Category: Culture

Emotion’s something we almost all have, tucked away somewhere or displayed up quite close to the surface. It’s probably one of our defining traits as humans: that we not only think but also feel about the life we’re living. Between timeless subconscious fears, emotions accompanying memory, and those tracking back ahead of future uncertainties we likely all have quite strong rivers of feeling merging within us in the present moment.

It’s a beautiful thing, that life should affect us emotionally – how it’s not just the cool head but also the warm heart that responds to the experience of being human. We empathise, sympathise, share in, and act out of concern for the inner lives of others. We can place ourselves in their shoes, consider how they’re feeling, and relate in ways that help not harm their path through life.

These days, much seems so cold, calculating and inhuman. Even our human encounters can come across as transactional and devoid of genuine warmth. For some reason it seems we’re approaching everything with the mind’s logic; confidently deconstructing and labelling others’ experiences, intentions and struggles with our own sense of what it all means and what should be done (Notes One).

We seem to be living in quite cerebral ways – everything run past the logic of the mind, as if that thinking should be guiding the heart. But, not to downplay the importance of clear, creative thinking in the slightest, the question of how best it relates to feeling doesn’t exactly seem clean cut (Notes Two). Should the heart be “allowed” to do as it pleases, even at the cost of reason itself?

It’s interesting to consider how we go about “being human”. Feeling’s a useful way of approaching life: letting things come to us in that human, compassionate, emotive form. But it can also billow up in seemingly uncontrollable, overwhelming waves that threaten our ability to keep a cool head rather than respond to its churning pull. Whether the head or heart “wins out” maybe some sort of ageless question.

And, in many ways, modern life seems pretty good at bringing something new to the table in terms of emotion’s realities. We seem to be talking more, breaking old conventions, acknowledging the difficulty of managing feelings. The inner life is much more laid bare, much more acceptable for the reality that it is. Seeing something, letting it be, finding the words to talk about it all seem so very important (Notes Three).

But then, what do we do with it for the best? Should we dial up emotion, live into it, really make a “self” out of it? The past might have relegated it to a stifled, repressed existence, but does that mean we should swing to the other extreme and let it all out? (Notes Four)

Finding the “right place” for emotion – channelling it to become a powerful source of wise intelligence for how we’re living – must be pretty crucial in responding well to all life’s inevitably throwing at us.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Frameworks of how we relate
Note 1: Strange arrogance of thought
Note 1: Humans, judgement & shutting down
Note 2: Working through mind & society
Note 2: How it feels to be alive
Note 2: Living as an open wound
Note 2: And, how much can we care?
Note 3: Complication of being human
Note 3: Does being alone amplify things?
Note 3: Conversation as revelation
Note 4: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 4: It resonates, but should it be amplified
Note 4: Living your life through a song
Note 4: Playing with fire?

How we face up to what stands before us seems the essential human question – we see, we think, and, somehow, have to decide what to do. Do we let the world throw us off course, hem us in, or otherwise upset our balance? Should we take “how things are” and “things that happen” as a sign for us to sit back and let things be? What’s another way of responding?

It’s perhaps the question of all philosophy: how to meet life; what it means; the choices and responsibilities we have, individually and collectively; and where it all leads. It’s the sense of humans in the world, surrounded by all that world cooked up before they arrived on the scene, and what we make of the place where we stand – the face life’s turning towards each one of us (Notes One).

With “The Obstacle is the Way”, Ryan Holiday’s offering up an impressive combination of Stoic wisdom alongside examples of people who’ve lived their lives by similar principles. Starting from the words of Aurelius – “The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting… What stands in the way becomes the way” – it develops the idea of transforming life’s challenges into useful steps along our path.

Divided into “objective judgement”, “unselfish action” and “willing acceptance”, the book pulls together many wonderful and intriguing stories of people having applied themselves courageously and creatively to the circumstances they found around them. It’s certainly interesting to think that the whole repertoire of human responses is open for us all to draw strength from.

