Alternativefruit.com
shop to support
|
|
|
Wherever we are, whoever we may be, and whatever our agenda, we all must work. Some of us work for a living, to survive, and put food on the table. Some of us work to increase our wealth, even if we are financially safe. Others work to maximise their life experience by keeping everything how they like it and building on what they have. Labour is not a simple thing that has one or two variations. It‘s a wide-ranging aspect of all our lives and manifests in many forms. One way to look at the whole is to split it into three distinct categories. These can be isolated as to their range of influence.
Physical Labour – This is the one we usually think of when we talk about work. It’s often hard and tiring, it requires a lot of energy and a good rest. It could be manual work, like in a manufacturing line, or landscape work like building or gardening. These are generally well-paid jobs that reward people for their provision of energy and time. Other kinds of manual work are not well-paid but are considered natural parts of life, childcare, housekeeping, cooking for the family, caring for elderly relatives, and much more do not offer a salary or income but are necessary parts of our lives. Cognitive Labour – This is also often very hard work. It’s not just the muscles that require energy; the brain does too. When we think for a living, we’re expected to use our learning and intelligence to solve problems of various complexity. Sometimes it’s simply inputting numbers and letting the program do the rest, other times it’s inventing schedules, timetables, and ordering patterns that can make the most out of what’s available. These jobs are often well-paid too, when we’re in the employ of another. It doesn’t get paid well when it’s done for the self, entrepreneurs and family heads alike must use their brain all the time to put things in place. Emotional Labour – This is the one that’s often hidden. In the way that some of us have strong bodies with big muscles and what they like to call big bones, and some of us have highly intelligent minds, some of us have massive emotional lives. While emotional labour might be a matter of five minutes in the shower to sort yourself out for some, it can be the exact opposite for others. Depending on our experience, our upbringing, our tolerance tools, and our thoughts about ourselves and the world, taking control of our mood and motivation is often like wrestling a buttered pig. Stress levels are not always rewarded in work, some notoriously low-paid work like kitchens are stressful and low-paid. Public-facing people and civil workers may be given a good salary once they qualify for intellectual labour too. Stress and emotional upset at home cannot be rewarded, only prevented and protected as often as possible. Physical, cognitive, and emotional labour are connected in the way they directly affect each other and feedback into themselves through this connection. When one is tired, or unwell, the other two fall back in a kind of psychological and physiological harmony. The thoughts and feelings we have directly influence our internal chemistry which then influences our mechanical processes. When our physical or cognitive self is compromised because of low mood, this can cause the mood to deteriorate further. Catching the problem before it takes root is near impossible as we tend to tip suddenly after long periods of rewarding stoicism. It can reduce our ability in all forms of labour if any one kind is unable to be put into action. Even though our emotions and feelings are invisible and they may not be like those of our peers, they must be cared for like our bodies and brains. If our emotions are healthy, it’s not necessarily the case for someone else. We can forget this more often, above other kinds of labour. With any work done, any job, there is a balance of physical, cognitive, and emotional labour that is usually specific to the role. Hopefully, we find something that fits our personality, yet often we find ourselves working a job we don’t fit in with just to get the income. Finding the stairs to the right level when our mood is low requires significant cognitive effort. It sometimes needs not just the individual effort but the group effort of therapists, family, and/or friends. Sometimes the person with an emotional problem can’t even see the logical route out, can’t see the issue with how their emotions are reacting in their body, and are content to repeat the hurtful narrative that frames the hormonal and physical response. Getting through this barrier and then retraining the mind to avoid that downward spiral is like sculpting a David from marble all over again. In the most serious cases, it’s just not immediately possible. It can sometimes feel like the marble is cracked all the way through. Maintaining emotional wellbeing at work is vital as the emotional labour of workplace activity cannot be understated. During stressful periods of activity or prolonged repetitive labour, emotional work is taking place. The mind may want to fight