STA is initially a personal rather than a public philosophy. However politically, economically and technologically interconnected we think we have become, we still live individual lives and most of our pre-occupations are local. People do not bully and rape, or cut themselves for reasons of global politics (though, obviously, social and economic crises increase the stresses of daily life). And these individual lives will, I am convinced, be richly enhanced by a deep awareness of all that is around them, the encouragement to express that appreciation creatively, and the sense of their own uniqueness allied to the equal uniqueness of all other creatures.
Nonetheless, I think STA has wider implications too. It is not a cult for tree-hugging star-gazers in the countryside but a perspective, which can also speak to those living urban office lives with barely a sight of greenery. What might a society influenced by a STA perspective look like? It would, as children do, see individuals rather than generalisations and statistics – the bureaucratic model on which adult society is currently based.
We would gain a greater sense of agency in our lives at the expense of institutions, the media &c as we realised that their existence depends entirely on our suspension of disbelief. Any complex society must have institutions and organisations, but perhaps they would now be shaped by their communities to suit local need, so mirroring nature’s pattern for growth rather than following an ideological programme, whether socialist or capitalist. These new bodies would recognise that complexity is natural and essential, rather than an anomaly that must be regularised. Social care, for example, would begin with understanding the individual’s needs and their capabilities: once you see a person ‘soul to soul’ you must know that they are not a ‘problem’ to be managed, but someone with their own unique spark which might yet be kindled. This awakened society would value people’s haecceity and so would not demand they conform to fashions or beliefs. Society would be less exploitative both because we acknowledge others as our equals and because the fruits of exploitation – riches, power, fame – are shown to be irrelevant fancies, toys for selfish brats. Technology would be valued as a tool to help us, rather than a Pied Piper we must pantingly follow. Life would be more mentally demanding, of course: we would constantly have to think for ourselves rather than downloading our opinions from the media and Zeitgeist but, in a society where everyone was thoughtful and engaged, this might just prove more stimulating than exhausting.
If everyone went about their daily business with a STA perspective there would be no more wars, a cooler planet, pies in the sky and mermaids in parliament – it isn’t going to happen. But the milder revolutions outlined in the previous paragraph are not impossible. Indeed, many of them have already been shown to be feasible and effective, for example in the social experiments led by Hilary Cottam and outlined in her book Radical Help. She has proved the value of re-thinking acculturated welfare systems guided not by ideologies, institutions or budgets (for these are all made-up things) but by the real needs of individual people. ‘Every solution must start with experience itself, the grain of everyday life.’ She, of course, like countless others in human history has pursued awareness, love, creativity and haecceity which are at the core of her work without the least idea they are ‘STA’s Four Natural Duties’, without reading this book or staring at the sun on a misty morning. Anekantavada. Nevertheless her method is focussed on standing still and considering the miracles in front of her – struggling, frustrated, sometimes desperate people, but each a unique human wonder. And she has shown that this can work. STA may begin as a personal philosophy, but it is scalable and transferable too.
STA can be a secure basis for political activism. Demonstrations, chaining oneself to railings and emailing MPs can sometimes be helpful, sometimes not – every situation is different. But if this activism is based only on current opinions about politics and institutions, it may prove untrustworthy in a febrile world of changing news stories and Twitter-storms. And if our concern with the environmental crisis is merely a panicked ‘Save Our Skins!’ reaction to scary news, any changes we achieve are likely to be short-lived. Our actions must instead be rooted in a coherent world-view. The climate catastrophe is the direct and inevitable consequence of our society’s current, entirely incoherent world-view, a rag-bag of self-indulgence, opportunism and intellectual dishonesty which we might call Anthropocentric Materialism (though to give it a name at all lends it an unearned cogency). Its anthropocentricity, weaponised by technology, claims that current human knowledge should be the arbiter of the world (in spite of the limits of that knowledge, and the Darwinian evidence that human exceptionalism is a lie). Its materialism claims to be objective (conveniently ignoring both the limitations and the evident subjectivity of all our perceptions), and therefore universal. Anekantavada is verboten. All non-human creatures, all non-Western cultures and traditions must surrender to it. The old, exploitative imperialism is rebranded as ‘globalisation’ and, of course, ‘Progress’.
Misericord in Leintwardine church. The two wrestlers keep on fighting, though they lost their heads and legs centuries ago.
Some of the most inventive minds in science and engineering, backed by billions of dollars, are concentrated on the question, ‘How can we continue to live self-indulgent, acquisitive, myopic, consumerist lives without doing too much harm to the planet?’ The clue is in the question. Problems cannot be solved by the same type of thinking that created them (as Einstein may or may not have said). We never Stand Still and Consider. When we do look at nature our minds are already busily on the move, allocating pre-calculated values to what we see. Creatures are ‘beautiful’, ‘disgusting’, ‘useful’, ‘vermin’ – judgements that are about us not them. We need a more honest, more harmonious world-view. Whether it is STA or Buddhist or Jain or pagan or animist or Shinto or one of the strands of an institutionalised religion like St Francis’s Christianity hardly matters – Anekantavada is essential – it must accept our rootedness in a complex, interdependent, animate world, showing respect for all life and an alertness to the consequences of our actions.
If society is a ‘congregation’ rather than a ‘church’, every one of our actions good or ill contributes to it; indeed society has no existence except as the sum of our actions. In this sense, everything we do is political. ‘If you embody what you aspire to, you have already succeeded,’ writes Rebecca Solnit. ‘That is to say, if your activism is already peaceful, democratic, creative, then in one small corner of the world these things have triumphed . . . The best way to resist a monolithic institution or corporation is not with a monolithic movement but with multiplicity itself.’ Our strength lies in that multiplicity – the resistance on innumerable fronts that our diverse haecceities give us. Hope is not the expectation of better times, but the acknowledgement that better times are possible, and this we can know most surely not as a global ideal but by living them ourselves. Being in itself becomes a Sacral activism.
At the end of Blue Planet II, wondering how best to repair the damage we have wrought upon the oceans, a marine scientist, Jon Copley, concluded, ‘It comes down, I think, to us each taking responsibility for the personal choices in our everyday lives. That’s all any of us can be expected to do, and it is those everyday choices that add up.’ (As it was those everyday choices that caused the problems in the first place.) This simple, almost platitudinous, advice echoes St David’s last words to his disciples – ‘Gwnewch y pethau bychain’ ‘Do the little things’. Although by espousing haecceity, STA is resolutely unprescriptive, this seems the surest course to me too. [Footnote: essentially they are saying ‘Live well.’ It is sobering to think how much of our everyday world is predicated on the assumption that we will not ‘live well’. How many people’s jobs depend on our errancy – the military; prison service; police; arms and munitions industries; the judiciary; solicitors, accountants, government inspectors of any kind; the intelligence agencies; security firms; some medical and social services staff; locksmiths; council employees picking litter and removing graffiti; builders of walls, gates and fences; makers of CCTV and online security systems; charities for refugees/women/children/animals. How deeply ingrained in our culture is the presumption that we cannot trust each other, that so many, maybe most, of us will ignore the wisdom of the sages and go on behaving like shits.] I do not recommend STA because it seems tactically savvy – a desperate ploy to avert catastrophe. I recommend it because it is true to reality/nature; it is a positive way to live.
Comments