Having confidence in complex systems

How are we supposed to trust in the kinds of complex systems that need us to do so? Like driving, or society itself. How are we to place our lives in the hands of these collective realities and operate on the basis that it’s safe?

It really seems that such systems can only be run on trust, on the idea that everyone appreciates the responsibility they have and the belief that others are placing in them (Notes One). Almost as if trust is taken as a given – a prerequisite for taking part in anything of this nature. Doesn’t society need us to act confidently? To believe in it and uphold our end of this invisible bargain.

Which, in a way, seems strange: this idea that we would trust complete strangers to understand the significance of what we’re engaged in, the risks we’re running, and faith we’re demonstrating in the net of safety such participation effectively casts around us all. Aren’t we placing a great deal of trust in one another? Assuming that everyone’s acting from the same level of awareness, skill and care.

Because, if we’re not, don’t things become rather dangerous? Driving heavy machinery at high speeds seems a momentous responsibility, given how much other lives are at risk if we’re not approaching things with the appropriate amount of seriousness. Expecting anyone to participate in shared systems must depend upon the solemn duty of us all fully realising the importance of our roles and our actions.

Isn’t it amazing that we’re all taking part in things that assume this basic transactional unit of “trust” in every other person? That each of us must understand and appreciate the value of what we’re involved in – how essential it is for community and the very idea of people being able to live alongside one another without constant checks and renegotiations.

Don’t we need to know that everyone around us sees common activities in similar ways? That seems a large part of how education, the media and culture serve to sustain society with collective awareness: this sense of us all being on the same page, taking part in this important conversation, and responding to it along similar lines (Notes Two).

Knowing that we’re right to trust in complex systems seems fundamental to them being a success; doubting seems like it could be almost as dangerous as the thought of them not being trustworthy. Distrusting, don’t we start acting defensively or aggressively? Protecting ourselves from the risks we know are there if these collective agreements fall apart (Notes Three).

There’s not really a point to these musings, just a slight amazement at the idea of engaging with systems based upon trust. It’s such a tenuous thing and, usually, something we’re wise to hand out cautiously and review regularly to ensure we’re not putting ourselves at risk.

That many of the systems surrounding us, on which communal existence depends, assume we can place it in everyone around us seems beautiful – in a strangely risky way.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Trust within modern society
Note 1: Contracts, social or commercial
Note 1: Society as an imposition?
Note 2: Passing on what’s important
Note 2: Powerful responsibility of a media voice
Note 2: Culture as information
Note 3: Picking up after one another
Note 3: Authenticity & writing our own story
Note 3: People, rules & social cohesion

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Values, and what’s in evidence

In all that surrounds us, what’s seeming most important? Isn’t our world, in many ways, painting a picture of what we’re generally considering important? Our actions within it showing which elements we are treasuring most? Life, then, could be a place where our values are always quite clear for everyone to see.

It’s interesting to think we live within such a world. Society around us, in all these big and little ways, forever showing and reminding us what matters within our community. Not only through the legacies we’ve received from the past – the infrastructure, architecture, history, social forms, and traditions – but also through how well we’re treating it all now. Don’t our attitudes towards things speak volumes?

Doesn’t everything we do communicate our values? All our words, the ways we interact with others, and how we’re acting within shared spaces or structures all effectively speaking of what matters to us, what we see as essential, and what our priorities are. The ideas we hold of life rippling out of us through all the choices we’re making in everyday life.

And, it seems we tend to know what we’re “supposed” to say – which values we’ve been told to uphold by those around us. Things like equality, fairness, honesty, kindness, courage, self-control, generosity. Knowing something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s happening, though. That whole “do as I say, not as I do” inconsistency. While we may know what’s “right”, that’s not to say we aren’t often looking for ways around it.

Perhaps that’s just human nature? Society being an imposed construct, we perhaps needed to be taught how best to live within it: the kinds of attitudes, beliefs and ideals that would help strengthen – and, not weaken – the valuable collective endeavour (Notes One). It certainly seems our natural self-interest would need containing for social life to function harmoniously.

