To say that the Meaning of Life is “food, clothing, and shelter” must be missing the point, right? The meaning of life is found in art or religion or love, not in mundane details of survival. True, but without survival, there’d be no life to have meaning; and surviving well can be an artform, religious practice, and expression of love, all at once.
Having studied the New Testament maybe too much, I try to take a God’s-eye view of things, where every human soul is unique and beloved, and surviving well means everybody’s needs being met, now and into the future. By this definition, humanity is just barely surviving. Of course this is nothing new, but for the first time in history we now actually have the tools and wealth to meet everyone’s survival needs – but, same as it ever was, these resources are busy doing other things.
It would be one thing if we were powerless to help people who are currently starving or homeless, but our collective choice not to help makes it doubly tragic. This “let them eat cake” irony follows me around, making it hard to enjoy the many modern luxuries and amusements on offer, because I’m unable to forget that these resources could be helping some people just stay alive. Am I neurotic? Or is it a bad case of overview affect, caused by a poster of the planet I encountered at age 14? Whatever the cause, I go through my day with a vague awareness of the 8 billion other people on the planet; of my advantages, and their plights.
My point of reference here is the San Francisco Bay area, the lap of luxury where I, mostly through sheer luck, have a home. By Bay Area standards I’m far from wealthy, but I’m always employed, my survival needs are easily met, and I spend a fair amount of time being pretty happy. I’d like everyone on the planet to experience at least this level of survival, and try to think of ways this dream could come true.
Having also once been homeless, I also fully understand the uneven correlation between wealth and happiness: climbing up the income ladder, greater wealth produces progressively less additional happiness, until at some point money spent is essentially wasted. Once a person’s essential needs are being met, it’s actually smart to share ones wealth: the joy of eradicating malaria would far exceed the joy of owning a new superyacht.
I must surmise that the owners of superyachts exist in an entirely different moral universe from me. Mine includes the overview affect, in all its aspects, plus an understanding that what we call “justice” is in fact a universal law, not a man-made convention. Every action causes a reaction, what goes around comes around, and you reap what you sow. Near as I can tell, karma is real. And near as I can tell, the law of karma extends beyond our earth life – justice is eventually served. I have no idea what this future justice might look or feel like, but the logic is sound, and there are many indications that our conscience does follow us to the next world. All these moral elements point in the same direction – to what the religious call the Golden Rule. The nonreligious can just call it empathy and compassion.
The superyacht-owner moral framework must not include any of this, near as I can tell. Whatever their professed religious beliefs, they seem to be operating at the moral level of a prairie dog – a biological default, whose main goal is the production of offspring. From this perspective, philanthropy doesn’t make sense, because it benefits other families, who ultimately are in competition with your own. Maybe these morally underdeveloped souls are actually the ones in need of charity: we should gift them with a SpaceX ticket and a handful of psilocybin mushrooms.
Meanwhile, back here in the middle class, I neurotically wonder whether I really need a new sofa. From a planetary view, what’s the cost-benefit analysis? What’s the dollar value of possible derived pleasure? How would I even make these calculations? Do I really have time to be thinking about all this?
We’re all making these decisions, awarely or not, all the time. It’s a constant balancing act; and since my choices often seem quite arbitrary, it would be presumptuous to offer any specific advice. The overall aim is clear – for everyone to survive – but it’s in the details that we can lose integrity, or get lost agonizing. Exactly how do I be selfless and selfish at the same time?
We’ve built thousands of huge stadiums solely for our entertainment; I’ve, strangely, never been in one, yet feel only moderately deprived. To be clear, I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t entertain ourselves, or gather together at games or festivals, or spend wealth on the many modern pleasures we’ve devised; I only wish we could get as excited about saving the life of a starving child as we do about the home team winning the championship.
This isn’t an impossibility. During the Kuwait war, teams from various nations engaged in intense but good-natured competition to extinguish the burning oil fields. Our competitive and patriotic impulses can, in the right framing, inspire good works. Rather than compete in a race to Mars, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk could be in a race to eradicate cholera. Why does their choice of goals not surprise us?
A colony of ants can be dedicated to the protection of their queen, but we’re not ants, in my opinion. We can emulate the behavior of any animal species, but aren’t bound or intended to. Each one of us possesses a God-given desire for, and right to, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which precludes a “ruling class” version of survival derived from the insect world. Bezos and Musk may consider it “normal” that maybe 10% of us enjoy material security; I consider it an aberration. This distorted reality exists only because we collectively allow it.