Between it all emerges a sense of staying calm, seeing clearly, finding opportunities to grow through our difficulties, then committing ourselves to dismantling, going around or simply working with the obstacles in our way. An idea of calculated risks, boldly faced – understanding reality but not letting it hold you back from your aims.

It’s a narrative of relentless persistence, learning from feedback, doing our best, and using everything to our advantage – pressing forward to gain ground and respond well to whatever life throws at us. Then, the strength of not being discouraged even when living through darker times; falling back on the firm determination, resilience and preparation of our own inner fortress.

In many ways, it’s a beautiful picture of life and powerful mindset with which to approach it. Somewhere between the warrior and the statesman, it’s an interesting blend of philosophy, daring and diplomacy: seeing things for what they are; doing what we can; enduring what we must. It’s very practical, encouraging, and good at making you feel less alone in life’s struggle.

It’s not been my way of looking at life – questioning whether we understand rightly and what our actions will mean has been my preoccupation; as what’ll happen if we’re all pursuing our own, possibly mistaken, agendas this way? (Notes Two) – but, that said, the way this book depicts using such a philosophy to move forward in life is definitely worth bearing in mind.

Notes and References:

“The Obstacle is the Way. The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage” by Ryan Holiday, (Profile Books, GB), 2015.

Note 1: The sense of having a worldview
Note 1: Do we know what stands before us?
Note 1: David Bohm, thoughts on life
Note 1: The philosopher stance
Note 2: One thing leads to another
Note 2: Where do ideas of evolution leave us?
Note 2: Ways thought adds spin to life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes and References:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes and References:

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

What can we do when so many things, almost completely outside our control, keep assailing us? Situations, images, assertions, statements, facts, lies, retellings of things people have or haven’t really done. Perhaps, some version of the classic “fight, flight, avoidance” strategy? Deciding whether we can change things, accept them, or remove ourselves from the situation. But, does any of that truly solve anything?

If we were living in a world we could trust, maybe these things work (Notes One). If we could be sure our attempt to fight injustice would be met with a wisdom that acknowledged and stood alongside our indignation, restoring order and ensuring problems were rightfully dealt with. If we could feel that by walking away, keeping our head down or going with the flow others wouldn’t suffer from our lack of action.

Instead, it seems we’re living in a world that demands our engagement. The nature of modern systems makes almost everything we’re doing part of much larger global networks with tendencies toward greed, exploitation and various forms of destruction. Resting passively or turning our head away, we’re arguably still facilitating rather than challenging such realities.

If that’s the nature of life now, in all its relentless insistence, what “is” the right way of dealing with it? This unending flood of all that’s demanding our attention – things we should rightfully care deeply about – surely runs the risk of overwhelming our capacity for intelligent, balanced, reasonable responses (Notes Two).

Effectively, social infrastructure – the whole of “life” – is being dismantled and reworked around us while those responsible for doing so stand little chance of being affected by the fallout. We’re the ones bearing the stress and uncertainty of trying to safely navigate a shifting landscape. It seems we’re the guinea pigs, the canaries, testing out how viable all this is – the crumple zone of modern innovation (Notes Three).

It’s perhaps understandable that people rage, turn a blind eye, or suffer from the psychological pressures. Anxiety, depression, interpersonal tension, low tolerance levels and lack of consideration for others kind of make sense given everything we’re all under. Angry activism clearly has a context, as does careless social disengagement. But, potentially, these things compound rather than resolve our problems.

We all know what’s going on, and that it matters. If we’re to trust in the systems or companies governing our lives then they surely need to be trustworthy: acting out of concern for our reality as much as their own. There’s great responsibility to breaking society down and reconfiguring it around new ways of operating. Being sure those at the helm aren’t treating “our lives” as collateral damage seems so incredibly important.