Looking around though, isn’t a lot of what’s going on more greatly influenced by “market” values? The thinking and attitudes of that space often seeming to spill out and filter into our lives more generally – all those judgements, desires, and feelings about personal worth. It’s interesting to think that our values, once perhaps coming from the rarefied world of philosophy, poetry or thought, might now come out of industry.

Whether it’s a problem might be the important question. While the kinds of social values listed above seem quite altruistic – encouraging people to act for the benefit of others – aren’t our economic attitudes generally more self-serving? It seems an area of life where we’re told to look out for ourselves and ensure we stand apart from others. Markets, almost by definition, being places of competition, exclusivity and advantage.

Musing over what picture our lives are painting, it’s interesting to consider we might be moving in directions that enhance our antisocial tendencies with very little left to offset the “drift”. What will it mean for society if our choices are being made more out of limited personal interest than concern for what it means for everyone else?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Society as an imposition?
Note 1: Is this the ultimate test?
Note 1: “Quest for a Moral Compass”
Note 1: What’s not essential
Note 1: The value of a questioning attitude?
Note 1: Picking up after one another
Note 1: Too much responsibility?

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Whether we make a difference

In all of life, doesn’t everything we do matter? Everything, eventually, touching upon others through the words, thoughts or actions we’re choosing. Isn’t it all rippling out in every direction to become part of everyone’s lives? We might believe or feel we’re of little consequence; but, in reality, it’s so far from true.

We always make a difference. So, bringing full attention to those choices might dramatically change the realities we’re all living with. If, instead of carelessness or self-interest, we acted on compassion or love, wouldn’t that ripple out into the world? Potentially, sweeping others along with it.

It’s fascinating to consider the nature of reality: ways things join together in chains of causality or complacency; ways attitudes or actions spread so contagiously; how that might shift things one way or another (Notes One). It seems undeniable we all play a part in it; whether or not we’re being deliberate.

All we do serves as an example, a validation, an encouragement, a challenge – creating impacts and setting standards within our increasingly wide social environment. These days, where little remains hidden and everything’s interconnected, isn’t it time we awoke to that potential?

It can’t be easy making a difference, though. Waking up within these complex, fast-moving systems and trying to find our way within them must be breaking new ground? Where can we find proven ideas for how to broach this? No human ever having lived within these conditions, any strategies can’t actually be tried and tested (Notes Two).

And there’s so much to care about in this world; so many issues we’d rightly feel inspired to fight for. In every area there are important battles to be fought around “what it means to be human”. Modernity wraps its tendrils throughout our lives; challenging us to uphold what matters and discard whatever’s working against it.

Within that, living alongside one another can seem almost indescribably hard. While we might not always agree – often, over issues that truly do matter – could there still be space on the edges of us to accept others as they are while holding to those higher values or perspectives that may be needed? What do we achieve when we don’t make that space?

Tolerance may never be easy: allowing something we disagree with to exist in our presence, unchallenged. And, with choices said to define us, it’s perhaps inevitable our lines of identity become points of conflict: if self is on the line, it’s almost natural we’d attack the opposing ideas that threaten us (Notes Three).

Giving people space to work out their thoughts without insisting on our own begins to seem a surprisingly generous attitude. Especially when there’s so little time for hearing others out or discussing things in all their fullness – when we’re squeezing meaningful communication into stolen, passing moments.

Can life happen that way, or only this distracted, half-finished echo of it? So, while everything matters, carving out time or space – physically or psychologically – to do it justice sometimes seems an impossible task.

Notes and References:

Note 1: One thing leads to another
Note 1: All we want to do passes through community
Note 1: Is this the ultimate test?
Note 1: Questions around choice
Note 1: This thing called love
Note 2: Would we be right to insist?
Note 2: Imperfection as perfection?
Note 2: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 2: Doing the right thing, we erase consequences
Note 2: What if solutions aren’t solutions?
Note 3: Letting people change
Note 3: Education as a breaking away?
Note 3: Thoughts of idealism and intolerance
Note 3: Authenticity & writing our own story
Note 3: Making things up as we go along

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Society that doesn’t deal with the soul

With everything that’s going on in life, it’s strange to think no one’s really so concerned with what’s going on inside – our inner lives or, for want of another word, the soul. If we were to see all that goes on within us as significant, valuable and important, why is it treated as if it’s of no relevance or interest to society?

