there is no higher purpose
than being in the here and now
with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity
no one need do more
than need be done to be and let be,
but people do – it’s the culture we live in
notes and links:
2018-10
photo credit: Carina Dimmek on Unsplash
links in the bang commands below are to the results for their search terms
!mw higher purpose / : a more meaningful reason to live, work, etc.
!gb in the here and now (Thich Nhat Hanh) / being aware of being
!g with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity / see Thich Nhat Hanh on this
!gb the culture we live in (Daniel Quinn)
The culture we live in promotes the belief that we can use without limit any and all natural resources: sinks as well as sources. Of course we can’t, and this becomes more clear the longer we act as if we can.
The underlying premise of this culture is that owning more and spending more always makes life better. Not only is this not true, it also means doing more than need be done to be and let be, and this consumes – and in the end exhausts or destroys – more resources than not doing that.
Culture as “a people enacting a story”:
The word “culture” is notoriously polyvalent, and Quinn/Ishmael proposes his own definition: a culture is “a people enacting a story” (1992, 41). Most of the world’s “civilized” societies, notwithstanding their apparent diversity, turn out to be enacting the same story, namely that “[t]he world was made for man, and man was made to rule it” (1992, 72). Alternative lifestyles exist among the primitive societies, whose prevailing ethos holds that “[m]an belongs to the world” (1992, 239) rather than vice versa; and that “[t]here is no one right way for people to live” (1999, 183). Instead of “civilized” and “primitive” cultures, Quinn speaks of “Takers” and “Leavers” (as in “take it or leave it”), cautioning that “[t]he Leavers are not chapter one of a story in which the Takers are chapter two” (1992, 42).
from a book chapter by Bei Dawei you can read here
See also a wonderful post by Jonathan Cook – Why we’re blind to the system destroying us – on how the culture we live in is made up of stories and on how whoever controls the narrative controls us as well.
And do read John Pilger in his foreword to Propaganda Blitz on how mainstream media that were once thought free from bias – the BBC, the Guardian, Channel 4 News – are no longer so.