I also consider this elite survivalism an abdication. Moving to another planet won’t fix anything: our sicknesses will follow us through time and space until we confront and heal them. A change in consciousness is really the only thing that will “save” humanity, which change occurs, ultimately, in one place: here and now.
In our long succession of heres and nows, I see human survival as an artform slowly being mastered – something beautiful yet to be created. A world where everyone feels secure seems as plausible as a Marvel movie; but then, 150 years ago, a Marvel movie would have seemed implausible. If cinema technology can progress so quickly, maybe other things could too? We have the tools to ensure survival for all humanity, but have yet to collectively agree that this is a desirable and attainable goal. Marxism at least tries to envision it; but, in practice, no form or style of government has produced anything near my dreamed-of utopia. Technologies and ideologies have progressed, but somehow our morality seems stuck in the dark ages.
So what really holds us back? Digging for some bedrock answer, I keep ending back at “selfishness”, which seems hardly helpful at all. Can selfishness even be defined, let alone cured? Self-care is a virtue; at what point does it morph into a a sin? Still, wherever I look in my modern industrialized world, the trend holds: people so focused on their own welfare that they’re oblivious of the welfare of others – in fact, even that of their own children.
To survive well entails sustainability; i.e., doesn’t lead to bankruptcy – a goal shared by both conservatives and conservationists. As we enjoy the comforts laboriously created by previous generations, can anyone argue that we don’t have a responsibility to future generations? Of course present survival trumps future survival, and many people simply do what they must to stay alive; but so much of what we in the developed world spend our wealth on goes far beyond simple survival. As a semi-Christian-semi-socialist (because Jesus was crystal-clear about needing to care for “the least”), I look with sorrow at the world’s upper crust, where extravagance isn’t tempered by modesty, conspicuous consumption now the law of the land. Meanwhile, the land itself is staging a rebellion – and our children look with dismay at the world we’re bequeathing them.
In discussions about climate change, people perhaps don’t appreciate the conservatism of science. The culture of science is built around caution and understatement, because a single exaggeration can derail a career. So when you see climate scientists handcuffing themselves to the doors of banks, this is not a cheap stunt – they are desperately trying to get our attention.
It’s totally understandable that we should want to ignore these warnings of impending depletion and bankruptcy – they are super inconvenient! They mess with our entire fantasy of how life is supposed to look. But at some point we’re like Johnny Depp talking with his accountant, when he should be talking with his therapist. We should be asking: Where did this fantasy come from, and why do we cling to it?
The fantasy seems to have several origins. One, of course, is media and advertising, which continually ratchets up our expectation of what the “good life” should look like. Downton Abby for me, thanks. The combination of raw capitalism and peer pressure is powerful; and when we act on our conditioned craving for an aristocratic life, the result is selfishness, because present technology can’t provide all humanity with this level of affluence.
Tied in with this origin is a deeper one: our ability to envision these rarefied environments in the first place. Beavers can’t do it; monkeys can’t do it; only we can; and we do it very well. Getting very metaphysical, let me posit that this ability to imagine grandiose splendor is further evidence of our “divine” origin. We each, for some reason, have the capacity to envision heaven. We can easily imagine things that couldn’t or shouldn’t exist in this world. And we can easily desire these things, even to our detriment, if we choose.
I do plan to live in a mansion, but it won’t be in this world. In this world, I could not, with a lifetime of man-hours, build a mansion; and if you gave me one, the upkeep alone would exhaust me. I trust that my desire for such a home is good, but understand that this world just wasn’t designed for such perfection and permanence.
If one doesn’t believe in a future world where one can build a custom uncorruptible mansion, one can be consigned to a state of frustration, forever yearning for things that resist materialization. Any plan to fulfill such a heavenly fantasy here on earth will entail inducing or requiring others to forgo their own heaven in service of ours. And then, accompanying the hollowness of that accomplishment will be the repeating refrain: Is that all there is? All the goals reached, the money spent, are not producing the euphoria we’d expected. We’ve been duped into believing that material splendor will bring happiness, but it fails even at that.
Even if one believes in a hereafter, great efforts of patience and humor are still needed: I know full well that, down here, dust and rust never sleep, and those castles in the sand will surely slip into the sea; but still, I want what I want, and I want it now.
