Do you subscribe to the view that we live in a time of profound social pessimism? Do you find yourself with a positive view about yours and your family's prospects, yet find yourself being negative and pessimistic about other people (believe them to be unkind, untrustworthy)? The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has uncovered these themes in its new 'Social Evils' report. The crux of this thesis is that we live in a time of profound social pessimism and social unease. Despite the fact that we are wealthier, healthier and have more of what we want than ever before in human history (yes even despite the blip of the recession), a dark seam that has been exposed by this latest research is undeniably there.
Rampant individualism, social inequalities (high profile overpaid bankers and rip off politicians!) and a erosion of values are clear indicators. Matthew Taylor writes a compelling debate in his Reflections on Social Evils and Human Nature, part of the Rowntree Foundation work. It is the very affluence that we are bathed in that cause us to bypass cultural safeguards and commitment devices. Affluence and our culture of 'instant gratification' breeds impatience and makes us flout social norms, higher values and institutions that encourage a more long term view of society.
But, as the spiral down into anxiety and credit crunch are starting to make us realise, it is impossible for us to thrive without a deeper sense of values and purpose to our collective lives. 'Affluence breeds impatience and impatience undermines wellbeing'. Remember, our brains have developed over 400,000 years and have served us fine for the majority of our existence; 99% of our lives have been consumed by scraping by to find food and shelter to get by and survive. We hunted, we were hunted, we struggled, we died young. In the scheme of things, it is the last few seconds of our existence where we find ourselves 'never having it so good'. Yet our poor brains remain hardwired for short-termism.
So no wonder then, that we get attached to our wealth. That we succumb to selfishness and self indulgence. And then get indigestion! But really it is our ways of thinking that are failing us. We get attached to our comforts, to our jobs, to our incomes, to sex or exercise, to our materialistic rewards and believe that it is these that bring us happiness. And it is this attachment that cause us problems.
If we want to transition from anxiety, unease, and lack of wellbeing, we need to look to higher goals and values and move towards self-actualisation. And the foundation for this is to start to work on our attachments. If we are overly attached the new car we just bought, we get all stirred up when the little boy down the road, who is severly disabled, accidently runs his bike into it scratching the shiny new paint.
We have two choices here: if we are 'attached' to our new car, overly identified with it, we get annoyed, perhaps shout at his parents, and start to watch every minute they are out in the street. This wastes emotional energy and and sets us on a spiral of negativity. However, if we are detached from this object, we are filled with compassion for the little boy and the scratch is of no importance whatsoever. We experience the car as an object to get us from one place to another; rather than a status object that serves to boost our ego and make us feel good about ourselves.
Hence through practicising non-attachment or non-reacting, we are increasingly liberated from the pointless energy-wasting activities of the ego and become filled with increasingly deeper contentment and equanimity. In a sense, this is a move from doing to being.
Meditation helps us to move from doing to being, it helps with softening of the mind. By relaxing the psychosomatic grip on the moment, it allows events to be just as they are. Success is proportionate to one’s willingness to let each new impulse to control or improve simply appear, bloom, and fade.
We then begin to realize how much of our emotional and mental energy has been engaged in end goals of stimulation and gratification, and how attaining them never produces anything like a lasting happiness. This perceptual re-education,called vairagya, or “non-reacting,” involves entrusting oneself to one new experience after another. As each fresh anxiety, agitation or 'reaction' is recognized and permitted to settle, one unexpectedly notices that familiar triggers of disturbance no longer have any effect.A profound equanimity has quietly developed.
We then begin to realize how much of our emotional and mental energy has been engaged in end goals of stimulation and gratification, and how attaining them never produces anything like a lasting happiness. This perceptual re-education,called vairagya, or “non-reacting,” involves entrusting oneself to one new experience after another. As each fresh anxiety, agitation or 'reaction' is recognized and permitted to settle, one unexpectedly notices that familiar triggers of disturbance no longer have any effect.A profound equanimity has quietly developed.
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