The Lot of the Doubting Individual

The lot of the doubting individual is at first invariably a painful one. To follow the thread of thought into the forest of psychological adventure is to open our eyes into the destructive nature of society in an irreversible way that affects all aspects of our lives. Gradually, we begin to see everything in a new light, until even the 'normal' becomes strange and alien; the heavy but welcome price we pay for this insight is that our old, comfortable (false) assumptions about the sensible way to live and the sensible goals to pursue, are lost forever. But what takes their place? Often, initially, very little.

The implications of this quiet revolution of consciousness are extraordinary. Suddenly, in a world single-mindedly devoted to a particular version of what is 'right' & 'good', we find ourselves alone & bewildered. Suddenly, at work, or in the pub, or in front of the television, we may be beset by a profound internal conflict between differing ideologies. The stress and anxiety resulting may often be extreme.

There is, after all, great comfort and security to be found in the herd; we love to belong, and leaving-if only in spirit - is traumatic. A wild oscillation may ensue between our desire for truth & authenticity and to belong, so that for a while, we may swing so violently between the two, that we are no longer sure what we believe anymore. It is almost as if the mind cannot immediately accept the shock of abandoning too rapidly our old cherished beliefs, our old guides to life; so we grow into our new view of the world bit by bit. And how understandable this is. We might believe that the whole idea of 'progress' is a fallacy - a process of running ever faster to annihilation, that the modern version of success is in fact a desperate failure; yet we may also hold a job in a company that demands maximum economic growth from maximum dedication to to the (false) ethos of 'progress' and 'success'. On the realization of this the internal conflict may be so enormous as to be almost insupportable, and time may needed to temporarily switch off from our doubts if only to retain our sanity.

But for the doubting, this is only the start of it. We may succeed, intellectually and theoretically, in turning against the entrenched beliefs of corporate consumersim, but what about us — what are we going to do about it? Initially we may well feel that we are phonies, armchair iconoclasts, prepared to criticize society, while continuing to work, play and consume in the usual way. And what a dismal prospect this is - that, perhaps, whilst we can never again go back to our earlier values, yet we may not have the courage to go forward. Where then are we? In some limbo, some space between worlds? In this situation, our lives may seem a hopeless confusion, a bewildering mixture of doubt, self-doubt and inaction. For all our lives, our materialist culture has insisted that a particular version of life is the good life, that we are alive and young only once, that we must make the best of it - by consuming as much as we can while we last. We consider our new ideas, our awareness of the destruction of the very life-support systems on which we depend; but then we also consider our old awareness of ourselves, of our dramatically short and troubled existence, and we feel that we owe it to ourselves to make the best of it as defined by society. We think, perhaps, of our career, our family, our standard of living and material possessions, our security and ask ourselves if it is not crazy to think that we should be prepared to radically change the way we live for the sake of a 'mere idea'. There follows, perhaps, a process of continuing self-doubt and re-affirmation of our ideas–and we wonder if anything will ever come of it.

This is the lot of those who have become aware of the destructive nature of the way we live, who no longer find the whole world view of corporate consumerism credible or even sane. Apart from the intrinsic conflict involved, the difficulty of the situation is often exacerbated by isolation and by the absence of a clear direction in which we might proceed. We have said 'No!', but how do we say 'Yes!'–and to what, exactly should we say 'Yes!'? Does a 'Yes!' for the world make sense as a 'Yes!' for the reality of our own lives?