Kaizen/Smriti Part Two (continued, obviously, from part one.)

More from the third sense of 'resolution:' a resolution of what is abstract into what is practical and direct. Or: what's Eros gonna do?

Despite my natural inclination to say, 'let's wait and see' (part of the idea of Kaizen, after all, is an embrace of the possibility and reality of constantly changing vision), I do at the moment have a sense of direction/function for this, or I wouldn't be doing it.

If time is a frontier there are no more modern pioneers, except in the individual case, as one grows through that orientation of mind. I would say that our pioneers are well beyond what we call the post-modern (should you have absolutely no conception of what these terms mean, my apologies, but stay tuned, I will be elucidating the distinction I am making between the modern and post-modern much in this year), but this is not so much my interest here, as I am not on the frontier in this sense. Having left our modern settlements to those who will grow through them, a sizable edge of our culturally contemporaneous adult humanity is laying the first solid foundations of post-modern society. Men and women have been here before, but not in numbers sufficient enough to establish a city, a genuine center-of-gravity. What we have seen in the way of post-modernity up to recently has either been exclusively individual or modernity in drag.

A major conceit of this year for this blog (or until I am disabused of it) is that we are at the endpoint of our culture's process of modernity, it has nothing new or surprising for us in a collective sense; we have turned over all of its stones, and large encampments of us are headed for or have begun establishing a post-modern city and society, a place still quite wild and undefined. This, as any process of growth, will be accompanied with great pain and backsliding, much of which we are watching in front of us now, and it is far from certain that we will be able to maintain a sustainable cultural presence there. If we do, it is because we will have been able to remake what it means to be human, individually and culturally, from this level of meaning. As a microcosm of the process, a young person still pulling himself out of the traditional cultural consciousness and family embeddedness, creating for himself an individual autonomous identity, while also reaching into the realm of the post-autonomous not only intellectually but in practical everyday life, I am situated well to document this and push it along. I see in myself the potential to be a city-planner for our new culture, someone actively exploring the implications of this consciousness in this world, and my greatest culturally valuable talent is in the kind of writing I am able to achieve occasionally on this blog, as a sort of essayist and cultural critic.

Practically, that changes little about the blog; it has always been a way for me to test out ideas and present them to whomever is willing and able to sift through them. In addition, though, I plan on a greater amount of engagement (the eternal plan...) as well as using the blog in companion to what I am reading, both for school and for pleasure, allowing me to remember what arguments others are making and how they fit into my angle of attack on the world, something I am terrible at (names), while also giving me the impetus to track through reading outside of my school's curriculum.

Also, as I feel I have a pretty good working sense of a personal philosophy but few opportunities to drag it out into the light of day where it can be challenged, and the blog serves this purpose as well. Not only can this philosophy be found in the accidental, what I happen to be reading or seeing online, but it is open to reinterpretation based on this, and based on the comments and participation of you. In my perfect world everybody is so willing to throw themselves on the table, recognizing just how permeable that thin layer of pretense is that separates our outside and inside world, but as this is not the case, engage me freely as you will, knowing that what you put in in intensity I give back; it is not a demand so much as an invitation to the constant questioning that is this Kaizen/Smriti, that is so integral to the post-modern meaning-making, and so vital a weapon against complacency, one of my pet sins.

With this in mind I hope as well to write at least an entry every day, though this is not a hard and fast rule, and the effort it takes to write some of my more involved entries obviously will prevent this from happening. The idea, though, being that having this in mind constantly, starting the day by starting an entry and finishing it by finishing one will help me keep this whole shebang in mind, Smriti.

Kaizen/Smriti, a resolution, of sorts. Part One

Kaizen/Smriti:

I have decided upon a slightly new direction/function for this blog in the new year, and that direction/function is best seen through the concepts of Kaizen (Japanese through English) and Smriti (Buddhist.) I am using the blog as a sort of record of my year (also guided by these concepts) and as a ground for writing.

