Most of us "paddle" our way through life
We believe we can consciously determine what happens next.
Imagine you are driving a car or perhaps a passenger in a car. You probably believe the driver is in control. He/She is choosing how fast to drive, where to position the car on the road, when to brake, when to indicate, which turning to take and so on.
This seems such a natural way to think about such things that for a lot of people there is no other way to think about what a driver does.
But just suppose there were some other way of looking at driving and for that matter some other way of looking at walking, eating and so on… and even a different way of looking at thinking.
We have become so accustomed to the way we believe things to be happening that it can be very difficult to see it from some other point of view.
Sometimes we "drift"
We can believe that we are not in control and everything is determined for us.
Again, imagine you are driving a car or perhaps a passenger in a car.
This time notice how the driver continually responds to what is going on outside the car. He/She is not choosing how fast to drive - this is being decided by the car in front or weather conditions or bends in the road or local speed limits. There are so many things that determine how fast a vehicle travels but looking from afar (perhaps as a visitor to planet Earth) all the factors seem to be external to the driver. Even if a car is going very fast because the driver feels the need to be at an important meeting on time, is it not perhaps the meeting that is determining the great speed, rather than the driver, who may in fact prefer to drive more slowly. Where the car is positioned on the road is determined by white lines and perhaps which way the road bends next. Braking is decided by vehicles in front or slowing for a corner, etc. When to indicate is determined by junctions and so on.
For many people this is an unnatural way to think about such things as our whole way of speaking assumes the driver is always making conscious decisions. We say, He drove, She is braking, He changes gear. It all implies the driver in control. It is the way we speak everyday and consequently it is the way we tend to feel about things. We feel that the driver is in control.
As a more extreme example consider this; The child stepped into the road and the car screeched to a halt. In this sentence the driver has not been mentioned. It may be quite right to leave the driver out as braking rapidly to avoid collision and avoiding hurting a child are such natural instincts that the driver probably did not think about stopping until after the foot was on the brake pedal. So, if the driver did not need to be mentioned in this case, perhaps all the driver is doing is responding to external stimuli.
So here is an alternative way of looking at driving and for that matter another way of looking at walking, eating and so on… and even a different way of looking at thinking. Although we have become so accustomed to the way we normally believe things to be happening that it can be very difficult to see it from some other point of view.
The trouble with this "drifting" view is that it is far from inspiring. It is unlikely anyone has become great or really inspired others whilst being entirely of this mind set.
Q. Is there some way we can use this idea that we are not in control of things without becoming fatalistic?
A. Stop Paddling/Start Sailing will introduce or re-introduce you to the meme’s view of the world.
We can choose to "sail" through life
We can believe that that memes are in control through us and we are in control through memes... both at the same time.
When traveling in a car notice how the driver not only continually responds to what is going on outside the car, but how the driver’s precise actions are controlled by the car itself. As the car in front speeds up the driver’s right foot moves down with the accelerator pedal. Then the car in front brakes and the same foot covers the brake pedal.
What is really going on here? Is it the driver deciding to do this all on his own? Obviously not, as it is certainly in response to the car in front. Is it the car in front that is determining the driver’s actions? Think carefully.. if the following vehicle were a motorbike the right foot would not be responding in this way. So we can choose to say that it is the car that is deciding the drivers exact movements. We can say that the car is like the white lines controlling what the driver can do or we can be much bolder and say it is the car design that decides how the driver acts.
Imagine if years ago it had become accepted that the right hand controlled the accelerator and the braking was by the left foot. Then exactly what the driver does would be quite different. It could be said to be a silly little example, but it is just one of thousands, perhaps millions of things in our lives controlled by ideas that other people had and have been passed on to us.
Continuing with the car theme, we have more and more ideas going into car design. We have electric windows, heated front windscreen, CD players, sunroofs, fog lights and so on, all affecting what the driver does. Then of course there were the white lines mentioned above – someone came up with that idea and they were copied all over the world controlling what drivers do.
Looking around our homes there are inventions and gadgets everywhere, all of which originate from ideas someone had and persuaded others about. So we live our lives among things invented by other people. Surely there is no surprise in this, but the theme I hope to convey is bigger, in that these ideas are literally everywhere. Every word on this page was invented by someone or some culture and was copied over and over until accepted in our language.
For thousands of years most of the world’s ideas were in people’s heads, but gradually more and more have been written down, put into drawings or made into artifacts. These days ideas are everywhere in forms such as emails, books, music, news, sport and so on. With so many ideas it is increasingly difficult to recognise them for what they are or appreciate their huge influence on our lives.
The reason I think it is advantageous to recognise the influence of such reproducible ideas is that many people are finding the sheer volume/weight/numbers of ideas overwhelming. It can feel like a massive thunderstorm or a powerful wind forcing you where you do not want to go.
I have used this wind idea to form the “sailing” part of my book.
This alternative way of looking at things is not something anyone need adopt full time, nor is there any need to massively change a lifestyle. It is about having the ability to see the world from more than one view point or even from the "paddling" then "drifting/"drifting" then "paddling" points of view. There is a real alternative.
Can we understand why we seem to be blown around in life? Many readers are finding some clues and some answers in “Stop Paddling/Start Sailing”.
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