I think life can be metaphorically compared to economics: everything has its price.

The price for freedom is personal risk. The price for safety is freedom.

 Understand that the price you pay for your reality is a choice, a way in which you create your reality yourself. Psychosocial reality comes with a price. An endeavor costs time, energy, and probably even real money. Communicating an idea costs the risk that it will be negated, disputed, shot down, and maybe you will be a social cast-aside because of your ideas.

I was, for some time, involved with a grassroots activist group. We had a lawyer on our side and one of his favorite phrases was: “Civil disobedience means nothing if you are not aware of how you are being disobedient, why you are being disobedient, and the risks of your disobedience.“

The moral of this one powerful sentence is an important feature of the 21st Century Enlightenment: personal responsibility.

 For us to be effective, to change our psychosocial reality, to change our world, to benefit individually and as societies, and to make good choices, it is imperative that we are aware of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and have some sense of the risks and costs involved in what we do.

After awareness, we must realize that, if we move forward, we do so at our own risk. If we don’t tackle the challenges that are our own making, if we don’t gather enough information, if we don’t consider the context of what we do and we fail, there is no one to blame but ourselves. One of my first blogs for this project, What do People Want?, touched on this concept in political terms:

A political shift (and one is sorely needed) can only come when the citizens of a democracy realize that they voted for their politicians, that they knew their representatives were corrupt, lying, self-serving, power-hungry people and yet, when election time rolled around again, they vote for them again!

 In individual terms—having to do with you and your decisions and interactions—there is no difference.

You, and only you, control your determination and your choices. Even though other people, social conditions, and various other outside influences can and will probably affect your outcomes, to assume responsibility is much more productive and conducive to growth and development that being irresponsible—which will get you nowhere.

Easy ways to express personal responsibility include, for example: If you make a mistake at work—admit it, own it, and fix it yourself. Or, if you know how to do something properly yet you take the easy route (or cheap route or short route or whatever) and your endeavor doesn’t go well, then there’s no one to blame but yourself!

This is a difficult way to live your life. It takes suspending your ego and taking heat from others—your boss, your spouse, police, etc. But be careful, if word gets around that you’ll assume responsibility for anything, you’ll quickly become a scapegoat.

If living this way is difficult and I am advocating it, then I must think there’s some benefit, right? A combination between awareness and personal responsibility in politics would prevent history from repeating itself. The idea that this silver-tongued politician is better than the last silver-tongued politician is a result of placing blame for problems on the first politician—not ourselves.

If you took responsibility for your mistakes at work, you could learn from them, not make them again, instill a sense of trust in your superiors and the organization as a whole, which might lead to more responsibility, more money, and more fulfillment in your job.

Taking the easy route is always tempting. Why? It’s easy. But if something needs to get done and you know how to do it right, just do it right. The outcome will be closer to what you actually wanted in the first place. This is precisely why knowledge is power, why it’s better to know things even if you think ignorance might really be bliss.

Remember why you get up in the morning—to do stuff. And the only reason you can get away with doing stuff is because you’re a free-acting, autonomous individual. Make good choices, you probably already know how.

“There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.” -Kierkegaard.

Maybe you’ve had those conversations with your friends, a few beers in your belly or just feeling vulnerable and open for whatever reason, and you asked them: “What if life is just a dream?”

It’s laughable isn’t it? It’s so cliché! Life isn’t a dream, silly! We can reach out and touch it. It’s our wooden or brick houses, our metal cars, the chairs we sit on, the food we eat, the air we breathe. It’s the other people we know, the dust and dirt, waking up in the morning--every morning. It’s work and family, studies, bills, obligations, TV shows, and our parents and friends. It’s repetition and consistency. We have children, they grow up, we get old, we die and then they do the same. It’s verifiable, solid, and everyone we know sees and hears and feels and tastes and smells it too.

I’m not writing this to try to say that this isn’t the case. Sorry to disappoint. But I do want to make a distinction. I want to propose that there are two realities. They often seem like one, and understandably so.

One reality would exist if there were no humans. The Earth would still be a spinning rock in space, orbiting a bright yellow star, ever an unquestioning slave to the forces of gravity and entropy. The trees would still grow, and when they grew too big and the wind blew, they would buckle under their own weight, crashing to the ground with groans and crackles while their branches snapped and tore at neighboring trees until nearby forest creatures startled at the sound of a dull thud as they met the ground. The sky would still suck water out of the oceans and dump it on the land where rivers would flow through sprawling grassland and past content, lazy herds of four-legged herbivores, ever watchful of the predators on the fringes of their view.

The other reality is our own deliberate creation and positive choice. The cars and houses I mentioned before, the chairs, the bills, the children, the music we listen to, religions, ideas, political systems, successes and failures, parties and festivals, friendships and families, books, schools, artistic masterpieces, love and hate are all manifestations of this reality. It is as small as a tiny child picking up a toy and examining it and as large as two great nations going to war.

These two realities merge and interact and play off of each other. The buildings we build and the cars we drive and even us--the human race--occupy physical space and become a part of the landscape. Even the chemical composition of the atmosphere is, in part, a result of this reality. But where did all of this come from?

It all came from the synthesis of thought, choice, and action. The child picking up a toy, driven by curiosity, altered her reality, physically moving something as well as making a new entry in her brain, an entry that may influence her future reality. The two warring nations, driven by complex social and psychological phenomena, decide their future would benefit from the destruction of the other. Political forces, another manifestation of psychosocial reality; emotion, technology, ideologies like nationalism and ethnocentrism--all manifestations of psychosocial reality--merge to create a situation where people’s lives end or are drastically altered and the entire history of the world is changed.

This reality is within our control and it is no less real or significant than the physical, empirical reality that would exist without a human presence.

Of course, it still isn’t a dream. We don’t get to bend space or time or force others to adopt our vision. We are not entirely free. But we are still so incredibly free. All that the human race has ever achieved, as individuals and as a whole, all of the triumphs and tragedies, the beauty and horror was people actively and willfully creating this reality--psychosocial reality.

Everyone realizes this on some level. It has been acknowledged in some form by the world’s great thinkers and artists and is a theme through all of human philosophy and religion. (For a great illustration of this, click the “theme” link and check out the dropdown menu “See the Variety of Names.”)

However, studies and understanding of psychosocial reality still go relatively unacknowledged as potentially useful and relevant, except in some abstract, maybe spiritual sense. The purpose of THEE is to make an understanding of psychosocial reality useful and valuable to us.

What does all of this freedom to choose mean to us, to you? What could a greater understanding of psychosocial reality mean in the “real” world? Let’s explore it together. I don’t want to start with conclusions but it can mean a new life or a better employment situation or a more enlightened society.