Isn’t it what we’re all living with? Our own memories, experiences, hopes and dreams. All those paths we’ve walked, people we’ve met, ideas we’ve entertained, and moments we’ve lived to this point. The perspective we’ve gained on life and expectations we have in mind about it must be a huge reality for every single person. From the human viewpoint, it’s perhaps all there is.

What do we have but our inner life? The ways society’s ideas affect us and make us feel about ourselves, others, and existence itself. The kinds of relationships we’ve tended to have, whether nurturing and life-affirming or something quite different. Isn’t everything we’ve encountered in life part of this inner landscape of lessons learnt, emotions felt, and habitual responses forged over time? (Notes One)

I’m not sure can we say that doesn’t matter, that we shouldn’t take things personally, when it’s conceivably all personal. Isn’t anything that deals with people “personal”? Any action, word or attitude that touches another can be seen as personal; much as we may claim it wasn’t intended that way. Everything that happens within society must – on one level – be personal in that it’s all happening to, for, by, or around people.

Yet aren’t we often being treated as mere physical objects? Interacted with on the abstract, hypothetical basis of ideas about “human nature” and how to “manage it” within modern communities. As if, in order to cope with this way of living, we reduce others to being simply concepts of humanity – not quite acknowledging them as real people so we can make it through the day.

Of course, there is a lot of overwhelm to modern life – this constant inundation of new information, hefty emotional content, and the difficulty of brushing up alongside relative “strangers” in both physical and virtual reality (Notes Two). Faced with that, it’s perhaps “natural” we prioritise managing our own lives and what matters most to us, rather than worrying unduly about everyone around us.

Which seems to mean no one’s really that bothered about soul, about the bigger human picture of how this is coming together. So, we’re treated fairly coldly; picked apart quite callously by industry calculations; pushed around almost carelessly by culture’s critical judgement. An “each to his own” mentality that seems, sometimes, to forget we’re all human with inner lives that matter (Notes Three).

While it seems impossible to actually deny the richness and beauty of the human soul, as captured within culture, philosophy or thought; it also seems we’re living in ways that aren’t fully taking into account the real value and significance of all our conscious experiences of existence.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Personal archaeology
Note 1: Complication of being human
Note 1: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 1: Going towards the unknown
Note 2: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 2: What’s the idea with culture?
Note 2: True relationship within modern society?
Note 2: Mastering life’s invisible realities
Note 2: Attacks on our humanity
Note 2: Is this the ultimate test?
Note 3: Absolute or relative value
Note 3: Treating people like sims?
Note 3: Where do ideas of evolution leave us?
Note 3: What it is to be human

Turning to those who are, in various ways, attempting to address the inner life, there is Literature that’s treating the soul.

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Picking up after one another

If we’re doing something but don’t quite do all that’s involved, what does that mean? Isn’t it that somebody – ourselves or someone else – ends up having to complete the task some other time? Anytime we’re not completely taking responsibility for what we’re involved in, someone along the line has to pick up those pieces.

At the level of society, that must create burdens: people carrying weight and those adding more. If we’re leaving rubbish behind in public spaces, someone will have to pick it up if these things aren’t to accumulate. It seems important to see life that way, to realise how anything we’re not fully seeing through becomes our community’s problem (Notes One).

More personally, it seems we can do something similar to ourselves: past, present and future self all perhaps stand in that relationship to one another. Procrastinating, planning insufficiently or letting things drift, aren’t we effectively just saving up problems for ourselves at another time? Understanding more, we’d perhaps avoid such a scenario (Notes Two).