Kaizen, which has been a favorite concept of mine for quite a few years, means making continuous small improvements. At each step, there is a pause, a looking-around, and a re-implementation of direction/protocol. The Japanese means "improvement," in the same sense English does, or "amelioration" in the Chinese (改善) but through an American-English translation of Japanese business practices has come to mean "continuous improvement."

I take "continuous" to mean "anew each moment." One will get two very different measurements of the English coastline using a mile and an inch as standards of measurement. I hope to continue to make my standard of measurement smaller and smaller, finding the possibility of fundamental change in each moment, until change and being are synonymous, at which point the game looks quite different.

"Improvement" is a trickier word. Change for the better, of what? My concept of this is something like "healthy growth," but each of these terms carries a good amount of baggage as well, if associated with the word "normative." For now, think of a blooming apple tree.

I should also note that "Kaizen" has a reactive connotation to it, finding a problem and fixing it, to which I would add Otto Scharmer's idea of "presencing," the ability to sense and bring into the present one's highest future potential, which is more active. I include both active and passive, past and future, in my concept of "Kaizen."

This could be terribly inefficient, and I certainly agree here with the old leadership maxim that to do anything even if the wrong thing is better than doing nothing, but quite aware that my disposition is towards theorizing without action I am actively training my capacity to act past theorizing, which is where Smriti comes in.

Smriti is an anglicized Sanskrit word which means literally "that which is remembered," but which has taken on a much greater importance in Buddhism. I will here use it mostly as self-remembrance, and, following Alan Watts, what I really mean here is 'awareness of awareness.' The Chinese etymology is helpful as well. 念 (nian) is usually the translation for "Smriti," and consists of 今 (jin) the character which means "today" or "now," and 心 (xin) which is the character for "mind/heart." What is the mind doing now, and now, and now. The English translation "mindfulness" carries this constant connotation as well, it is something underneath each moment in consciousness, at its most concentrated. When eating, know that you are eating, when walking, know that you are walking, when talking, know that you are talking.

Of course, a zen master may say "stop being mindful!" that is, when walking, walk. No need to know you are doing this. Ultimately I agree with this, but this comes at the end of a long process of mindfulness training, at least if one wants to embody it 'off the cushion,' or outside of a meditation retreat. Neither am I, though, at the stage of merely having the thought "I am walking," but somewhere in between. Eventually, as one remembers to become aware of what's occurring in awareness bit by bit (or word by word, action by action), one realizes that there are too many things to actually literally keep track of, and the mind relaxes and lets awareness watch experience without remarking upon it. Walking is walking, and talking talking, if only temporarily. When I am aware, I can do this, and can see my mind as it inserts that thin film between the action and the awareness. But I am not always aware of what I am doing; I flicker like a light bulb not quite screwed in.

Putting these two together, Kaizen/Smriti, you have my resolution, a New Year's resolution which is continuous; my standard of measurement already much less than a mile, it would be odd for me to try once and check back next year. Resolution is a particularly effective term here, "solution" meaning both a loosening and a fix for a problem, and "re-" being an intensifier tied to temporal repetition. Apply that 're-' to each moment, and you have the concept I am looking for with Kaizen/Smriti. A resolution, 'I will remember,' as a resolution to the problems of living, which is also a resolution of what is abstract into what is practical and direct, and a whetting of the resolution of my awareness to the smallest possible interval.


Glass House, also a project aimed at cultivation of awareness, was more to find out the ways in which I was embedded in others' meaning, the chains of culture and relation behind me, and to bring that in front of me, even if not consciously undertaken as such at the time. It was to discover what roadblocks I kept putting in front of myself, and why. In this, it was largely successful, and culminated in the understanding that the reason I was subjecting myself to such a ridiculous degree of exposure was that I wanted to be found out as a fraud, and I think of this as the natural side of having a persona and an ego, and part of the process of discovering the authentic, another way of thinking of 'Smriti.' One might call this "Thanatos," the death-urge, the desire to destroy the limitations of self at one level of being to foster greater growth.

