How Not To Be Normal

Discovering Your Human Agency Through the Living Structures of Unfolding Wholeness

Return To Normal

Over the past few years, I have frequently heard people lament a return to normal. The problem with what was once normal is that it provided conditions for a global viral pandemic, accelerating inflation, and the real possibilities of a global nuclear war.

I know the average person cannot fathom how they have any responsibility for these crises. We do. We allowed them to happen in exchange for what is normal.

Normal is ...

No thinking

No change

No surprises

No exceptionalism

No demands

No obligations

No accountability

No creativity

No gratitude

No welcome

No honor

No life

No future

My experience across the full breadth of my life is that people do not know how to think for themselves. They respond emotionally to the crises that afflict them, their families, and their communities. Largely unaware, they are complicit in their passivity.

If we chose to be different, life would be different. We have a clearer sense of what we want from life. Let’s reverse the above by simply removing the resistance of saying No.

I want ...

To think for myself

To change things within my grasp

To surprise myself

To be exceptional in my actions

To demand more from myself

To fulfill obligations to my loved ones

To be held accountable to be my best self

To create impact that makes a difference that matters

To be grateful for the gifts and blessings of life

To welcome strangers into friendship

To honor people who have made a difference in my life

To live freely and openly as a person of impact

To have a future that my grandchildren will benefit from

Some of you may think that this is too idealistic. It is only because the No list is rich in cynicism and nihilism, with the result that we become passive, dependent people.

As we start this new year, let me encourage you not to make resolutions or fancy plans for self-development. None of that will last into February. Something else needs to happen if you want to be different this time next year.

Be A Human Being

If you watched my interview with the Kenya women in the rural economic development program, you will hear them talking about the importance of the skills of self-sufficiency and interdependence. When I heard that from them, I was very impressed. It was because those two skills function at a low level in our society here.

How many of you welcomed the government’s supplement check during the pandemic? Do you realize that the government’s actions put you in a position where you lost your job? This is what I mean by not being able to think for yourself.

As human beings, we are more than desiring beings. We are also discerning beings.

Harry Frankfurt describes what this looks like.

It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Human beings are not alone in having desires and motives, or in making choices. They share these things with the members of certain other species, some of whom even appear to engage in deliberation and to make decisions based upon prior thought. It seems to be peculiarly characteristic of humans, however, that they are able to form what I shall call "second-order desires" or "desires of the second order."

At an animalistic level, we desire, crave, the fulfillment of our senses. We feel hunger. We experience fatigue. We want intimate relationships. This is our basic animal level of desire.

Frankfurt points to a second-order of desire. We don’t want just any food to satisfy our hunger. We don’t want to sleep just anywhere. We don’t want to be sexually intimate with just anyone. We have within us an agency, a capability, to choose between seemingly equal choices.

We decide to eat a steak instead of a cup of yogurt. We decide to sleep in our bed rather than in the back seat of our car. We decide to love someone who shares a common perspective and values.

When this second-order desire loses its footing in our lives, our humaness becomes diminished. We become as animals. Feeding off any food we can get. Sleep wherever I can. And having sex with whomever I want, any time I want.

Charles Taylor takes it a step further.

A person must be a being with his own point of view on things. The life-plan, the choices, the sense of self must be attributable to him as in some sense their point of origin. …

Moral agency, in other words, requires some kind of reflexive awareness of the standards one is living by (or failing to live by).

In simpler terms, as human beings, we have the capacity to objectively stand outside ourselves. Look at our lives. See why it is filled with conflict and then decide to do something about it.

We can reflect upon our situations. We can see where we have made errors in judgment or were successful in analyzing what is happening in our surroundings. We are aware of the potential pitfalls and benefits that come from making complex decisions about what we want. We know how to take action to bring fulfillment to our lives.

To see ourselves objectively, we must have the capacity for situational awareness paired with self-awareness. Yet, this objectivity is not a static picture of the moment. Rather, we are witnesses to the unfolding development of our lives.

