Author: admin

Hope as a force to lead us onward

Hope is this beautiful idea – hope can lead us forward, believing in what is possible, but it also leaves us open to disappointment if it’s wrongly placed. Without it, we’d be left thinking this is the only possible reality, that little or nothing can change.

We look at the world, we look at the individual, and both are almost undeniably flawed. We struggle to be all that we sense we can be, both on a personal level and more broadly as a society. Life seems a series of compromises as one by one our childhood ideals are broken or contorted. Our society doesn’t greet us and take us by the hand to work together for a better world, but seems to set us fighting one another for every rung of the ladder. Much of what ‘we’ do doesn’t really need to be done; it just creates profit or advantage on some level. Culture and advertising bombard us with unrealistic images, creating a market for these things and encouraging us to make personal comparisons (see Relating to cultural benchmarks). And with technology much is never forgotten, so that freedom to change seems harder.

At this point, the future of society – some say the world at large – is in the hands of humanity. So it seems we need to find some kind of hope there, in our ability to overcome what seems to be the inherent selfishness of “human nature” and create a better way forward.

This has headed in quite a bleak direction given the title of this post, but this is my point. Where can we place our hope? Can we believe in the potential of the human being? That to me is the essential question and many of the threads here I will be picking up again later this year. My earlier post Mental health relative to modern times also connects with this.

For me, despite all of the challenges and the darkness, I have deep faith in the human being, in our capacity to change and to connect with one another on the basis of the human condition we have in common.

I think the human being is the answer. We are undoubtedly the problem, but also the solution. Within ourselves it seems we must find the empathy, understanding, courage to cooperate and build a more human system that works for us rather than against, and respects rather than exploits the environment we depend upon.

And, for me, this is something we can start building on a smaller personal or community scale which also seems very hopeful.

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Relating to cultural benchmarks

I was reading some articles a while back about how young adults are struggling with feeling themselves capable and ‘grown up’ given the seeming impossibility of attaining the ‘usual’ benchmarks of ‘successful’ adulthood: home ownership, stable marriage, career security, etcetera. This got me wondering about what these benchmarks actually are, and what they really mean about us. Does a career define you? Does your self-image or social life define you? Do your relationships, family, health or fitness define you? Or are all of these things expressions of you?

With benchmarks, I suppose they are events or standards that we tend to measure ourselves by – some have them, some don’t; some want them, others may not; some assign deep meaning to them, others find it elsewhere. In a way maybe we all evaluate our personal worth against the absence or presence of these things and our views on that. Maybe we struggle our whole lives to attain or make our peace with what was possible for us according to such reference points.

Naturally, they seem to be historical constructions carrying with them social and cultural meanings of the past. It seems marriage used to be this sign of social status, recognition, maybe a moral or personal affirmation or judgement. Also that career spoke something of your character, your nature, your standing in life, your values and concerns maybe. And home seems to have demonstrated success, priorities, the face you present to others.

I suppose the essence there is that all this was seen to speak of inner qualities and contain an element of truth about a person. With modern life, I’m not sure the extent to which that remains true. Does home ownership really say that much? It often speaks more of opportunity; and while many still see value in crafting a certain aesthetic to demonstrate to others, I’m unsure how much that says of their true nature. Does a career really tell you much about a person? Sometimes it might, often it seems more of a pragmatic choice or one endured rather than embodied.

In all these things, maybe they define us in some sense and allow us to form some conclusions about a person; but I don’t know how much meaning is really contained within that now.

If in the past these benchmarks genuinely told society something about a person – signs of inner qualities flowing out and finding a place in the world – then I can see how they held meaning. But if they no longer necessarily speak of a person’s true self in that way, what is the value in assigning meaning to the more superficial considerations that money can buy?

Maybe there’s a way to step back, re-evaluate things, and see each person as a valid expression of their character, interests, situation in life. Listening to how people relate themselves now to these benchmarks in terms of values and life opportunities may contain more truth about a person and how they engage with their choices in life.

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Education, society & the individual

The subject of education has come up a couple of times so far and is of central importance in terms of the kind of society we are creating; for that reason, and in the light of Trying to understand our times and various other posts, it’s also a difficult topic to address.