With that constant resolution creating more and more space for authenticity, for a space where I can act freed from psychological embeddedness in my culture and relationships, in the rituals of being established as a child, comes the unreining of Eros.

For Eros, you can do your own research: Wikipedia's entry is woefully inadequate; I would start with Rollo May's Love and Will. Eros is the creative/destructive force of the universe. Whitehead called it 'negentropy' for its opposition to the physical concept of entropy, and so by 'destructive' I mean the destruction that happens naturally when a new thing is created, not the lethargy of entropy, nor the malice of evil, though I would not rule out that Eros works in ways that can appear to be evil. Personally, I think of it as the delight in guiding creation, and it has a rather specific emotional/psychological/somatic feel to it. And so, if 'Glass House' was an attempt to expose the habits of mind keeping me from expressing myself to the extent of my potential, this project is the vigilance over their impetus, and the release of and identification with Eros.

I should note that not everybody's psychological life revolves around the smothering of Eros, and so while this stage of my life involves the above, this will not be directly true for everyone, or even most people. Each person carries into adulthood their own cultural/familial directives to carry out which must be uprooted and overcome if they are ever to be an individual adult.

But for me, and for now, Kenzai, Smriti, and Eros are symbols of transformation in the Jungian sense, in that they represent for me ways of human-being-in-the-world whose outlines I can vaguely perceive but whose expression I am only barely capable of comprehending, let alone enact within my own consciousness. They represent a way of being more encompassing than my own, but not by so much that it is more than a step or two away.

And with that, 2010.

Unintended Consequences

An article on National Geographic.

Real quick: unintended consequences. Any system is in a constant state of cyclical flux, (feedback loops, if you will) that is in balance at any point in time. The more complicated the system, the less obvious the connections between individual constituents of the system. For example, the dynamic of a two-child family is more complex than the heating system of their house, and the operation of their society is infinitely more complex than the family.

The more complex the system, the less likely it is that consequences of changing one element can be predicted.

We're seeing this across the board when it comes to climate change, which is why certain pundits now prefer the phrase "global weirding" to "global warming."

Again: 1- the earth's ecosystems are about as complex as they come.
2- We are seriously screwing with them.
3- Anybody who does not take this uncertainty (or, looking at historical examples of assuredness in the face of complete unknowability, the relative certainty of disaster) as the number one most important thing in any talks about climate change has the race handicapped poorly.

Of course, we're not just fudging with one or two things at a time here. We are fudging with everything in the global ecosystem, upon which humanity is precariously balanced. Who knows what's going to happen? Nobody. But, rather than write it off and say, "well, whatever happens isn't likely to be that big," we should be saying, "we're in a balance that has suited us well for thousands and thousands of years, and the likelihood of a new balance being in our favor is probably small."

It's ironic that this conservative value is so outside the mindset of the majority of today's political conservatives.

And, though this is an environmental example, it relates to almost every human choice. At the outset, options may appear clear, but one can never correctly judge what the consequence of the first choice will be. Instead of blindly trudging forward through ever changing circumstances, we need a much more flexible way of operating, one that makes a choice, looks at what happens, and only then moves on. Kaizen: my favorite Japanese word.

China, and Sloppy Thinking (v. David Brooks)

An Op-Ed in the Times by David Brooks, where he summarizes an extremely important cultural difference between the West and China, and talks about several theories on why it may be, though, obviously, who knows?

But there are great problems in thinking this way. I don't have the answers, of course, but I would at least like to add something to the conversation.

"When the psychologist Richard Nisbett showed Americans individual pictures of a chicken, a cow and hay and asked the subjects to pick out the two that go together, the Americans would usually pick out the chicken and the cow. They’re both animals. Most Asian people, on the other hand, would pick out the cow and the hay, since cows depend on hay. Americans are more likely to see categories. Asians are more likely to see relationships."

