Daily Reflections 2025-05-19

It’s a rainy morning. We had a gorgeous day yesterday and I spent most of it in the garden preparing beds for planting so I’m a bit stiff and sore this morning, but in a good way.

And I have a few thought rattling around.

I read a great piece by Jennifer Browdy yesterday called AI and the Human Soul. I highly recommend it.

I realized that her call to action is exactly what we are trying to do with the Lifeboat Academy. Cultivate beauty and kindness. Be bold and vulnerable. Share your experience openly; don’t hide your reality anymore. Prepare sanctuaries for those in need. Stand up and be counted. Insist on being recognized and seen.

The path is so clear in my head. I see how it could work; it’s completely plausible. But, of course, that’s not a guarantee that that’s how it will work.

But ultimately, the goal isn’t the goal. Flow is the goal. But to reach flow, you must have a goal that isn’t flow. It’s a bit like the notion that pursuing happiness is the surest recipe to never find happiness. Or that flying is nothing more than throwing yourself at the ground and missing.

You can’t flow without a goal, but likewise you can’t flow if all you have is a goal.

Flow is the meeting place between reality as it is and reality as it could be.

A big part of the challenge because reality as it is and reality as it could be (i.e. our thoughts) move at vastly different speeds. It’s almost like we need a clutch to facilitate meshing the rush of thoughts with the stillness of reality.

Thoughts move so quickly in part because they are so thin and shallow. Even when we are thinking “lots of thoughts” they come through like a thin jet (with lots of splatter).

Reality is like a wide, slow, flooding river. There a many swirls and eddies where things appear to be moving quickly and chaotically, but only as blips in a wider and more ponderous movement.

So, here we are doing what we should, positioning ourselves right there on the living interface between the world as it is and the world as it could be. You would think that support would just magically appear.

I saw a meme the other day along the lines of “it’s a beautiful planet, but an ugly world” and that seems to be the core of it. We’ve developed a society predicated on fear of authority which leads to a perpetuated, internalized violence that can’t help but manifest as violence against people and all living things. Doing the right thing these days is just as likely to invite attack as to receive support.

Only dehumanized people dehumanize people.

I am increasingly convinced that our core beliefs about human nature lie at the root of our problems.

We’ve been conned into giving up our freedom and our sovereignty because we are told people (other people, of course) are no damn good. There are horrible people out there who want nothing more than to harm you and use you. More animal than human.

We are taught this lesson all through our childhoods by being on the receiving end of people being horrible. At home, we are victim to the overwhelm and stress of our parents and all the unhealed traumas of their childhood. At school we get beat up by teachers and bullies. All the time told “this is how it is.”

By the time we head out into the wider world, we’ve been conditioned (traumatized) to believe it’s a “dog eat dog” world out there (never mind the fact that dogs are social animals that work in packs and rarely if ever turn on their own kind).

But if we look closely, we see that those horrible people were actually just conditioned (traumatized) to be that way. Every single one of them thought either: 1) they were doing it for your own good or 2) they had no choice.

So what if instead of thinking people are no damn good, we thought that our basic human nature is malleable and vulnerable? What if people mostly take the shape that people expect of them?

What if the openness, curiosity, active learning and responsiveness of children is actually our true nature, along with the tendency to get easily overwhelmed by experience and emotions?

What if it’s human nature to respond to threats and deprivation by either shutting down or lashing out, and also to respond to kindness with kindness and generosity with generosity?

What if human nature was actually just a mirror of the social environment we create together?

If so, then the “nature” we see is just a statement about the reality we create. We. Collectively.

Think about the difference in character between a dog that has been abused or living on the streets vs. one that’s be raised and cared for in a loving home. Why would we think it would be any different for humans?

Unfortunately, the powers that be keep insisting that no, the “reality” is that people are no damn good. So that’s why we need to police to brutalize us – for our own good.

Only dehumanized people dehumanize people, but we’ve all been dehumanized in countless ways. Through predatory economics and corrupt churches (see predatory economics). All the isms and an “us vs. them” attitude that colour codes the whole world into two teams of “for me” or “agin’ me.”

So, the main task before us is to rehumanize ourselves. That starts by challenging the received wisdom that people are no damn good. Because you are a person and so that shit gets internalized and you stop trusting yourself; stop trusting your own experience and reality.

Here’s a reminder about who we are. We are (part of) nature. We are vicarious. We are a process. We are social animals and we are amazingly creative and adaptable. We are part of a larger intelligence.

We need to start acting like it.

Flow can only happen when you engage with reality as it is while still holding on to reality as it could be. Life lives at that interface. Taste doesn’t exist in the tongue or in the strawberry, but only in the two at once.

So, what’s the clutch that helps us synchronize the interface? How do we find that sweet spot more often and hold it longer? And how do we get so engrossed in the playfulness of trying that we are like surfers always looking for the next wave to ride?

The goal is not the goal, but you need a goal.