Within all the awareness of and immersion in the troubled themes of modern living, where’s the answer? Can we do little but swing between idealism and despair (Notes Four), or is there a path of active engagement in constructing the solutions we all need? And, while we’re seeking that ground, what’s happening to our frayed nerves and relationships?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Trust within modern society
Note 1: What would life be if we could trust?
Note 1: Who should we trust?
Note 1: Trust in technology?
Note 2: Would we be right to insist?
Note 2: Freedom, what to lean on & who to believe
Note 2: Desensitised to all we’re told?
Note 2: Questions around choice
Note 3: All that’s going on around us
Note 3: Matt Haig’s “Notes on a Nervous Planet”
Note 3: Mental health as a truth to be heard?
Note 3: Concerns over how we’re living
Note 4: Effect, if everything’s a drama
Note 4: Do we know what we’re doing?
Note 4: Convergence and divergence
Note 4: Dystopia as a powerful ideal

Fully aware this is perhaps my bleakest post to date, these more optimistic ones may help serve to offset it: “Minding the Earth, Mending the World”, “Living Beautifully” by Pema Chödrön & This thing called love.

Can novelty, in itself, ever “be” meaningful? As in, the simple act of being new somehow being enough in terms of meaning. It’s a kind of creativity, I guess: this endless game of form, variety, imagination, relationship, commentary.

Sometimes, though, I wonder at how much of modern creativity and culture is generative or degenerative – are we engaged in bringing something new or perpetually revisiting the old? Sort of like magpies, pilfering the world around us for the next sparkly, remarkable thing. As if creativity were simply unearthing and reimagining what’s already here.

And that’s truly not meant critically as many beautiful and insightful combinations can come up that way, very much prompting us to look again at the world with fresh eyes. It’s almost like this ‘coming to awareness’ of the incredible treasure trove of pooled human skill and experience we’re now finding ourselves within (Notes One).

But is it all there is to creativity? To pull existing things into different relationships, creating new meaning through juxtaposition or the subversion of expectations. Isn’t it just a constant refreshing of form? A shoe, curtain or car forever reworked into slightly different but terribly significant new formats. This glitching, refreshing echo of the substance of the thing we’re always updating.

There’s clearly creativity there, but it seems more relative than absolute: that we’re pouring our ingenuity and attention into the pursuit of never-ending subtle or dramatic innovations. What does it mean to be forever churning out something new and, frequently, disposable? Gestures or trinkets that are over as soon as they’re current.

It’s surely so different from a world of valuing possessions, making things to last a lifetime and taking care of them so they do. Compared with that, the modern lifestyle seems an almost unnatural or self-indulgent way of operating: we have so many things but don’t care much for them, even if this game we’re caught up in comes at the cost of global environmental and social devastation (Notes Two).

The whole question of what we’re doing here can be such a fascinating but daunting question to ask: if we’re all here on Earth, why is “this” how we’re choosing to spend our time and resources? What does it all “say” about life and the value we’re assigning to things? As intelligent creatures, do we truly understand all we’re taking part in and what our motivations are?

Undeniably, though, we’re also social creatures and creative ones: we want to express ourselves, act on our values, be seen for the statement we’re making, and find our place through what we’re aligning ourselves with (Notes Three). Creativity’s a powerful force, wanting to take hold of the world and leave a mark. This act of bringing the unique self to life.

But isn’t this also a picture of exponential consumption, wastefulness and distraction from the ‘reality’ of seeking novelty for its own sake? There might be a degree of meaning within it all, but the wisdom of continuing this way seems increasingly questionable.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Do we need meaning?
Note 1: Culture as reflection
Note 1: Thoughts on art & on life
Note 2: Interdependency
Note 2: At what cost, for humans & for nature
Note 2: The insatiable desire for more
Note 3: Culture as what we relate to
Note 3: Definition, expression & interpretation
Note 3: The creativity of living

This very much picks up trains of thought started in Patience with the pace of change and Will novelty ever wear off?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes and References:

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

What “is” the best way of approaching life? Getting stuck into what’s around us or shifting out to gain perspective on issues affecting us all? In light of how, with greater or lesser awareness, all that we do feeds into complex global systems, whether we’re focussing on the immediate or the remote seems a pertinent question.

In practical terms, our agency’s perhaps most effective within our immediate environment. There, we operate within very real communities where our words and choices offer a living example of the impacts we’re all making (Notes One). How we live day to day, the attitudes and values we’re bringing to bear, paints a clear picture of what we see as important.