There are other famous studies exploring the difference in the way citizens of developed nations organize information from rural people in developing nations. What they found was similar to the above: Asked to pick out which object didn't fit in a group, the developed nation's citizens picked "wood," from a group that included "wood, saw, hammer, and ax," noting the relationship between tools, but the rural people were confused, seeing basically no connection, and most often picked "hammer," since both a "saw" and an "ax" can be used to cut "wood."

The point, though, is that there is a relationship between "cow," and "chicken," but it's not a practical one, it's an abstract one. The study, if I remember correctly, was about the effect of education and reading on the way the brain organizes information, and it also showed that adults who learned recently to read also began to make abstract rather than practical connections, that it was not simply children who had been well educated that made this connection.

So, is this an East-West difference, or a difference in educational methods? The East is famous for rote learning, while the West values (ideally) the fostering of thinking itself, as a way to make previously unnoticed connections and to problem-solve. Ask any High school student in China what date an historical event happened, and they'll likely be able to, especially if they're preparing for the Gao Kao, a test that compares to our SATs as The Joker compares to your average bank robber. Ask them why that date is important, and they may be strapped to think of anything. A western student may just be b.-s.ing, but they'll be able to construct some sort of argument, which is ironic due to Brooks' statement that the context is so important to the Chinese. (Obviously, both what and how are important in learning.)

I do not know what the difference is due to, but I would be wary of making claims one way or the other.

He continues:

"But what happens if collectivist societies snap out of their economic stagnation? What happens if collectivist societies, especially those in Asia, rise economically and come to rival the West? A new sort of global conversation develops."

Really? What about Japan? Famously, Japanese companies are run like feudal empires, and are loathe to change (not change of, say, methods or reacting to markets, with this they do very well (look up Kaizen) but structurally, and yes, culturally. But even this is changing. Articles in the Times a few months ago chronicled the rise of employees suing their companies for various damages. Japanese mainstream society has only existed outside of strict feudalism for seventy years, and China, it could be argued, is still mostly a peasant, folk culture, growing towards modernity and away from traditional roots, and it has only been doing this for thirty years. Change appears to happen quickly, if not all-at-once, but, in reality, it is often a painstakingly slow process, especially in the earliest stages. It takes generations, plural, not twenty years. I cannot say that China will become more liberal and Western internally (though externally they have co-opted quite a bit) but I would certainly be sensible enough to be more patient about it. After all, the Enlightenment started hundreds of years ago, and people still aren't all that enlightened, even though they may personally think they're great.

And then:
"For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the Western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts."

This is certainly true, which is (conversely) why I think it is so important to emphasize every individual's development along the lines they wish to pursue. Like economics, where local conditions reflected in prices contain far more "knowledge" overall than central planners can ever have, the individual knows what is best for him/her, and can make choices accordingly, whether those choices are driven by "free-will" or by the context the choices are made in (obviously, this is far too complex a subject to tackle here.) Ultimately, I think the distinction is irrelevant. No matter how the choices are being made, the individual and the society are better off if someone can make a personal "choice." The problem with putting the emphasis on social contexts is that, as in China, where this is overtly so, it leads to a very rigid social structure where one is expected to do one and only one correct thing according to the circumstances, entirely denying that individual difference exists (I have come up against this again and again here. Fortunately, since I am not Chinese, my choices and conduct are taken with a grain of salt, and quite often admired, in the "Oh I wish I could do that" sort of way.) Again, wherever the "choices" are coming from, it is clear that offered different options, different people will do different things.

In any case, the West is not done developing either. Yes, we're depressed, yes, we need healthier communities, yes, we need more social ties etc. etc., but we're coming to see that, and, as individuals, choosing to deal with it. Isn't that preferable to somebody sitting in an office looking at statistics and saying, "hmmm, we should somehow coerce older people into more exercise." Perhaps the example goes to far, but I'm sure you get the point.

This is why I think this article is dangerous, almost.

