Ideas - boon and burden

I have been studying language in depth for a number of years. I recently have been putting together learning material for the Northern Sami language which is one of the Sami languages spoken in northern Scandanavia. I still don't know the Sami well enough to comment on their society and way of life, but my initial impressions gave me a lot to think about. Life in the far north to me seemed another world.

Despite my name, I was not born in Europe. I have European ancestry, but I was born in South Africa. I have not experienced snow as part of every day life. I have experienced snow on skiing holidays, but that's about it. My normal is sunny weather, sometimes wind and sometimes rain. I spent most of my childhood in a leafy and warm rural suburb of Cape Town. My childhood was running in the garden, watching TV, playing on the computer, going to watch movies and reading books.

I spent my primary school and high school years sucking up knowledge. I love learning. I got into programming in high school and went on to do Computer Science at University. Already in University I knew something was missing from my life. I felt the rigid structure of the university and the ideas of those around me were restricting me. I wanted something different.

So after I got my degree in 2005, I left University and enrolled in a 3D Animation course. At the time it was not much to write home about. I learned how to make 3D models, and to make and apply textures and to make animations. I was never that good at it. I ended up disliking it so much that by the end of the 2 years at this animation school, I decided to go back to Computer Science and did a 4th year honours course.

In hindsight though, I did learn something from it that I didn't realise I had. The people at this animation school were very different to the people I had met during my Computer Science course. They were more open minded and very creative. It was during my time at the animation school that I got into console gaming. I got an Xbox 360 and starting playing all the games that were now available to me. I think being around all those creative people had opened up a door in my mind and I appreciated video games for their artistry now, whereas before I just viewed them as fun, but unimportant.

I learned a fair deal about art and how art is made during those years. It really changed my perspective. When I went to further my studies in Computer Science, I did it with a renewed vigour. I could bring together both worlds. Long story short, I finished my honours, worked for a year and went back to complete my Masters in Computer Science. I got a job after my Masters, but only lasted there a short while before I ended up with depression and resigned. This was in 2014. In late 2014 I started Silly Linguistics and things have never really been the same for me.

It has opened my eyes to new ways of living and experiencing life. Now, 4 years later, I feel like I am on the brink of a new discovery. I feel like I am ready to take the next leap forward in my life. I have spent many many many years studying. I have learned how to learn. I have built up and refined my intellectual apparatus. It has come in quite useful in my life. But there is a new part of me coming out now.

The contrast with my life up until now and the life of a reindeer herder in northern Scandanavia gave me new perspective on my life. I have built up my cognitive tools, but my personal life has suffered. I have had depression a couple of times and for long stretches of time, my personal life was not pleasant. I can't say much about the life of a reindeer herder, but I can certainly say a lot about the life of an academically minded, computer literate and European descent man who grew up in Cape Town.

Western society prides itself on progress and achievement. We have built highways, skyscrapers and airplanes. We have created rockets and explored the solar system. But have we lost something along the way? I am not alone in feeling a bit lost and washed out. Part of this is a yearning. A yearning to know more about life. What does it mean to be human? What is happiness? Where do we go from here? Western society does not have all the answers.

I am prepared to admit now, after all these years, that my academic background did make me a bit arrogant. I felt like with these tools I could change the world and I could become the person I always wanted to be. But it didn't happen like that. Actually the opposite happened. Struggling to hold onto my knowledge and world view only made things worse. I went into 2010 (my first year of my Masters course) feeling hopeful, but a bit confused. I didn't really know where my life was going.

If you have read anything I have written before, you will know that in 2011 my brother committed suicide. It was a shock. None of us in my family saw it coming. For about 3 months I was barely functioning. I just slept and ate. I eventually started getting back a semblance of reality. I started seeing a psychologist and my long process of healing started.

I have been a part of western society (make no mistake, southern Cape Town might as well be a part of Europe, at least from a cultural point of view) my whole life. It has brought me great joy in a lot of ways. But it has also produced a lot of problems. Our relentless pursuit of progress is exhausting. Our focus on ideas and tasks, rather than the human fulfilling those tasks. Our idealisation of certain members of our society, rather than looking at our society as a whole. Western society has problems.

