seems we’re in perpetual competition over who gets to speak, to exist, within social interactions. As if we’re barely listening while we wait for the chance to be heard. As if others are only allowed as much space as we are in this strange balance sheet of mutual appreciation or mutual suppression. Maybe it’s simply hard to let another version of reality exist in our presence? Especially if we’re not entirely alike.

Communication and relationship can start to seem increasingly complicated, given how much our ideas and identities matter to us all. How, then, are we to truly know who others are? Get beyond our idea of them to flesh out that flattened image of their living personality. Let the past go to leave space for what’s happening now to emerge before our eyes. Don’t we all seek recognition? To be known by others.

It just seems, especially with technology, that we’re often thrown back into our own minds and ideas; leaving less and less room for seeing people as they really are.

Notes and References:

Can “how we relate” really change?
Might we lose our social muscles?
These ideas we have of one another
Giving others space to be
Words & relating as paths to change
What does it mean to be tolerant?
Do we live in different worlds?
Ways of being & what’s getting left out
Can each be true to themselves?

Ways to share this:

Being conscious of our constructions

How aware are we of the realities we’re living within? Their initial reasoning, their alternatives, their implications or risks. All these activities we’re engaged in that somehow weave their ways into, behind and throughout our increasingly common existence. From the “simple” societies of times past, how did we get to this point? And, how’s what we do now perhaps different from all that went before?

Sometimes it seems we’re living in a building we’re forever constructing. That, while the structures are there, we’re always needing to reinforce the walls, the functions, the purpose of it all – filling it with our understanding, our intention, our commitment to upholding all that’s important within the social forms we received from the past. This ongoing maintenance that perhaps goes along with almost anything in life.

Aren’t we handed many, many things by society? Its patterns, stories and standards becoming the habits or beliefs which shape our existence. Almost as if there’s this reciprocal relationship between self and society where forms and ideas surround us and we make our choices within them. Society as this environment we’re born into, much as we are into nature.

In many ways, we seem defined by it: by the opportunities and thoughts available for us to engage with. That we’re living in this manmade world of social structures, needs, laws and desires where things play out as they will, given the human nature which fills them. As if society is built for, around and upon us; the choices we make within it being the world we then inhabit.

How “are” we to fill it? Thinking mainly of ourselves and the life “we” can carve out? Looking to the system as a whole – the healthiness or viability of this overall way of life? Focussing on the edges and how “this” sits alongside others and all that our lives rely upon? Considering how things “work” from any conceivable perspective? Holding to our highest values and how they might best find full expression here?

It sometimes seems that life’s meaning is a question “we” must answer: that we’re not handed the formula, the structure, so much as asked to engage in its active creation. That we’re perhaps not “right” to simply go along with things and make of this what we will – passively accepting the world as we found it – when we could serve to insist on everything working well from all angles.

I think it taps into that niggling question of life as a conversation we step into – that we’re called on to respond, to craft our own statement of life’s meaning through the choices we make. That our participation is what makes all the difference as to the direction things are likely to take: our sense of what’s acceptable or admirable informing the reality we’ll then live within.

Much as self-interest might also define us, grasping what our lives are serving to create – and, concerning ourselves with all the details – seem just as fundamental to the idea of being human.

Notes and References:

Things with life have to be maintained
The beauty in home economics
Culture’s conversation as a way of life
If environment shapes us…
Shaping the buildings that shape us
What are we building here?
Losing the sense of meaning
Understanding what we’re all part of
Conversations we agree to have
And, how much can we care?
Nothing short of everything

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