Counter Counterintuitive

I’m working on a book project (I’m not the author, I’m a book packager and the developer of the book) on the topic of sustainable living. The premise of the book is that this is not only responsible but also contributes to living a more fulfilled and happy life. This is true because it focuses on life-affirming activities and not so much on people just “getting theirs.” That is, it gets away from consumption, debt, and living for right now without regard to how our activities will affect ourselves, others, and the environment.

The publisher is very taken by this idea (as am I), and we have come to an agreement about the book. I am happy to say it will be published in about a year and a half from now. In her description of the book for the editorial board, the publisher wrote that the approach the author takes is “counterintuitive” to what we usually think of as living the good life—fancy home, fancy car, expensive clothes, and all the other material stuff we can get our hands on. In other words, the book’s approach is counter to this and explains how this is not the road to living well at all.

Now I’m going to get to my point. I want to suggest that this book is not counterintuitive at all. In fact, the whole idea is to awaken the intuition in the first place that most of us just ignore. If the ideas in this book did not make sense, then they would not appeal to our intuition at all. Most of us kind of suppress our intuition, that voice within that is telling us what’s sound and what isn’t. Our culture is so “of the moment” and focused on individual satisfaction that we simply ignore the implications of our behavior—while knowing down deep that at some point there will be a price to be paid for short-term thinking and behavior. At some point the negative consequences of this will catch up with us.

So it’s not counter-intuitive to do the right thing by ourselves and our world. It’s completely consistent with being aware of our feelings and our understandings of what's right and then having the courage and fortitude not to get sucked in to ignoring those feelings. Listen to your intuition, reason out what's it's telling you, and you'll almost always feel good about yourself and what you chose to do.

—John Woods, August 27, 2007