If we saw the connections between our actions now and the consequences catching up with us later, might we do differently? Maybe changing our ways gets easier when we truly realise that we’re only doing it to ourselves. But, to think that way, we’d have to believe in and care about our future; if it looked like we might as well live for the moment, thoughts of acting responsibly towards our future might never arise.

Individually as much as collectively, maybe responsibility depends on believing something has value? That sacrificing our desires for the good of society was valued. That this path we’re asked to walk and all that’s expected of us along the way leads somewhere worthwhile. If our community doesn’t seem to value, appreciate or care for us then why would we be inspired to limit ourselves on its behalf?

I’m unsure where this train of thought has wandered – maybe to the point that if we’re to take full responsibility for anything then we may need to understand why and believe the reasons to be true? Maybe we need more inspiring reason than “because you must”, “everyone has to” or “this is how it is”. Beyond all the traditional threats, moralising and incentives is there any more comprehensive reasoning on offer? (Notes Three)

In many ways, I see this is pulling at the threads of society. It’s the sense of how to encourage and uphold the kinds of behaviour community life depends upon: responsible behaviour. Doesn’t society need us to act that way? To do what’s best for us and for others. To not go about creating problems. To find the right relationship to the present moment so we’re acting wisely with an eye to the future.

It’s the wisdom of thinking beyond the present moment – considering all the personal and systemic ripples going out from the choices we’re making and example we’re setting. Thinking that way mightn’t come naturally, but otherwise won’t we all be living with the consequences?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Market forces or social necessities
Note 1: Any escape from cause & consequence?
Note 1: The idea of think globally, act locally
Note 1: Ethics, money & social creativity
Note 2: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 2: Doing the right thing, we erase consequences
Note 3: Do we really need incentives?
Note 3: Common sense as a rare & essential quality
Note 3: If society’s straining apart, what do we do?
Note 3: What keeps us in check
Note 3: Tell me why I should

Sometimes it seems that the foundation of life perhaps rests in believing our own worth, as explored in Love of self.

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What keeps us in check

What holds us back in life? I’m thinking in the sense of restraint – what stops us from simply doing as “we” please? Is it external constraints like law and ostracization? Do we need rewards for doing the right thing? Or could an inward sense of understanding come to harmoniously regulate our actions?

There’s so much theory around what motivates people – how to inspire or compel them in different ways. The predictability or reliability of our behaviour seems a valuable asset. Society must be easier to run if we’re all acting in consistent, integrated and mutually beneficial ways. Industry must prefer having a captive or loyal basis for its products and services.

Perhaps we’re best guided by fear? Threats of suffering, abandonment or isolation seem pretty effective in controlling people. Incentives also work well – anything to sweeten the deal and make us feel we’ve made a wise or personally-advantageous decision. Maybe those are simply heightened versions of natural consequences? That, ideally, we’d do what’s best and not do what’s damaging or problematic.

Causality presumably serves to limit us? The fact that, down the line, our actions’ effects inevitably add up to something helpful or harmful to us, others, or our community more generally (Notes One). Maybe our “constructed” threats and promises are merely artificial signals of that reality? Although, it does seem they’re often used to direct us toward more questionable outcomes.

Then there’s conformity – how we’re social creatures, strongly influenced by the standards of any group we aspire to be part of. Something that’s leveraged so purposefully through education, modern media and marketing. In its natural form, communities generally seem to have had strong sets of values and ideals for members to uphold. These days, it’s all seeming quite conscious and calculating.

Is it just that we “know” all this now? Knowing social acceptance to be powerful in shaping individuals, maybe it’s only natural we employ that tool to create what we’re wanting. Once you know something, it’s probably almost impossible to go back to using it subconsciously – or, having it used on us – without feeling an element of coercion.

There’s also the question of whether ideals, in and of themselves, have power to hold society together. Can values shape and reinforce social realities simply through having inspired us all to freely uphold them? I suppose that’s also an aim within education, media and culture more broadly: instilling principles and patterns of behaviour that’ll help maintain healthy communities (Notes Two).

