The Problem with Platitudes

This is the season of platitudes. The close of the academic year and commencement speeches, the acceleration of the election process and political speeches, and the Olympic games and media speeches are all upon us.

• Be boundless—shoot for the stars.
• Anything is possible—all you have to do is believe in yourself.
• You can be anything if you just apply yourself—you can even be president!
• Either you fight or you give in.
• We have to take the fight to them.
• I will fight for the American people.
• Winners are losers who got up off the ground and gave it one more try.
• Set your goals high, and don’t stop until you achieve them.

The narrative is to dream big and be willing to struggle and fight to achieve your dreams. Many people believe that to have a successful life they must construct an aspiration and a desire, set a goal with a high bar, and relentlessly and aggressively pursue the construct to satisfy all the accompanying cultural platitudes. This process is believed to give a sense of meaning and purpose to life that will ultimately lead to success and fulfillment.

Besides human beings, what other life form does this? None. Then how can this be the right formula for life?

Life is hard—for all life forms. Life is full of threats. Defenses are required. By design, life is a struggle and sometimes a fight to keep the organic from becoming the inorganic. Yet, all life eventually dies. The only known real purpose of life is to protect and propagate the genetic code of life; the purpose of life is to successfully sustain life through the generations. Life is not about the me, but about the we, and particularly the very wee—our children. The rest is platitude.

So why make life harder? What is so essential about pursuing a narcissistic battle with platitude? A four-billion-year history of other life forms on Earth suggests that such human ideas, constructs, narratives, and beliefs are inessential to life. Life is less about a story and all about experience. The moving through and the connecting to the environment comprise the experience of life, while meaning and purpose are given with life—protect and propagate the code. Further search is unnecessary.

What is essential for all life forms is safety. Safety provides the time and physiology for growth, regeneration, recovery, reproduction, and resilience. Wellness, health, and happiness are found within safety. Humans have no essential need to create a false self, seek an impression of meaning and purpose, nor engage in unnecessary competition or conflict to live a “good” life. These illusions of control within the metaphor of a battle lead to our many wars within ourselves and with each other, to much suffering.

The incessant victim-martyr-hero stories of our culture glorify the conflict, competition, struggle, and fight, and the individual superhero who survives the battle to fight another day while ignoring the background of destruction left in the wake of the war. We aggrandize the battle between good and evil—always feeling we are the good, or at least the justified. We gravitate to wars on poverty, drugs, crime, wokism, cancer, viruses, peoples, countries—the “evils” of the world without addressing the need for the creation of safety. The war between good and evil is an illusion, while the choice between threat and safety is our reality. Choose wisely. Wars fix nothing. Safety fixes everything.

So, when you hear a speech about struggling, fighting, and battling to achieve aspirations and goals, to thus find meaning and purpose, to ultimately become a successful and fulfilled human being, be skeptical.

When you are inspired to get up and conquer the world and when you are encouraged to fight, fight, fight!…just don't.

"War does not determine who is right, only who is left." — Bertrand Russell

Seek safety for yourself and others - and let the rest of the story write itself.

Stay safe and stay tuned,