One destination can yield two or more different outcomes. Depending upon the reason and the motivation for being there.
This statement sums up the dilemma that we all face in terms of how different parts of our lives and how our collective life experiences are going to play out for us over the coming months and years.
The different or alternative outcomes we can expect depend upon choices that we make that we may well continue not to realise that we are even making.
They could as easily be made by the impact of an event or a series of events that make a certain destination or a range of different destinations inevitable. Rather than any of them being either a conscious or unconscious choice.
So, what are the choices we face?
The choices we face are quite literally about the way that we live. The lifestyles we have. The food we eat. The houses we live in. The way that we work. The way that we are entertained and that we entertain ourselves. The ways that we value education and life skills. The way that we see, respect and value others. The way that we interact with our community and the services and resources that we share. The way that we travel. The way that we treat nature and the environment. The way that we consider the future. The way that we think about others and the way that we think about ourselves.
The list is indeed long. But those who can see this will also understand that we are always making a choice.
What many don’t yet realise is that some, if not many of the choices that we have to make will not be based upon the things or the experiences that we have that are outside of ourselves.
Rather, the choices that we have to make will be about how we choose to interpret the value of the things or experiences that are outside of us, how we think about them and how we respond to them within.
Examples of these choices in life are already being presented to us to make. But the way that we are experiencing them today does not materialise in forms that we recognise as being a conscious choice.
We are experiencing critically important choices like a decision or a change that is being imposed upon us by those with responsibility over our lives. And these changes are being implemented in ways that make it feel like we don’t have any choice.
The reason that this is happening to the majority of us today is it is only the people who are controlling the lives of others who have any real reason to think and plan ahead for the way that society and the system or way of doing things will work for the future that lies ahead.
However, these same people have been planning ahead and making decisions that now affect every part of our lives for decades past. And we are all paying a very heavy price.
Decisions constantly made to benefit and enrich the few at the cost of the many do not come cheaply.
Today, the ‘powers’ that control everything are only too well aware that time is running out for the system that has progressively hurt and impoverished everyone else, whilst they and their kind have become increasingly rich.
They are making attempts to mitigate the impact of the decisions that they have already made by creating and implementing public policies that we have never consented to and have never even discussed.
We experience what is being done ‘to us’ and ‘to our lives’ as if we are being controlled and are heading into a world where we will increasingly be told what we can and cannot do.
The reason that this approach is so offensive to us is regrettably simple. It involves the rather difficult relationship that we all have with truth.
Deep down, often unconsciously or without thinking, we realise that whilst it may never have been our conscious intention to live unsustainably and to cherish money and material wealth above all things and most of the people in our lives, this is exactly what we have done.
Those who control everything today are well aware of what they have already imposed upon everyone. Because the addiction to money and material living that many of us don’t even realise that we have is also one that they share.
Guilt always likes company after all.
Servicing the addiction to wealth and the power and control that comes with it by changing the worlds of others, so that they help to feed the addiction of your own, is something that only those who are addicted who have power over everyone and everything else are able to do.
The actions of an addict who is acting to feed their own habit and the habits of those around them are never accompanied by any kind of rational consideration or feeling for the cost and impact upon anyone else whom their actions might involve.
For those whose lives have not reached the point of addictive compulsion, the process of waking up to or understanding what they are experiencing and then making the conscious decision to live differently and take back control, is where the pathway back to where sanity – and this case humanity – can begin.
The greatest ill that our addiction to money and material living has inflicted upon us is unsustainable living.
It’s what we might recognise as focusing purely on the things and the experiences that we ‘want’, rather than the things and experiences that we ‘need’.
All of the problems that the world faces today are wrapped up in the offshoots of unsustainable living.
Unsustainable living spans our experiences of life at world level, from the impact of globalisation and the way that money rules everything, to the personal impact of the dehumanisation of relationships and the diminishing value we place on community, the people who are around us every day, and the meaning that values have or should have across our lives.
Greed, selfishness, separation and everything we interpret as making us different are at the root cause of all the problems that we face. Yet we today fall into the trap of mistaking the effects of the problems as the cause themselves.
The mess that we are in has been developing for a very long time and the biggest issue that we all face is whether events will take the decisions out of our hands, or if enough of us can wake up to the reality we now face and change the direction that we are all going in time.
Adam Tugwell 