But, even then, there’s some sort of balance to be struck between inner and outer regulation – do we “need” to regulate ourselves in order for “this” to work? Living alongside others conceivably depends, in various ways, on discipline, duty and self-sacrifice; attitudes of ego and competitive advantage perhaps working against us. Maybe society needs our understanding and devotion?

Looking at all that sustains us – this harmonious coexistence with others and with nature (Notes Three) – it’s interesting to consider to what extent we’re chipping away at what’s holding it all together.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Need to suffer in order to change?
Note 1: Fear or coercion as motivators
Note 1: Do we really need incentives?
Note 1: Any escape from cause & consequence
Note 2: Tell me why I should
Note 2: Making adjustments
Note 2: Doing the right thing, we erase consequences
Note 2: If society’s straining apart, what do we do?
Note 3: Technology & the lack of constraint
Note 3: Smart to play the system?
Note 3: Intrinsic value of nature
Note 3: Trust in technology?

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Treating people like sims?

Is it really the case that, behind closed doors, people treat our lives as if they’re not quite real? As if hypothetical or projected outcomes aren’t really lived through, felt and experienced by actual individuals.

Maybe it’s simply the nature of thought and how we apply it to our lives? Thought often “being” this detached, logical, impersonal way of seeing things: deconstructing, labelling, theorising, planning and executing. Is there something about plan-making that’s inherently inhuman, in that it relies on treating complex realities as abstract datapoints we shuffle around to gain profit or reduce loss? (Notes One)

Life “can” be analysed, grouped, observed and predicted. We can casually walk around the room as big as this world and place our labels on everything we see, confidently expressing our understanding of it all and explaining how things should be. Thought “has” that power and we’re taught to wield it from the moment we’re born.

So perhaps it’s “natural” we get to the point of governments and businesses coldly looking upon us as data, as patterns to be managed or exploited; letting research, evidence, modelling, projections and proposals inform policy-making. So much in life’s being directed by the kind of thinking that sees those involved as if they’re simply abstract elements of broader intentions.

But doesn’t everything very quickly become personal? Aren’t these offerings, services and interventions essentially dealing with the realities that make up our lives? It’s always going to be someone’s hopes, feelings, self-worth, and journey through life. All of that’s very real and can’t be discounted (Notes Two). There’s personal – therefore, social – cost to it all.

Just because we “can” look on life with the calculation of thought, does that mean we’re right to? It seems the world’s being set up as these vast, interlocking systems with so much effort being made to influence our behaviour within them. And, within it all, there must be people who know “what’s happening” – what’s being created, allowed and encouraged – but apparently don’t care for the human side to that picture.

Can we do that? Even in the name of business, profit or efficiency, can we disregard all the lived realities and attitudes around human worth we’re serving to reinforce? Can we choose the mindset of commerce instead of concern, seeing the eventual outcomes as “worth the sacrifice” for this future we’re aiming to create?

Is the individual human life not deemed worth much in that vision of progress? We may not see the humanity of it all, but it’s there. Everyone carrying within an incredible richness of unique gifts, insights and challenges; all deserving dignity, respect and freedom.

How aware do we let ourselves be that these will become intensely lived experiences for people? How often are we carried away behind the mask of planning, acting as if the realities playing out are mere simulations of lives unrelated to ours? Isn’t everybody part of this same system? Can any life be folded into another’s plans without that being problematic on some level?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Those who are leading us
Note 1: Ethics, money & social creativity
Note 1: Thoughts of idealism and intolerance
Note 1: Strange arrogance of thought
Note 1: Where do ideas of evolution leave us?
Note 1: Caught in these thoughts
Note 2: The difference humanity makes
Note 2: Economics & the realm of culture
Note 2: Attacks on our humanity
Note 2: Any escape from cause & consequence?
Note 2: This thing called love

Maybe, within all of this, all I’m really talking about is What it is to be human.

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Common sense as a rare & essential quality

How much do we truly, deeply understand the way things work? The way they fit together and the kind of thinking and action needed to ensure everything runs smoothly, safely and harmoniously for us all. Life can sometimes seem like a complicated mass of never-ending rules, opinions and expectations; separating the essential from the non-essential can seem an almost impossible task.

