I have made a big mistake - Society

I was reading some Tim Ingold essays last week. The book sort of lept out at me while I was heading toward the Buddhism section - and there is a funny thing everything I am reading at the moment from ancient history to anthropology to Buddhism to literature all seems connected. Instantly I like his reasoning, and I realised a huge mistake in my thinking so far: Society.

Society has been left left out of my bottom up approach of late. Tim Ingold argues that Society is not some expansive structure which moulds its components, nor is it the result of underlying subconscious processes either: it occurs in the everyday conscious processes of willing agents.

It occurred to me that taking part in the vast ocean of human interaction was something that I have progressively cut myself off from in a Cartesian way, beginning to doubt the wholesomeness of everything. The Iraq war was the icing on the cake. The people that surround me are ostensible idiots and this self generated proclaimation has damaged my relationship with them and society.

For Ingold the meaning of life arises out of the nexus of interaction that gives things their meaning. Culture and society are not to be seem as identical. Culture is a tool that is used by the agents of society to order their lives. Ingold goes so far as to say that consciousness IS this ocean of interaction (although I must have misread him because of the contradiction that on one hand being conscious is a precondition of taking part in society, but on the other it is also identified with society). It is also the

But this is good enough to identify my mistake. In its simplest version our meaning of life can only be sought in our relationship with others.

However like everything this only goes so far: enter the Ouroboros. Ingold is then saying that the meaning in his life has been manufactured from his intellectual relationship with readers like myself (and mine in reverse). This duplicates the hypothesis of which we talk: firstly the hypothesis in its ordinary meaning of language interaction and secondly in its social meaning of inter-personal interaction. This hypothesis is more than just a ball to be tossed about, it is proposing that it can see itself in the mirror: it talks of meaning being constructed in relationships, and in so doing it sets up a relationship: it talks of something which it actually is. Does this mean then that we can talk of a relationship in terms that are beyond actual relationship, or is actual relationship required for us to talk about it, or are they same and how would we know the difference without another relationship ad infinitum.

So the model breaks down it seems as the extreme limits like everything. But again it has been supremely useful. Arriving at the Buddhist section the next day after my Ingold distraction I realised that Buddha is saying the same thing. Our mind exists in our relationships and the spiritual path is none other than improving our relationships with people. Improving what we do, what we say and what we think.

This is the root of all human life: our relationship with people, and our striving to improve that relation. Well there is a lot of work to do and it doesn't happen all of a sudden!

My leaving work has not improved my relationship with them, but it has bought me this time to think and reorganise the army. Karmically I will be entering exactly the same abusive relationship I had with the bosses at work (they are abusive people). And, while I had been practicing Buddhism for all my time work I never managed to stop the relationship being abusive. They (the bosses) have very deep character flaws and indeed it was my duty as another human being to help them manage those. I lost it eventually and I too became flawed, the relationship broke down even more than before.

But it is good, the river flows on and we gain the experience we need to travel the next section.

So a mark in the sand here. Never step back over the re-re-realisation (for I keep getting reminded of this) that it is in human relationships alone that we find life.

p.s. at least that is stage 1. I have struggled in my webpage for a much, much greater concept of relationship: that which includes all things both animate and inanimate. (That webpage is due for an overhaul. The process which began there and runs through this blog should condense again soon into another webpage - with a focus on clarity and usability!).