I challenge you to learn like a scientist, and live like an artist
Going back to the original meaning of “spirit” as breath, or lifeforce, I suggest using the term “spiritual” to mean:
having an awareness of, and interest in, all life and what makes life so special
Looking at life scientifically and acting in life artistically is the ultimate in spirituality, don’t you think?
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I’ve talked about the three options possible when making a decision:
1. If it seems good, go towards it.
2. If it seems bad, go away from it.
3. If it’s impossible to tell whether it’s more good or more bad just yet, wait a while and get more information.
And those are indeed all very nice, clear, simple options for when the important stuff in life is staring you in the face.
But what happens when you look at your other options? What happens when you expand your two dimensional perspective on paper - with it’s here or there, or rising above it all - and move into three dimensions?
Well, you’ll probably discover new ideas popping out!
The new ideas viewpoint is neither black nor white, and also not quite rising above it all for the big picture view, but entirely outside of the very flat box that you were in before, giving you a perspective that sees the good, the bad, and the big picture all at once.
Imagine if you could entirely, just for a few minutes, step outside your self and see all of your life all at once as it fits into your world. What do you start out as? What things spiral around you in the middle? What happens to all the bits and pieces of you at the end? Where did you come from, and where do you go, and what colorful things happen in between? Can you see your own grand story, now that you’ve got the narrator’s perspective, with all of the back and forth and up and down that your life’s dance becomes?
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How do you know what the right thing to do is for everyone?
You don’t.
Unless you’re omniscient, you can’t possibly know.
So what do you do, then?
You do what you love to do as often as you can, offer the results of your passions honestly and openly, and let everyone else decide what to do for themselves.
Our biggest problems, within our selves and our society, come when we either don’t do what we love, or when we don’t let others have the freedom to choose what to do for themselves.
So, if what you love to do is create stories, then create stories and let those who love to hear stories come to you. If what you love to do is build bridges, then build bridges and let those who love bridges come walk across those bridges with you. If what you love to do is fly, then fly, and let those who love to fly come fly with you. If what you love to do is dig holes, then dig holes and let those who love to be deep within come jump down in with you.
And while you are busy doing what you love, those who love to do other things will do those other things, lovingly, and the world will grow into one big ball of lovely holes, bridges, stories, flight, and everything else that is right for everyone.
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Burnout, and all it’s ensuing maladies, happens when you try to give more than you have.
Guilt, with all of it’s ensuing maladies, happens when you don’t give as much as you’d like to.
And joy, with all it’s ensuing loveliness, happens when you see that you have an abundance of something that you can easily give plenty of, and still have far more than enough for yourself.
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What inspires you to go out of your way to do something? What makes you invest an extra pile of your resources in a project or activity? Why is it that you are willing to put yourself on the line, some times, for some things?
Is it because you expect a direct return on your investment?
Is it because you expect an indirect return, some day, in some way?
Or is it because the process of using these extra resources in and of itself is a direct reward to you?
If it’s more often that last case - where you do extraordinary things simply because you value doing those extraordinary things - then you will not only enjoy yourself in the moment no matter what you do, but also naturally be seen as an extraordinary individual, which will offer others the opportunity to clearly see how enjoyable it can be to do extraordinary things, which is also likely to lead both directly and indirectly to extraordinary returns on your investment.
Funny that…
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Most likely anyway.
Everything changes. But different things change at different paces. The sun is one of the things that is most consistent in our human lives, with it’s vast size and power and centrality to our solar system. But on a more detailed look at the sun, we see that it too is ever-changing and impermanent, with whorls, vortexes, flares, and a veritable maelstrom of fluctuations in light, heat, gravity and magnetism. (Did you know that the sun flips it’s magnetic poles, from north to south and vice versa, about once every decade?)
The Earth, similarly, is so very stable and solid and lasting as a part of our lives, while also, similarly, being quite creative and surprising and amusing on the level of the surface, where small details of ferns and feathers and fathers are ever changing and moving.
The core of a thing is still there for ages and ages. So too are the overall patterns of things there for eons and beyond. These cores and patterns are the things we can count on, for the most part, as we plan our lives, while skirting around the surface of things experimentally and joyfully in a dance of sheer enlightenment as we let go of attachments to the superficial while holding gently onto the hand of the deepest and most meaningful things…
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Each human generation forms it’s primary intellectual (philosophical and political) beliefs about who they, as individuals, are, and what they should do in the world, during the stages of growth that I call 100 and 101, the Purpose and Uniqueness stages, respectively. (See my post the theory of growth is growing and the Hierarchy of Needs) So, whatever positive, cutting edge things society as a whole is starting to do at the time a generation is in the 100 and 101 stages will become the intellectual platform that the individuals will carry with them throughout their lives, about their basic social identities and avocations. Effectively, each generations’ metaphorical gourmet organic meals become the next generation’s most elementary staple foods in their even more culturally diverse pantry.
Generations transcend and include their predecessor’s best bits.
