on charting our own course

occasionally I tune in to talks given by people who work in sustainable development. the sensitive acuity of these sorts of people inspires me. and yet they don't "show up" on the horizons of the broader public. how can they compete with flashy celebrities and gruesome news stories?

perhaps their concerns are too specific to capture public attention--too mired in hyper-local projects at some times, and bureaucratic quibbling at others. but it strikes me that youngsters are growing up in a time when it's easy to believe that the whole world is accessible. yet, lives worth paying attention to are still suspended behind some veil.

TED has helped to bring more exposure to the synthesized ideas of those whose careers are wrapped up in how to improve or change the world. I take in their glorious unfurlings with starry but glazed-over eyes. TED talks' live audiences are people who already have plenty of momentum. fellow speakers, wealthy investors, innovators and their ilk. but I bet a lot of the people who give some TED videos millions of views are a lot like me--dazzled but disoriented, and maybe even a bit alienated. how can we help? is this problem all figured out? should I be a mere fanperson of these ideas--should I take my care and concern elsewhere?

how to make ideas actionable will be a question that surrounds anything worth acting on. and it's not my intention to take down TED. in terms of its effects in the world, my calculations yield a net good.

but there are a lot of people doing really critical work who will never have the opportunity, or even possess what it takes, to give a TED talk. they don't have twitters or instagrams and they don't blog often enough to keep the eyes of others. they don't write for The Atlantic or the Huffington Post, so their thoughts aren't available to be quickly shared--they can't go viral. in short, they're not available for consumption.

maybe it can't be any different. it seems to be a common truth that those who are the most practically useful are often the least able to communicate their utility beyond a narrow range of people or institutions. for these sorts to avail themselves to the wilds of the Web would require they steal time and mental energy from more salient tasks.

but who then are we to pattern our lives after? I am concerned about this for young people. (I include myself among the young). we are going to be cheated if we take our cues from the trajectories that immediately surround us--not necessarily physically, but in terms of what we are exposed to. these commonly seem to be of a wealthy, Western sliver of the spectrum that is actually available.

the internet can be a great tool for those living in a place where their peers do not understand or value them. growing up homeschooled in the rural south my hours were spent doing things like watching TV, learning to make art, engaged in all manner of activities outside and, most critically, spending hours on the web corresponding with others about politics, music, art, and the particularities of caring for my animal menagerie. it let me find kindred spirits and encounter new, challenging ideas far beyond what Vance County could offer me even if I had been in school.

that being said, I get the feeling that the internet can create the illusion of the whole world being accessible to us. there is an expectation that anything worth noting, or knowing, from anywhere in the world will show up on our radar if it's important. but by that logic some of the most interesting or critical things will be assumed to not exist because they don't get much attention in news and socail media. and so there are whole realities, robust and impactful, that go about their business despite most citizens of the planet being quite oblivious to their existences. it's not their loss, but ours.

I'm not sure there is a way to get the obscured facets of life to show up in due degree without becoming an utter loudmouth--the sort who presents their views in so extreme a fashion as to color the water of public opinion or awareness, but does so at the expense of their message's quality or nuance. this doesn't seem like a realistic remedy.

so maybe the larger problem here is that of the human tendency to align our lives along well-trodden courses. how can each of us tune in to our unconscious intelligences--those subtle indicators of desire, of need, of potential--while simultaneously resigning ourselves to the paths of least resistance?

formerly, I believed that cool lives and lifestyles weren't getting enough attention, and that if only people were made more aware of the full range of options than we'd see people charting their most individually appropriate courses. now I believe that to still be true--exposure is valuable--but I just don't think that the internet can be changed. it won't solve the exposure problem for us.

for now, I'm on to two potential qualities of this discussion that can change our abilities to find distinct courses of action for ourselves (and, presumably, for the planet and its people). one is that the internet isn't the be-all, end-all of human experience. much of living lays outside of it. and while we assume it to be a fairly descriptive and representative expression of life I'm pretty sure that it often plays an  unhealthily prescriptive role, especially for the young.

and my second point is an equally obvious but equally new (to me) insight. rather than solely seek our calling out in the world, we should also ask ourselves some more questions. questions like, what do I hope to accomplish in the world (so far as I can tell this far into life)? and, what is my definition of success? and, what troubles me about the way things are?

until we spend some time introspecting in this way, gaining interior knowledge, our impressions of how lives can play out in the external world won't be as valuable and may even be inappropriate for us. we will only encounter and taste the lowest hanging fruit. but looking within is a skill requiring attentiveness and a degree of separation from the flashy narratives the dominate the web, and which would happily dominate our minds and set our courses for us.

