Tuesday 7 February 2012

The Problem With Thinking Ahead.

Had the usual premature wakening this morning – 5¾ hours this time. And, also as usual, it was accompanied by the familiar knot of anxiety. The problem comes with contemplating the future – the world’s in general, but mostly my own. I see a lot to be anxious about, from the very shortest term to the longest. It seems to me that there are two ways of dealing with this:

1) Concentrate entirely on living the moment.

2) Contemplate the longer term spiritual view.

The former is difficult since I, like everybody else in this best of all possible worlds, have been conditioned to think ahead. But western culture is becoming ever more obsessed with change for its own sake, driven by the perceived – and subsequently conditioned – imperative for economic growth. The cyclical bedrock that has sustained human society for so long is being undermined, and the same forces are making the future ever more unpredictable. And so there is conflict. The system trains us to think forward, whilst gradually dismantling the very point in so doing.

The latter is possibly even more difficult since it is essentially such an unknown quantity. I place some reliance on instinct and intuition, but faith is something I can’t persuade myself to cultivate. It seems obvious to me that the human consciousness is built to enquire, not blindly believe what somebody else tells us to believe.

So what’s the answer? Do the jobs that need doing, I suppose, and deal with tomorrow when and if it comes.

2 comments:

andrea kiss said...

"The former is difficult since I, like everybody else in this best of all possible worlds, have been conditioned to think ahead. But western culture is becoming ever more obsessed with change for its own sake, driven by the perceived – and subsequently conditioned – imperative for economic growth."

It really bothers me how people worry more about economics than they do about the environment. In the last Conservative debate among the potential republican presidential candidates almost all of them talk about preserving the future of America and its youth through economic security. Michelle Bachman and other candidates want to take some of the power away from the EPA, (Environmental Protection Agency), so that companies, businesses, etc aren't as restricted as to how much they can pollute the environment so that they can make more money. It angers me that they fail to understand that no matter how wealthy our nation is in the future we still can't live on a planet that that is slowly being destroyed. Money can't stop negative climate change, clean our air, etc. etc.

JJ said...

Of course, and the other thing that concerns me about this is that economic growth must surely be finite anyway. Where do you go when the markets are exhausted, except into catastrophic economic collapse? I don't see how we can keep on having more and more ad infinitum. It seems to me that we either have to rein back and reorganise the balance of wealth, or face going over a cataract some time in the future. The rich folks disagree, of course, and they're the ones in charge.