Author: admin

The thinking behind technology

If how we think about things, in turn, shapes how we see and respond to them, what does it mean if our lives are increasingly mediated by modern technologies? Almost as if our perception and interpretation of events is now being informed by the very specific ways of thinking that helped build this technology and carve out its place in our lives – the design of it all.

We must be being “trained” by these things: our own ways of thinking subtly reshaped the more we interact with any given piece of technology, until we might struggle to live life without it. Don’t we get acclimatised to every application or operating system we use? The assumptions and logic behind them becoming this unquestioned sense of how things are and should be.

Might it not be that we simply start to “see” life that way? Thinking about all our relationships, choices and experiences in terms of how they’re presented to us – how we’re being guided to see them. All these strange ways the language of technology has been slipping into our language in life over the past few decades: comment, chat, cancel, like, swipe, delete, share.

As if we’re really starting to see things this way, recasting the whole of reality in light of how it’s been presented. The meaning or importance of each aspect of existence perhaps getting shifted in new directions; drawn down certain channels until, over time, we forget things used to be done other ways. Sometimes it seems like a form of behavioural control: all of us isolated, being reprogrammed by our devices.

Isn’t the thought behind how we live quite fundamental? The meanings and conventions of everyday life essentially “being” what life is, where it leads, and the sense we can make of it all. All the details of our lives coming together into this picture full of purpose, function and intention as humans collaborate and relate themselves to one another in the pursuit of mutually beneficial outcomes.

The meaning of it all – the ideas we have in mind – can’t be unimportant? This sense with which everything we do is accompanied by some kind of thought about why, what it means, how it helps. Our understanding of life hopefully trickling down to inform all the decisions and activities we make part of our lives; everything having its place and serving its purpose, either individually or collectively.

It just seems so strange to think that algorithms might be redesigning our lives, our shared existence and who we are as people. That all the complexity of human societies might be reduced to some codified version of themselves which then evolve in weirdly distorted ways. As if the tried and tested fabrics of our lives might be rewoven in all these new patterns; potentially lacking the truth or meaning they once contained.

There might be very little choice now over the roles technology will play in our lives, but aren’t the thoughts we have in mind distinctly our own responsibility?

Notes and References:

Social starting points for modern ways
Losing the sense of meaning
Is this the ultimate test?
“Response Ability” by Frank Fisher
Where would we stand if this were lost?
Too much responsibility?
Seeing that things mean
Does technology oversimplify things?
Learning all we need to know
If environment shapes us…

Ways to share this:

Somewhere between ideals & realities

Is it that we’re always living somewhere between ideals and reality? All things existing at some point on this scale from the beautiful, rarefied world of philosophical concepts all the way down to their often-flawed implementations, within which we tend to find ourselves tangled in the real world. As if we’re all living in some imperfect version of the dream – the imagined and hoped-for manifestation of perfect wisdom.

And, as humans, we can surely understand both: we can grasp how things “should be” and see all the ways reality’s falling short in so many aspects of our lives. The mind both thinks and observes; seeing the ideas and noticing the realities. Don’t we feel it? All the painful imperfection of inspiringly beautiful concepts somehow being distorted, broken or discarded at various moments within everyday life.

Maybe that’s simply where a lot of mental discomfort steps in? This build-up of all the times we’re seeing notions of kindness, fairness, respect, consideration, patience, interest, tolerance, reciprocity, honesty or concern fall away in the face of their opposite. As if reality’s almost this seeking of balance between opposing extremes: each day filled with moments where ideals should, perhaps, step in to guide our actions.

How “are” we to live in such a world? A place where what we know, feel or believe to be right is up against all these examples of completely different kinds of thinking. This sense in which the childlike desire for fairness and love is almost inevitably crumpled along the individual’s path to maturity. As if our ideals “have” to somehow be broken in order for us to live within society and accept its parameters.

Is it true? That there’s no place for idealism. No way in which we could string all of humanity’s finest concepts into some kind of workable configuration. No possibility of our lives unfolding in perfect harmony alongside countless others. As if we simply have to accept imperfection; our own minds perhaps forever taunting us over the niggling ideals we hoped would find their place in our lives.

