Beyond Survival

The Case for a New Way of Living

I have a vision that keeps recurring. I talked about it a bit in my Philosophical Friday post, which I’ve linked below.

It’s the vision where we take survival off the table and teach people how to thrive—by healing themselves, letting go of the things they can’t control, and shifting how they see experience.

I’m the first to admit that it’s a pretty radical view of the world. It would require a massive shift in how we function as individuals and as a society. It removes morality as anything other than an individual guidance system. It makes money nothing more than a simple system of trade. Societies are based on shared resources instead of shared values. Individuals are left to do as they please, and corporations are required to support the communities they serve by giving back a percentage of their profit in free at-cost goods and services.

I believe strongly in full self-responsibility—where people understand that every thought, feeling, action, and word they express is their own responsibility, regardless of the experience that leads them to say, think, feel, or do anything. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an easy place to get to. It’s very tempting to blame the external world for how we feel or think and for what we say or do. While your thoughts, feelings, actions, and words may be effects of an experience that triggered them, they are still yours, and they are still a separate process from the experience itself. You are always in control of those things. The experience can’t make you feel, think, say, or do anything. It’s entirely up to you. That level of self-awareness is both challenging and terrifying.

I understand the argument against this because people feel strongly that anarchy would ensue. I get it. From where we are right now, you’re probably right. However, if survival were no longer an issue and simple cause and effect were what people learned to abide by, things would rapidly change for the better.

• Homelessness and hunger would be solved immediately.

• People would suddenly have far more control over their lives than they do now.

• People would feel empowered to create positive change without worrying about catastrophic consequences.

Yes, a lot of people would quit their jobs, and that would mean companies like Walmart and Amazon would have to find ways to incentivize lower-paying jobs. This would improve working conditions, hours, pay, and benefits across the board—not just for specific employers but for all employers.

We would have to rethink how work fits into our lives. Instead of being about survival, working would be about thriving and making life better.

Individual well-being would become more important than the stock market, money, filling jobs, or keeping an artificial economy running.

When societies are built around putting individual well-being first, they are overall healthier and happier. But people don’t see it this way. They tend to believe that if we make society the priority, individuals within it will benefit. This reflects the same trickle-down approach that conservative politicians often tout—make the rich richer, and the wealth will flow downhill. We all know how that works out.

Well, guess what? The same is true in society.

When the priority is placed on the society as a whole, the individuals within it do not fare better—because the freedom of the individual is significantly limited as a means of protecting the society from the individuals within it.

But when the priority is placed on the individual—when we stop focusing on protecting anybody from anything—the society as a whole ends up healthier and happier. People are radically free, and ultimately, they will have more bandwidth, energy, and desire to give back to the society they are a part of. They will help create a happier, healthier society over the long term. The health and happiness of society is a grassroots effort that happens solely because the people within it are taken care of.

To see and understand this, we have to shift our belief that people are naturally bad, lazy, and greedy. We have to recognize those things as pain responses. This is how people act when they feel they have to protect themselves from something. If survival were no longer an issue—if access to everything were assured and people were truly able to take care of themselves and make their own choices—the meanness, laziness, and greed would fade away.

There will always be people doing things we don’t like. We’re not going to stop everything, no matter how ideal society becomes. It will never be a perfect system. But that’s not the point, and our job isn’t to stop people from doing things we don’t like. We’re still here to experience, explore, grow, and learn. We can’t take that away from anybody, nor should we. But what we can do is create a system that does not manufacture pain.

We can build a system that does not determine right and wrong, does not make choices for people, and does not regulate people—only corporations. A system that allows total free will is a system that allows people to heal themselves. Much of the pain people feel is created by limitation—or perceived limitation. When we remove the limits, the pain falls away. When the pain falls away people begin to act better because the pain is no longer influencing how they show up in the world.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this vision or what I’m going to do with it. But for now, the best thing I can do is share it with you.

Let me know what questions you have in the comments below.

What do you think about a system where the individual is completely free and corporations are regulated instead?

Love to all.

Della