There are sustainable ways to have tastes of heaven here on earth; and in the larger picture maybe that’s really all we need: a preview of things to come. Instead of a fancy car, one can delight in some nice clean clothes, and maybe a bit of jewelry. Instead of a mansion, one can have a modest home furnished with things that spark joy. If we relinquish the unnatural desires fostered by advertising and media, and if we realize that some desires are inherently intended for future fulfillment, contentment suddenly becomes a lot more attainable.
Countless people in the Third World understand this simple truth, but many of us in the industrialized world labor under the fantasy that we can and should create a physical heaven here on earth. In pursuit of this fantasy, we purloin the wealth of the world, and the labor of our fellow man, thereby creating many of the problems that beset humanity. Technology can go a long way towards making our lives more comfortable, but our idea of “the good life” may also need upgrading; otherwise, our created “heaven” will have to include security systems and jails, armies of lawyers and soldiers. And then, even if all this is deemed acceptable, our very planet will be bankrupted by our desire for celestial opulence.
Along with my failure as a stadium attendee, I’m also a complete failure as an advertising consumer. I avoid all advertising; and ads that do reach me often have a backwards effect, inducing an aversion to whatever’s being sold. The attempted manipulation offends me, regardless of the product. I basically regard all advertising as a form of dark comedy, we being the butt of the joke. There may be plenty of “good” ads, but the Mad Men really are mad.
From my perspective, the interdependency of politics and advertising money is baffling. Why would anyone believe anything in a paid political advertisement? It’s the one place you’re least likely to encounter objective or useful information. If undecided, I tend to vote for the candidate or issue with the smallest advertising budget.
Advertising once had a useful function – to get information to our eyeballs – but in our modern interconnected world this is barely even needed. Nowadays, it seems the primary function of most advertising is to exploit our gullibility – to make us want or believe something that maybe we shouldn’t. Of course some have reached a disinformation saturation point, and no longer believe anything that media shovels at them, but that’s not a solution either. We each need to employ our detective skills, and to educate ourselves, continually. A democracy can’t function without reliable sources of information, and these need to be funded directly, not through advertising. And don’t even get me started about data mining and surveillance and AI…
I continue to rant in this manner for some paragraphs, mercifully edited out; but I feel strongly about this – ideas matter a lot, and our marketplace of ideas is currently in bad shape. BTW, if you are, for some reason, reading this, your curiosity and patience are to be applauded.
So anyway, surviving well is an art. I’m a musician, so yeah, definitely support the arts! But again, what is not potentially art? Farmers and cooks, housecleaners and house builders – anything done with focus and commitment is art. But sometimes our art is just bad. If my beautiful life results in your ugly suffering, that’s bad art. The climate scientists are just writing an honest review, trying to let us know that our art isn’t working – not for us, and certainly not for our children. If we really want to succeed at the art of living, we’re going to need to dramatically up our game, with a creative vision that encompasses the entire planet, and stretches off into the future.
Since we have widely varying ideas of what a “good life” would even look like, attaining it for everyone will be no simple project. Will it be a rustic home in the country, or a parcel of suburban paradise, or a comfy apartment in a bustling city? These visions needn’t be mutually exclusive, but they all need to harmonize, and all need some major upgrades. We’ll need breakthroughs not only in technology, but also in the realms of conflict resolution and governance, communication and consciousness, ethics and morality. The only answer I can see is “all of the above”.
In the fine art of survival, technology is certainly an essential paintbrush. Neither simple nor complex technology is inherently superior: a pandemic requires dizzying technology; sustainable agriculture can require almost none. But having spent time living in a treehouse with no plumbing or electricity, trying to subsist on raw food, I’ll enthusiastically opine that technology is great! Whenever we invent something useful, we should co-credit God, and trust that she’s also suitably pleased, and looking forward to all the discoveries we’ve yet to make. But in uncaring hands, any of these inventions can become simply evil – probably not what she had in mind at all.
Even in my treehouse, I had access to a few technological marvels that made all the difference: a ram pump in the creek for water, an on-demand water heater for showers. Ah, the good life. There actually was a stove nearby, but I was pursuing an ideal, trying to see how close to the Garden of Eden I could get. Not very close, it turns out. Like Thoreau, I was forced to concede that a life of Edenic simplicity is a mirage. If you doubt that, head off into your nearest forest buck naked (because anything made in a factory would be “cheating”), and contemplate reality for a bit. If it exists anywhere, humankind’s “good life” exists somewhere in the future.
