The following texts have been written in order to include them in the publication that is going to be made.
Active mediocrity
In our western society, we understand the world in an individualist way. We are all special, with our own dreams and ambitions. However, in countries like Japan, there's a more communal mindset. Important decisions in the life of a Japanese person must, above all, somehow contribute to society.
None is better than the other. Here, we deal with our own problems and in Japan they do the same with theirs, that are not few. This thought is born from observing my environment: the collective obsession with being different, special, unique. And for what? Being different is a virtual goal many want to make you believe they know how to reach and speak to the rest of us as if we were lost. I don't feel like I'm lost, I live here! In the middle of general bewilderment.
Phrases like "be yourself, everyone else is taken" have a very wide acceptance. It's a sentence that doesn't look like hiding anything negative, but the way I see it it's a way of fleeing forward, of recognising that there's still a way to be special if you are audacious enough. Even if that formula looks ordinary and boring to you.
Chris Do, graphic designer, says: "the idea of being original is both ignorant and arrogant. Ignorant, because you don't know what's come before. Arrogant, because you think it was all you". This quote changed my life as creative. Once this is understood, the frustration from trying to stand out, being special and the need recognition goes away. It's not a question of stop being original for fearing being perceived as ignorant or arrogant, but of recognising that originality is overrated and it's something completely subjective. It's all right not to be 'special', so it is if one is. However anyone wants to express their identities, it's their business.
This reflection was going to be closed with a joke that turned into an anecdote, and it's a better conclusion. I was going to say, in a comic sense, that the best choice would be to practise 'active mediocrity'. After looking it up on Google to see if anyone else has thought about this, that's how it has been. David Perkins says: "The world would be a better place if most people achieved active mediocrity rather than passive erudition".
For a moment, I felt special and Mr. Perkins has given me a lesson of humility demonstrating me that I wasn't being clever, but an ignorant.
You are going to die
It's interesting what we often consider 'wasting our time'. Generally speaking, we don't like to think about death. It's hard for me to believe that fearing death it's human when I see how animals react to life threating situations.
Since a few years ago, I've become more conscious about my own mortality, and that has tremendously helped me in my life. Knowing that tomorrow can happen anything to me doesn't obsess me, but it makes me relativise many aspects of the day to day. I put much more time and attention to the people that truly love me, to the activities that make me feel good and less time to discuss about politics on internet. I might feel bad for not cleaning over the weekend, but it makes me feel better to think that instead I've been having a good time with my friends or partner.
Confucius said: '"People ask me why I buy rice and flowers. I buy rice to live and flowers to have something to live for". This is one of the most honest and human quotes I've ever encountered, and it's closely related with what has been previously said, since the money is just a way to materialise time. Yes, we waste a lot of time and yes, we spend money in what others consider wasting it. Flowers are the dangling carrot that makes the donkey to move forward. Material whims or presents with a sentimental value looking for the reaction of our beloved ones meet the same purpose. Let's spend our time enjoying.
If you are not enjoying while reading this, then you are wasting your time.
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We know everything
There's a quote in the film Se7en where David Mills (Brad Pitt) tells Lieutenant William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) "The point is that I don't think you're quitting because you believe these things you say. I don't. I think you wanna believe them because you're quitting". It's one of those phrases you've got to repeat a couple of times before it's properly interiorised.
How many times do we take for granted facts because it's so much easier than questioning them? Unconsciously, we convince ourselves that we believe certain things and we zealously defend them without even been sure that we know what we are talking about. We bother in doing so because it's easier than judging our knowledge.
An example of this is recycling, a habit that is part of our lives and seems to have a positive goal, but that depends on what part of the planet you live on. Recycling is about making the system sustainable, a system that is harmful in many other ways than just the environmental. Indisputably, this western system of ours exterminates forests, species, poles... and that has to stop. Although, it also obliterate human lives. Lives that seem to have moved to the background. It's not a good consolation that in 20 years we will be contaminating much more less if to sustain our wellness we've got to exploit more children and adults in other continents.
Another interesting scenario for this question would be to admit something like the concept of 'gravity' wasn't discovered, but invented. It's incredible to see people defending that gravity exists just equally as in the medieval it was defended that the Earth was flat. Science helps us to understand the universe, and its value is incalculable for human beings. It's the tool we've created throughout centuries to understand and use our environment a bit better. But what was science once, it's been denied in our times. What makes us think that we are right nowadays? Maybe some years in the future from now we will look at the theory of gravity with pity as it's sometimes done with stellar maps from the past, where the Earth was the center of everything. Maps which, by the way, were of great utility back then.
