In the previous episode (Sensing Sustainability – Part 1), I discussed the current widespread insufficient awareness of how we humans experience reality with our five senses; how this reduces our ability to describe such reality accurately, and thus to change it to one we’d like better; hence how our economic system—a set of values, rules, players, and behaviors—can only be dysfunctional when mostly based on inaccurate or chaotic interpretations of reality. And it is not only our economic system, but the whole of our lived reality which becomes more chaotic, since our actions depend on our interpretations. It works like an echo. In this episode, I suggest what we can do to increase our control over our experience.
If I do not have an experience of what is flour, what is milk, what is sugar, etc. I cannot make a cake. If I do not consciously track the kind of experience in my body that results from different kinds of foods, by focusing on my body sensations, I cannot choose the right food for me.
A little reminder for those who may be reading my prose for the first time: If I say “tree”, you can probably see some kind of tree in your mind’s eye. But what do we see when we say “a decarbonated economy” or even “the economic system”? The economic language is full of abstract terms very few (if any) can relate to tangible, experienced things in their lives (see also Sustainability is an Abstraction). Most of us cannot see the flour, the sugar, the eggs, etc. and the detailed process (who does what, when), that together produce the “economic system cake”.
When hearing arcane terms coming from leaders in charge of some part of our lives, with no or inaccurate connection to our ground reality, our bodies feel naturally bad. But most of us are so used to feeling bad that we may not notice. And lengthy explanations, that use even more abstract jargon, only make things worse.
In order to reach sustainability, we must immediately stop feeding the beast of insane abstraction. And as leaders, we are responsible for showing the way.
In order to have a satisfactory economic system–one that helps humans develop sustainably–all its components must be sufficiently connected with conscious human experience, and that experience must be and feel mostly good. To evaluate costs and benefits accurately we must have a sufficient direct sense of what exactly is being added or removed from what, whom, where, and when, in quantity and quality. We must therefore become much more aware of how a “cost” and a “benefit” relate to truly experienced, concrete things we can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch, and also what we feel emotionally about those.
In order to achieve this, we must practice the skill of experiencing and relating the experience to words and numbers, until we master it. We must thus increase the average time we spend every day observing our tangible reality, both outside and inside of our bodies in the present, moment after moment, and how it makes us feel. And journal about it.
I’m quite serious. It is a matter of life or death. Just start practicing and it will quickly become a habit. And please adopt a neutral mindset when you do – you are merely observing and describing what you perceive here and now. Gathering information about facts, using your body abilities.
Here’s a bit of what I am sensing now: “I am sitting at my white desk in front of a bright computer screen. I am writing a blog post. I feel good. My fingers tap on my black keyboard. My right forearm hurts a little. I sip tea from my tall white ceramic mug with little black stars. The tea bag label says: “The only constant is change”.
Your turn. If you do only a little of this every day you will be surprised by how fast you become able to notice and integrate an exponentially growing amount of things in your conscious reality that you weren’t before. And you will be able to truly change your reality, and that of those you influence, for the better.
Naturally, the conscious observing occupation will come with slightly decreasing the time and attention spent on certain other occupations. So, let me assure you: first, it’s very enjoyable; second, it’s peanuts compared to the time we are currently giving to the wrong people and organizations–the ones who feed on our blindness. In fact, the more we invest in paying attention to our basic reality, the more we are able to change it for the better and the happier we and ours become. You will quickly end up saving a considerable amount of time and money—those you are currently spending on activities that come at a net cost to you and the world.
Otherwise, we will continue jumping to half-baked conclusions and guesswork, feeding bad energies, risking our lives and the life of others.