But then, without a sense for the bigger picture – ways all those actions form part of larger systems with impacts felt around the planet – we surely risk ploughing on in damaging ways, claiming we didn’t know. If we don’t think on the global scale, stretching our imagination to encompass the rippling consequences of accumulated small-scale choices, we’re perhaps not quite taking full responsibility for our lives.

Presumably, though, that’s a fairly recent way of thinking? Before the widespread application of modern technology, our choices likely didn’t create such coordinated impacts and, equally, we didn’t have the means to know of global trends and realities. Such awareness can only have arisen alongside all the processes of Western globalisation that began setting things up to work this way.

It’s intriguing how in the last hundred years or so the world’s been wrapped around by these ways of operating that, effectively, link all our lives into this very intimate, powerful, responsive web of interrelationships. Decisions made locally, by every household, feeding into social trends that bear extremely real consequences for communities, industries and ways of life in completely different areas of the globe.

That’s a lot to get our heads around as we go about our daily lives. On top of all the ways “modern life” is straining our own communities and relationships, it’s tying our actions into this almost-unimaginable set of realities we’re arguably also responsible for. It must be a completely new way to be human? And, potentially, completely overwhelming (Notes Two).

As an idea, then, “think globally, act locally” seems a great framework for awareness and agency: understanding what our choices feed into, we can begin operating intentionally on that level; seeing the importance of community-based actions, we can behave more deliberately there. Knowing we make a difference – that, despite time or distance, it all adds up – seems a powerfully realistic perspective on life.

But how manageable is this? Every choice weighed down with global ramifications, every area of life becoming a context for debate or action, seems a recipe for overwhelm. Who’s ready to bring acute awareness to every aspect of their existence? It’s the human mind turned inside out, seeing itself as part of a planetary whole. It’s a lot to take in. But it’s also the world we’re now living in.

Notes and References:

Note 1: “The Spirit of Community”
Note 1: All we want to do passes through community
Note 1: Passivity, or responsibility
Note 1: Invisible ties
Note 2: One thing leads to another
Note 2: Matt Haig’s “Notes on a Nervous Planet”
Note 2: Does anything exist in isolation?
Note 2: How important is real life?
Note 2: And, how much can we care?

Another post looking at how the scope of our ideas might inform everyday living was The sense of having a worldview.

In the past, I’ve been reticent about the reworking of mindfulness or other traditional practices for the modern world – the way whole bodies of understanding and context are snipped away, leaving neatly-packaged techniques for the Western marketplace. This idea of discarding the bigger picture of a spiritual mindset to offer products without the inconvenience of depth.

Perhaps it’s only to be expected though? Living in a society that’s dismissed any form of “belief” as unreasonable, there’s likely no room for bringing full systems of it back in to help us manage the psychology of living (Notes One). Maybe it’s only natural the West look around for specific activities that can soothe troubled minds and help us meet the world with a calmer, more compassionate sense of self.

Within all that, Pema Chodron does a wonderful job of making Buddhist thinking accessible and relevant without losing the greater sense of where these practices “sit” within that spiritual context. This stance of standing deep within her tradition, yet speaking in a way people can approach and gain something from without having to ‘go there’.

It’s as if she’s created a room on the edges of Buddhist thought where modern minds can enter, hear useful perspectives, and receive effective strategies for managing our lives. Without undermining the fact there’s ‘more to it’, she’s offering something our hearts and minds seem to need: “Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change”, although written in 2012, could hardly be more relevant to current times (Notes Two).

The basic premise is how “As human beings we share a tendency to scramble for certainty whenever we realize that everything around us is in flux… But in truth, the very nature of our existence is forever in flux… We seem doomed to suffer simply because we have a deep-seated fear of how things really are.”

And, in the face of that, “Is it possible to increase our tolerance for instability and change? How can we make friends with unpredictability and uncertainty – and embrace them as vehicles to transform our lives?” Basically, then, a question of how we should live. Life being, by its very nature, destined to pass and change, how can we understand ourselves and respond well to the world around us?

