If you’re reading this, I feel it is safe to assume that you are a human being. Maybe not. Maybe you’re an alien or an artificial intelligence or my Uncle Francis. Regardless, I’m going to continue as if you’re a squishy ape creature on the same planet I am.
So...life. That’s a thing. It’s a cool thing! So many things to do. The Earth is literally billions of acres of a cosmic playground for us to make life anything we want to make it. We can make the sand in our hourglass of life anything we desire!
But are you consciously choosing your life experiences?
I don’t like to make assumptions, but I have an eye for picking out statistically significant trends from the noise. I think it’s safe to say the majority of people are afflicted with a lifestyle obsession, whatever that may be.
What I mean is, most people tend to be born (I was hatched from an egg, so I know there are exceptions), and then they start learning. And learning. And learning….
Then they forget to learn.
I think it’s a very human thing to get stuck in a behavioral rut. One of our greatest strengths as a species is our natural creation of an ego; a sort of mask we wear that tells us how to dance on stage as the scenes of our life play out. It allows for people to become highly specialized characters, which allows our collective to diversify and act cohesively to conquer everything life throws at us.
But, what is not a very human thing is forgetting that the ego is like a mask and can be taken off. If you were in a Shakespearean play, you would need to take your costume off and change character after it was over. Otherwise, you might try to order a coffee in iambic pentameter while wielding a dagger. True, it may be an interesting experience, but it likely will not play out how your character may hope.
In this, I am saying that neither the east or west bank of a river is better than the other; what is important is how well you can traverse from one side to the other.
I like to think of this in the same vein as having two eyes. By having two different perspectives being fed to our brains, we gain depth perception. Similarly, by having two different ways of processing the world (one inherent and one grown from the environment), we have a means of creating depth in our paradigm. We can look at a scenario and perceive it as two separate things. This gives us a wider range of choices to choose from.
Imagine being thrown into an unfamiliar situation, something you have no experience with. You will probably seek out the advice from someone more knowledgeable. What that other person is giving you is perspective that you can use to better make decisions moving forward. Likewise, our brain’s intrinsic means of processing information can reconcile unknowns that the ego is working with, and vice versa.
If we remove an eye, we lose our depth perception; if we only operate under the guidance of the ego, we will be blind to many of the possibilities that lay before us.
This is critical to growth, and is becoming exponentially more important to embrace. Think of the world your grandparents grew up in. It’s fundamentally different than the world of today. There was once a time where entire generations would be born and die in a similar world as their ancestors.
The rate of change itself is growing at an increasingly fast rate. This is primarily being driven by technology recursively improving itself, which in turn is affecting the rate we generate novel ideas. In a world where billions of new ideas are generated every day, it is natural that the evolution of systems becomes faster than humans can adapt to.
I don’t know what the future holds. If I did, I’d be buying a lot of stocks. Some people in certain positions of power may be able to see more clearly, but we’re reaching a point where the rate of change within the system is making the future unpredictable.
If a majority of people keep moving forward without the ability to distance themselves from their egos, we are doomed. It’s like driving straight down the road, approaching a turn. Sure, driving straight may have worked up to that point, but continuing on that trajectory will only lead to disaster.
This is a systemic problem. No one is actively choosing to limit their own growth. What happens is people grow up in a culture that actively conditions them to accept life on a surface level. Our education system is adopted from the Prussian Military Academies, which were designed to create obedient boy soldiers. They were modified to meet the needs of industrialism and to ensure nation-states had ample cannon fodder. Our work culture follows a similar trend, where people sell their time and agency. This is not a nurturing culture. We are systematically stripped of our ability to choose, and that translates to a passive acceptance of how things are.
We live in a massive positive feedback cycle. People are conditioned by the culture, who then grow up to reinforce the culture. The solution? Break the cycle. The more people who choose to branch out and create new culture, the more others will come to see the attachment to their limited perspective. If a fish has never been out of water, it cannot know what wet is. Only upon leaving the water and experiencing what “dry” is can the fish conceptualize what “wet” is. On that same train of thought, if people never experience a culture which fundamentally contrasts their own, they will never know the boundaries of their own perspective.
When someone sees a door open that they didn’t know existed, curiosity naturally takes over and will guide them to it. Perhaps fear will prevent them from stepping through it in that moment, but just by revealing the possibility to them you are changing them.
I think this is the most important thing that anyone can be doing now. To be the change of the world is acting to save the world. Because things are changing fast. If we aren’t trying to change with it, we will reach a point where we will be too far behind to adapt, and the chaotic systems we have created over thousands of years will spiral into oblivion. It is paramount to our collective survival that we focus on embracing change, and radiating that acceptance outwards.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring? We can’t know what it is. Regardless, the next dawn is approaching. The only thing we can do is be open to whatever it brings, and radiate our highest selves.