The Living Structure of Unfolding Wholeness

Part of our problem is that we have been trained - programmed - to view the world as a machine. It isn’t a machine. It is a living organism. To understand what this means, let’s look at how architect and philosopher Christopher Alexander describes The Nature of Order. (The series is in four volumes and is described here.)

“In a mechanistic view of the world, we see all things, even if only for convenience, as machines. A machine is intended to accomplish something. It is, in its essence, goal-oriented. Like machines, then, within a mechanistic view, processes are always seen as arrived at certain ends. We think of things by the end-state we want, and, then ask ourselves how to get there.”

Alexander describes two principles. There is the principle of a living structure and the principle of unfolding wholeness. Throughout this work, he is speaking of architecture. However, what he is saying applies to every aspect of life. He describes his observations about these living things in terms of structural properties of living things.

“I managed to identify fifteen structural features which appear again and again in things which do have life.

1. Levels of scale

2. Strong centers

3. Boundaries

4. Alternating repetition

5. Positive space

6. Good shape

7. Local symmetries

8. Deep interlock and ambiguity

9. Contrast

10. Gradients

11. Roughness

12. Echoes

13. The Void

14. Simplicity and Inner calm

15. Non-Separateness

Without context, like a building or an office team, those properties may not make sense. However, the reason to list them here to distinguish these principles of wholeness from a mechanistic view of our lives. Alexander states,

“these fifteen properties are the glue from which wholeness is constructed. Asking how they come about in the world is, in another form, therefore the same as asking why wholeness itself comes about in the world. And this is no less than asking how living structure comes about.”

The importance of this perspective is to persuade you to move your perception of the world from a mechanistic one to a whole one. The description of what is normal is a mechanistic description. If you were to desire to change your perception of the world to that of a whole perspective, it will mean that you embrace that which is alive in the world. But not only alive but that which is emerging. Alexander refers to this as unfolding wholeness. Wholeness is not a thing as a part of a mechanism. It is how the structure of the thing lives. As it lives, it unfolds into new versions of itself.

Consider that this is what I am pointing to. We don’t establish resolutions for the year. We don’t set goals. Instead, we live into principles that help us become aware of the world around us and aware of who we are and how we are changing in the midst of this unfolding wholeness.

Our growth unfolds from the living structure of our lives. What is this living structure that is our life? It is the whole of our life. It isn’t the parts that show themselves in a Normal understanding. It isn’t working on one thing, but utilizing all aspects of our lives to their full advantage to grow.

Christopher Alexander’s perspective is not how normal life functions. Unless living in the midst of unfolding wholeness is the life that you now have.

Awareness of ourselves and the situations that we are in will grow in this process. We need to understand that …

Self-awareness precedes situational awareness.

Situational awareness enables us to live whole lives as human beings.

The Unfolding Wholeness of Human Agency

Early last year, I wrote a long series on The Culture of Simulation. Later in the year, I wrote a piece on how we have transitioned out of an immanent material world into an immanent non-material world. This non-materiality correlates to the culture of simulation. Because of this development, it is natural to see that Normal Life is no longer about our pursuit of goals and achievement, but rather an avoidance of much that constitutes life.

Harry Frankfurt and Charles Taylor point us to an understanding of what we are as human beings through the language and images of human agency. We are discerning culture-creating beings who make decisions where No and Yes represent a decision to follow our desires and values.

Christopher Alexander points us toward an understanding of the living structure of unfolding wholeness as the context where our human agency gets practiced.

We have a choice.

We can choose to live a Normal life that is limited and ultimately unfulfilled. Or, we can choose to live a life where we seek to grow by embracing the wholeness of life. To live this second life, we have to learn how to stop thinking in mechanical terms. Instead, we respond to life by becoming aware of what is right in front of us. Then, we decide what we should do and we act upon it.

If you found during the past three years that you wanted to go back to a previous normal life, I’m sorry but I don’t think that will ever happen.

The answer to the question that reality presents is to embrace your capacity for second-order action and learn to live in the unfolding experience of being a deeper, richer expression of your potential. It will not be easy. But it will be full of life.