Education, in principle, is the way in which we shape future generations – passing on essential skills and knowledge; sharing values, cultural artefacts, social realities; preparing individuals to find their place in our world. So clearly it’s under a lot of pressure in today’s changing realities, even without talking politics, statistics and accountability. It’s also the first point where government can really legislate on standards and address inequalities without interfering too directly into family life, and it seems a lot of complications arise from that direction.

So it’s a pretty important function, and also a pretty intense reality where everyone has their opinions and demands. More traditional folks fight to keep more classical elements, which some see as less obviously applicable to life; the economically-minded fight to prioritise qualities for the workplace; more spiritual, social or artistic types may prioritise a more human-centred, creative approach that allows individual qualities to flourish; others seem to advocate quantifiable scientific methods.

I wonder how all this appears from the child’s perspective – how they view the world into which they are being welcomed. It seems often there’s a disconnect between the organisation of the school and the realities of the family and of society; and if children hear a parent complaining at the expectations of the school – be that homework or discipline or other regulations – how does that affect the authority and respect of the teacher? Are we raising new generations to run the gauntlet between opposing realities? Is what we are doing, what we are imparting, important or something to be struggled against or belittled?

Teaching seems one of the more important, stressful, and derided professions in modern society – at the frontline between individuals and a troubled social reality of divergent opinions. Families are struggling, individuals are struggling, schools are struggling, society is struggling. Education and also Healthcare are two systems that seem to be feeling the pain of society most, as individual realities meet government functions. In both these I think the demands of our culture and society may be set against what is healthy and helpful on a personal or social level.

As I said at the outset, this is a challenge to address. Education is so tied into values, culture, reality, and hope. It’s where each individual finds and creates meaning, and comes to understand the world. It has to serve both the individual and society. It’s also an area of life where we struggle to be on the same page. It comes down to what’s important in life, what life is all about, and – as I’ve written in various ways – I’m not sure we have an answer to that yet.

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Waste and consumer choices

I essentially want to look here at cycles within Western society in terms of economic and consumer activity. Starting from the root of the word as ‘household management’, I tend to view economic activity as housekeeping or the process of managing natural resources.

It seems bizarre how even fairly recently “waste” as we know it did not really exist. It seems that food was grown fairly locally and bought in its rawer, unpackaged state. Clothing and possessions were fewer and treated with greater reverence and care. Property was maintained and designed to last. Materials were generally natural and could be repurposed – wood, metal, natural fibres. Then suddenly we are all generating vast amounts of waste, and in forms that cannot be reintegrated into nature. It’s quite an incredible shift really, and surely one that must be actively sustained by standards within the business world.

As an aside here, the book “Cradle to Cradle” by William McDonough & Michael Braungart is fascinating and challenging in this regard; and this topic also links with my recent post on “Small is Beautiful” regarding our treatment of natural capital and the principles underpinning our actions.

I also find it interesting that we demean those who perform the ‘menial tasks’ within our system, such as maintenance or production, when to me there is a real importance in taking responsibility for the full reality of a situation. In maintaining something, you gain valuable insight into the material reality of our choices: Is something nearly impossible to maintain in its intended state? Does it require unnecessarily chemical products or time to clean? Does it age well or seem designed to do the opposite? To me, it’s one of the contradictions of our society that we embrace consumerism but do not want to look at the consequences and learn from them. We get someone else to sweep it under the carpet.

As with most things, I see a real truth behind all this – that we are not looking entirely consciously at the system we are embracing; that we are not fully taking responsibility for the less glamorous realities of how it all works. Yes, we can make all manner of things. Yes, there are few limits to what we can envisage and create. Except the material limits of our ecosystem, the human limits of social inequality, the ethical limits of the world we leave behind us. Hopefully once the excitement of material indulgence fades we will begin to look and act more responsibly in terms of how we manage these things and the full implications of the choices we are making.

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“Small is Beautiful”

There are some books I simply love and this is one: “Small is Beautiful” by E. F. Schumacher. I considered writing this post purely on the tagline “A Study of Economics as if People Mattered”, but was won over by some of the ideas discussed in the first chapters.