I don't know how to fix them. But I am willing to admit that there are problems. I can't change the world. But I can at least try to change myself. My life up until this point has been a relentless pursuit of knowledge and ideas. I have finally discovered the idea that ideas might not be all that life is about.

Ideas are a boon an a burden. They can cure disease, make planes fly, allow us to record images and sound for future record. But have those ideas always served us, the creators of those ideas? Sometimes, as with healthcare, ideas have created better standards of living for many people, me included. Without psychology, and psychiatry, I would be a lot worse off. But have the ideas such as capitalism, socialism, communism and monarchy improved our lives? It's debatable.

Humans are territorial and tribal. We latch onto things we understand and identify with. For me, it was the idea of ideas. I thought if we just find the right idea and apply it then everything would be ok. But the world is much more complicated than that. We can't think ourselves out of every box. We need to look into our hearts and ask ourselves what we need to do to make our lives better. Our intuitions and instinct got us this far. Our ancestors developed abstract thought at some point and made us the species that can conquer the world.

But what have we lost in the relentless pursuit of progress? CEOs of top companies would rather reduce their taxes, and keep money off shore than invest in the very people the company relies on. This is not sustainable. Just like the tragedy of the commons, capitalism is a tragedy of the commons writ large. It started out as a way for merchants to support themselves through their own efforts, and now as we approach the third decade of this century, we live in a world of increasing disparity.

Our worship of ideas, intelligence and progress has made us focus on the wrong thing. Cheers go up whenever the GDP raises by 1%, but when a group of people finally get legal recognition, it's on the 3rd of 4th page of the newspaper. We have become fascinated and in love with our own intelligence. "Look at us! We can make machines that can peel an apple in 20 seconds!"

I am not a critic of progress itself. We should always try to get better at things. I got into Computer Science because I wanted to learn how to work with these technological marvels and maybe one day make a difference with them. But we should not become enamored with progress. Progress should not be a goal onto itself. When we do that, all other concerns fall by the way side.

The human mind is a complex thing, but it does weird things under pressure. Corporations are under pressure from shareholders, and CEOs, who would like to keep their job, pay hard to perform their role as best they can. They think of solutions to the company's problems and work hard to enact them so they can please shareholders and raise the profits of the company. They are only doing their job, but if they don't take a step back and look at where they are going, they end up getting mentally railroaded.

Profit and progress become a mantra. They become all that matter. And they end up doing terrible things, because they serve profit and progress and nothing else.

In hindsight, I see that my brother's death was actually not out of the blue, but the last tragic act of someone who had been out of sorts and depressed for a very long time. He felt disconnected from the world. He could not do the things that his society wanted from him. He had become depressed, over worked, over burdened and he felt like he could never live up to his own ideas of what life could be. He had no way out.

I suppose I was in a similar spot. I also felt depressed, overworked and overburdened. But I never gave up, and if there is anyone out there reading this that feels sad or angry or depressed or disconnected, know that you can get help. Things can get better. You just need to reach out to someone and start on the road to recovery.

I had put up science, technology, progress and ideas up on display. They were what mattered to me. They were what will solve all of humanities problems and remove all our woes. But I was wrong. They have been as much of a boon as they have been a burden.

My salvation came when I let go of these the idea that progress was all that mattered. I tried to look at what else humans are capable of. Humans can produce not just airplanes and tractors, but we can also produce literature and movies and art.

The secret is to find the best of both world. Let us continue to push for scientific advancement, but in areas that serve the very people who make it possible, humanity. Let us find a way to build up businesses in a way that serves all the people that work in it, not just those who control the purse strings. Let us challenge all ideas, not just those we find distasteful. Let us find the paths that will lead us to a world where we are more whole, more happy and the human race as a whole feels less despair, anger and hopelessness.

It won't be easy, but it is doable. We have created so many wonderful things in our time on this Earth. We can do this too