After some reflecting (as well as reading! book list included below), it’s apparent to me that the greatest impact a society or person may have on an individual is their sense of possibility.
In every society, there are a list of rules and taboos — what you must do and must not do. Examples readily come to mind: cursing in a formal situation, public nudity, what good art is, what you are allowed to say, etc. As far as the eye can see, there will always be society with rules and rule-anarchy is not expected.
What is up to chance though is the perspective the society has on those rules. In other words: Do people see these rules as rules, and taboos as taboos? Once we see rules as a rule, we understand that the codification of the rule was a decision that other people made, often a long time ago. Same with taboo, if we see it as such, we understand that X thing was seen as bad under a certain context.
Once we understand that, we understand that our current context has changed, and with different contexts there may come different rules and taboos.
Once we see rules and taboos as such, we understand that the walls around us are made of glass and different possibilities, behaviors, creativity, and expressions are possible outside.
Likely, this is one of the reasons travel to foreign countries is so attractive to many of us, especially the young people aching to see what is outside their “boundaries”. Travel violently changes the context, and with it the expectations one has as to “how things are (supposed to be)”.
Some of this rigidity in rule and taboo following is inevitable, though I propose that we all have the potential to be far more flexible than we think. Moreover, I believe that parents, teachers, and culture could keep possibility alive within individuals simply by having them realize that the rules and taboos they see are merely rules and taboos. What is allowed is surely much smaller than what is possible, and likely the moments in our lives which we will look back in our final moments are the moments where we let go of previous rules, taboos, categories, descriptions, and behavior and give ourselves permission to see what is possible.
Recommended reading:
Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse
Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer
The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander
(Honorable mention: Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche)
