EMBERS
A Philosophy of Connected Living
Picture a fire burning. It’s warm, and draws those around closer. The flames flicker and spit, and a thin plume of smoke drifts up into the stars of the night sky. See the logs, see the flames, feel the heat, see the smoke. This fire took time and effort to build. Foraging, chopping, arranging, igniting. When the wood is wet, the fire smokes unpleasantly, and the chill creeps in. When the logs burn low, the flames splutter demanding more fuel. Some things we throw on the fire and they flame out instantly, providing no warmth at all. Some logs burn right through the night.
This fire is the central metaphor for my philosophy of living. It’s about connection. All the things in your life are connections. We worry too much about the heat and the smoke (meaning and happiness and money and purpose) when our primary concern should be feeding the fire.
It’s all about connection
Recently, University of Toronto psychologist John Vervaeke coined a phrase that has resounded in the public sphere: the meaning crisis. His view is that increasingly modern people are struggling to make sense of their lives. We are lonely, religiosity is in decline, trust in major institutions is eroding. Today, it seems we are drifting towards being materially wealthy but spiritually bereft. The words we use to diagnose the problems of modernity are often the antithesis of connection: lost, isolated, lonely, dislocated, unmoored, anxious, and indeed, disconnected.
Like everyone else, I’ve struggled with these questions of purpose and meaning. It’s only lately that I’ve made real progress. I credit Iain McGilchrist - who has written two wonderful books (The Matter with Things, The Master and His Emissary) - and many others. The way the West attends to the world can be very narrow. Everything must be explicit, detailed, and literal. We have lost space for wonder, and humour, and soul. By living for connection, in a way that incorporates left and right brain attention, we open our minds to more.
Previously, I’ve written about the great pursuits in life: wellness, beauty, goodness, truth. I still think they hold true, but they must be seen as ideals, not practical matters. I’ve also written about the need to follow your curiosity and engage in creative projects in phases of Motivation, Exploration, Generation, and Amelioration - but this MEGA framework faces the problem of being practically useful but without a strong philosophical foundation. The EMBERS philosophy connects the practical and philosophical, I call it a philosophy of connected living.
Your connections are the burning logs in the fire. Each of our fires burns differently, optimised for different proclivities and talents and preferences. But I believe we can broadly categorise the type of connections we face. When we grab at meaning and happiness, we’re grabbing at smoke. It’s in the burning in the furnace of the fire that we create the heat that we crave: Meaning, purpose, happiness, wealth even - these are the culmination of connections.
The EMBERS
Picture the six logs of an idealised fire. See the symmetry - how each of the logs complement the other to create roaring flames and heat and smoke.
I have six categories of firewood, six realms of connection. You may have more. There are infinite ways to think about the connections you can make in the world, and how you might describe them. In my life, I like the acronym EMBERS. There are infinite ways to name the connections in your life, EMBERS is my frame:
Expression
The ideal here is beauty or art or self-expression. Music, stories, painting, sports, dance, poems. Expression is an endless avenue for creation. Brian Eno describes art as doing the things we don’t have to. Expression is the pursuit of art and better culture. This the realm of Bach and The Beatles, of Whitman and Roald Dahl, of Van Gogh and Michelangelo, and a constellation of creators that burn bright into the future. Expression is inspired by curiosity and crystallised through creativity. These are the artefacts that bring joy and beauty into life.
Mind
The ideal here is Truth. This is the realm of ideas and theories. We make the world explicit, and then we remake the world as we progress our understanding in science and technology. When expression meets mind, opinions make way for facts as best as we can know them. We are always fallible, never certain, yet we continue to revise and update our understanding of the natural world and ourselves. We have great traditions in maths and physics and biology and all of the natural and social sciences. We have achieved tremendous things: medicines that save young children, buildings that shelter thousands and creep towards the sky, computers that seem to have minds of their own. Their is no limit to what we can do or know - only what we can imagine and the laws of physics.
Body
The ideal in this realm is wellness. To connect with your body, with the natural world, with good food, with sleep and rest, with sun, with activity, with the physical exertion that our physical evolution craves. We are, after all, physical creatures with legs that want to run, lungs that want to breathe, and eyes that want to see the light of the sun. All logs burn more fiercely when we are in good physical health.
Earning (Vocation)
The ideal here is flow. Or freedom if you prefer. You’re after work that makes you come alive. Opt for vocation, not work. For you, this might be in the realm of expression or mind, as artist or scientist. Or both. You will likely find your vocation in some unique mix of embers. Wear your work identities like cloaks if that helps you, so you can slip in and out of them as they serve you. Those with a deep sense of vocation may prefer to use their work identity instead as armour, or as anchor in a sea of infinite choice. Earning is a clumsy and crass category, forced in, the same way it is in life. But it is a necessity, to form a career, and to try add value and service to the world. We must all find the means to sustain ourselves and our families, to free our time, and to thrive.
Relationships
The ideal here is love. You can use words like goodness, morality, service, social connection. This is the area where we can find easy connections. We are evolved to be with others. This is where family, community and home resides. We can expand this circle to our pets, our local ecosystems, and living things: nature, and the green and blue world around us.
Spiritual Systems
The ideal here is the sacred. Some call that God. Some call it love also. We all live with different sets of values and beliefs. We choose to believe certain things and not others. Most of us can do with more wonder in our lives, with more appetite for the unknown. Together, the other embers will fill you with a spiritual connection with the world - this last category makes space for that.
Heat and Smoke
Most people want instant meaning. They want certainty. But these people are grabbing at smoke instead of building the fire. Meaning is only ever found through connection. Making something beautiful, a great conversation, preparing a meal for your family, deepening your understanding of the world, or exploring your innate curiosity.
I like James Carse’s conception of finite and infinite games. Infinite games offer the opportunity to create meaning. The slow-burning, long-lasting connections that you can tend until your last breath. Finite games make smoke. Any fire can burn clean or emit smoke. Smoke is made in the pursuit of the wrong kind of connections. We pursue many things for bad reasons: greed, lust, status-seeking. These connections will not sustain you. They will flash in the flames and thereafter the whole fire burns weaker. You’ve spent time and attention and energy on the wrong materials. Making money, craving status, pursuing vices, this is all smoke unless you are also creating connections for yourself in doing so. Money is only useful if you are using it to find creative freedom, or creating value for someone else.
Maybe one man’s heat is another’s smoke, but I recall a quote from Jim Carrey that stuck with me:
I think everybody should get rich and famous and everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that that's not the answer
Heat is happiness, meaning, purpose; arising from sustained connections and connected living - in other words, these things are the by-product of a strong flame.
The Connected Life
The connected life is the good life. A slower, richer existence. The connections you make are wider than just work or family or looking after yourself. It is all of this and much more. You may fill your days with heat from various embers: with work that absorbs you, with people that delight you, in environments that nurture you, facing all of this mystery and magic with courage and humility. You’re not grabbing at the world, rather you’re forming part of it. You can have a grand view of things, of things beyond yourself, a place in the community, a vocation, an engagement with that which makes you curious and creative. The connected life requires an open and engaged disposition, an active mode, an understanding that all connections result in the embers that make a life warm and filled with flame.
What embers will you cultivate?
I’ll be moving some of this more philosophical writing to another Substack: EMBERS - if you’d like to read more like this, add your email to the below:
So well written