“There is no one right way to live.”
That quote comes from one of my favorite books of all time, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. If you haven’t read it, go pick up a copy and crack it open.
Good, you’re back. I’ll continue.
Live as you see fit, and let others do the same. So long as they aren’t impinging on anyone else’s happiness, what business is it of yours? You may not like them or the way they act, but are they physically harming you?
Live and let live.
If there was one thing I wish I could beam into everyone’s subconscious, it’s this simple concept.
People, we need to lay off of each other. Like Louis C.K. said, “The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as them.”
For all of recorded human history, people have had opinions about other people. But for most of recorded human history, those opinions have been sequestered to the opinion-haver, and maybe his or her closest confidants. Once the printing press came around, it was a lot easier to spread those opinions–but it still required a lot of work on the part of other people.
But as media technology has advanced, and become democratized, it’s become easier and easier for opinions to spread.
Now we’ve reached the pinnacle. Social media has allowed literally anyone with access to a computer or a smartphone to spread their opinions to hundreds, thousands, even millions of people at the push of a button. I can type up 140 characters, hit “tweet”, and instantly be in the heads of more people than I will know in my lifetime.
Roman emperors would’ve killed for that kind of influence.
As a result, now we’re at the point where opinions are news. We no longer discuss politics, we discuss opinions of politics; we don’t talk about current events, we talk about responses to current events.
We are a world of eyeballs, and they’re all pointed at each other.
We need to stop worrying so much about how our neighbors are living and start worrying about how we are living. Or, as my boy Marcus Aurelius put it:
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
(My apologies to my female readers. Let’s just assume he knew that all women were already good and therefore didn’t argue about it.)
Regarding the quote from Ishmael, “There is no one right way to live,” I have to add a caveat here. Or maybe it’s more of a clarification.
While I do think that cultures and lifestyles should be allowed to flourish, I don’t think anyone should be forced to live within the confines or rules of a particular culture. There are certainly practices that are common in other countries that are physically and mentally damaging–sometimes deadly.
My thoughts on how the Ishmael rule should be applied to these cultures are…muddied. The jury is out. However, I can say that the rule does still apply insofar as the people who are the victims of these practices are having that rule violated on them. They are not being allowed to choose how they want to live. If a woman wants to wear a burqa, she should be absolutely free to. But she should not be forced to, either by physical, verbal, or cultural coercion.
That’s how I feel about it, anyway. You?
The Vulcan Buddha 