It seems the kind of dissonance that could break the human spirit, wearing us down to the point of dejected fatalism. That the mind would be capable of seeing and appreciating such concepts yet destined to exist within their flawed manifestation. It seems likely to prompt either anger or resignation: the emotions sparked by this frustration striking out in fiery indignation or folding in to become bitter apathy.

Between those, hopefully there would always be points of engagement? Places we could discuss things and understand exactly how or why the realisation of our finest ideals presents such a challenge. Somewhere to insist on bringing those values to life and create awareness around all the fine lines crisscrossing every moment of every aspect of everything we do – and, all the problems that come by ignoring them.

Finding those places – countless as they may be – might be far from easy, but where are we likely to end up otherwise?

Notes and References:

Wisdom the world no longer gives?
Conversations we agree to have
Pieces of the puzzle
What’s at the heart of society?
Does money crowd out other values?
Seeing what things mean
Living through the changes

Ways to share this:

Nature, wisdom & leadership

What “is” the nature of our relationship with the world around us? Sometimes it seems we inserted ourselves into this really decisive position of being the ones who set things in motion. That, based on our present level of insight, we’re intervening and making changes that will inevitably play themselves out, one way or the other, throughout the course of time.

Which is what it is, I’d imagine. That’s the position we seem to hold: unchallenged beings capable of understanding, thinking, and planning action. As if “life” were, in some way, the testing ground for our intelligence; our ability to grasp complex realities and work both creatively and responsibly within them. That, hopefully, we would see the importance of every given thing and take great care not to damage the whole.

If we really understood everything, wouldn’t we know exactly what to do? How to act in regard to our surroundings. What each thing needs and how it’s likely to behave. Whether we’re talking plants, animals, weather, geology or land management, there’s always this question of how well we’re understanding where each thing fits, what its roles are, and all the potential risk any degree of imbalance might bring.

Almost as if – in this role we have – we must surround nature with our greater understanding of it. That, stepping into things, we become responsible for knowing what to do. As if we’ve taken on our shoulders the need to manage this wisely and rise to the challenge of really seeing that invisible bigger picture of what it all means and how much every single thing matters. Like a big cosmic jigsaw puzzle with high stakes.

It seems incredible, when you think about it: the responsibility lying in our hands. This sense of humans standing in relationship to everything around us – this huge give and take of all we gain from our environment and all “it” might gain or lose from our engagement. How we must somehow work with this leadership role that’s fallen to us and live up to all it entails.

Don’t we tend to assign everything its place in our version of events? Giving roles to animals through our agricultural, sporting, culinary or domestic arrangements. Making plants part of this aesthetic conversation of culture and lifestyle. Carving our way into landscapes to make space for our needs or take what we want. The whole of nature, seemingly, ours to do with as we please.

In a way, perhaps we’re giving direction to nature by assigning it all a purpose within our lives. Often, though, it seems things would run more smoothly without us. We seem to benefit most from the relationship; given all we take from the equation. Not least, perhaps, being the wisdom which we could potentially gain from witnessing the consequences of our actions and reflecting on the moral responsibility of it all.

Looking around us and seeing the feedback of causality, might we not learn to appreciate the value of what we didn’t know before?

Notes and References:

Our roles in relation to nature
Appreciating other ways of being
Nature & the fulfilment of potential
Green as an idea
Wisdom the world no longer gives?
Are we wise, living this way?
If environment shapes us…
Charting our own course

Ways to share this:

Seeing what things mean

As intelligent creatures, how often in life is it truly clear what things mean? Don’t our interpretations, along with the overarching picture into which we’re placing any given fact, effectively change the meaning we’re assigning? The human mind becoming this strange lens through which realities are filtered to the point of them coming to “mean” something to us as individuals.

Almost as if each community or culture gives us the code for how we should be seeing things – all the nuanced shades of interpretation we need to apply and the delicately significant order in which any conflicting priorities or values should be stacked up in our minds. The perspectives of any one group of people somehow having been honed into a fairly unified set of ideas about life and how it all works.

Then, this sense in which we had to be trained into any particular mode of understanding: what it all means and the options available for how we might respond. The conventions of our various cultures essentially, perhaps, amounting to ways of thinking about all the different aspects of life. Our ideas on relationships, speech, the individual, respect, authority, freedom, tradition, and countless other things all pre-defined for us.

