Bodying-Forth a World

It seems to me that we often neglect the agency of the thoughts that occur to us. Through a strange trick we believe that it’s we who think thoughts, but the more honest formulation seems to be that we are thought through.

Do you ever get that sense?

If we were truly thinking our thoughts, wouldn’t we have a better understanding of where they come from and how to stop them on those nights when they keep us awake? At times thoughts seem to burst in the room, clamoring for our attention. Or they overstay their welcome and become grudging fixtures in our experience. However, at times they occur with such clarity and with so little commotion that it’s as if we’ve merely stumbled across something that we’d forgotten we knew all along.

The other day a thought occurred to me in such a manner. It appeared as a fully formed idea, the words unfolding one after the other: Upon each of us falls the task of organizing ourselves in accordance with the future we wish to inhabit.

This is a difficult task.

Generally speaking, all that we know for certain is how to act in accordance with the history through which we’ve lived (or through which our ancestors lived). And to the extent that the world-that-is remains similar to the world-that-was, this is a satisfactory situation. After all those habits sufficed for survival relative to those conditions. Gravity hasn’t changed much, so the mechanisms of gravitational adjustment that our species developed — mechanisms that are relatively “hard wired” or genetically determined — are still fit for the task.

To suspend the habits of our historical behavior is not an easy thing.

But their perpetuation presumes that the environment will remain relatively unchanged. Hopefully it isn’t too much of a stretch to say that “unchanging” is the one thing that the world around us is not. Therefore it behooves us to adjust our manner of action.

Of course, the question may be: what if I don’t know the future I wish to inhabit? As examined in previous editions, positive selection is a rare thing in the living world. Negative selection, the pruning away of bad fits, is far more common and tends to be far more robust. We’re often hard-pressed to articulate what we want, but the inverse is almost always available. In that case we can reformulate the task as follows: organize yourself in such a way that you reduce the probability of dwelling within the future you wish to avoid.

There is an important distinction in this formulation.

It is not a matter of preventing the undesired outcome — we can have no guarantee of that. However, we can reduce the probability of a given outcome.

Injuries are a good example. Although it can be effective marketing slang, there is no such thing as “injury prevention.” There is only risk mitigation. Another way to consider this is that reducing the probability of injury always looks like injury prevention…until it doesn’t. The world is never a perfectly safe place, and there is almost always some non-zero probability that an injury will occur. However, much can be done to reduce both the likelihood and the severity of an injury (which almost always depends on improving the coordination of force transmission — or communication — through the body).

Relationships are another good example. Given the ambiguity of words and the carelessness with which we use them, it’s impossible to think that any relationship will be free of miscommunication. Undesired outcomes are bound to occur. However, although we may never have the “perfect” relationship, there is much we can do to reduce the likelihood that we end up in the sorts of relationships we don’t want.

Of course, any designation of “the future you want” and “the future you don’t want” depends on you, the evaluator. The standards must be set by you, and this is a difficult task for most people. Generally we’re led to want relative to what the Other wants, or as Lacan says, “Man’s desire is the desire of the Other.” This has many possible interpretations, among which we find:

• Man desires what the Other desires
• Man desires that the Other desires him

We so often organize our activity in accordance with our perception of the Other’s perception. This can manifest as a compliance with societal norms of what’s valuable (including what our caretakers raised us to consider valuable), or it may be an opposition to what society deems valuable (a sort of rebellious acting out). In either case, the Other’s desire sets the rules of the game that we play. It is far more difficult to set our own standards for what organizes our activity.

In another section we’ll examine authenticity and see what is asked of the individual who wishes to live as a “category of one.”

For now there’s an opportunity for reflection. Consider the future you wish to inhabit. If you were to organize yourself in accordance with that possible world, what would be asked of you? Consider too the inverse: what defines the future you don’t wish to inhabit? What is asked of you in order to minimize the probability of dwelling within that possible world?

You are now what you will have been.

Moment by moment you body forth a world. Let your wishes for the future enact themselves and bring into being the sort of world in which you wish to live.

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