Looking at the world around me (your own view might be different, though), and seeing the patterns of life, I see that our current generation groups loosely break down into the following set of happy campers:
The Silent Generation (born around 1935): started being active in the world when society at large was moving into stage 010 - Belongingness, intellectually family-centric, emotionally other-focused, and physically seeking. They’ve given us the strength to take care of those closest to us when times are tough.
Baby Boomers (born around 1945): started being active in the world when society at large was moving into stage 011 - Effectiveness, intellectually family-centric, emotionally other-focused, and physically offering. They’ve given us the stuff we needed to take care of each other when times are tough.
Hippies (born around 1955): started being active in the world when society at large was moving into stage 100 - Purpose, intellectually world-centric, emotionally self-focused, and physically seeking. They’ve given us the idea that we personally deserved better things in life.
Generation X (born around 1965): started being active in the world when society at large was moving into stage 101 - Uniqueness, intellectually world-centric, emotionally self-focused, and physically offering. They’re actually giving us the better stuff that we realized we personally deserved in life.
Generation Y (born around 1975): started being active in the world when society at large was moving into stage 110 - Diversity, intellectually world-centric, emotionally other-focused, and physically seeking. They’re giving us the idea that the whole world deserves better stuff in life.
Generation Circus (born around 1985): started being active in the world when society at large was moving into stage 111 - Creative Leadership, intellectually world-centric, emotionally other-focused, and physically offering. They’re giving us the stuff we need to allow everyone in the world to have the better stuff that we realized that everyone deserves.
Generation 3D (born around 1995): will start to be active in the world when society at large comes into stage 1000 - Personal Wisdom, intellectually universe-centric, emotionally self-focused, and physically seeking. They are giving us the idea that we can evolve as a species. Seriously…
Generation Wow! (born around 2005): will start to be active in the world when society at large moves into stage 1001 - Personal Peace, intellectually universe-centric, emotionally self-focused, and physically offering. And they will give us the tools we need to evolve as a species…
Of course, as I said, each generation is transcending and including the earlier generations best stuff, so all of these things the generations give society were around before in older generations, it’s just that the younger generations make it hip, and figure out how to use it in the most beneficial way. For example, Generation X might have built the internet, but Generation Y figured out that it should be used to connect diverse people together. And Generation Circus is figuring out how to use those connected communities to bring good things to the whole world!
And, after having made it out of the survival stages after WWII, and storming through the success stages of the Space Age, society will watch as Generations 3D and Wow! discover that the whole world is very much in their hands, and we will be amazed at how gracefully they help society step very boldly into the transcendent stages. Maslow and others have already seen the transcendent stages in highly developed individuals in small numbers, and now those numbers are about to grow exponentially…
Obviously the old Native American understanding that the children are our future is true both socially and biologically.
Which is why, if we honestly want a better future, we understand that it’s our mission to give the children of the world all that they need to not just survive, or even thrive, but also to give them all they need to transcend the present state of thinking and being in our world.
Now, what exceptional form of solids, liquids, gasses, and/or energy do you have that you can offer a child in the interests of a better future? And how can you help these future leaders learn not just how to move around in the world forwards and backwards and right to left, but also up and down so that they feel completely comfortable being fully present in a three dimensional world?
When you offer someone something the only way they are going to be enthusiastic about accepting your offer is if it’s obvious to them that it’s better than what they’ve already got. So if you find that they aren’t enthusiastic about your offer, you know that it’s either because your offer isn’t actually better than what they’ve got, or that your offer is better but that this is not obvious to them.
The way to tell which of these is the case?
Well, you could try to be psychic.
If their response to your offer is especially negative, you might want to ask, “What are you most enthusiastic about what you’ve already got?”
And if you believe that your offer really is far better than what they’ve got, you can be completely direct and ask “What do you need to see before you will believe that my offer is better than what you’ve already got?”
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Try a little experiment. Identify someone you tend to have conflicts with via email or other text-based communication. Then, instead of replying to them in your usual way next time they offer you some of their thoughts, find their most forward thinking idea - the most positive direction they seem to be offering for a better future - and then multiply their thoughts by saying “Yes, and…” finishing the sentence with your own positive thoughts about a better future.
Because, from their perspective, the path they want to go in is probably right for them, at least from their unique viewpoint right now, and so is the path that you want to go probably right for you, as seen from your unique perspective, and when you combine the two directions together, you can create forward momentum. Like two people pulling on the two opposite ends of a rope, not necessarily in parallel directions, and not in opposing directions either, but with both moving at some unique angle towards something new and better for themselves. As the two move forward on their individual paths, while still connected to each other by the rope, the whole relationship between them also gets pulled towards something better, with the individuals and their relationship all ending up making positive progress.
To which I imagine you might respond: “Yes, TheWiseTurtle, and…”
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It’s possible that one might be able to learn how to make things happen in the outside world using just your mind, but it’s clearly a hell of a lot easier if your body and heart are in on the action as well.
Which is why intellectually convincing yourself that something is the “right thing to do” isn’t ever as effective as honestly feeling that it’s the right thing to do, when it comes to actually doing the right thing, right?
