Aboodi Shabi

The piece below on “Lies to stop believing” has attracted a wide range of views, both complimentary and critical.

I’ve just been reading the Jewish philosophy magazine, Tikkun, and come across this piece on “Wanting Fully Without Attachment“, which contains the following excellent couple of paragraphs, which resonated with what I was trying to get across:

“If you are an activist or in some other way engaged with working to transform external reality, you may wonder whether this path would ultimately lead to apathy or lack of engagement with the world. What about children’s need for food or safety, for example? How can we not insist that these needs be met? Yet, even in this acute example, we can still see the difference between giving up and letting go of attachment. It is not about giving up on the hope for all the children in the world to be safe and have sufficient food. Nor is it about giving up on working to eliminate hunger and violence. Rather, it is about being able to tolerate internally the possibility — which is also the current reality! — that it just may not happen that all the children in the world will be safe and have sufficient food. If we cannot tolerate the possibility, then how can we have space inside to interact with life as it is? If our approach is based on what should happen, without this capacity to accept life, what would keep us from trying to force a solution? We have all seen so many historical examples of revolutions that turned into a new regime of horror. How will we ensure that we can sustain our vision and openness if we cannot tolerate what is happening and those who are supporting what is happening? To protect ourselves, we often turn away from the dual horror we need to experience to keep our hearts open. We protect ourselves from the horror of knowing that one child under five years old dies every six seconds, or almost 18,000 daily, from malnutrition and related causes (not to mention the effects of wars of all kinds). And we protect ourselves from the fear of succumbing to the anger and desperation that lead to re-creating domination and horror. Without the tools to keep our hearts open, many of us do, indeed, shut down and tune out the plight of the children so that we can even manage to continue with our own personal lives.

If, however, we remain open to the possibility that no solution will arise and at the same time continue to bring our heart and attention and action to working toward a solution, our work takes on an entirely different flavor. We work toward our dreams, we embrace the vision and our needs in full, and we remain open in the face of what is happening. In doing so, whether or not we have external success (and so far as I know, none of us knows how to move the world from here to where we want it to be), our work itself becomes a modeling of what the world could be.”

I wish I’d managed to put it so well!

After a difficult financial year last year, and knowing that the future looked uncertain, I decided to move into a smaller and cheaper flat, which I did towards the end of last year.

Although the flat is smaller, it is a much nicer space, or at least it has the potential to be, and it has a proper management company who actually care about the building and the residents.

One of the things that I liked most about the flat was the elegant parquet flooring through-out the apartment. Admittedly it was covered by a hideous carpet, and badly in need of sanding and re-varnishing, but I new that once Id decorated the flat, Id be able to get the floor restored and was looking forward to the beauty of a newly-polished old wooden floor.

But, it was not to be.

The management company, on finding out my plans, pointed out that one of the rules of the building is that all floors must be carpeted to minimise the noise disturbance to the other residents. Of course, I was disappointed, but the more I thought about it the more at peace I became with this. I had a long discussion with the Building Manager about it, and ended up telling him that I would rather live in a building where there were rules and a structure to take care of the residents than in a free-for-all like the last place I lived in, where the communal areas were shabby and neglected.

And, it made me think again about the idea that getting what we want is always a good thing, and that restrictions and limits are a bad thing. Actually, the benefit of community is one that I think its worth making personal sacrifices for.

As regular readers will be aware, one of my pet themes is the problem of entitlement. And in an apartment block, or neighbourhood, or country, or even a world, in which getting my own way, or doing what I want, is more important than following the rules of a community, or respecting limits, then, I think, things soon fall apart.

The dark shadow of the cult of individual freedom is that, ultimately, community becomes seen as restrictive or limiting, and we put our own personal satisfaction above the good of the whole. Werner Erhard used to talk of a world that works for everyone, which requires a very different way of being in the world than the pursuit of individualism and personal freedom at all cost.

From the perspective of a world that works for everyone, we have to navigate between my personal wants and freedoms and the good of the community, and there are some important things for us to reflect on:

What are the things that I want, and how do they impact on the community, and on the wider world?

What are the benefits to me of the community, or relationships, that becomes available to me when I let go of getting my own way, or of doing what I want?

What difference will it make to my community, or to the world at large, if I let go of some of my personal freedoms?

Quotes:

“We can choose to live in a ‘you or me’ world, or in a ‘you and me world”. – Werner Erhard.

“You see, the whole thing in marriage (for marriage, substitute, community/neighbourhood, etc) is the relationship and yielding – knowing the functions, knowing that each is playing a role in an organism… marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That’s why it’s a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate in a relationship. And when you’re giving, you’re not giving to the other person: you’re giving to the relationship. And if you realize that you are in the relationship just as the other person is, then it becomes life building, a life fostering and enriching experience, not an impoverishment because you’re giving to somebody else. This is the challenge of a marriage.”- Joseph Campbell