Abstraction

abstraction |abˈstrak sh ən|
noun
1 the quality of dealing with ideas rather than events : topics will vary in degrees of abstraction.
- something that exists only as an idea : the question can no longer be treated as an academic abstraction.

This term can be applied to almost any humanity controlled blight on this planet. The abstraction of hunger. The abstraction of genocide. The abstraction of environmental cataclysm. The abstraction of war. The abstraction of mental illness. While most of us agree that something, anything must be done to address these issues, we can appear to be quite apathetic in our less than zealous efforts to confront them. We donate money, attend a rally, and crawl back into our down filled beds and sleep like babies, our conscience clear. As long as we are able to live our lives and keep world issues as abstractions, things will never change. Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio students refer to how the experience of that project removed the abstraction of poverty from their psyche. Empirical experience immediately brings abstractions into the realm of reality, making them impossible to ignore.

One of my students just returned from Nepal where she fed a thousand people. Literally. She travelled there to further her training and expand her knowledge. When she witnessed the poverty and suffering around her, she took the money she had been saving for a laptop, purchased some food, and proceeded to personally serve this food to over a thousand people. Hunger is no longer an abstraction for her. It is a very real, tangible problem. By sharing her first hand experience, she has inspired many of us to reconsider our lifestyles. The money I spent yesterday to feed twenty of my black belts a single meal could have fed 500 people in Nepal for a day. We have so much and the volume of what we consume and waste is obscene. Something as easy as simplifying our lives can address many of the most critical man induced problems facing our world today.

There is so much we can and must do. The projects we initiate, despite often having a fundraising component, create the biggest impact by raising public awareness for the issue at hand. The more abstractions we remove, the more apathy and indifference we eradicate. A world without apathy and indifference is a world without mediocrity, and a world with great hope and potential.

“Live simply so others can simply live.”
- Mohandas Ghandi (1869 - 1948)