Thinking of how each community has, over time, evolved to see life their own way, it’s almost as if humans have been forever breaking down the elements of reality then fashioning them together in all these specific interpretations of events. Each country, group, family or person having come to see life their own unique way – and, thinking things “had” to be done like that in order for life to hold the “right” meanings.

Bringing with it, of course, the fact that if others aren’t assigning the same meaning then intentions can easily become lost. Isn’t it all a form of communication? Something built upon common meanings whereby “what we mean to say” gets carried faithfully over to others. If we all assign differing meanings, is it even possible to understand one another? Almost as if we’d all drift into speaking our own distinct language.

The idea that we might be shifting toward living in our own versions of reality seems intriguing: that, within our various groups, generations or subcultures, we might all be crafting our own worlds while living alongside inscrutable others. As if many different versions of life’s meaning are coming to coexist between people with very little interest or capacity for bridging the divides.

If our thoughts create some sort of commonly held “web” around reality, allowing us to communicate about it in meaningful, purposeful ways, what would it mean if we each started to live in webs of our own making? Losing, perhaps, the sense of our ideas somehow needing to match or reflect realities – rather than amplify or distort them – if we’re to be able to talk and understand one another.

We might all be looking at things from different perspectives, but can we still transcend that to share thoughts about the same, one reality?

Notes and References:

If environment shapes us…
Pieces of the puzzle
Ways of being & what’s getting left out
Conversations we agree to have
What’s at the heart of society?
Seeing where others are coming from
Words & relating as paths to change
Nothing short of everything
Do we live in different worlds?

Ways to share this:

Do we need to understand the past?

How much do we need to understand all that’s gone before us? All the ideas, events, experiences or intentions that invariably shape so many details of our everyday lives in the present. Sometimes it seems easy enough to forget about it, to say there’s more than enough in the present to occupy our minds, but what does it mean to do that? What are we leaving behind if we simply plough on with “how things are”?

It’s interesting to imagine how much the past influences us – to what extent we’re effectively living within all of the thought processes preceding our own. All those projects, theories and solutions others dreamt up and set in motion around various aspects of our lives, subtly informing the ideas we have in mind as much as the systems we’ve woven into each day. That whole convoluted heritage of human society.

Of all the thought flowing through our history, can we really just pull the plug and forget about it? All those intriguing ways ideas spread, grew, cross-pollinated and evolved through various communities, places and periods of time. Things hiding away, forgotten about, only to emerge at later moments in new forms; taking people on different journeys to arrive at different points. All the errors and successes of those paths.

Isn’t it an incredible, weaving conversation? All the minds that’ve been inspired by certain ideas – notions that’ve spawned civilisations and galvanised people to fight for specific principles, ideals or ways of life. Thought, in strange ways, having woven its way through time to the point where we’re each standing in the present day.

The idea that we might now step away – break the chain of understanding and transmission – to walk forward with only the fruits of modern civilisation sometimes seems strangely daring: can we cut those ties and be sure of where we stand? If history’s the arc of all the beliefs, facts and forces that’ve led humanity to this point, what would it mean to leave that path with only our currently accepted narratives about it?

Would we still have a thorough enough understanding of existence and the modern world’s place within it? Will we still have enough knowledge to constructively engage in redressing whatever pressing matters still need to be addressed? If the past’s a mysterious place filled with distant personalities, trains of thought, ideas and their imperfect expression, can we still grasp the full complexity of it all?

Sometimes it seems the past is simply a complex jumble with “truth” buried somewhere within it – ideas that might’ve been working themselves out behind the scenes, hoping to make their way through and into our lives. Also, that modern life’s convenient retellings might sometimes be clouding over the reality of it all with strange assumptions, conclusions or implications. As if our true path, the value it holds, may be obscured.

If the past’s a chain we hold our place in by understanding, what would happen if our grasp of it became skewed, distorted or incomplete?