In essence, the first chapter looks at our economic system and its treatment of ‘natural capital’ as a foundation we both eat away at and mistreat through our interference: “Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.” Taking the natural environment as a given or as a system we don’t have a strong duty to understand and maintain seems so relevant to ideas and conversations being held today, given that nature is an “irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing.”

At times it seems current debate gets derailed by trying to ascertain if we are directly responsible for climatic and environmental changes, or whether they are natural occurrences. For me this slightly avoids the issue of the nature of our relationship with our environment, the fact we know it to be a delicately interwoven ecosystem, yet how we persist in careless practices ‘until evidence definitively proves otherwise’. Surely the wiser move may be to accept that we are acting out of balance and, rather than wait for the consequences or a more fragile reality to wake us up, to develop more integrated and wholesome practices now?

Chapter Two then looks further at our ways of being and whether this can lead to permanent peace: “The modern economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy, and these are not accidental features, but the very causes of its expansionist success … If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing less than the collapse of intelligence. A man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things as they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness, and his very successes become failures”.

Schumacher goes on to challenge the notion of prosperity as a goal, calling for a return to wisdom in the search for a more peaceful co-existence through economic activity built on sounder principles. It’s a challenge to summarise this writing, as the ideas are dense and well-argued, but these chapters seem increasingly relevant to the situations we are finding ourselves in now.

I’ll likely revisit this text later as the chapters on Education and Technology are also timely, but I think there’s great value in exploring this book as a way of looking at modern activity with fresh eyes and evaluating which ideas still stand up well in that respect.

Reference: “Small is Beautiful. A Study of Economics as if People Mattered” by Dr E. F. Schumacher (Abacus edition, Sphere Books, London) 1974.

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Natural World

Often in life I look to the natural world as a metaphor of sorts to understand the way things are and how they relate. This is the inclination behind much of the photography that’s accompanied my posts so far: the beauty of forms and colours, the processes of growth, the wisdom behind the seasons and relationships of nature. So I’ve planned a few posts to address this more directly, for those so inclined to join me.

To me, there’s an inherent power and truth in nature – the consistency of the days, the seasons, the years; the honesty and beauty of the markers of time, be that cherry blossom, falling leaves, or holly; the social rhythms and cultural traditions accompanying the changes in nature; the amazing truth that our day-to-day realities are as they are because of the movements of an almost unimaginable planetary reality. We might complain about the weather or the seasons, but we exist within this incredibly complex system of warmth and cold, light and dark that shapes our daily lives and the nature we see around us.

Equally how we look at that, how we talk about it, the extent to which we acknowledge and tend it interests me greatly. Often I find people dismissive of my wonder at nature – “it’s just the position of the sun when it rains”. I’m not sure where that arises, maybe because we can understand things on a material level we then tend to reduce phenomena entirely to that knowledge? Maybe there is little place for wonder and beauty in a rational society, or more that we struggle to reconcile the two perspectives.

It’s funny how we complain about weather on a pretty personal, short-term basis – as if the winter were here merely for our inconvenience and discomfort, and the British summer mainly to exercise our capacity for disappointment. But surely the life of the planet depends upon this alternation of seasons and the ways in which that supports and manages ecosystems. And psychologically, if we weren’t cold would we appreciate warmth so much? The processes of alternation and change seem fundamental to human nature in a way.

As mentioned in Animals in human society, I wonder at the full degree to which our ways of living are built upon the assistance of animals and also of plants – the natural world as a whole. In some way we’ve risen above nature and maybe because of it, yet we’ve become somewhat dismissive of that because we understand it and we seem to view it as a resource, an inconvenience or a pretty backdrop.

So much in life seems to echo this experience of rhythms, transformation, and the tension and balance of opposites. Later I’ll look more at the place of nature within society, so this simply sets the scene for now.

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Globalised society finding its feet

There’s been talk lately of ‘the end of globalisation’ and what that means for the path of civilisation, interpreting last year’s events as signs of a reversion to more limited, national interests. That may or may not be true, as who’s to say what these democratic incidents really mean and what may rise out of them. How I see it is that we are all more interconnected as a result of globalisation and that will not ultimately change, but the relationships can become more mature and hopefully better.

