"We learn to love by loving."

A short line from an essay in a book I am revisiting (started a while back and got sidetracked). It's an idea that resonates deeply with me. Many years ago I remember seeing a collection of short films and one of them contained this idea of a man who reinvested his time to care for his dying wife; despite planning on leaving the marriage before finding out she was sick. The film ended with this line, "by choosing to be a man in love, he became a man in love once again."

Now, I don't want to oversimplify this; there are all sorts of considerations when dealing with relationships like this. But the thing I want to come back to is this idea that love is learned through practice. Specifically, I want to highlight the spirit that the author of the above quote is coming from. Love, not just in a romantic sense but as a revolutionary act, is something that needs to be practiced. Self-love, self-less love, self-giving love—these aren't things that you can feel your way into. You can only learn them by doing them.

"We need to value the consequences of our actions more than the cleverness of our ideas." (Ruined by Design)

While this statement is written for designers, I think this is something that can—and should—be applied more broadly. Our economy runs on ideas. Business ideas that are tidied up just enough to find venture backing, seen to be a path profit for those doing the investing. Advertising ideas crafted to chase awards and notoriety. Marketing ideas that are praised on their ability to stand out amidst a rising tide of excessive content. The better the idea, the faster we move with it. Monteiro's point is a call to slow down and consider the potential consequences of these ideas before we put them into action.

Unfortunately, slow and deliberate thinking is rarely rewarded in our economy.

"Where we put our labour is a choice; a choice that we should be willing and able to make with our eyes wide open, fully aware of its repercussions. Who we work for and how we do that work are the only things that matter right now." (Ruined by Design)

I've often felt that where I worked mattered more to me than things like how much I make or even what it is I am doing. Of course those things are important, but the balance for me has always tilted slightly in favour of wanting to work somewhere that I feel aligned. That's not always an easy thing to find and I'm grateful for the times in my life when I have had it.

At the end of my life, I want my kids to know that I did what I could to not screw the planet up too bad and to make things better for other people. Even if that maybe cost them a few luxuries that their friends had.

Picked up the 'sh*tty pulp edition' of Ruined by Design recently. This was one of my favourite books I read a few years ago and so it's a good excuse for a reread. A lot has happened since I first read it—both in my personal life and in the world—so I'm interested to see what resonates now.

In the intro, Monteiro describes the goal of the book as wanting to "help you do the right thing in environments designed to make it easier to do the wrong thing." I think this is a perfect description of the tension of trying to work for a better world under capitalism. It's something that time and time again I have grown frustrated by how much the system, those environments he speaks of, are resistant to change. The question of whether or not capitalism is capable of producing a common good, one I have reflected on previously, seems to keep coming up as a no.

Capitalism relies on the myth that profit and the common good can coexist. It's what has fuelled Silicon Valley's techno-futuristic promises up to this point. Sure, you have to ignore all the missteps along the way. Selling people's data, massive efficiency layoffs, union-busting, those are all necessary evils on the road to a better tomorrow. But the truth is these aren't in the pursuit of good, these are done in the pursuit of profit. As Monteiro puts it,

“When the people at the top tell you they want to change the world, it’s generally because they’ve figured out how to profit even more from those below them.”

In Horsley's book, he notes a passage in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus rebukes the religious leaders for telling people to donate their money to the church rather than care for their family members with financial need.

“You skillfully sidestep God’s law in order to hold on to your own tradition… But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ In this way, you let them disregard their needy parents. And so you cancel the word of God in order to hand down your own tradition.” (Mark 7, NLT. Emphasis added)

It strikes me that I never heard this preached in all my time in the church. Instead, we were taught to give to the church before all other needs. I'm not going to flat out suggest that this passage was actively ignored, but it isn't lost on me that for all the sermons on tithing I sat through, this never once came up.