"The rise of China isn’t only an economic event. It’s a cultural one. The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream."

This dream, as we have seen throughout history, and this way of thinking about humans and the rights of individuals, has led to the worst tragedies of human history, not the least of them in China itself, during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Importantly, free societies never do this, and Authoritarian societies really like to.

And, as hinted at above, the American Dream has always included a social dream. Making it to the top certainly does not preclude community, and often those who have won their American Dream are the most prominent of social benefactors.

"It’s certainly a useful ideology for aspiring autocrats."

Exactly.

I will be writing later on the rise of China economically and politically, hopefully before the Olympics are done.

Keep Thinking.

Notes on comments from "Eatin' Meat" and Tantra.

Two good comments, much more thoughtful than I was expecting. If you have not read them you can read them under the post "Eatin' Meat."

From nlv, the main thing that I was hearing was the "why is this so repugnant to people?" problem. Why does it bother people so much that others choose to be vegetarians? As nlv said, "Why on earth do people feel so threatened by someone cutting meat out of their diet? Who can i possibly be hurting by this decision?"

I think there are many reasons why people feel so threatened by others' choosing to become vegetarians, but they all revolve around identification. People are creatures of habit, and their habits, and activities, become mistaken for who they are. For just a gross simplification, think of somebody who always goes out with his friends for beers after work. If he stops drinking, or even if he finds a new activity, or a girlfriend, say, his relationship with those people can change drastically. He may find that he was friends with them more out of circumstance than anything else, and they may resent him for this. Again, this is a drastic simplification, but think about how people answer the question, "who are you?" Beyond age, sex, and nationality (still not a real determiner of who a person is,) isn't it most often with a list of activities? I am a mother, I am a soccer player, I am a restaurateur. The work one is probably the answer given most. Who are you? I am a television ad-man, I am a teacher, I am a window-washer. Now, most people won't answer "I am a meat-eater," but they don't have to (see below,) and the point is just that people often mistake what they do for what they are, so when somebody else chooses to do something that seems opposed to one of their activities, they feel like they are being attacked, because, on some level, they're taking it personally.

But with meat-eating especially, because this isn't even a conscious choice. It's so embedded in people's activities, and in the culture, that it seems one-hundred percent natural. That someone would choose to go against this is an affront. (What could be more American than a hamburger with cheese?) And so that somebody else has gone through the conscious process of rejecting this makes it feel (feel being very important, it is an emotional reaction, not a rational one) as if someone has consciously deliberated and debated and come to the decision that yes, you, meat eater you, are wrong as a person. Especially if somebody is close to you, or if you are part of a group with a set of associated characteristics, meat-eating being one of them (I'm thinking, like, a sports-team of manly men big boys beer drinking meat eaters, perhaps, or a frat house...or pig farmers,) your decision to forgo meat could make them feel uncomfortable. You were on their side, they trusted you, and now suddenly, "I don't even know you anymore, man."

There's often a defensiveness in this as well. Your conscious decision, even if it's not paraded in someone's face, can make others guilty, especially if they haven't themselves done the thinking necessary to justify their choices to themselves. You're making them look a little like a slob. I'm not suggesting that most people have thought out their meat-eating, quite the contrary, they haven't, and this might also make them uneasy.

As nlv says, "But what really bothers me about everything is not that i get embarrassed or even harassed for my choices, i can deal with that no problem, it's that i see a cruelty expressed by people when something appears against their own traditions. It has been made so clear and tangible because they are allowed to make fun of me, and their initial reactions aren't suppressed because it's not a big deal to make fun of a vegetarian." This sums up what I've been saying nicely, I think. Why is there a word "vegetarian" but there's no word "omnivoritarian?" Or "carnivorarian?" (Despite the fact that a diet of eating only meat would be ridiculously damaging to one's health I think most omnivores in america would contend in vain against a vegetarian that they were carnivores until the mistake was pointed out to them.) It's groupthink, the tendency to just go with what seems normal, without ever trying to figure out where or why something is normal. What's normal never needs to be defended, it's assumed, which is why there's no word for the "ideology" of one who decides to eat meat, though there is vegetarian "-ism."