Picking up from Trying to understand our times, it seems we’ve been creating this new globalised society of sorts and so much of how that fits together hasn’t yet been defined. We’re involved in this self-reflexive process of creating meaning out of this set of realities and, rather than asserting conclusions that do not exist, it seems we need to somehow articulate our various perspectives within it all and work to create a new code of engagement.

This is exciting, but also quite daunting. Communication and the process of change was my attempt to begin addressing what seems one of the major challenges of modern society.

Sometimes I wonder how far we’ve moved beyond schoolyard social codes, and indeed it seems many schools struggle to instil ethical boundaries in this respect. I’m referring to the basic models of the wounded bully, the cult of popularity, the effectiveness of “being good”, the wars of words, and the expediency of behavioural psychology in moving things forward rather than tackling the messiness of socio-emotional realities or moral ones.

Without communication, without mutual understanding, how can we create a globalised society that works? Surely it would simply be imposing a system onto others.

Cultural diversity is a beautiful thing, and differing social conventions are fascinating yet also challenging when it comes to global integration. How aware are we of the ways we’ve been conditioned by our own culture and of how this shapes our social and political engagement? Without being conscious of our own formative attitudes, we seem prone to judging others as “wrong” when they’re likely just shaped by different ideas. Unless we can talk about that, how can we move forward together?

It seems there are issues with the systems we’ve been working with, both within the originating societies and in terms of others struggling to integrate it with their existing values and practices. So it seems we need to reconsider, re-evaluate the essence of that system and, in doing so, rise to the challenge of communicating our ways of being and listening to those of others.

For me, globalised society is finding its feet: we have this new interconnection, this wonderful merging together of experience and outlook, plus all the challenges that throws up and the opportunities for creating something new. Who’s to say what that new system may be, but hopefully it’ll be able to incorporate diversity with greater flexibility and also be based on genuine cooperation and mutual interest.

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The challenge of community

Lately I’ve noticed various articles decrying the loss of community, be that the difficulties encountered by local businesses or the stripping away of local support systems and interconnections. It seems in many ways the traditional functions of community and local relationships are fading and being commodified into services or products. That may be slightly cynical, but it does seem distrust and the perceived security of the client relationship are replacing natural cooperation between people.

When I think about what community used to be, it seems it was a fairly static collection of people with a network of established relationships that people maintained and understood. It seems there was a hierarchy of sorts and also social convention that shaped interactions, creating trust. Much of life seemed mediated through community – celebration, the passing of time, social meaning, the processes of change.

Modern life seems to have stripped much of that back through social mobility, rising populations, remote and abstract economic activity, the changing structures of family and other social relationships, and the growth of technology. Much of the limitations and hierarchy seems to have gone, creating a slightly unnerving level of freedom but also the conditions for greater equality.

In our predominantly economic reality, it seems many of the old functions are re-emerging as business opportunities offering lifestyle, entertainment, maintenance, care, or security as services where I imagine much of that used to exist within the parameters of household, neighbourhood and community life. Even modern services such as counselling seem to replace natural social relationships and meaning, for example through the stability and honesty of social life.

Overall the sense of community seems to have drifted into a more isolated, transactional, problem-solving approach to modern life. Maybe it’s the lack of time, or the application of economic principles that outsource certain functions for efficiency, I’m not sure. But in essence it seems that human connections are disappearing and being replaced by economic ones.

Of course it’s harder to trust when community is now a large, changeable mix of people and social conventions are breaking down or undefined. And there are natural challenges to communication when so many aspects of life have changed so completely – that takes time, and time is something we don’t have in many ways.

As with everything, I’m not aiming to criticise so much as delineate what seems to be happening. Hopefully we can engage with these processes and begin to more consciously create and maintain these structures, rather than looking on local community as simply something that adds value to our real estate and quality of life. We are still groups of people living in places, and it would be nice if that human reality could be revived.

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Mental health relative to modern times

This is an interesting issue and one I want to do justice, so bear with me if you will.

It’s probably clear from topics I’ve chosen to write about and the way I do so that I don’t look at life “normally”. It’s been suggested I could write more punchily, give some slick solutions, engage more with the world of social media to grab people’s attention. But there are reasons I don’t, and essentially those reasons revolve around how I see life and human existence.

Posts about the Value of each human being, Happiness in modern life and Age, Image & Self Worth probably demonstrate that I look at life quite deeply, quite philosophically. Things I’ve written about Values and the economic and Trying to understand our times hint at how I see Western society as struggling and essentially needing change.

