Today, as I walked back up the hill from town – where I had been to the butcher bakers and yes actually a candlestick maker, I was hit by a rather alarming thought. Possibly a realisation of a philosophic nature. And in the words of the inimitable Run DMC it goes a little something like this………
‘What if the emancipation from evolution is contentment.’
I realise I will need to open out this unnervingly lean statement because it is Tardis like in what it conceals.
It strikes me that the ability to evolve – to adapt and survive - is why the human race is the top of the food chain. The unwavering evolution of our species is something of wonderment and awe. The concepts we have created, the inventions engineered, the countless lives bolstered by the sheer ingenuity and evolution of the human brain. I could write from now until the end of time and still not cover everything that our human evolution has delivered in terms of forwarding our species, such is the vastness. What is the one thing that our evolutionary direction of travel shares no matter the output, whatever the discovery? MORE.
More, is the crux of evolutionary progress. More time, more speed, more money, more space, more size, more ownership, more autonomy. MORE.
I was watching a documentary on the effect of Social Media on the human psyche – no spoiler alert required – we know it isn’t good. I wasn’t aware just how detrimental this consumption of multiple streams of content across our days, nights, weeks, months and years could be though. Our brains are at a maximum point (according to the documentary) when they have social input from 20 stimulus points. When have you ever only had 20 stimuli on social media? Notifications, newsfeed updates, video streaming, ads etc – hundreds within just a few minutes. This is the perfect example of MORE.
We were not content to do one thing at once. Unsatisfied with one conversation, one topic or a singular source. I know that had the human race been fulfilled by the simpler ways then of course most of the wonderous advancements that we can truly be proud of in fields such as medicine, science, arts and travel would just not have occurred. Had humanity grown complacent even just 1000 years ago then serfdom and village beheadings would be cultural backdrop. I do query though when we feel enough is enough – or if we are even capable. The latter of these ponderings terrifies me, perhaps it is truth that we cannot settle for things being enough as they are.
Must we always push harder, faster, longer for MORE?
We think that by having more of something we are freeing ourselves from the onerous labours of the times before – it’s why we strive. We created carts for horses to transport goods, so we didn’t have to carry them. Then we invented boats and cars and lorries to speed things up and get more things to more places more quickly. Eventually we went into the air and formulated flight so that we could liberate ourselves from the limited movement of goods nationally to internationally in just hours.
It seems to me that the ultimate goal of our evolution is freedom. And the intention is good. Make life easier, pursue more by doing less. What has happened though is the gains we have in physical demands have been silently shackled to the mental load. Covertly the cognitive gymnastics have us wired to the ON position permanently. Far from freeing us we are more imprisoned than ever. Falsely seeing ourselves as a consumer of things we are in fact the product, the consumed and our attention is the currency.
Could it be that the antidote to our evolutionary emancipation is contentment? At least in the size and scale of the lives we lead. Smaller social circles – real in person ones. Calmer, kinder close- knit communities. Being more monotask than multitask?
I am not for one minute saying that we need to stop trying for better – rather that we need to get better at understanding what better looks like. It is not always about MORE – it can sometimes be about less.
Where it is about more is MORE connected, MORE whole-hearted and MORE compassionate – and all of those require LESS division, LESS mental demands and LESS expectations.
Is MORE from LESS really possible and can we really replace contempt with contentment. I don’t know, but I am certainly willing to find out. Next time I will be delving into some of the things I think can lead to a little evolutionary plateau – and why that is absolutely to be cherished on the micro level.
X Love and Empowerment Fliss X
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