I think the feeling of loathing one feels as a meat-eater for vegetarians that I noted in the post comes from this, and is a projection. You feel, as a meat-eater, that vegetarians are attacking you irrationally, because, of course, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing. They're attacking not only one thing, but all the things that you stand for in your life (again, what could be more American than eating a cheeseburger, so someone who loves america and associates america with cheeseburgers is going to feel as if you're trying to change what america is with your transgression of ridiculously "not-eating-cheeseburgers-as-an-american.")

Obviously, I'm not saying that any vegetarians are actually attacking meat-eaters when they become vegetarians, quite the contrary, but that's the point: the identification is a mistake. You can eat meat, but that is not who you are. The more emotionally mature and stable somebody is the less likely they are to be offended what you decide, but, then, perhaps most of the population is not extremely emotionally mature. Fortunately our society is less coercive than most of the societies in history, even if it can still be difficult to make the choices, or, as nlv says later, be the type of person that lives necessarily on the outskirts of mainstream society.

And the other thing is that most people, excepting those close to you, and those who are truly idiots, and those who are partisan for one reason or another, probably don't care that much if you're a vegetarian, even if they might make fun of vegetarians behind their backs, or feel vaguely threatened by it. But, of course, the people who are loud get all the attention. Few vegetarians are militantly so, but those are the ones you remember. Something like being Christian and being constantly identified with Jerry Falwell.


As for Cary's comments:

One word she mentions is "sacrifices," and actually, though I understand what she's saying, I would have to disagree with the word. I think when people make "sacrifices," they're usually making a mistake, or trying to jump into a decision before they're ready for it, or they are simply blaming something else for making them miserable.

An example would be if somebody had a child early, and they feel as if they are sacrificing their youth and fun to take care of the kid. They are always working, and they dislike this, they bitch about it, etc. etc. They feel as if they are forced into it by something, or by themselves, and they end up seriously resenting the kid. But, they are not being honest with themselves, or at least not open with themselves. They are making a choice, and though the circumstances may have forced them to make a choice they wouldn't have wanted to deal with originally, they do have a choice. They are working for their baby. They are not forced to do this. They could desert the child, or give it up for adoption, but they have chosen not to do this. I am not suggesting that they are all good choices, merely pointing out that when you feel forced to do something, you are usually just leaving some possible choices out of the framework. But, by doing this, you are denying the part you play in making the choice. It doesn't make work any better, perhaps, but at least there's the recognition that you have chosen to do this, that, given the circumstances, which you cannot change, it is what you want to do. (yes I am aware of the grammatical problems with the subjects in this paragraph and I don't care.)

Fortunately, no one is going to force you to be a vegetarian, and you shouldn't force yourself to do it either. "I think the biggest issue for me, and I think for others in my boat, is how daunting it seems to take this whole thing on fully." There's a Japanese concept from a mashing of two words that mean "good," and "change," and it's Kaizen, which means, basically, small, constant, incremental change, which takes active engagement with your life. As Cary says, conscious consumerism, or let's say, for here, living a conscious life, demands your attention, but there's no reason you should force yourself to sacrifice anything you don't want to, and that's the point.

