Yes, we are going to have to begin to think about this as a country and economic reality, but that isn’t where I am going here.
Five appointments, one with the Dentist and four more Doctor’s visits. Paying bills and shopping, doing the laundry etc… There was my week. It is like that for most of us anymore, the minutiae of life pushing, pulling and creating automatrons of us all to a certain extent. It is the price we pay for living in the lap of affluence, and or the bowels of poverty. The meanings of it all are the same, survival in one form or another and success that is measured out immensely disparately.
Life today is rife with abundance, in every corner of every niche there is abundance of the minutiae that one must perform to “live.” From employment to family to personal health and wellness there are so many things that take up that most valuable resource…time. More and more we are being taught simply how to go through the hoops and end up at the end of the game with a retirement account and a paid off mortgage. So self reflection and coping with the difficulties that any planning might incur is not really a taught part of life anymore, it is all about success. Like I have said, that is also measured immensely disparately.
We have a lot to choose from, we have a lot of great ideas and some not so great ideas. In having so much to choose from, what are we supposed to choose to care about? Where should our empathy go and where does sympathy work better? Why do we make our money and where does it go? Why do we believe in this God and not the same one just called by a different name? How much do we invest, with that inside part of us into any idea or ideal? Any thought or action? How much do we “buy in” on that person, on ourselves even? Humans have limits of self and psyche, of ego and Id, and of coping or being intolerant. Humans have a full plate that is already vastly unfulfilling, and more is being tossed onto it by the hour. The cost of society, its banes and rewards alike.
So just like going to Las Vegas everyday, every second, we humans have a basic income to spend on life. How much we lay down on one bet or another can have permanent or temporary results. Now this isn’t real cash, it is how much you can care and be a part of in every aspect of your days. Yes, I could give the Panhandler a dollar, but I was saving that for cat food for tonight… Do I feed a person I don’t know, or my loving cat? This example uses money, but really it asks how much do I care about the Panhandler? How much can I emotionally invest of my basic income? I could spend it all and take it upon myself to get them off of the streets, put all of myself into the work. Or I could walk by without eye contact and just wish them luck under my breath? Between the two extremes of anything is where we constantly find ourselves today. Because we have affluence and abundance, we have greeds and we have needs. How much we spend on any given moment rolls with us in some way as we go through our lives. Apathy or empathy, it is the new meaning of the faces of Drama and Comedy.
We are also led to believe by those same emotions that we need to invest. It is a reward center return akin to illicit drugs, it tells us that we are wired to respond to these areas and if we don’t we will be complicit, or even worse, thought less of… It is the curse of overthinking and manipulation, that part that is of our own making and our own manipulation. This is one you really can’t blame on anyone else even if you wanted to, because nobody else has access to your inner accounts. Then again, most people don’t even know they have access to them all either. So taking this to the 700 millionth degree, you can see why we may have issues? In this opulence, a fair degree of separation from the top down has spurred wastelands of apathy and wellsprings of empathy and little in between. There is literally too much life for one to engage in to meet the requirements for success anymore. We are not our society’s boon any longer and our society is not ours, the inflexibility of one, and the eventuality of the other running head on.
In this more and more closed society, one in which people do not know their neighbors let alone their own story, there is a necessity. One that reaches beyond the screens and puts humans back into the equations of society and living. The individualism that has nested us together into our more and more digital tribes is also grouping us out of the voices that we need to be, we need to hear. The exposure of how we are and who we are is being opened up anew. We know how the homeless live and the wealthy as well, we know how some got rich while others fell victim to simply being born. The fairness of the freedom, and the empathy that we hold as a whole will hopefully even out the fields of desperation and greed. But our basic incomes right now are stretched to unseen ends and we can feel it like we are behind the pack and running fast to catch up… all of the time… How much do we spend? How much can we afford? Why is this so hard to figure out? There is a feeling more and more of just saving it all because it is useless try and that would not beget success or it would be too much of a bet.
People are changing at their core, through the actions and inactions that abound in the world today. It is more and more a world that would steal your accounts if they could and they do try. In self reflection I get to decide how much I get to spend on my bets and spend of my emotional basic income. I look at the history and hedge them against what I know. Then I don’t get my expectations out of whack and the world is what it is, when I live in that world and in that present, I have a huge bank account most of the time, and the wisdom to know the difference.