Sophie McBain, who lives in New York but who writes for The Guardian, a British publication, is suggesting that our pursuit of a "Better Life" is perhaps leading us into error. McBain's column, which appeared in The Guardian on January 1, 2024, was a meditation on the practice of structuring each New Year around one or more "New Year's Resolutions," which we believe will make things better, if we can only accomplish in fact what we so earnestly resolve.
McBain's column bears the title, "Is being ‘good enough’ better than perfection?"
I think McBain is on to something. When considered from an "environmentalist" perspective (certainly one of my favorite go-to "worldviews"), human beings seem often to reject the idea of conforming our activities to the limitations of the "World of Nature," and feel much better when we are constructing our own, "Human World." One of my recurring themes is the fallacy in thinking that we can, somehow, create a world of our own that is not, in the end, completely dependent on the "World of Nature" into which we have been most mysteriously born. Any regular reader of these blog postings will immediately think, "Oh, yeah, now we're going to hear about global warming."
In fact, "Global Warming" is being caused by our human refusal to live within the limits of the natural world. We could obtain our energy from the "flow" of the energy that pours down upon us from the sun. Instead of living within the limits of that "flow," however, we want, instead, to dig up those "fossil" fuels that represent tens of millions of years of past "flow," so we can do things that we want to do, and go beyond what the "World of Nature" provides. Like (just an example) building a new city on Mars, since we have "fucked up" (that's a technical term) all of our cities here on Earth.
Well.... McBain's point (and I think it's a good point) is that even within our "Human World," the world that we create, we are not ever satisfied. We keep looking for "better," or even for "perfection."
How about just accepting, and loving, the blessings that exist?
We're already getting into that "New Year." It isn't really isn't all that "new" by now. Still, let's all think about whether McBain might be right. If she's right, that might change how we comport ourselves during the remainder of 2024!
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