Becoming not Being #1

Our current way of living in the western educated industrialised reductive and destructive West (WEIRD West) is fundamentally predicated on static rather than dynamic states as the cornerstone of reality. We value BEING over BECOMING every time. Of course we pay lip service to such sayings as 'it's not the destination but the journey that counts' but in the way we formally organise our lives and coerce ourselves into thinking we OVER VALUE steady states - ie. Being over the reality of Becoming.

Why? Because the act of 'thinking about things'- which is realy about creating communicable pictures to others and to feed ourselves in preparation for communication to others- this activity encourages us in several false supositions. It encourages us to believe that the snapshot is the reality rather than the ongoing movie.

Now a snapshot may capture a great deal, but it omits the most important feature: life. It's a frozen chunk of life rather than the real thing. And like something long left in the bottom of the freezer, not much nutrition.

Buddhism is quite clear on stating that change is closer to reality rather than a steady state. Most people who are not WEIRD western influenced also accept on a deep level the reality of change and becoming. 

Once you shift from a static perspective to a dynamic one, once you latch on to the 'becoming' aspect of anything, the conditions becoming needs, you start to loosen the ties of being. 

In his famous book Being not Having, Erich Fromm, rightly shifted attention away from mere possessions. Now we have to shift away from possesing a single unalterable state and embrace the cosmos is in constant change and all is becoming...something else...