WARNING!: Excessive use of the word awesome

I think awesome is a slightly silly word, which I why I’m using it so much. Otherwise this could be quite a morose article. In referring to awesomeness I mean real genuine authentic awesomeness (which I’ll discuss first)—not fake American TV muscles, guns and explosions, teenager awesomeness—though I’ll assume you’re not really sure of the difference.

This article is an attempt to innovate a new way of finding meaning and purpose in our lives. I believe we can do this by using our subtleties of perception and insight to “auto-generate” meaning. In other words: create new meaning and purpose out of thin air. Auto-generating meaning is a topic I also discuss in Hyperconscientious Self-reflectivity, in Issue 3 of the One Future journal.

In this article I’m arguing that—if one understands the extraordinary context of one’s life, and if one understands that we have the ability to adapt and change the way we live, and one has the freedom to do so—any individual has an option to identify an innate obligation to aspire to an extraordinary life.

What is awesomeness?

So, what is awesomeness? In the end—since it’s already such an amorphous concept in this discussion—that can only really be a view held between you and yourself. In the meantime, here are a couple of ideas...

One simple way of thinking about it could be this: You aspiring to live to your greatest potential. Greatest potential would mean: greatest capacity, greatest maturity, greatest response-ability.

I love the term response-ability:

Response-ability is literally your ability to respond—to respond to the events and happenings in your life. So response-ability is seen as a capacity, not a burden.

I think it follows that to develop response-ability requires the development of a great, big heart, an authentic, independent, moral character, and a strong well educated mind. It’s something that one has to aspire to, to take. It’s optionally the great adventure of being an adult. I know from personal experience there is a great thrill here, in deciding to become response-able and asking the question: What are the limits to how response-able I can become?

Another approach might be by being most ecological. By ecological I mean most related. That can be culturally and humanly as much as environmentally—the quality and depth of relatedness being what makes "most ecological" awesome.

Either way, I believe being awesome means one is constantly growing and developing throughout one’s lifetime. It means creatively developing your own personal version of probably the greatest and most undiscussed art forms of all time—the living of a Human life.

Also, I really believe, no matter what your circumstances, in every moment of one’s life, there is an optimal response that can be chosen. The more we find it or the closer we are to it, the more awesome we probably are.

So, maybe awesomeness is you aspiring to your greatest and most authentically creative and ecological response-ability?

Response-ability is a capacity, not a burden.It’s something that one does have to aspire to - to take. It’s optionally the great adventure of being an adult.

Reasons to live with gratitude

I think a primary reason one could find one wished to aspire to genuine awesomeness is out of a deep sense of gratitude for being alive, and having the tremendous luck of being born human. Being human means we get to know how lucky we are whilst also having the option to deliberately make good on that luck. This kind of gratitude is such a simple and personal thing I think you either have it or you don’t. If you’re not sure where you stand, here are some reasons why you might feel thankful and lucky to be alive...

The Universe is Awesome

The ~13.67 billion year developmental trajectory of the cosmos and all of the spectacular results we know of is, quite simply, awesome. All of time and space is pretty impressive. Galaxies are pretty neat. It doesn’t wobble (much) and atoms don’t spontaneously dissolve at room temperatures. That’s cool, too.

It’s also beautiful. By ‘awesome’, in this instance, as well as it’s stunning scientific reality, I also mean it’s stupendously amazing awe-inspiring breathtaking splendiferousness—however that may appear or be to you. Also, the understanding that one has the capacity to understand and consider that one understands that it is awesome, is also a part of the total awesomeness. In other words, it’s extra awesome ‘cause we know that we know it’s awesome.

All history is your history

We tend not to think of history as having much to do with us but it has absolutely everything to do with every one of us. We also tend to think ‘history’ refers to human history—but our story really starts at least where we know the universe to have started: at the Big Bang.

Every single speck of you was present in one form or another in that original moment - probably in the form of pure energy. That’s where you come from. Take your own body for instance: All the matter in your hands was present in the form of pure energy in that explosive elemental beginning. The subatomic particles that make up all the atoms in your hand condensed out of a plasma a few hundred thousand years after the big bang. All of the complex molecules in your hand are made from atoms—many of which were probably given birth to in ancient supernovae as a long dead stars ended their lives during the earlier stellar ecology of our cosmos.

A human adult body contains between 5 and 100 trillion living animal cells, all descendant cells from the very first livings organisms ~4 billion years ago. Because you are made of so many of them, there’s only an infinitesimally (!) small probability that none of the atoms in your body right now weren’t at one point part of an ammonite, a dinosaur, or the earliest humans. That’s a true fact. We are descendants of the first animals that appeared around 640 million years ago, and the first mammals that turned up around 200 million years ago.

The modern version of our species has been around for about 300,000 years. We tend not to think of distant human history as having much to do with us either, but it has absolutely everything to do with every one of us. What we normally associate as other people’s stories and histories is almost always actually our very own personal story. From survival bands to tribes to empires, through revolutions and renaissances, thousands of generations of people struggling to live well as best they could in their current circumstances, over thousands of years—is all one great ancient story that resulted in you. You are the living breathing walking talking result of all of that history—and you are aware of it. You are its’ success, and you have the option to live in the context of that knowledge.