the monotony in any number of ways, damaging our ability to concentrate. When we’re tired, our emotions may begin to dwell on this and draw down on our motivation. This affects work too. The interpersonal dynamics of the workplace require a constant emotional formula. We’re not just paid to do our job, we’re paid to get on with people and be helpful. This can be extremely taxing emotionally when others make this difficult for us. As in for some, being fake nice and passive is easy, where for others, being genuine and responsible is the only sustainable option. The exploitation of labour therefore doesn’t always focus on the physical. We’re used to hearing about underpaid labourers whose brute strength is undervalued and whose experience and understanding is put down to basic common sense. When this happens, it’s a power dynamic fuelled by economic disparity. Where one person wants to find employment, the other wants to pay as little as possible. If someone is desperate enough, if the disparity is large enough, there will be people willing to take on that kind of work. Emotional exploitation is rarely focussed on. This is likely because firstly we’re taught to keep our personal lives at home, and secondly, we each experience our emotional lives differently and to varying amplitudes. When extra stress and worries are placed on people at work, when they’re still turning up even though something terrible is happening at home, or when certain processes are designed poorly, we’re often not rewarded at all. Salaries and payments are based on production and application. The cognitive and physical labour that can be quantified can be valued intrinsically. What about the emotional toll of any kind of work, both from the job and what they’re expected to handle to do it? This invisible, dark energy like influence, has a direct relationship with the very things people are willing to pay for. Recognising emotional labour as real labour doesn’t just help individuals; it reshapes how we understand work, value, and wellbeing. When we honour the emotional dimension of human life, we create environments where all forms of labour; physical, cognitive, and emotional can flourish together. How would you set about providing for emotional labour, not just in reward but in recognition and in the design of future jobs? We all love a holiday, and getting away from it all sometimes is just the thing we need. For a limited time enter SPRING35 for a nice extra discount on flights. (ad) 
A scar is not just a mark of pain. It is a symbol of survival, a reminder that we endured and adapted. A scar is a bookmark in our story that allows us to see the writing again, maybe from a new perspective. As we create our stories and write our own histories, the scars we have as reminders can become much more than a bad memory. Creativity is the act of rewriting the scar’s meaning, turning pain into a symbol of resilience. When we deliberately author our own story with the experience as periphery, we can define the moment in our own words and in a light that manifests a positive outcome.
Regardless of how it felt then, with time we can redefine the symbols and reanalyse the events to see how our presence and misfortune was something more than just a nasty incident. Often our scars and tribulations are not unique to us, they’re shared among likeminded and self-similar communities across cultures, generations, and social groups. As we navigate our own story, the framework that others have adapted to for empowerment through trauma and discontent can become prompts for our own sense of progression. These scars remind us that suffering is inevitable, but they also remind us that survival is possible. No matter how good, prepared, or well-loved we are, bad things will happen. Whether on an individual basis or on a community basis, injustice and natural progression alike can cause us to suffer, to lose joy, and to feel unwanted things. During the initial moment of pain, we respond as natural beings. Our feelings, our actions, our decisions are immediate and fleeting. From this moment of vulnerability and weakness, we have a choice to continue and grow or to fall on our knees and give up. This experience shapes who we are as we move forward, it becomes a page in our story, and it carries reasons and causes for all manner of things that come next. How are we going to let these things change the way we progress? Will we cry victim and demand better from them or will we cry evolution and expect better from ourselves? Maybe it’s a bit of both. Like the Japanese art of kintsugi, mending broken pottery with gold, when the world smashes the pots of our spirit, we can use the magic of story and of personal agency to carry them into a positive light. As these stories and progressions grow, as communities learn coping mechanisms and the tools for acceptance in strength, these symbols and stories become enshrined in the community consciousness. Across cultures, artists have long shown us that creativity is not just expression, it is alchemy, turning wounds into wisdom. 
