Feelings of Insecurity: Sustained Or Merely Persistent?

August 12, 2009 by David Eggleton

I consider security the fundamental aim of human activities; people nearly always want to gain it, lose none.  Desire for it arises from accessible evidence that, as organisms, we are naturally vulnerable and do not know what's coming.  It continues into and through the awesome facts that we can devise and use what we've imagined.  The plot thickens as widespread, diverse and continuous imagining and effort add devices.  Some of them compound, some of them compete.  Coexisting, some become dominant, some have very little influence or impact.  Accumulating, they increase the apparent complexity of the human condition, the so-called real world.

Desiring security, what do humans imagine?  Time out from high alert.  Some certainties about the future.  A life of ease, perhaps of pleasures, perhaps of peace.  In either case, we’re imagining reduced vulnerability, more stability and more breaks from self protection and defense.  It's all decidedly unnatural (recall "always the movement"  from Emerson, months ago?).  With a small shift of attention, we imagine means to achieve these reductions and increases.  As hinted in the opening story, when we invest in each of these devices, we move or shrink the target.  We get something, but little, if any, of what we sought.

Thus we have made an artificial world in which the human population of the planet could double between 1959 and 1999, and triple (from 1959) in 2012.  We have devised much that would more than astonish our predecessors.  Humanity has succeeded, in those senses.  However, our living life support system is severely stressed, and security eludes many, if not most, people.  Even people we recognize for their riches feel insecure!  Studies discovered that whatever they have, they estimate needing roughly twice as much.  Uncertainties remain.  Security is hidden in the complexity we’ve generated, sometimes in plain sight (not accessible, not affordable).

With respect to reducing vulnerability and uncertainty, humanity is spinning its wheels, making a commotion, but getting next-to-nowhere.  There are no good reasons to continue the drive, other than comforts elites have attained, that only a tiny percentage of people can have.

The question posed in my title for this piece remains for each of us.  Do I keep this futility going or does it have a life of its own?  Probably the former; each of us chooses an outlook and finds or generates behaviors consistent with it.  We imitate each other a lot; much too much, considering our respective individualities.

In contrast to the accessible evidence of our vulnerability, scientific evidence indicates that other beings made and maintain the conditions that made humans possible and make them viable.  Each of us can choose the more positive outlook supported by this evidence:  the biosphere is for us, as in on our side.  Each can begin to collaborate creatively with others who make this choice.  With respect to other beings, each of us can live and let live far more than we do.  As we do so, we'll discover many affirmations of the outlook.  That's what happens with truths.

Continuing, we can together simplify and uncomplicate the real world -- so it really, finally, works for people and their living life support system.  Developing a local economy, more reliable and individuality-affirming than an anywhere economy can be, is one way, and is the focus of this Web site.  Immortality is not an option for any of us, but a significant degree of security is a gift we can give each other.  As we give, our locale approaches sustainability, more and more a home of security.

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