Here’s a Plutopian concept: individuals are interestingly quite different, not always in ways you can see. We should honor not just the tendency to build a visible life and environment that serves your own utopian vision – this also extends to the construction of an inner life and the cultivation of an inner voice.
The best tribes accommodate individual diversity among members, but the diversity isn’t always visible and it’s not always clear how to accommodate what you can’t see.
We should at least realize that there’s more difference in each individual than is visible and apparent. This piece in The Guardian discusses substantial variations in inner voices, in the way people experience internal monologue (dialogue).
Most of us have an inner voice: that constant presence that tells you to “Watch out” or “Buy shampoo” or “Urgh, this guy’s a creep”. For many of us, this voice sounds much like our own, or at least how we think we sound. But for some people, their inner voice isn’t a straightforward monologue that reproaches, counsels and reminds. Their inner voice is a squabbling Italian couple, say, or a calm-faced interviewer with their hands folded on their lap. Or it’s a taste, feeling, sensation or colour. In some cases, there isn’t a voice at all, just silence.
(There’s a whole other possible discussion about how there may be many voices inside your head, not all of them friendly.)
Image by Steve Loya. Some rights reserved.