I have identified several historical events as
the possible creators of our modern “soul sickness”…
the industrial revolution, the two world wars, the Holocaust,
Hiroshima… and so to put these events into historical context…
the industrial revolution can be said to have started in 1750 in the UK…
and in different countries have later dates… say France after the
French Revolution and Germany after 1800… these dates are hardly
written in stone and is quite debated by experts in the field…
in the US, the industrial revolution was vastly expedited by the American
civil war from 1860 to 1865.
So, you have World War one from 1914 -1918
you have the depression from 1929 to 1938
you have the start of the German attacks on Jews in 1933
with the concentration camps opening up by 1938…
you have the dropping of the bomb in 1945…so within
one generation you have quite a bit of historical events…
and now look at an philosophical event called Existentialism…
we can point out the early thinkers who we have decided to
be precursors of existentialism… Kierkegaard…1813-1855
Dostoyevsky 1821-1881…Nietzsche…1844 - 1900…
notice that these thinkers were born after the beginning of the
industrial revolution… I don’t think that is a coincidence
and you have 20th century Spanish thinkers such as Miguel de Unamuno y jugo…
1864-1936 and Ortega y Gasset…1883-1955
and you have such thinkers as Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel…
Buber 1878 - 1965 and Marcel 1889 -1973
once again notice the dates in reference to my rather limited list of events
in history…
and then you have such thinkers as Sartre 1905 - 1980… and Camus 1913-1960
these thinkers are existentialist…
but the question now comes, what exactly is existentialism:
it is a philosophy that holds the belief that philosophical thinking begins
with the human subject… not just the thinking subject but the acting,
feeling, living human individual…the predominant value of existentialist
though is thought to be freedom, it primary value is Authenticity…
but ummmm, authenticity… why should being authentic become a deal
in the midst of our modern history? I will offer up the suggestion that
historical events like the industrial revolution and the terrible events listed
such as the World Wars and the depression and the Holocaust and the dropping
of the bomb suddenly made this question of high priority…
what does being authentic have to do with such historical events as
the Holocaust and the World Wars? these modern events like the industrial
revolution has had an profound effect on the human creature…
if we are no longer authentic, it might be because of the industrial revolution…
because we are no longer in control of our lives and no longer able to be who we
are…we are devalued in the ever present search for profits and money…
the nihilist 20th century has turn human beings into inauthentic beings…
the pursuit of profits/money has devalued human beings and we responded
with world wars and a great depression and the Holocaust and then we
dropped the bomb…the devalution of man from the industrial revolution
can be connected to Auschwitz and Hiroshima…you can easily create
concentration camps if man is reduced to having no value…nihilism
is the step before Auschwitz and is the logical step before Auschwitz…
or said another way… when I go to work at my nihilistic company,
I have value in only so far as I create profits… no profits, no value…
that is the modern vision of how much value we put on human beings…
as for who I am… it doesn’t matter… my own personal value doesn’t matter
in any way, shape or form… it doesn’t matter if I am smart or mean or
funny or I love or have peace in my heart… human values are useless in our modern
world and thus we get Auschwitz and Hiroshima… and vast world wars…
Human values are negated in pursuit of profit/money…
thus we get something like Existentialism as a philosophy because
the modern world from its pursuit of profits have negated/devalued
who we are individually and collectively…and what is existentialism?
it values freedom…something we don’t have in the modern world
because freedom is a human value that has been negated by the pursuit of profit/money…
and the primary value of existentialism is being authentic
and we cannot be authentic if, if our values are denied, negated, dismissed
for we human being are not just physical creatures who exist in the physical
world where we are born and eat and shit and fuck and the other natural
human actions that come about because we are animals… coming from
the natural world of living and dying creatures with a past of a billion years
of life… we are human beings because we have values… values like
love and peace and hope and dreams and freedom and being authentic…
the modern world has negated the vital and most important aspect of
being human, our values…thus we have the historical events
like the World Wars and the Holocaust and the bomb occuring in
the 20th century… it is the 20th century that has completed the
mission of the industrial revolution in which human beings have been
devalued and denied and negated in the pursuit of profit/money…
we cannot be authentic if we don’t have values like love and hope
and values like freedom… the battle to be human is not about
our physical selves but about our values… and whether
we can exist if our values are negated and devalued…
for we have seen what happens if our values are denied…
we have seen the results in our history books and in the number
of dead from the negation of values in the 20th century…
the body count from the negation of values is in the hundreds of millions
in the 20th century… if we continue negating values, how many more
shall die in the 21st century?
Kropotkin