It’s an interesting challenge for the West as, really, we seem quite superficial – clinging to all these things and believing they somehow define us and make our lives meaningful. From the perspective Chodron offers, this life of fixed identity, attachment, and the strong emotions accompanying it might be better used as paths to awakening.

A picture of taking the self a little less seriously – defusing the bomb in terms of how we react to life – by committing to not cause harm, but be good to each other; to help others and ease suffering; and, embrace the world just as it is. As seeds of ideas that can clearly flourish into a complex spiritual tradition, these seem pretty solid principles for how we might decide to be human.

Notes and References:

“Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change” by Pema Chödrön, (Shambhala, Boston), 2012.

Note 1: Do we need meaning?
Note 1: Mindfulness, antidote to life or way of being
Note 1: “Spiritual Emergency”
Note 1: Power in what we believe
Note 1: Spirit as the invisible
Note 2: What really matters
Note 2: The power of understanding
Note 2: Do we know what stands before us?
Note 2: Ways thought adds spin to life
Note 2: The sense of having a worldview

What’s the West built upon? Surely, on history – this flow of time and ideas that became a way of life. It’s intriguing, really, that thoughts get picked up, reworked and taken in new directions to become, perhaps, quite different from how they started.

Mulling over the ideas behind how we’re living is fairly common here (Notes One), but one book that’s made more sense of things than many others is “The Quest for a Moral Compass” by Kenan Malik. I’d turned to it wanting to better understand the reasoning behind modern notions of morality, not realising it’s a line of enquiry that tracks alongside the whole “project” of the Western world.

The book charts the course of moral thinking from Ancient Greece to the present day, with Chapter Thirteen “The Challenge of History” focussing on three thinkers who’ve strongly shaped many recent theories and realities: Hegel, Rousseau and Marx. Isolating one chapter from the overarching sense of development Malik so impressively builds up isn’t fair, but it does seem to represent a turning point.

Hegel saw history as unfolding cycles of growth: “Each social form throws up internal contradictions, the resolution of which leads to its inevitable transformation into the form that succeeds it.” A viewpoint arising very much in parallel to the Romantic movement’s questioning of human freedom or “enslavement” within social structures.

It’s a narrative of society walking its path alongside individuals, with the main philosophers of the time battling it out over the best way to balance human nature with the “needs” of society itself. Discussions of right and wrong having, then, to delve into what it is to be human and what’s justifiable in pursuing collective aims.

Because, paraphrasing Hegel, we exist within community: “I become conscious of my self only as I become conscious of others and of my relationships with them”. Individuals making up society yet the state seeking to shape us for its ends is so circular, but maybe that’s simply the crux of human development: how we might exist and fulfil ourselves without causing problems (Notes Two).

A train of thought leading, almost inevitably, into the territory of money, with Rousseau seeing private property as a fundamental source of inequality and oppression. Letting people own what are, undeniably, limited resources within a community – be it global or national – does perhaps seem a recipe for division between those who follow.

Reasoning Marx then developed further into a materialistic depiction of unfolding, earthy struggles for power with morality as a means of control or justifying the means to an end. Grappling with ideas of human identity, worth and the value of labour, Marx apparently set earlier idealism ‘on its feet’ with this pragmatic view of social shortcomings.

Capitalism evidently created problematic divisions, with Marxism unable to offer a viable alternative. As Malik demonstrates, though, ideas have perhaps always been evolving as we seek to find the “correct” configuration for a society that’s able to maintain itself while simultaneously allowing all its members to flourish.

Notes and References:

“The Quest for a Moral Compass. A Global History or Ethics” by Kenan Malik, (Atlantic Books, London), 2014.

Note 1: One thing leads to another
Note 1: What are our moral judgements?
Note 1: Do we know what stands before us?
Note 1: The sense of having a worldview
Note 1: Do we need meaning?
Note 2: Economy as a battleground
Note 2: Contracts, social or commercial
Note 2: Right to look out for ourselves?
Note 2: Relating to one another
Note 2: Interdependency

Ideas around the value of our presence and all we bring to life were also the focus of The difference humanity makes.