With this post, I want to look more at the mind as the part of us that seeks to make sense of reality and our position within it.

As I wrote in Spirituality since the 80s modern society essentially strips meaning out of life, yet we still exist within that as intelligent beings. We must look at the short-sightedness of economic activity and its environmental impacts; we must witness the dismissive attitudes towards so many human beings who are essentially no different from us; we must adopt a way of life – or resist one – that reduces our existence to financial transactions, self-branding, calculated and false human relationships, the unchecked amorality of technological progress.

That’s clearly a negative assessment of life, although it’s also pretty accurate, and I’m well aware of the wonderful opportunities modern realities offer us as well. As I’ve said in Media immediacy, I do see cause for hope through greater engagement with the challenges we face. As may be clear within Communication and the process of change, “Towards a New World View” and “Essays” by Emerson I have deep faith and interest in the value of each human life and our capacity to understand, to love, to overcome.

To me, we live in strange times where a kind of fatalistic and antagonistic materialism sets us against ourselves and others in a struggle to “win” at life. We have tools at our disposal now whereby we can connect with others as never before and master the material world in ever-new and ingenious ways. But we also struggle to stay human, to relate to others authentically, to listen and care, to take the time to fully understand in all our rush for progress. I’m sure we can. I’m sure we can pull back from the inertia of that and bring our humanity to bear more clearly. I’m sure we can find a way to manage things better and create more beautiful realities.

Maybe this is realism, maybe it’s idealism, or we could label it as depression but it seems a “sign of the times” and I believe there are deeply real, important messages nestled within it all – within how the human being responds to modern society and how, for some people, what they see and what it means can seem pretty unbearable.

The reason I’m linking here to most of what’s come before is that this view of life is at the core of what I’m trying to do here. I’m not giving you my answers, because they don’t really matter. I’m giving my questions, my thoughts on what I see, and also my belief that everyone can think for themselves and should.

We aren’t really encouraged to question what’s going on, and it’s getting pretty difficult to understand with all the distractions and pressures of today, but I suspect it may be worth our while.

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Attitudes to elder members of society

This may be a strange confession, but I often find myself feeling slightly envious of older people.

When I see an older couple dressed to take in a show, the man carefully tripping by his lady’s side and proudly holding her arm. Or an older gentleman greeting someone with a subtle nod or gesture. Sometimes in a supermarket when the chivalry extends to modern interactions with shopping trolleys and lane etiquette. Often when I see someone aging well – wearing beautiful shades for their colouring, somehow expressing both the grace of age and the playfulness of their youth in how they style themselves, or when the twinkle of someone’s eye lets you know they know far more than you’d imagine and that an intriguing personality resides within.

In part, I think it’s how they’ve time travelled from a different era. Elder generations have lived through so many different realities with style and character, and that’s often quite beautiful. It’s also connected to what I was trying to say with Age, Image & Self Worth – that there’s more to human nature than meets the eye. Overall though I just love self-expression and truth, so the blending of honest aging with the human values more evident in how we used to live was probably always going to be a winning combination.

Then I see elderly people seeming anxious in public, as if they feel alone and full of worries and uncertain who to trust or where to turn. Which I can well imagine – the pace of life and the way people relate has changed so much in their lifetime, and the tone of the news must seem frightening to those already feeling isolated and less able.

There also often seems a tone of condescension in how these people are spoken to, which concerns me at times as to me it’s more an attitude of respect or reverence that seems due. OK they might not understand about iPhones or Twitter, but technology is more an overlay of human activity not a reason to see someone as irrelevant or less human. They may talk more slowly, more deliberately, and look at life with different eyes – focussing on smaller realities, subtleties, concerns – but that may be how they see things.

Of course, there’s a communication challenge – younger generations live at a new pace and communicate differently apparently; modern life is demanding and incessant, so finding the time needed to connect across these boundaries is hard; and we don’t seem to live in a culture that prizes the art of conversation but rather the efficacy of whatever it is we are doing.

I would just love for society to genuinely value all aspects of life and give a real voice to that without falling back on stereotypes that discount the subtle strengths different generations offer.

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