Life is just one damn thing after another*. This sentiment has been attributed to many people, though this exact rendering was published in The Philistine in 1909. It is of course equally applicable now, over one hundred years since that printing and indeed always had been up until that point in history. It is both very funny and very truthful - the former because of the latter - though I can’t help but feel that our amusement leads us to dismiss its potential lessons without further examination.
Looking a little closer, a good many of those damn things are situations or occurrences that demand a response, an action and frequently therefore - a choice. Which action do I take? Which choice do I make? More often than not, it seems our default position is to perceive our numerous choices to fall into a decision between 'this' or 'that'. Hunt or scavenge, fight or flee, the red or the blue pill? A recent meme born of an advertisement for packaged Mexican foods asked with incredulity 'Porque no los dos!?' - Why not have both!? but despite its apparent generosity, this suggestion still accepts the notion of only two possible components to our experience, even if they are both to be consumed in equal measure.
Importantly, this dualist approach to life extends well beyond choice-making. It is also perhaps our default position with respect to our perceptions and descriptions. As a species we are most comfortable when we feel we 'understand' a thing but unfortunately the extent of our understanding seldom surpasses the limits of naming and categorising. We feel that by the simple exercise of attributing a name to something or someone and metaphorically placing them into this or that box, or category, we have somehow achieved a modicum of understanding and indeed, control. At the most fundamental, most visceral, level this is evidenced by our eagerness to class all our fellow beings as 'one of us' or 'one of them' - the 'other' that we fear so much, due almost entirely to the simple fact that, truthfully, we know so little about them. Sadly however, having decided they are the other, we feel no obligation to understand them any further. Fear, contempt, hatred, ridicule - all need no further examination to be applied or illumination to be gained of anyone not in our elite, select few - not 'our kind'.
So how to see beyond this dilemma? How to step outside this lazy 'black' or 'white' and perceive all the possible intermediate shades of grey? Or, better still, actually examine black and white also in far greater detail, revealing that they are respectively comprised of the total absorption or the complete reflectance of every possible hue of colour in the visible spectrum? In short, how do we turn away from the monochrome and start to see the complete rainbow of possibility?
In 1996 Brian Eno published A Year With Swollen Appendices, his 'Diary' for the previous year. In addition to its daily record of activities and thoughts, copies of communiques and asterisked marginalia, it contains a comprehensive collection of essays, lectures, short stories and musings - the swollen appendices of its title and almost a third of the volume's total bulk. Among them is a relatively short but gloriously insightful piece entitled Axis Thinking, to which I repeatedly find myself returning for its remarkable clarity and potential. Perhaps it is in part his very 'visual' approach that particularly appeals to my designers' mind, but certainly his proposed 'model' for structuring our perceptions, considerations and communications has potential benefits well beyond simple descriptive use.
We are all familiar with scales of preference - for example, rating a product, service, desire from one to ten. This is an axis with two 'extremes' and a range of potential 'mixes' between them. This has a simple, horizontal, linear dimension. If we look at food as an example - it is after all a universal essential and relatively non-confrontational - we might have a linear preference scale for mild to spicy. We could all place ourselves at some point along such a scale. If we then wish to also describe our preference for heavy and rich or light and crisp foods we could add a vertical axis, thereby creating a two-dimensional 'graph' upon which to place our delight in a laksa, rich with chilli and coconut cream or a Thai beef salad, bright, fresh and crisp with just a tang of spice. Anyone with a different palate still has a place on the page, just perhaps not exactly the same location as ourselves. With each additional 'quality' we wish to measure - say meat-eating or vegetarian - we add a new axis, rapidly moving away from the possibility of a simple two-dimensional graph into a three-dimensional 'cartesian' space with x, y & z axes and then beyond that again into richly connected 'multi-axial' models. I find this easiest to imagine by picturing my personal preferences as a node - say a small rubber ball - pierced successively by a number of long skewers - each representing an axis between two possible alternatives. Some skewers will perhaps be equally protruding on both sides of the ball as I have a similar liking for both mild and spicy foods, but were I vegan, then obviously I'd be near the extreme end of that particular skewer, or axis.
If we now picture our small ball, our node, 'me', within a vast and complex multi-dimensional 'field' of cultural and personal dietary axes of preference, we can see that in fact everyone else on the planet similarly occupies a position within this rich arena of culinary possibility. Some might lie very close to ourselves, whilst other inhabit regions at the extremes of this potentially endless realm - enjoying offal, molecular gastronomy, paleo diets or such. Everyone is here. They are perhaps none of them precisely the same as me, yet they are all represented and equally so. This is no longer a world picture in which we can say it's 'us' or 'them' - two polar extremes - rather, we are all unique yet all united in our common occupation of this rich cosmos of variability. This is the magic of Axis Thinking - with all its potential complexity, it brings us all together to occupy the same 'universe' of possibility. No trait, no desire, no predilection, no genetic disposition, no race, no culture, no gender, no sexuality, no thing, nothing and no-one is excluded. We are all united in our occupation of this field of seemingly infinite possibilities. Plus we are all equally valuable, and potentially valued, for the power that our very diversity brings - someone occupies every conceivable position, everyone is uniquely qualified for their particular location.
Of course, as Eno points out, we must also recognise that the very axes themselves are not of finite length with fixed polar extremes. Much as the rainbow we see in the sky is representative of only a tiny, visible light, portion of the full extent of the electro-magnetic spectrum - stretching from the red end through increasingly long microwave and radio wavelengths, and at the violet end into the ever-decreasing wavelengths of ultraviolet, x-rays and gamma rays - so any and indeed all axes within our model of understanding are merely 'limited' in extent within any given moment by the extremes we understand or proscribe. As our cultures, knowledge and acceptance morph over time, so the 'occupied' portion of any axis may shrink, expand or simply slide along its continuum. Only after chillies were carried from the Americas in the fifteenth century did the European dietary axis expand into greater extremes of spiciness and only with more liberal attitudes slowly won after the decline of the stranglehold of religious doctrines did the duality of heterosexual or homosexual desire both expand and increase in complexity to include LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual and more). Plus, we need to recognise that wholly new axes may at times appear - virtual sexual encounters employing digital avatars only became possible with the advent of the internet. Of course, as is explored magnificently in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, time, politics, fear and circumstance could easily reverse these particular trends and attempt to enforce an axis comprised of the singularity of conformist heterosexual behaviour - though an axis comprising a singular point is of course a logical impossibility. As has frequently been observed, the only constant is change, and change is undeniably inevitable given the unstoppable march of time. My hope is only that perhaps with the benefit of tools to aid our understanding, such as Axis Thinking, we can ensure that our journey through time moves principally toward the betterment, rather than the detriment, of our lives and the lives of all others of the same or different species with whom we share this impossibly fragile speck of rock in the seemingly infinite expanse of the universe.
Submission for New Philosopher Writers' Award XIX: Life
*1909 December, The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest, Edited by Elbert Hubbard, Volume 30, Number 1, (Untitled short item), Quote Page 32, Published by The Roycrofters, East Aurora, New York. (Google Books Full View)