Notes and References:

Learning all we need to know
The thought surrounding us
Integrity and integration
Does technology oversimplify things?
Shaping the buildings that shape us
Learning from the past, looking to the future
Do the “lies” blind us to truth?
Detaching ourselves from the past
How fast can it all unravel?
How quickly things can change

Ways to share this:

Deepening understanding

It always seems strange, in a way, that something as “superficial” as art could effectively help deepen our understanding of things. This surface representation of how we see and interpret the world around us somehow being capable of adding new levels of meaning or awareness to our experience of life in general. As if it’s drawing things into focus – honing in on what it might mean to be human.

Of course, it might also be seen as a strangely exclusive, conceptual world full of its own terms, conventions and ways of talking about things so simple as light, colour, texture and perspective. As if the language of everyday life takes on all these precise meanings that could propel us away from a form of communication we might otherwise have found enlivening and valuable.

As with anything, there seems so much history to art that stepping foot into that world becomes daunting; as if we’re simply bound to reveal our ignorance and feel oddly at sea in a conversation whose language we never learnt. Hasn’t almost every area of life progressed to oddly specific places? Everything carrying this volatile weight of the past, with all that comes along with it: groups, arguments, sides.

Maybe it’s that language, like art, sits on the surfaces of deeper realities? Our words referring to a whole world of history, just as the artistic world rests on the long conversations that precede it. And then, beneath it all, there’s simply the question of “reality” and how we see it – how we come to describe in words, forms, thoughts or feelings the impression we have of all that’s around us.

Isn’t life all about how we’re seeing things? The sense we make of our surroundings using the ideas, interpretations or conclusions passed on to us. Our ability to see – to notice or understand – things perhaps shaped by all we’ve been told about what matters, how it connects and what it’s all saying. As if all we have in mind is informed by this conversation we were drawn into from birth with all of its preconceived notions.

Almost as if art might be trying to creep into our brains and find that place where thought and perception combine; challenging us to reconsider how we’re seeing and interpreting reality. This sense in which it’s forever placing other peoples’ perspective in front of us, asking that we see life with their eyes and grasp whatever meanings they were hoping to convey.

Which, in many ways, seems so human: this desire to communicate beyond the confines of our being. Each person seeing and assigning meaning their own way; hoping that others might experience life through their eyes and feel it with their thoughts. As if we’re trying to delve into the intricacies of perception and the sense we’re making from it – the way people see things and the things which matter to them.

Might it not be that unpicking that fundamental sense of “meaning” somehow deepens our ideas around being alive?

Notes and References:

The thought surrounding us
Thought, knowledge & coherent vision
Is there any end to the power of thought?
Do we live in different worlds?
Where do we get our ideas from?
The wonderful precision of language
Beauty is truth, truth beauty

Ways to share this:

Wisdom the world no longer gives?

Thinking of wisdom as knowledge known in advance – that which helps us avoid mistakes despite our ignorance – is that simply something this world can no longer give us? The certainty of Western thought essentially “being” that it’s based on what can be known from the evidence surrounding us plus the capacities of the human mind: logic, reason and physical matter.

Isn’t it that we stripped back all of life’s workings? Breaking things down, digging deep into every area, then developing theories that broaden our insights to form a solid enough foundation from which to build. This whole body of knowledge that maps the known world, telling us exactly that can be said about any given aspect of reality – all we can see, feel, hear, touch or experience.

Perhaps it’s the only foundation we could offer ourselves? Having discounted the spiritual – anything unobservable to physical senses – it seems all we’d be left with is to form knowledge of what we perceive and string those thoughts into reasonably all-encompassing theories about life, causality and how we should live it.

Can causality ever be known, though? Can we really foresee all the consequences of this way of life? Can logic come to our rescue in explaining exactly how these disparate actions will come together in the physical, social or moral world? When it comes to human society or the realm of nature, might there be too many variables for this form of knowledge to be truly helpful? Too many ways this could potentially go wrong.

Sometimes it just seems incredible how many aspects of life we’re unravelling to weave in new forms – all this innovation that’s changing the fabric of so many lives and so many places on the face of this planet. Changes seemingly wrought mainly for the purposes of profit or power in some ongoing quest to conquer as much of the world as is possible.

Won’t there be consequences? Things we might wish we had known to avoid in advance. Yet things seem to plough on until something has the force to stop them. So much that could be trodden underfoot or swept aside along the way: lives, hopes, species crumpled up beneath this way of thinking and operating. The answer seeming to be that causality, intention or responsibility cannot be proven.

