Life doesn’t happen *to* you, it happens *for* you.
@mdrockwell so much this! Unfortunately too many people forget that we have the power and control to craft a life we enjoy, and to fix the things we don’t.
@pimoore I wish that were true. It may be true to some extent for some people. But I think this is spoken from position of privledge. Many have very little power or control in or over their lives.
@mdrockwell That I would agree with to a degree. I think that I was more directly responding to the notion that we have the “power and control to craft a life we enjoy, and to fix the things we don’t.”
Even the decisions we make are being made in a context much larger than us. So I might make a decision that has an affect from within a moment and a context. But it’s that larger context that we have only partial control and for many it may be very little control, very little power. An obvious example here would be our current need for a Black Lives Matter movement which speaks pretty directly to power, control and context.
@Denny the existence of BLM is an example to the contrary. It's comprised of individuals that are taking actions that will effect their lives. You're underestimating the power of individuals.
@mdrockwell Hmmm. That’s interesting! You’re right that it is a movement of individuals. But were they only to act as individuals they would not have the power or protection they have as a collective. The collective effort is something more than the individual and creates a new power that would not exist otherwise.
I think it’s an interesting discussion that speaks to the social nature of humans and human history. Whether we look at early Homo sapiens existing in smaller groups for the majority of our history or ongoing developments taking place in more recent times in the context of far more populated and complex social structures.
Throughout this history we have individuals living in the context of larger groups be they families, tribes, cities, etc. And it would seem that throughout our history our notion of self, our idea of community and so on has likely changed and still is. It’s all in flux!
It would seem to me that modern humanity (and perhaps all of human history) is in part an experiment of social structure which includes our roles as individuals rooted in relationships. Or is it better said that our relationships are rooted in relationship?
There’s a tension there, in that relationship. Ack, much to think about and consider. It’s something I’ve been interested in for a long time and I probably get overly wordy on the subject!
@Denny @mdrockwell No doubt the level of inequities and privilege in society today (financial, class, gender, race, etc.) has made this much more daunting of a task, and I don’t disagree with you. As Michael mentioned though, change happens with action, as difficult as it can be these days. Just like the BLM movement, or Greta Thunberg speaking out against climate change, or anti-poverty organizations fighting to make the wealth distribution in society more fair, people need to remember that nothing will change if they don’t take the first step.
Be it a historical revolution to push for wide sweeping reform, or an individual battling to improve their health or career, there’s nothing more unstoppable in the world than human willpower.