It’d be interesting to see all society’s guidelines pulled together into one document – all the formal and informal, timeless or ephemeral things we’re supposed to know about. Maybe, in part, that’s the internet? Every body placing therein their views, injunctions and advice for how to go about living. Arguably, everything’s there; but finding what’s valuable within it’s becoming increasingly difficult.

Everyone clearly has their view on life: the lessons they took firmly to heart in youth and structured their lives by; the insights gathered in the course of living that they now know to be incredibly important; the voices of others they believe and closely adhere to. We all have our ideas of what life’s about – a worldview we feel comprehensive enough to be trustworthy (Notes One).

Within all that, there’s presumably a little book called “common sense”. And it’s funny, because it sounds so simple and we might throw the term around as if it’s an easy thing to come by – as if we’re practically born with it – but is that actually true?

It’s not uncommon to hear muttered in conclusion, “Well, that’s just common sense”. As if some things aren’t really worth considering; we can just cast them onto the “dealt with” pile as no one would be foolish enough not to grasp the basics. It comes across as quite a dismissive attitude, to my ears – this sense that any form of logic, reason or understanding can be so casually discounted as beneath us.

I understand, of course, that it’s just language. It’s probably a term that arose to encompass all those things that fall beneath formal, disciplined learning – the bedrock of having a basic grasp of life, society, people, relationships, and how these interact. This fundamental awareness we all need of how things fit together, our agency within them, and ways we might impact others for better or worse.

Isn’t it the essential foundation for society? If we’re to live alongside one another, having a “sense” for how to share all we have in common – systems, resources, space – must be something society truly needs of us (Notes Two). If we lack that, acting purely out of self-interest without a thought of “what if everyone did this?”, communal life will presumably be sorely tested.

Which is probably my point: common sense might seem easy in our eyes, but isn’t it too important to disregard as being too obvious to discuss respectfully? Assuming people know and appreciate the value of “the basics” seems, perhaps, a recipe for disaster. Failing to reinforce or underline the importance of any kind of thinking surely risks it falling out of common usage.

Notes and References:

Note 1: The sense of having a worldview
Note 1: Knowledge, capacity & understanding
Note 1: All we want to do passes through community
Note 1: Which voice can we trust?
Note 2: Contracts, social or commercial
Note 2: Any escape from cause & consequence?
Note 2: Society as an imposition?

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Any escape from cause & consequence?

Thinking about the things we say and do, it’s interesting to consider if anything’s without consequence. Even if we don’t “see it”, all these things effectively land somewhere, causing ripples that spread into the individual and collective lives of those around us. Words or actions perhaps exacerbating situations that then lead onto consequences for people we never meet.

It’s probably some version of “every action having an equal and opposite reaction” – that nothing’s really neutral, unnoticed or slipping into a void where it hurts no-one (Notes One). All we’re doing feeds into reality somewhere, be it one with a face or more impersonal and abstract systems such as global economics and its social impacts or the intricate balance of our own societies.

All the patterns of behaviour people are working so hard to map, predict and control must inevitably add up to complex social pressures and difficulties. Careless words, quick judgements, comedy brush-offs or distractions must all paint a picture of the distracted, atomised interactions filtering out through our lives. Doesn’t all this shape our attitudes, our feeling for what matters and what’s acceptable?

I’m struggling slightly to pull the threads of this thought together, but isn’t it true that everything we’re all doing travels out there somewhere? It’s not like none of it matters; it must all matter to someone. At some point, personal choices and collective trends presumably converge to create an impact that’s felt by one, if not many, people. Choices that, perhaps, get strengthened by seeing how everyone’s doing it and few seem to care.

We might be happily focused on our own reality – all the challenges we face, people we’re trying to please or impress, balls we’re juggling in our daily lives – and make many of our decisions either habitually or by way of the fact that any consequences truly won’t affect us or those we care about. It’s probably a “logical” position to take in terms of psychologically managing a modern life.