For non-creative types, the mythic inventor or fountain of wisdom might sound romantic and alluring but it’s hardly ever the case. Real creativity isn’t about mysterious forces and divine insight handed down from aliens, angels, or archons. No, it’s the normal workings of the brain when a problem is provided and its solution is something you care about. We imagine the lone genius struck by lightning-bolt inspiration, but in truth most breakthroughs look more like patient gardening than divine revelation. When we see a clever solution to a problem, we can often be amazed at how simple or ingenious, or how magical the process may seem. It all depends on the level of understanding required to appreciate how it works. Yet even the simplest solutions seem to evade us until they’re pointed out. It requires an element of imagination to see things in a new light, and that’s something we all have. So, if we learn what happens in the creative mind, we are in a better place to emulate that and think of solutions for ourselves.
The creative process is the central mechanism in the act of creativity, the person and the product are on either side of this fundamental dynamic. If you care about finding a solution or achieving something that you desire, then you’ll be in good stead to be the creative person. Next, you have you apply what you know to the problem. By learning about what you’re trying to achieve, you populate your mind with relevant and associated wisdom. It's rare to find a solution straight away, often all kinds of things influence you in the beginning and it’s like finding a path through a new forest. As you learn the trees, the lighting, the sounds, things start to become clearer. Often the time comes when you have to take a break. We can’t dedicate ourselves to solving little problems all the time, often we’re left wondering what time it is and realise we’ve a thousand jobs to take care of. When our conscious awareness is no longer focused on the issue at hand, the information we learned becomes processed and gradually taken up into long-term memory. It’s at this stage where our subconscious mind takes over and begins assimilating this wisdom into the context of our problem. Because we can’t see this process directly, if often seems mystical or magical. In fact, it’s normal behaviour. What happens in the mind when we learn information and use it to solve a new problem? We use the information gathered, often in a completely unrelated context, and reframe it using our own perspective. This often provides brand-new insights and offers patterns and statistical behaviours that were so-far unnoticed. By re-arranging what we know about the natural world and the invented world simultaneously, we can use invention and nature together to form new and valuable products or ideas. We learn new wisdom about the world when we look again at data with a new set of eyes and a different angle of understanding. As our control agenda, or the initial problem, fades into passive attention when we go about our normal lives, the interest we discovered in the associated data remains. This encourages us to still research and learn on the concepts even when we may not care so much about our initial desire or idea. As we increase our body of knowledge on the topics, we build an ever-clearer picture of what we are learning about. Eventually, something might click in the mind where all the data begins to point to something we can use, something of value to us. Every generation has had its own problems to solve, and the data collected by the previous generation to work with. As we can only assess creativity by product when it comes to historical activities, like inventing the wheel, the brick wall, the bow and arrow, we can delve a lot more deeply into the creative processes of post-industrial thinkers. Self-reporting has been an integral part of scientific thought, as the process must be repeatable and transparent. However, when self-reporting, inventors and creative people might not be aware of their subconscious processes or little influences and so ascribe everything to strange power, cleverness, or some other non-scientific explanation. Creativity isn’t a lightning strike from the heavens, it’s the slow, attentive weaving of what we know, what we notice, and what we care about. With the right surroundings, the right companions, and the willingness to keep looking again, each of us can create something of value. That value need not be measured in millions; sometimes the most transformative act is simply caring enough to make the world a little better. Explore a universe of professional creativity with Magix Creative Software. Make music, videos, animations, rescue video tapes, and much more. (Ad) 
Thinking about thinking has always served us well. Like a pool reflecting our rippled selves, a good philosophical dialogue clarifies what we see. When we grow up, our ideas and imagination mix with everything we experience, are taught, and hear in stories. Philosophy examines this, our intellect, our culture, our reasons for remembering. It gives us an open door into the realm of idea and motive that, if we enter, can put us in a powerful place when using our own discernment and inventiveness.