Maybe a more direct way of relating to this perspective is contemplating the lives of our direct ancestors. In my instance, my family has a listing in the Doomsday book (1086 CE), stating ancestors of mine were farming on land near Leeds. How did they get there? Who were their ancestors? Where did they come from? What were their lives like? Almost certainly their lives were more bleak, difficult, short and tougher than ours. Thinking on that makes me want to make the most of all our incredibly good fortune to be born at this time in history. I’m sure they would be upset if I just languished and ignored possibilities they never had.^{[Note 1]}

The ability to consciously evolve

The fact that we can evolve our personal and collective culture means there is an inherent option for general greatness always available. Unlike most other animals, life for Humans need not be a random series of interactions driven only or mainly by our genetics. Our lives can be a series of conscious and moral choices that make us and everyone else better and better and better and better.

Simply said, I think, once contemplated, the option to deliberately, conscientiously, develop and grow, means by default we have the option to become great. That result is available to us. An intrinsic/implicit/derived autonomously generated obligation to be awesome can be found in realising there is nothing stopping one from aspiring to one’s greatest potentials.

Of all my arguments here, I find this the most compelling and exciting. Whatever your reason, we have an innate ability to innovate ourselves, our being, our entire way relating to life. We are incredibly lucky to have it.

I hope you have many other things in your life to be grateful for—that you are safe, well fed, loved, part of a family, a community, and free with a life full of opportunities.

A personal sense of obligation to live greatly...is the expression of a deep sense of gratitude for being this aware, this awake. Gratitude for being born this lucky: Human in this extraordinary cosmos.It means creatively developing your own personal version of probably the greatest and most undiscussed forms of all time—the living of a Human life

The implicit obligation to be awesome

The basis of an intrinsic or implicit obligation to be awesome is based upon our decision to be so obligated. Again, as described previously, that decision can be bolstered by a deep appreciation of our extraordinary circumstances, as previously described.

Living a life out of a personal sense of obligation to live greatly, is living a life of gratitude—a life lived in deference for the miracle, and the awareness of the miracle, that one is alive. It’s a desire to make good on one’s extraordinary luck. It is the expression of a deep sense of gratitude for being this aware, this awake and this lucky: Human in this extraordinary cosmos. The extraordinary fact of our existence just as it is doesn’t demand a response, but if you do truly think it’s magnificent or profound—it seems to me an upstanding response is more desirable than no response—the more upstanding the better. If the most upstanding response is the best response—what would the bestest, most upstanding response be? Well, it would be awesome, of course.

This outlook really is between you and everything else – a very personal decision. The obligation to be awesome is implicitly suggested, but always, it can only be chosen—chosen by a magnanimous heart and a mature mind. The sense of obligation is implicit only to those who decide it is apparent. There otherwise is no obligation. Until that moment it quite simply doesn’t exist. It’s a personal understanding and a personal decision to respond. There are no rules here—no dogma for the masses – this is an optional, invisible obligation to the self initiated.

Once this position is taken, it can become the locus of your entire existence. A simple outlook, but foundational, immutable, passionate, forever incomplete and profoundly exciting. By default aspiring to anything less than realising your potentials—which in short order usually translates to a passion for realising our potentials— simply becomes unsatisfying.

The implicit obligation to be awesome is a viewpoint generated by a mature, independent, contemplative individual. I find this an extraordinary thing—it can’t come from anywhere else. It is only available to such individuals, making it an elusive and otherwise invisible mode. An obligation and a way of living that is only there if one sees that it is, decides that it is—not based upon any books or dogma, but one’s own understanding and personal relationship with the vast and extraordinary context in which we live.

THE ILLOGICAL ESSENCE OF TREES

Extending on that: I think this individual and deeply subjective basis for a mature appraisal of life is critical in redefining meaningful contexts for living in the third millennium.

The 18th century philosopher, David Hume, famously pointed out that it is illogical to get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. That is, he said we can’t be provided any moral view or rational path of action from the mere presence of say, a tree. Just because the tree is there doesn’t provide us with a logical reason for a moral response to the tree. He was correct, and ever since philosophers have obsessed over resolving the is/ought logic gap.

The thing is, who said logic was the arbiter of what is right and wrong in the first place? In this instance, the tree grows in a cosmos with people in it, too. We are a unique and new emergence in our cosmos, and we add something to it—we add to it our passionate, heart-felt awe and love of beauty. We add to the tree. We can appreciate it and say it’s beautiful, extraordinary, profound and meaningful—meaningful because we decided so. Trees and logic can’t do that.

Humans (and all other self reflective organisms) have something essential to add to this cosmos: our capacity for a profoundly intelligent subjective appraisal. It’s a critical addition. In the same way atoms add matter, we add perception consciousness and morality. I believe we can champion this capacity and the exciting and challenging implications of embracing it.

Awesome.