The attitude we’re showing toward others, the distant impact of our choice, the bigger picture of the world we’re helping create isn’t perhaps on our radar. Which, in many ways, might seem “fair enough”: bringing fully conscious awareness to all the systems that go into making the lives we lead is far from easy (Notes Two). Is it even possible to live in full awareness of everything that’s currently happening (plus, its historical context)?

Consequences can be so remote, invisible and disconnected. Take a small, but not insignificant, example: livestock worrying. It seems a picture of dog owners not fully taking responsibility for their pets in the UK’s green spaces; not, perhaps, knowing the knock-on effects of their interactions with sheep and cattle. Wild creatures that can then become stressed and unpredictable, causing devastating injury or loss of life.

Our action or inaction might seem unproblematic – the laws or warnings of others simply a meddlesome limit to personal freedom – but it could also be that consequences truly matter somewhere down the line.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Invisible ties
Note 1: What we create by patterns of behaviour
Note 1: Society as an imposition?
Note 1: What if it all means something?
Note 2: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 2: The idea of think globally, act locally
Note 2: How important is real life?
Note 2: Questions around choice

Perhaps standing alongside this quite nicely, “Minding the Earth, Mending the World” talked about the challenge of responding to life.

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Ideals & the pursuit of them

Talking about life, how clear are we on right and wrong? Often it seems we start with a strong statement but after a few tweaks and prods the whole thing begins to unravel. It’s as if we’re all somehow compromised by the complexity of the systems we’ve been drawn into – somewhere along the line, we didn’t see the line we were crossing and ended up trying to defend a flawed standpoint.

And these days it really seems the lines are blurred to the point of being almost invisible. Perhaps that’s the nature of modern systems and the technology that’s often mediating them? That we don’t fully see how things work, all the connections and consequences trailing in our wake. So much now being hidden away, ambiguous and subject to interpretation, truth and clarity can be hard to find (Notes One).

On paper, it’s seemingly easy to draw the clear lines that make life look straightforward. Each valuable principle or quality can neatly map out the paths to realising our vision: kindness, honesty, courage, love, generosity, forgiveness, patience. Reality, of course, is far more muddled. In all the pressures of life, pursuing ideals can’t be easy or people wouldn’t have written so much about it (Notes Two).

Modern life, particularly, seems to be very morally ambiguous: understanding all the systems we’re living within then standing back to form a clear judgement of our involvement is a pretty demanding task (Notes Three). All these things really sprouted up around us all at a disarming speed, leaving us in this strange situation of trying to catch up and grasp all these complex ethical questions we’re now part of.

As consumers free from the constraints of tradition, it’s arguably down to us all to determine our course of action. In terms of freedom, that’s such a heavy burden: choice; information; understanding; discernment; courage. When so much is aiming at undermining our conscious awareness and distracting us from using our common sense, seeing the wood from the trees is far from easy.

It’d surely be rare to find someone who was walking a completely unassailable moral line through it all? Someone with no blind spots, no areas where they’re unwittingly ignorant of what’s truly going on. Someone who never made a false move on the spur of the moment having misread the signs or misunderstood the wider context of the decision they were facing.

So often, though, it seems we shoot down a moral stance based on some other ethical shortcoming – as if we cannot listen to someone’s views on nutrition if they had their eye off the ball with regard to fuel, clothing production, commercial monopolies, modern social conventions and so forth. As if we’ll only listen to someone with those impeccable credentials.

But, with all the moral lines crisscrossing through the realities of modern life, where “is” the right place to stand on every given issue? Surely every situation’s throwing up a new challenge to find the line and make the right response.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Life’s never been simpler…
Note 1: Technology as a partial reality
Note 1: In the deep end…
Note 2: “Quest for a Moral Compass”
Note 2: Plato & “The Republic”
Note 2: “The Measure of a Man”
Note 3: The value of a questioning attitude?
Note 3: What are our moral judgements?
Note 3: One thing leads to another

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