The Art of Living for the Conceptual Age

The time felt right to give this blog a change-up, from "politicat: the feline is political" to "The Art of Living: a blog for the conceptual age." This doesn't mean a whole new project, but perhaps a more unified(though not uniform) vision of this project of meaningful reflection upon what it means to be alive today, which is essentially what I've tried to have my blog be all about for the past five plus years. The new title and tag line come from two texts I've been considering lately.

I first came across "the art of living" in the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a 20th century German theologian involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Before and during his imprisonment for involvement in the plot, Bonhoeffer worked on a book entitled Ethics in which he turns from his earlier idealistic and modernist morality of right and wrong toward a more nuanced, poetic and postmodernist view of what it means to be an ethically responsible social being. Here is the excerpt pertaining to "the art of living.

To learn to live with others within the boundaries of the ought means not standing outside the process of life as a spectator, critic, or judge. Living with others means not being motivated by the ought but by the richness of life's impulses, by what is natural and has grown, by what is freely affirmed and willed. It does not mean humorless hostility against the art of living, against any weakness and disorder. Living with others does not consist of the suspicious, watchful measuring of what is by what ought to be, nor in the anxious subordination of everything natural to the requirements of duty, of everything free to what is necessary, of everything concrete to the general, of everything without purpose to a purpose--so that finally, in a grotesque transgression of the boundary of the "ethical," the concluding paragraph of one Christian ethic has to be called "Morally Permitted Relaxation"! Living with others means living within the boundaries of the ought--though not motivated at all by the ought--in the midst of the abundance of the concrete tasks and processes of life with their infinite variety of motives.

In this sense, the art of living is a balancing, juggling and dancing between the world as it ought to be and the world as it is. A drastic and heavy shift in either direction--doing only what is right ("the ought") on the one hand, and powerlessly surrendering to what is unfortunately the reality of existence on the other--is always detrimental. Life is to be approached with the spirit of an artist, continually creating the world anew, but limited to the materials at hand. A masterpiece is never a perfect work, but one of passion and meaning and beauty. The same can be said of life. We are not regulated by rules and habits, as strongly planted as these might be within our psyche. Rather, we are led to live with others by goodness and rhythm and grace.

Bonhoeffer was ahead of his time. Soon after the end of war that claimed his life (he was finally hanged in a Nazi prison camp for political dissent), the world would enter into a period of technological advance so thorough that, as another writer argues, our planet (or at least the Western part) now spins around the axes of design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. For Daniel Pink, these are the six senses of the new conceptual age, which he introduces in his 2005 book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future. In an article at Wired.com, Pink summarizes the thesis of his book in words that, although address a different topic, strongly echo Bonhoeffer.

The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. Today - amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom to bust to blah - there's a metaphor that explains what's going on. And it's right inside our heads.

Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres...The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times.

Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.

Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.

This new conceptual age demands, or more appropriately, invites us to see and live in the world with artistry and empathy. This is nothing new for many, but what may be new is being explicit and open about this approach to life, and recognizing that the new era is shifting in our direction. This gives us all much to consider, and gives me much to blog about.