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Today’s video blog post from The Art of Non-Conformity offers a short, but sweet, reminder that it’s easy to find more happiness and health when you pay attention to all the good and interesting ideas that are right in front of you right now. Of course, you always have the choice to focus on the bad and uninteresting bits, too, and it’s entirely up to you to choose whether you want to be happier, or be more annoyed, in any given situation, by choosing where to focus your attention. When you want to feel worse, you can look for all the annoying stupid ideas around you, and then when you want to feel better, you can look for all the delightful and wise ideas around you and add them to your pile of intellectual treasure, for as Buckminster Fuller notes:
I’m not a genius.
I’m just a tremendous bundle of experience.
Because every experience is an opportunity for adding to your bundle, leading to you becoming even more of a genius than you were before.
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From simple elements emerges new and beautiful and complex and challenging things. For example, starting with just four simple components, one discovers that there are an infinite number of combinations that are possible, because even in base four, one can continue counting indefinitely. DNA has four elements - adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine - which, when combined, offer us the emergent properties of all the living things on planet Earth (as far as we currently know). Nose hair, red lips, and tiny little drums in our ears are all emergent properties of those four simple elements of AGCT.
Of course, giving the process of combining these elements a set of rules, such as those for DNA where A is only allowed to be next to T, and C only allowed to be next to G, puts limits on the variety of outcomes of the combinations. Which means that the patterns we find are more obvious and easily found, as long as we are aware of the rule being applied.
So, while sometimes it is delightful and valuable to focus on the emergent properties themselves (Oooh, shiny! Or Ewww, gross!), it’s also sometimes useful to look for the simple elements that are at the heart of the matter, and the simple rules that might be imposed on those elements, if we want to understand where a particular property has emerged from and why…
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For those folks who want to see a whole delicious salad bar of selections for strengthening local economies, take a look at YES! Magazine’s 31 Ways to Jumpstart the Local Economy.
And for those folks looking to simplify the process of making the economy, on local and global levels stronger and more vibrant, I suggest the revised Local Cabbage resource categories to focus on when connecting with others:
Output of…
Energy
Gasses
Liquids
Solids
Information
Imagine a community where everyone is warm enough, can breathe enough clean air, has enough clean water, has enough healthy food, and has access to the information they need to be the best person they can be. And then imagine that they have the opportunity and right to give away any extra energy, gasses, liquids, and solids from their bodies, and offer any information they have that will help others become the best persons they can be. How brilliant would that be?
Of course, once you explore deeply any one of these 10 simple things, you’ll see an almost infinite number of paths your community might want to pave (with stonedust!) to get there, which is where the YES! article comes in!
But really, the best way to begin building an economically healthier community, is to start wherever you are, right now!
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Following in the, very, very delicately placed footsteps of Generation X’s and Generation Y’s edge-pushing, sexed up, intellectually challenging versions of the old “Greatest Show on Earth” - the more modern circus acts that we know as Cirque de Soleil, the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, and The Daily Show - it seems as if the next generation, the one that’s only recently started to sink it’s teeth into the ideological version of solid food, is going to be far weirder than any before, and far more creative in assembling teams of diverse, entertaining, and mostly obscure talents to astound and amaze us and keep us distracted while we all take a little temporary vacation from the real world, and have a chance to recover our ability to wonder, after such a long stretch of being gripped by incessant fear and anger and worry.
The next generation is going to recapture our long dormant childhood skills of play, and use them to pull us up and out into a better place for everyone.
In The Wise Turtle’s old eyes:
If the silent generation, born before WWII, watched their families and friends struggling with the simple act of taking care of each other in this overwhelming place that they were only just being thrust into, then they represent Belongingness - tribe-centric, group-focused seeking.
If the baby boomers took everything so very, very seriously and desperately craved some kind of structure and solidity for the country, though regulation, laws, large corporations, and military intervention, then they represent Effectiveness - tribe-centric, group-focused offering.
If the hippies gave us the whole concept of peace and love (”We demand the good stuff, dammit!”), they represent Purpose - world-centric, self-focused seeking.
If Generation X stood firmly in the middle of the make-it-or-break-it yuppy/slacker dichotomy, then they represent Uniqueness - world-centric, self-focused offering.
And if the diverse and decentralized-yet-infinitely-connected networks of the world wide web is what Gen Y gave us, then they represent Diversity - world-centric, group-focused seeking.
Then the current young-uns, who’s brains and bodies are just finding their voices in this already very purposeful, unique, and diverse world are going to be reasonably well prepped to offer us something quite new that will very likely look like the stage of growth that is Creative Leadership/Organization - world-centric, group-focused offering.
Now, this isn’t your grandfather’s very respectable and practical organization. This isn’t even your father’s very wealthy and powerful organization. This is the organization of sideshow freaks! This is PETA. This is Burningman. This is the MIT Media Lab. These kids already have a desire to help the world, have the ability to work together with pretty much anyone and everyone, and have a stockpile of edgy, clever silliness and oddity to throw at us from all directions at once, overwhelming our senses and making us let go of all the stupid crap we’d been holding onto that was dragging us down, so that we walk out of the next decade or so a bit more of an empty slate, with which to start drawing a whole new, more universally-focused, world.
And, they’ll do it all without a safety net.
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