Publisher's note: Perhaps the three most pursued and coveted things in our modern world are control, ownership, and independence . In Richard Eyre's mind, they are the three deceivers — and are ultimately both unobtainable and undesirable. They are, Eyre believes, the "false gods" that separate us from God and rob us of the things of the spirit. This column, exploring the obsessions we have developed with control, ownership and independence, and outlining a better and more spiritual alternative for each, will open you to a new world of thinking that may change how you live. Richard welcomes your feedback and inputs. Write to him at Richard@meridianmagazine.com.
Those of you who have read the earlier installments of this column (you can catch up by clicking here) know that we are essentially saying that, in today's world, our obsessions with Control, Ownership , and Independence (which we will sometimes abbreviate here as "CO&I") are undermining and sometimes ruining the quality of our lives.
This column will later propose three alternative attitudes or paradigms that can be substituted the three deceivers of CO&I and make our lives happier and more balanced. (These three alternatives will have none of the negative aspects of our CO&I addictions, but preserve all of their benefits.) Before we can get to these three alternatives however, it is important to be thorough in explaining why CO&I are so destructive, depressing, and ultimately false. We will progress through this explanation week by week, with the goal being first to pull ourselves away from our addictions and then to convert ourselves to their alternatives. Today's column is about why we should beware of what we want.
“Beware of What You Want, for You Will Get It”
As human beings, our objectives, even the subconscious or unconscious ones, affect everything we do. The most dangerous misperceptions are the subtle ones because they deceive us without our awareness, and we do not sense the danger. The “herd mentality” influences us all in spite of our abhorrence of it, and the herd is charging toward the graven images of Control, Ownership and Independence.
People often spend much more time and effort pursuing things than they spend examining what it is that they want and why they want it. We need to learn to ask ourselves if we are really pursuing the right things. We can be so influenced by our environment, by our peers, by the advertising and media that surround us. We tend to want what other people want, or what other people have, or what other people tell us we should want.
Deep down, within our spiritual selves, we may know what is real and what is lasting — and thus what we should be pursuing and working for. But the things "of the moment" seem to grab away our attention from the deeper things, and we live our day to day lives going after the temporary and the transitory rather than thinking about and building for what really matters.
In our urban society, surrounded by other people, competing with other people, watching media and ads featuring other people who seem to have everything they want (and everything we want) and who look perfect, we find ourselves falling into the pursuit of society's definition of success rather than our own. Since everyone seems to want certain things, it is easy to just assume that they are the things to want and to assume, subconsciously, that we want them too. This is an enormously dangerous assumption.
Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Perhaps the most important thing we can examine is what we want and why we want it. If we don't examine these key things, we fall into assumptions about what we want, and these assumptions are highly influenced by the media, by our peers, and by the world.
We assume that we want proactive, check-off-the-list control of our everyday lives, and that we would be happier if we had it. We assume that we want to own nicer clothes and a newer car and a bigger house and that we would be happier if we did. We assume that we want to be more independent and not need other people so much and that we would be happier if we were.
What is interesting is that the "wanting to be happier" part of each assumption is the true and correct part. If someone asks us what we want, we usually say, "To be happy." So happiness is our conscious goal, and it is the right goal (God himself, through his prophet, said "men are that they might have joy.") The problem comes not with the conscious goal but with the subconscious, unexamined pursuits of the things we assume will give us happiness — control, ownership and independence.
Just as the conscious goal of happiness is supported and backed up by scripture, the assumed, subconscious goals are not . In fact, scripture reveals them to be lies — false spiritual concepts that will lead us in directions exactly opposite of our assumptions (toward unhappiness instead of happiness).
Scripture tells us that God and the actions and interactions of His plan of agency control our everyday lives, not us. Scripture tells us that God owns the earth and everything in it, not us. Scripture tells us that we are dependent on God and interdependent on each other, not independent. Assuming otherwise is not only inaccurate; it is unrealistic and selfish and will lead us inevitably toward stress, frustration, jealousy, and other kinds of unhappiness.
Things We Should Control
Of course there are some things we should want to and strive to control — our emotions, our passions, ourselves. And we do own our agency in a sense, and must accept that it is fully ours. And certainly a degree of financial independence can be a good thing.
But we, and the society all around us, carry CO&I so much further than that. They get broadly defined as highly desirable, and become the yardstick by which we measure ourselves and others. We want to control more and more, and things we can't control begin to frustrate us. We want to own more and more, and we become jealous of those who have more and judgmental toward those who have less. We want to be more and more independent, which separates us more and more from other people and from God.
We get caught up with CO&I without examining our own assumptions.
Figuring this out is one thing, but what you do about it is another. Many who have realized that the headlong pursuit of CO&I brings unhappiness have gone in an opposite direction that is just as extreme and just as damaging. They have just given up their proactive tendencies, dropped out, and started trusting their lives to "fate." They have substituted "no goals" for "false goals." And they have become even unhappier.
What we must do instead is substitute true goals — objectives that are in harmony with spiritual realities. We must find the Three Alternatives, and discard and disavow the Three Deceivers. By now, many of you, (especially those who have read all three columns) have your own ideas about what the three alternative attitudes are. To be correct, these alternatives must guide our lives toward God rather than away from Him.
The alternative to "control" must acknowledge God's control and seek His guidance through impressions, nudges, and heightened awareness and perspective; yet it must still accept the responsibility for self that successful mortality demands. The alternative to "ownership" must acknowledge Gods ownership of all and seek His guidance on caring for all that we are entrusted with; yet it must also accept accountability for all that we are given. The alternative to "independence" must acknowledge our dependence on God and seek His guidance in the serving, interdependent relationships we have with our brothers and sisters; yet it must also recognize that one purpose of this second estate is to help us learn to think and to decide for ourselves.
The three alternatives must preserve all of the good aspects of CO&I (initiative, motivation, discipline, and so on) but eliminate all of the negative aspects (judgment, jealousy, conceit, presumption, envy, covetousness, and other negative qualities)
Don't wait for me to reveal what I think these alternatives are in a future column. Tell me what you think they are (or what you think they should be). Send your thoughts to me at Richard@meridianmagazine.com . I will publish what I think are the best ideas I receive on The Three Alternatives in a future column.