Don't be like Lieutenant Somerset. You don't believe something so you can quit.
Interlude: Contradiction. You may have noticed by now some contradictions. What life would this be without contradictions?
Chaos
One of my favourite reasonings is from Werner Herzog. He says "I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder". When one contemplates the quantity of destruction across the cosmos, the natural way of animals and, in short, nature, it's clear that humans are the anomaly in this system.
We like to humanise animals. We even humanise the weather and believe that it understand and discerns between good and evil, but it's not like that. Good and evil are human creations. But, on the other hand, human beings are also destructive. We must remember that, despite all the conflicts and wars we are living nowadays, we live in the most pacific period in the history of humanity. That says a lot about us. The only thing we know is capable to bring what we understand as 'order' to what we consider 'chaos', is our reasoning.
It seems that it takes a lot from us to admit that we are not capable of everything. That for the universe, we are insignificant. That doesn't mean that we can't achieve amazing things despite our goals are part of a micro-universe in the cosmos. We can do that and more. However, the Mount Everest is full of corpses that were once highly motivated people and probably much more prepared than many are at the time of confronting the challenges in their lives. Why then that effort in convincing ourselves and others that if you try with all your heart you can achieve anything? I strongly believe that this is the new 'going to find yourself in India' from the 90's, a trend in a world of competitivity.
That famous quote of "find what you love and let it kill you" comes to my mind, and I think it's a good phrase. It's better to die doing what you love than living in anguish. Elon Musk once said in an interview that 99% of start ups fail. Ideas only find their way of working through failure (another debate would be the ideas that work in our world and what reflection those are of our society), even if the failure is as species. Once you achieve everything you wanted, then you have everything to lose. Why don't go for it when you have nothing to lose?
The difference between both approaches is that one is about enjoying the trip, while the other is getting obsessed with a goal, that of not being achieved, can produce much suffering.
Smartass
It's easier to be clever than to be kind.
It's not strange to encounter individuals that know more about football than football players, more about politcs than anyone else and more about your profession than yourself. Nowadays, it's great to have almost the totality of the human knowledge in our pocket, but with so much information at our disposal two things that I've noticed, at least, take place.
The first one is something called confirmation bias, which consists of only taking as valid information the one that favours your point of view. Something that I find particularly interesting is that, when looking at the top of the social pyramide one can find that two mass media of opposed ideology might belong to the same owner. It's not because they don't have the morals (which is quite possible), it's because they don't participate in this duality, they only perpetrate it. But oh well, that's another debate.
The second is the myth of the perfect reasoning. Giorgio Nordane explains it in his book 'Psychotraps' much better than I'd be able to: "There is a psychotrap that is only characteristic to the most inteligent subjects and the most intellectually elevated. It's the idea according to which all problems and difficulties of life can be faced through a reasoning that respects the criteria of rational logic. It's what Paul Watzlawick defined as the hypersolution of rationalism: to deposit our trust, often blindly, in our ability to analyse any human phenomena, enlightened by the light of intelect, and reach the explanation and contorl through an overwhelming logic. This sublime self-deception is the result of thousands of years of philosophy and logic that, from Aristotle onwards, have succesfully guided men for him to develope the intelligence and capacity to manage reality. Although, when this becomes a rigid and absolute form of analysis of each phenomena, the process changes from functional to disfunctional".
In other words, nor did we inform ourselves so much nor we care about it. We believe we can analyse by ourselves, and most likely I've falled in this trap throughout this publication.
Going back to the first phrase, "it's easier to be clever than to be kind', what do you think? If you are having dinner with your family and someone impetuously decides to make a comment about politics that totally contradicts what you think and is totally bollocks, is it easier for you to be clever or kind? what is most important, to respect the moment and be considered with the rest of the guests or start an argument just for the sake of defending what you consider is true?
I have no idea
"Don't listen to other people's advice. Nobody knows what the hell they are doing". Signed, a 93 year old.
Feedback:
Since I'm going to make two versions of this publication, one in Spanish and one in English, I decided to write it first in my native language (Spanish) and then translate it to English. I shared the texts with family and friends to get some Feedback on it. One friend was particularly analytic, and he told me that I needed to back up better my arguments. I told him that it wasn't my intention to make a truthful publication, but more like a reflection of my personality and the way I see things. In that case, he said, it's noticeable that I wrote this. I didn't want to write something that felt fake or pretentious, and he said that it isn't like that, it's authentic, which is exactly what I was looking for.
