Limits are good

The mere shattering of form is for human as well as for animal life a disaster, ritual and decorum being the structuring forms of all civilization.

Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

Limits are a dirty concept in our culture. We want to get what we can whenever we can. And the logic of economic activity in our time is of ceaseless growth and expansion.

Limits are a dirty concept because our culture is thoroughly penetrated by the worldview of market economics, to the exclusion of almost everything else. The goal of life is a feast of materialism in which we want ever more.

This worldview is dominant in what has been described as the “postmodern” era, when the inner dimension of meaning and values is fluid and unshaped. Ambiguity and uncertainty, with no central meaning to anything, are its defining features. It is said the world is made up of an infinite number of “discourses”, of constantly changing forms without absolute value.

At the risk of sounding reactionary, I think limits are good. We are stuck in simplistic views of them as restrictive and oppressive; it’s time we developed a more sophisticated understanding of form and limits.

All material form has structure and therefore limits. As the form changes, so does its structure and the limits inherent in it. A seed in the earth becomes a sapling and then a mature tree, which eventually dies and goes back into the earth to nurture more growth. At each stage in the process of change there are embodied limits. A eucalypt seed will not sprout an oak, a sapling can only grow a certain amount depending on conditions, a tree is a tree and not a rhinoceros or any other form, and like all form it eventually dies and renews with its death the ground from which it emerged. Even with genetic modification, form ambiguity and fluidity, there is still form and limit, though it may be difficult to name or comprehend. All material form has limit.

Limits need not be restrictive – in fact, they are continuously changing as all form evolves. In the human world, limits are necessary for social relations. As we allow certain behaviours, so we proscribe others for everybody’s benefit. Over time our limits change as our understanding of “the good” changes – when once there was slavery, now it is banned; when once we restricted the roles of women, now those restrictions are lifted. When we chafe or buck at certain social limits, feeling them to be oppressive, we are saying that the forms to which they belong no longer affirm life in a meaningful way. This then allows human society to grow and develop, changing its laws, relationships and sense of itself. New limits are set which, in time, will also be replaced as society evolves.

Limits help us to understand ourselves and our world and encourage responsibility for our actions. Children learn by bouncing off limits – when a child touches a hot iron, it knows not to do that again. Adults also learn by making mistakes, or meeting the limits of their capabilities or actions.  

To be cavalier with limits is dangerous, and to ignore them outright invites disaster. The ancient Greek goddess Nemesis would visit retribution on anyone who broke fundamental laws or had too much of anything. In our own time, the result of greed and disregard of limits is the destruction of life on Earth, which ultimately imperils human survival. We need to urgently rediscover the importance of limits.

Our postmodern uncertainty and sense of ambiguity around limits are symptoms of a major period of transition in which the old ways of understanding are no longer helpful. We have reached an age of complexity in human material power and knowledge that requires new vision. As in times past, transition periods are chaotic, and much of the worst of human nature rises to the surface. There is a need for a realignment of values and meaning to meet the shape of current times. This will ultimately mean the creation of new forms and the setting of new limits.

Jungian author David Tacey says Western society is based on knowledge, but Indigenous cultures are grounded in wisdom. I think he has touched on something very important. Wisdom implies humility, which is recognition of oneself in relationship with others, a healthy tempering of the ego. A life-affirming society with ecological balance and respect cannot be achieved by form-breaking materialism. It will need to have wisdom at its core.