Could we gain enough clarity to see the ramifications ahead of time? Somehow know in which areas to limit ourselves for the sake of completely unseen consequences in other areas of existence – other places, people or times. Knowing beforehand seems useful as learning after the fact leaves few opportunities for changes. But, as with tradition, how can we ever be sure what’s wisdom rather than caution, control or convention?

Within all this, how can we know? If, in a complex reality, thought can’t necessarily warn us what’s best in advance, are we simply destined to walk paths of confident error, denying responsibility for the consequences trailing behind us, rather than heed the fearful regurgitated whispers of established wisdom?

Notes and References:

Charting our own course
Information might be there, but can we find it?
Responsibility for the bigger picture
Can our thinking match realities?
Gaining clarity on the choices before us
How fast can it all unravel?
Nothing short of everything

Ways to share this:

Learning all we need to know

How, in life, are we to be sure of knowing all we need to know? Ideally, of course, we would: life would somehow prepare us for all we’d encounter by having furnished us with the concepts we needed to meet all manner of evolving situations. Each person having such a deep feeling for personal and social realities that we’d all know exactly how to respond to the inevitable challenges of life.

Isn’t that, in a way, what’s required? That the ideas we have in mind match up realistically with this world around us – this rapidly shifting set of interlocking scenarios and choices that, together, makes up the realities we all share. That our minds would be filled with healthy, constructive, reliable pieces of information that, together, constitute a helpful grasp of this undeniable complexity.

Don’t we need to understand exactly how it all fits? What things “mean” for individuals, social structures, and everything else our choices play into. How our own, personal realities and needs ripple out to affect others. The elusive and delicate balance that’s needed at each point where competing demands touch upon any given thing: all those places where us and others, past, present and future converge.

How else are we to live in the world, if we don’t understand what we’re doing and why? As if “all this” is simply meaningless, habitual acts that, together, make up what we call “life”: time spent, words spoken, impacts felt, steps taken, potential destroyed. What is it all? This body of humanity charting its courses across limited space and finite resources. How are we to explain our actions?

There must be fundamental concepts behind it – basic ideas of how to live and why it matters. Underlying currents of “what it is to be human” and how well that’s currently weaving its way through the lives we lead. Beneath the churning waters of every aspect of life, isn’t there some kernel of the human being? This unit from which we extrapolated the complications of modern global society.

And, presumably, youth’s the place for getting to grips with that: the developing human mind coming into contact with the riches of our merging civilisations to arrive at a thorough yet realistic sense for “life”. Each person making knowledge their own, working things out for themselves in the relative safety of childhood, in order to comprehend their place in the flow of events.

If we’re not figuring things out “then”, what will that mean for society? If people enter into it with an incomplete understanding, appreciation or mastery of all that’s required. This sense in which education’s helping acclimatise people to reality – bringing information, developing capacities – so as to avoid problems making their way into our futures.

Although, if we’re asking people to understand and take their place within systems that don’t entirely make sense, maybe problems also lie elsewhere? Even still, seeing what the aim was and working to ensure that that’s the future we’re helping create was perhaps always the point.

Notes and References:

Education as an understanding of life
Will things change if we don’t make them?
Passing on what’s important
How fast can it all unravel?
Rich complexity of human being
Nothing short of everything
Connecting truthfully with life

Ways to share this:

Is this the riskiest place we’ve lived?

Within the history of humanity, is the internet perhaps the riskiest place we’ve lived? In some ways it’s probably not, in that it sits within periods of previously unheard-of “peace” between our various nations. But, on the personal level, isn’t there quite a lot of risk involved in this way of life? Also, collectively in terms of the destabilising forces technology seems to be bringing along with it.

Maybe it’s simply a question around the nature of risk? The physical risks of societal instability or conflict; the risks that come where expertise, resources or infrastructure are lacking; the interpersonal risks when convention or values aren’t upheld. Life must “always” carry risk in various forms – all those points where things could strain, break apart or fall away to leave people exposed.

In the past, maybe those risks were simply different: more tangible and obvious within our environment as things we should shield against or avoid. Things like cold, hunger or violence that communities might strive against through their diligence, foresight and careful preparation. All the effort that must’ve gone into creating, sustaining and defending any way of life and the future of those living it.