From my technological nadir, I’ve re-approached civilization with a more favorable eye, trying to find a healthy balance between modernity and simplicity. That balance will be different for each of us, but it seems we all are being called to clarify our concept of “appropriate technology”. I don’t view sustainability as antithetical to a modern comfortable life, and envision the merging of these two goals; but lord are we miles from that vision. Our commerce-driven society has bestowed upon its members the supreme title of Consumer, and it scarcely matters what we consume, as long as we do so in the latest style, and with maximum convenience.
Aside from that nebulous selfishness, the problem here seems to be one of inertia and habit – traditions, routines, and practiced behaviors that can often be helpful, but also resist change, even for the better. Oddly, psychedelic drugs may prove to be helpful here, given their power to help lift us out of ruts, rethink habitual behavior, and set off in entirely new directions. I’m sure there are other less drastic solutions available – like, perhaps, turning off the TV – but something is needed to help get us off autopilot.
Don’t count on your government to do it, or on the holders of financial power. Whatever their cash cow, they’re going to keep milking it as long as they can. This really must be an individual revolution, at least at the start. Our choices and actions may seem entirely insignificant, but we’re like the ants who will collectively face down the grasshoppers. So I guess sometimes it is okay to act like an ant.
Some of the scariest grasshoppers right now seem to be not people, but corporations. Under present law, corporations are considered “people”, but they lack one essential ingredient of humanity: a conscience. What’s worse, their dispersed structure and overarching imposition of “fiduciary duty” actively discourages the exercise of conscience by its members and stakeholders. If corporations are people, they are, almost by definition, deranged, sociopathic people – and right now, in the “free” world, they pretty much run the show.
In the form of corporations, our dreaded Artificial Intelligence dystopia has, in a sense, already arrived: humanity’s subjugation to powerful self-sustaining entities which lack a human conscience. It’s perhaps no surprise that corporations are avidly pursuing literal AI, because it fits in perfectly with their existing ethos. I’m sure there are many corporations who started out with the intention to “don’t be evil“, but their very nature seems to lead to other outcomes.
These corporate monsters are but a symptom of a world where capitalism has gone mad. With their massive budgets, large companies, public and private, have every advantage in manipulating our thoughts and feelings – co-opting our patriotism, sexuality, ideals, all in the service of “growth and productivity”. I sense that our Founding Fathers didn’t foresee this. As money inexorably flows from the poor to the rich, resistance seems futile; but we each, ultimately, choose whether to play along in this game.
Legal systems and governments are a kind of technology; some work better than others, and some possess glaring flaws. A good inventor sorts through ideas and experiments, and isn’t afraid to discard the failures. If something about our government, or a law it’s created, is failing us, we, the ants, need to summon our courage and act. The unfortunate fact is that there are bad actors among us, the mightyists who pathologically crave power and wealth, who give capitalism a bad name. They are a minority, but the problems they’ve caused will only be remedied when the good actors act.
Speaking of ant metaphors, there are an awful lot of women in the world; and I wonder how different our story will be as they find their collective voice of grounded sanity, and begin using it loud and clear. I’m not trying to stereotype or oversimplify, but maybe it’s time to try an alternative to patriarchy.
That being said, I’ve recently developed a deeper appreciation of the audacity of this country’s founders. It’s true that, as rich white guys, they left some gaping holes in our democratic framework, but their overall plan was revolutionary in every sense of the word. They were acutely aware of the many ways a democracy might be undermined, and did their best to invent a machine that couldn’t be hacked. But ensuing generations have perhaps not fully appreciated that this is an ongoing project: that such a machine needs constant updates, and the hackers never quit.
Many observers of modern civilization have concluded that multiple profound transformations are needed if we’re to survive at all; and it seems that a linchpin in these transformations is our governments. We may not believe it, but we do still hold the reins. Some people might think that it’s too late – that the mightyists have already won, and democracy is effectively dead. That our only remaining job as citizens is to keep producing and consuming until the planet is fully exhausted. But the ghost of Ben Franklin keeps nudging me on. He and his colleagues had high hopes for this little experiment, and he’s telling us not to give up. There are many good people in the world, and our inventions can help us manifest and amplify that goodness. Technology, of all kinds, can give us godlike powers; but, as in the Marvel movie, we still must confront our demons.
If we emerge victorious, what will our world look like? It will, I think, be a place where everyone is his brother’s keeper: where my happiness depends, in part, on yours. It will be a place where some of us willingly relinquish some of our luxuries in order to provide sustenance and dignity for others. And, when we’ve finally perfected our art, it will be a place where, as if by miracle, there’s enough good life for everyone.
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