I have tried to understand our time period, our modern times
or if you wish, our post modern times…………
as I have thought about and studied and wrote about where
we are right now… a common thread has appeared… that of
meaning… if there is one commonality of life right now, it
involves in our meaning, what does it mean to exist in 2019?
what does it mean to be human right now…
I am old enough to have grown up with the “American dream”…
the goal was to grow up and have a nice house in the suburbs
with a white picket fence and two cars, two kids and a dog and cat…
as a kid, you were expected to work hard to get into a “prime” collage which
then allowed you to get some high paying job in which you worked for 40
years and then you retired and collected an excellent pension living our your
golden years with respect and dignity……….that was the “American dream”……
but from where I sit… this fantasy life of the “American dream” has no meaning,
it has no value… I don’t see the point of working for 40 years to get a crappy
retirement where I must choose between medicine and food…
the Modern world has no meaning… it is as simple as that…….
there is no point to follow the American dream because it leads nowhere,
goes nowhere, has no meaning………
that is what is lacking in this “Modern” age and that is meaning……
the old forms, the old ism’s and ideologies have failed to give our lives
meaning…… go through the old forms… going to an excellent university to
get an education to get a “good” job…………more training to become a worker…
nothing more… that is the “modern” definition of education… training workers…
that education hasn’t shown us how to become better human beings or to become
wiser or to gain knowledge that can actually mean something to us………
no, we are trained to be workers and the media and state “programs”
us to spend our days buying useless trinkets, to become consumers…
there is no point, no meaning to our current existence outside of breeding
more workers and more consumers……….
the modern experience is empty, nihilistic, without any meaning or hope…
and that is what is lacking today…… to have some point, some meaning to
our existence……
I have tried to create some meaning by working out some possibilities for
human beings…….ART is an example of us trying to use ART to create
some possibilities, some meaning in our lives…what other possibilities
exists for us? we reject the modern ideal of living life by being
a worker and consumer……….in fact, we could begin by rejecting
the entire “modern” experience from the university which only goal
is to train high end workers to high school which is to train low end workers…
and we can reject the “Modern” idea that we can find meaning in the
buying an selling of any goods… it is no longer about trying to create
a “comfortable” life with houses and cars and 401K plans……….
those things hide the fact that we live empty lives fuel by
empty lies and empty promises…………
the modern question is simple… how do I find meaning in this modern life?
where does one find meaning in the midst of all the lies and empty promises
that we get every day… buy our product and become irresistible to the opposite
sex… buy our product and rocket through to become CEO live large…
the answer, the true answer lies in both us and, and in something outside of us…
we find ourselves in our relationship with others… the DU, we cannot find out
who we are without acting and reacting with others… we simply cannot……
we human beings have qualities… qualities like love and honor and justice
and charity… but we must learn and practice those qualities with others…
we cannot love without another… we cannot be just without others…
we cannot practice charity without others…… to become who we are means
we must, must engage with others…… by myself, I can only get so far with
being human… to reach my full possibilities as human, I need others…
but our current reality, our current ism and ideologies don’t allow us to
engage with other human beings in an honest and open dialogue as to what
it means to be human…… because we must view others has “competition”
for the limited resources that are available and that we need… my co-worker
can take the pay raise I need… so I must treat them as the “competition”
and until we lose that “reality” that others are the “competition”, we
cannot begin the journey to real wisdom……….
it is this idea of a zero sum universe is where we first begin to fail…
we can must reject a universe where we think that one person’s
gain is another person’s loss…… we must rethink of the universe as
a place where it is possible for everyone to gain… if we rethink
what it means to be human…… the goal doesn’t have to be to
make as money as possible regardless of the cost to ourselves or to
others…….no, the goal becomes non economic and more about the
path we must take to become human… for any journey of discovery
is about more then just us, it is about everyone and our relationship we have
with everyone………it is relationships that we must focus on, not losses or gains…
among others things……. the path to being human is a long path…
Kropotkin