As we nourish ourselves on the best food the mind can grow and bring seeds from all over the world to plant in our garden, complementing what we naturally grow, our diet and health will benefit. Mental health is not just a chemical reaction, so often it is about our thoughts. This is why philosophy matters far beyond the classroom. So, philosophy doesn’t just inform science, politics, ethics, and religion, it informs the self, the subconscious, and our friends as to what is really happening. Philosophy helps us to reserve judgement and appreciate the subtle differences in virtue and logic that we independently nurture. Not everything that grows is perfect, roses have thorns. Stinging nettles are full of good vitamins. Blackberry bushes snag and grab you, and apple trees are difficult to climb. Philosophy can be like a huge orchard and flower garden. When we jump in, sometimes there will be something painful, uncomfortable, or simply unpassable that puts us in our place. The entire opus of gathered philosophy is bound to be overgrown, unkempt, and unfriendly in places. This is why we are better off with a guide. A professional guide who knows the garden, who has maps, and who can explain how to reach the fruit and smell the flowers without getting scratched or tangled. Help yourself, in your own time, and at your own pace, to this list of Free Philosophy podcasts and courses online. There’s a brilliant selection. Begin, and you’ll discover not only yourself more clearly, but the world more deeply too. The History Of Philosophy Without Any Gaps This is a huge compilation and takes us through the whole subject in little, accessible sections. We meet the main luminaries of the subject one by one. The breadth of the globe is considered, and we visit schools of thought from all over the world. This helps to give us deeper insights into the way people think if they come from other cultures. After Dinner Conversation A regular discussion on ethics far and wide, something to delve into and put the mind to work when examining the conscience. How does your moral code match up to the global consensus? The Gray Area In the Gray Area Podcast, regular episodes explore the darker side of ethics and morality. It asks probing questions about modern and ancient practices that examine the virtue or lack of, in various contexts. Royal Institute of Philosophy This website is full of Philosophy Resources. Many of the resources are completely free and they include courses, podcasts, and articles that examine a wide range of philosophical thought. FutureLearn A worldwide education portal that links to several leading colleges and universities, FutureLearn has a healthy selection of Free Philosophy courses for you to enjoy. OverThink For people who don’t always have the time to think deeply, this offers a generous opening into a world of deep thought. A light-hearted tone and a subject matter that’s usually highly accessible, OverThink is a great place to relax. OpenCulture A go to place for cultural knowhow, info, and knickknacks, OpenCulture has a page dedicated Free Philosophy, too. Thier list is in-depth and more centred on topic and teacher rather than the whole. Yale Free Courses Yes, it is ‘that’ Yale, so if you wanted to add that name to your list of accolades, you could do it for only the cost of time. Their philosophy tends to be political and historical rather than spiritual or systemic. It’s the kind of philosophy that helps explain why politicians seem to be so alien at times. 
In a world of subjective experience, where our life stories craft our perceptions of the world, no two people can be the same. Not only are we genetically unique out of billions, but our individual backgrounds are also as varied as the clouds in the sky. This makes for unfathomable variations within our global community. Our cultures can help define who we are, the places we live, the people we live with, and the people we admire all help guide us into our true selves. Our internal framework of virtue, right from wrong, and what is proper, is crafted in stages and branches off into all aspects of our personality. Like a spider’s web, the whole network of ideas and associated feelings vibrates when one line is plucked. This can create problems when discussing or debating complex or emotionally charged ideas.
Dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that happens when two conflicting subjective truths fail to resonate. If someone plays the wrong note in a song, you can hear it immediately. It can ruin the experience for that moment, and if they keep doing it, the entire song can be crucified live on stage. This is because chords and notes in music resonate through harmony. Wrong notes do not resonate with harmony because they don’t fit the pattern. The opposite of resonance, in music, is also called dissonance. It is technically the same principle but in two different arenas. Dissonance doesn’t just happen in music. Perhaps this isn’t a concert. Maybe, this time the wrong note is an idea in a conversation or even a debate. If we are being called on to respond and add to the topic, our emotions can add extra colour to our reaction. These wrong notes or dissonant ideas can become pressure variations in swelling clouds. If they get too intermingled, the natural result might be thunder and lightning. This can also happen in the mind, when one rhetoric and narrative create a dissonance rather than a resonance. Depending on the feelings that surround the exchange, all manner of conflicting issues may arise. If the opinion of the other isn’t so relevant to you, you may regret their personality mismatch and think no more of it. If you love them, or respect them, if their view makes you look like you’re guilty, or some other charged situation with a much larger outcome, you might feel more passionately about asserting your rhetoric and your narrative. This is especially true if your version is concrete and rooted in your own experience, rather than read about or learned second-hand. Sometimes there is no way around the dissonance, and walking away is not a favourable option. This can be for many reasons, emotional or practical. The most difficult dissonance to resolve is the kind that strikes at our sense of right and wrong. Most of our virtues trace back to this principle, with the why and how carried to us through examples and stories we’ve learned. Sometimes our body reacts before our mind catches up. We feel something is wrong, even if we can’t yet name it. Subconsciously, we are responding to a deeper sense of wisdom. This can be an incredibly powerful motivator, and when it aligns with clear thoughts we can describe and defend, it’s like a river breaking free from a dam. When the perspective before us feels alien, or counter to what we know, and we care deeply about our truth and those who need to hear it, emotions can rise to critical levels. We can become desperate, even panicked, and as we see in our streets and across social media, people get angry. A radically different perspective can feel like an assault on the core of who we are. If our virtues are not respected or even recognised because of a conflicting narrative, it can feel undermining, disrespectful, a direct scratch on our self‑esteem. It is no crime to have a fragile self‑esteem. But such moments can make us feel slighted and almost entitled to respond with equal force or with something twice as fierce, to ensure the wound is not struck again. What if the situation isn’t about you and another person, but about a community, a country, or a wider issue dominating the social conversation? What if it’s not just you who feels the dissonance, but a large group like a demographic, or a coalition of people sharing the same view across the broader landscape? This is when dissonance can spread into public rage: difficult to control, hard to resolve peacefully, and often leading to a loss of trust and a widening gap in the scales of justice. It manifests in posters, songs, newspaper articles, and graffiti, culminating in a social musical score with aligned notes and orchestrations of rhetoric that harmonise with brewing grievances. If left to grow, and the passion is ignored, protests may break out. Emotional calls to action can escalate, sometimes tipping into harmful riots and clashes between well‑meaning citizens caught in something beyond their control, and the authorities tasked with restoring order. Anger is a natural response, and when we use nature to our benefit, we can become empowered by what it has to offer. How can we use something as hot and dangerous as anger to our benefit? It boils down to focus, containment, and deliberate action. Focus means the anger must be kept clean — not a far‑reaching explosion that disrupts whatever happens to be in the way, not a public outburst designed to create a scene, but a clear knowing of what you want to change and why. Containment means the anger is not allowed to leak into other areas; your passion and drive are not excuses to sour your mood, lash out, or treat others with unearned hostility. Containment reinforces focus, ensuring your moral energy stays in check and you keep the high ground. Deliberate action is the end result of this discipline. The heat of your anger can be like the fires in a forge. Imagine molten steel pouring from your furnace, ready to build the bridge you need to meet others halfway. You can use the energy of outrage to create something that paves a road forward, allowing you to walk away without losing your peace. You might even forge a new system that makes space for both perspectives to thrive side by side. The vast tapestry of life will always offer up unpractised musicians and clumsy masons. Variation is the natural world’s great gift, the force that allows life to evolve, transcend its prototype, and become something more. When we take a positive approach to our dissonance, and feed the fires of productivity, creativity, and invention, our journey shifts from destructive to future‑building. The best way to shape the future is to create it yourself. We cannot do everything, but the small universe beneath our feet is ours to tend. So, take it, build your mosaics from right and wrong, tested virtues, and the truths you hold dear. Be the builder, the inventor, the one who forges a path through anger and dissonance until two opposing ideas can stand together on common ground, sharing the same horizon. Do you want to gain a deeper understanding of human behaviour, emotion, and how to best manage these thing with yourself and others? Take some power back with this selection of top courses with free access. |
CategoriesAuthorAlternative Fruit by Rowan B. Colver 
Archives
February 2026
This site partners with Google to provide ads that directly fund production and hosting. If you run an adblock, please whitelist this website. This site also contains affiliate links which reward the author for each purchase.
|
RSS Feed