Tantra, which in the west is usually associated most with freaky sex, unfortunately, is this kind of active conscious lifestyle. All it asks is attention, and everything else is permissible. So, instead of forcing yourself not to eat that piece of steak, etc. etc., you say, okay, I want to eat this piece of steak, though I feel a conflict as well, I will pay attention to what I'm doing, I will use this steak as a vehicle for awareness. Two things happen. One, you find that your conflicts become less and less, internally, that you stop being so hard on yourself, and Two, that the changes you want to make come anyway, naturally. Let's say you're really paying attention while you're eating this steak. You may come to notice externally (and there's nothing wrong if you don't) that, actually, it's kind of gross, maybe you can see a vein or maybe paying attention to it brings associations (like the bones of the steak with the bones of a living animal or roadkill you just saw) you don't want to make when you're eating, or internally, that actually your desire to eat the steak was coming more from outside expectations or environments than it was coming from the steak itself. These are hasty examples, but the basic idea is that with attention, internal and external, you will less and less desire those things you had before. This is in contrast to the Yogic mindset, which says "This is WRONG, I WILL not do it," detrimental for two reasons. One, how do you know it's wrong if you've never really investigated it yourself, might these ideas of wrongness be received as well, just from another side of the debate? And Two, you're strengthening your ego in this process, in the long run aiding its games and your own helplessness to its whims.

So actually, what you call half-assed vegetarianism, is actually not such a bad thing, provided that you are active in your investigation, and constantly thinking and watching, even if you still want to or occasionally eat meat. Half-assed vegetarianism is terrible, of course, if that means you never think about it and just use it as a way to feel better about yourself relative to other people.

Any ideology is mistaken, the only best thing to do is to think and investigate for yourself. Get to the bottom of it, and when you do, dig deeper. So, do what you can now, and it will seem less daunting to you, but do it with one-hundred percent of your heart and attention. You will find, I think, that if you do this, and continue to do this, and continue to do this, you will get far much more accomplished than you ever felt possible.

By the way, the "conscious," part of "conscious consumerism/ capitalism" is a word that rankles me as much as "vegetarian" used to when I was a teenager, because I think it makes a lot of people feel better than those around them. I am conscious, I am awake, I know, I am right, and everyone else is a jackass. In a way, part of this is correct, someone actively engaged with their life and not just drifting is, in a sense, more alive, and yet this is no license for superiority, because there is none. So I prefer the word "tantra," though I am looking for a better one, if anyone has any suggestions, wrapped up as tantra is with hairy-people sex.

And, of course, this doesn't mean that you don't try, it means that you try as hard as you can to pay attention to everything going on in and outside of you, which, if you do, you will find making everything else around you falling into place naturally, and it will seem as if it all just happened. Do what you can. Those who try and do too much at one time almost always end up making things worse. Either they ruin their cause, or they turn others against it. The Soviet Union tried to force a feudalist society towards communism in strokes of the clock, which was totally missing the historical argument of communism. They were trying to make an infant graduate from college, and those that try and make huge life changes instantly usually relapse in a week, stealing from themselves the motivation and confidence to make further improvements.

Further:

"We don't realize the costs that this mentality and these expectations have on everything". Nope. We don't. But we will. There is no free lunch.

"And until it's easy for people to do the right thing, they probably won't."

That's basically the whole idea of conscious capitalism, and, actually, capitalism isn't that far away from this at its heart, though it gets crapped on by people who don't understand it. (And I wouldn't say the U.S. is a pure capitalist country, just as it isn't an actual democracy.) It's the most efficient way to allocate resources, and I think that we'll find, as this goes on, should it start to succeed, is that we'll see that the fair way of doing things for everyone is also, actually, the most efficient way, like how automakers, who all complained they wouldn't be able to make money if mpg standards were raised in the seventies, all saw their profits increase when they were implemented.

But any way, the moral of the story is pay attention to what you're doing, and don't be willfully blind, because, at the end of the day, there is no universally right thing to do. Just keep plugging.

You are unlikely to change a lot of people's minds, especially in your generation or of those older than you. Those that agree with you were likely predisposed towards your viewpoint anyway, but push on. The differences you make may seem small, but they add up.

nlv- "You can eat all the meat you want or not, i don't think you are a worse person for it. For some reason, i don't think the majority of people can say the same thing." Hopefully one day they will, and people won't find themselves the focal point of the hatred of others for their conscious choices, or, nlv says, simply "because they are different."

Make Connections.