despite all that we perceive as available to us, I don't think we're as independent a people as we'd like. only when we encounter and develop our inner selves can we begin to live in such a way that breaks the patterns reiterated around us. and we may be too exceptional, complex, or just too busy to make any appreciable impact on the web. but, so long as we're not compromising the replicability of our own good work, and so long as young people are ready to eschew tired templates of life in favor living a bit more to the point, I think society can move forwards more than it is moving backwards.

on the form of thinking

I've just returned from some time in Norway, where each day's circumstance and aesthetic supported good thinking.

of course, "good thinking" can mean many things. in the past, I may have meant thinking that was especially purpose-oriented, yielding clear notions of what to do next in life. at times I've assumed that my thinking must be purely verbal, and anything less was nearly primitive and underdeveloped.

but I have wavered between regarding high-quality thinking as being that of the rational, Western, precise sort and that which seems more fitting of the Noble Savage: instinctual, unconscious, nonverbal and yet robust. thus is how I have framed the continuum so far; hence, it's no wonder that I would have trouble deciding on one or the other. why should I settle on extreme or the other if both are, at different times, appropriate and essential?

upon recollection, the sort of thoughts I had in Norway fit neither of the above descriptions. being too young to drive our rented car, I was perpetually the passenger as we ticked along the countryside. finally, my wound-up mind could uncoil over the ochre, green, and gray of the landscape as we drove through (and, in our better times, explored) the endless countryside. I think people call this "taking it all in."

there was little pushing or pulling of my thoughts. they were commonly lazy, drifting, expansive--but most of all, responsive to my inner needs. at one moment I might be silently and sensitively impressed by the shape of the land, letting it sink into my bones. in the next moment I might be working quite diligently through a cognitive conundrum, asking and answering actual questions of myself.

I wasn't searching hard for anything too profound. except for one moment when I climbed pretty far up into a tree situated next to a very mighty river rushing down from melting lakes atop the big mountains that rose up all around me. when I arrived at the top of the tree I noted that this is the sort of place where people have important, profound thoughts. hurry up and think of something profound, I urged myself. then I acknowledged that merely being there was special and to be highly prized. having ceased to bully myself into arriving at any concrete new notions, and thereby permitting myself to savor the place, a new insight alighted on my mind like a little petal waiting so long to land. it didn't radically alter my outlook, but it was good to have and to revisit (for now, I'll keep it private).

recent experiences like these indicate to me the importance of allowing my mind to settle into where it needs to be. I've resisted this truth because it strikes me as self-indulgent and lacking intention--the "be here now" mantra that, when misunderstood, can justify a lack of disciplined planning or responsiveness to the state of one's self or the greater world.

but more lately I'm coming around to the idea that forcing the mind to either of the extremes as I earlier described is no more useful or appropriate than lolling about in a hedonic immersion in the here and now. I shouldn't be shoving aside exceptional mind-body experiences, the sort that resist immediate verbal interpretation, in favor of something tame and controlled through language. because there is meaning there, and something to be learned and unpacked, in time. nor should I resist moments of absolute verbal clarity, or avoid narrating my movements or describing my mindscape, if it comes naturally. to each instance, the required mindset must be granted, or I'll gain little.

there are two things to be acknowledged about embracing this sort of metric of appropriateness for my thoughts. one is that while it requires conceding to a more instinctual part of the self it is nonetheless a highly pragmatic approach. because all I'm really concluding is that the best way to think is the way that is the best. framed this way the conclusion seems circular, but all this really means is how to think depends on the circumstances. the tool required depends on the outcome desired.

the second is that this new approach (new to me--long obvious to many, maybe most) has been developed through exposure to the conservation biologist Peter Kareiva. he works in The Nature Conservancy and seems to be lauded for being a pragmatic realist when it comes to achieving the ecological changes our planet requires.

he gave a talk at the Long Now foundation's lecture series titled Conservation in the Real World. its content more or less fulfills the attractive title, acknowledging problems with common approaches: fear-based tactics that only alienate, and a resistance to technology that could more or less solve some problems.

but what struck me most was his assessment of the sustainable agriculture movement. I'm working from memory, as I can't locate a transcript of his talk (and it may have been in the Q&A after), but he describes a need for an outcome-based approach to evaluating the sustainability of food production and ultimately for the methods one utilizes. in other words, the only way to get past the rhetoric and mythology surrounding small/local/organic farming is to evaluate how well each enterprise scores along various critical criteria. for example, which system sequester the most carbon? which invest most in the local economy? which have to use the fewest chemical inputs? it may be that some farms score very high in some factors but surprisingly poor in others.

of course, fairly comparing farms is another matter that complicates this approach. does one compare according to acreage? that seems to miss the point. what about calories produced per acre? that too is troubled--the quality of the calorie must be considered. but the larger aim of determining the method according to the desired outcome strikes me as irresistibly practical, with potentially profound implications for farming but also applicable to many other realms. like thought. the way we should think depends on the outcomes we desire... or require. form should follow function; function should follow need.