The challenge I've faced in interface with societal
entities-from bikers to Baptists, is the entrenchment one encounters in their
modalities of interface. There is an irrationality in the acquisition of life
modalities, people tend to just believe what they are conditioned to believe,
you might say they take it as gospel, rather than really making a study of what
is the foundation of being, one’s sense of appropriate conduct.
What is truly frightening to me is the degree of
militancy one encounters from some quarters, there is a willingness to breach
all things, from dignity to the fundamentals of our ostensible society – it
seems an action to chisel out a place for themselves or to effect control over
others. They are absent a commitment to allowing their means of existence to stand
the rigours of disruption, where disruption is present there is renewal, where
disruption is absent there is decadence and or stagnation. It is a wonder as to
what exactly fuels this conduct, perhaps fear, perhaps greed, perhaps the
desire for control, perhaps to allow one modality of life to “out compete” the
other, perhaps tribalism, perhaps spite, perhaps envy or perhaps an
overwhelming need to stuff their view of the world down other’s throat. Dogmas
are like stray cats, it seems at some point in everyone’s life you’re affected
by one.
I’ve encountered in people the finest intent, love,
support, tenderness, honour, integrity – what is of concern is that those
people stand by while other’s inflict pain, bully, skulk in the shadows in
plain sight. What permits this to occur in such close quarters as a town or our
country, Canada? We need to find a means by which to effect some degree of
friendliness, or in the absence of that, agree to respect the boundaries
other’s set. Without the ability to function as an autonomous agent in society
at large, people are then forced into camps – fissures form and grow, and from
there the irrationality of tribalism takes hold. As Bill Clinton said “for
reason to prevail all we have to do is accept other’s truths to be as valid as
our own. “ Philosophies take many forms, from religions to stoicism to
political concerns. The important thing to remember is that all philosophies
are abstractions, to attempt to reify them or to apply them in a literal way
most frequently meets with error at best and pain at worst.
The most societal resolution comes in examining the
continuum that has at one end asceticism and hedonism at the other. All people
choose their place on this continuum, it is rare they arrive there with the
rational mind however. In the Anatomy of Power, John Kenneth Galbraith asserts
“conditioning” to be the most powerful of the “powers”, conditioning is what
happens to us as we are exposed to societal activities, starting with our
parent’s influences with regard to morality and gender, and then, as we move
through all the various civil and government structures to adulthood,
conditioning subconsciously affects our choice as to where we lite on this
continuum. People normally find their place on this continuum as a product of
the uncomfortable confluence of their tacit and actuated desires and the
explicit requirements as defined by their culture and peerage, in league with
the moral complex that arrived in their psych with their mother’s milk or
perhaps their father’s cane. The point here is that, inherent in this reality,
the suppression of desire, moral obligations, peerage observation and conditioning,
people find it necessary to engage in what they want covertly, so that they are
ostensibly maintaining continuity with the explicit assertions of the culture
at large. This creates a life that is absent integrity, integrity in interface
with peers is the place where words and actions meet, integrity internally, is
the actuation of self so that beliefs and actions are in accord. In
circumstances of orthodoxy or the ridged enforcement of dogma greater distance
develops between the tacit aspects of life and the explicit aspects of life,
hypocrisy in no longer a failing, but a necessity.
Tolerance is absent a requirement to forfeit personnel
principle or belief, it is only a commitment to accept first, and teach second
– and to then accept some will make choices that conflict with your principles
and beliefs – at that point tolerance dictates a goal of benign coexistence
rather that violent rebuke or attack. A priest and a strip club owner can pass
each other on the street unaffected, which should be the worst outcome from
moral discord.
Stephen Covey, after a review of hundreds of years of
success literature suggests we should first seek to understand and then to be
understood. A prerequisite for understanding is to converse, with an open heart
and mind, to prepare yourself to allow your beliefs to be challenged and in the
process to find a better way. Understanding always begins with a question, edicts
and ultimatums begin with an assertion. Force feeding your view absent
discourse, costs you the opportunity to learn and narrows the prospects of the subject
of your intervention.
The appropriateness of delivering any given philosophy in
any given circumstance, is best assessed by outcome and or the accumulation of
opportunity forgone. In the immortal words of Gerry McGuire “show me the money”
or perhaps “where’s the beef”, do its subjects possess a sense of place, has
the philosophy I’ve imposed delivered the uncontrollable desire for its subject
to kick up their heals, has love found them, has another’s warmth been near
them. Life can be a feast for the senses, that’s certainly my pursuit. Feasting
senses is in no way mutually exclusive to doing good, being good or effecting a
better solution. Here is my accountability question when I put my head on the pillow
at night; if everyone did what I did today would the world be a better or worse
place. Or as Winston Churchill says “it is important to have a grand strategy
but every now and again you've got to check the results.”
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