Almost as if society must, in many ways, secure its future by ensuring that the things it’s doing are sustainable, reasonable, justifiable and clearly understood. This sense in which communities create their boundaries and pass on their thinking to those that follow – painting a clear picture of “what life is”, “why we live it this way” and “what’s needed to fill these forms in healthy ways”.

Modern life might’ve made all that less obvious – hidden away behind obscure screens or drowned out by all the sparkly, distracting things that now surround those arguably boring aspects of life – but, beneath it all, the fundamentals perhaps don’t really change. Human needs being what they are, is life mediated by modern technology ultimately making our lives any more secure?

Sometimes it seems we’re just having to juggle that much more risk, pressure and exposure through being online. That, beyond the “need” of having access to it, we’re also having to defend against attempts to undermine our security. And, that we’re effectively now “open” to the entire world; anyone being able to reach into the confines of our personal space and deliver messages directly into our hands.

Of course, it’s a reality we can’t – perhaps, wouldn’t – choose to unwind: the advantages it brings are so many it may be impossible to argue we should turn the clock back to simpler times. Perhaps its benefits and its challenges are simply equal? A reality we must learn to master while ensuring that the fundamentals of our personal and collective lives are being enhanced rather than stripped bare.

Don’t we need to acknowledge the risk, though? See and accept the potential “cost” of this, instead of thinking it’s just “how things are”. Given humans have never lived this way, understanding exactly what we’re doing and why it still matters must be incredibly important.

Notes and References:

Responsibility for the bigger picture
Treading carefully in the lives of others
Does technology oversimplify things?
Attention as a resource
Appealing to human nature or the human spirit
Going along with what we see
Charting our own course

Ways to share this:

Ways of being & what’s getting left out

Of all the possible ways to be human why zero in on any one particular style of being and make that “the way to be”? As if we’re really just looking for the perfect archetype, the perfect manifestation of any given attribute, rather than embracing the richness diversity confers to our collective existence and the ways in which rising to “meet” difference may even make us better humans.

And, from that starting point, there are clearly many directions this could go, but what’s on my mind at the moment is personality differences such as being reserved and thoughtful or gregarious and dramatic. These basic traits of how we are – how we see things and relate to the world around us – as explored in Susan Cain’s fascinating book “Quiet”.

Looking fairly broadly at introversion and how it sits within the West’s preference for overt individualism and self-presentation, the book paints an interesting picture of how well we’re actually valuing other ways to be human. Why would we praise just one way of being, labelling over a third of our community as in some way flawed?

At its core, it seems to touch on our relationship with reality: that some are more inclined to “go out” to the world and act within it, while others feel the world more strongly making its mark on them. Almost this basic stance of how we stand in the world, how it affects us, and how we find or establish meaning there. The myriad ways human minds meet reality and make sense of it.

Sometimes it seems, in every area, we operate on spectrums between whatever we define as the extremes. Each person, in any given scenario, perhaps shifting their self-expression to meet their environment: confidence, openness, observation, reflection and action altering along with our understanding of the situation. Like equalisers, attempting to balance the inner with the outer; self with other; listening with speaking.

It’s interesting, then, that we might completely discount those more inclined to quiet observation. As if we’ll only listen to those who play the game, join the fray and operate on those terms. Won’t that be pushing a lot of people off balance? Encouraging them to be different from who they are in order to have a place at the table. How would we ever get the best of anyone that way?

While it may not be the biggest problem in the world, doesn’t everything count? Ideally, wouldn’t human society embrace the perspectives of all those living within it – all the diversity community contains – so as to reach a fuller understanding of all it might mean to be human? Idolising one way of being over any other just seems destined to create division, impatience and pressure to conform.

Almost as if we might never know some people; never having found ways to communicate beyond our ideas of how things should go. Going past the limitations of our own being, maybe we grow to appreciate all the other ways to be humans.

Notes and References:

“Quiet. The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain, (Penguin Books), 2012.

These ideas we have of one another
Do we live in different worlds?
Sensitivity & the place for feeling
Treading carefully in the lives of others
Value and meaning in our lives
Everything culture used to be
Words & relating as paths to change

Ways to share this: