a change of pace today… or is it?
I have stated before that when we are born, we are born into a family,
society, state that has certain values it expresses and those values
are indoctrinated into us as babies…but values aren’t the only thing
indoctrinated into us as babies/children…roles are indoctinated into
us…what do you want to be when you grow up… and we see the role models
all around us…firemen, policemen, president, baseball player… and so
we see these as our role models to be when we grow up…
I myself, wanted to be a baseball player when I grew up and I practiced
being a ball player for hours upon end…I would throw the ball, usuall a tennis
ball against the walls of the house and catch it…as I wasn’t allowed to do this in
the house, I spent hours alone, out in the yard throwing the ball against the walls
of the house…I must of broken a hundred windows throwing the ball against the house…
and I am sure you have your own stories of you practicing to become some role
in your future life…and that is what we are practicing, to be some role of some
sort within society…
as we grow older, the possibilities of the roles we can play become larger…
from president to teacher to athlete to news anchor to scientist to soldier to
pilot…… the number of possible roles grew in proportion to our age…
the number of possibilities we have for playing roles is large…
but the roles to be played must fit into certain parameters…
society must approve of the roles one is to play…you don’t see roles
where people sit around and think about things… you don’t see as a
role model, philosophy… scientist perhaps, but not philosophy…
the role models that society permits are roles that “contribute” to society"
and that is a very important notion to understand… the role models that
society praises are role models that in some fashion contribute to society…
and philosophers are not valued because it is felt that the contribution
of philosophers is minimal at best
… Philosophy is a genteel means to poverty…
or so says the t-shirt…
but is our lives really about the roles we play?
when ask, “what do I do” my answer clearly states my role,
I am a checker… but that role is the least important role I play in
my life… I am a husband and father and son and brother…
I am a philosopher… each of these personal roles are far more
important to me then the role of checker…
but I play other roles, citizen, consumer, producer, part
of a target audience, member of a society……
and my role as citizen is clearly laid out for me, if nothing else,
I must, must support my country regardless of what it does…
but, but I cannot in good conscience support a country that
engages in torture, a country that has concentration camps for
children, a country that practices anti-life policies of IQ45…
and a country that in its moral document of the budget, makes
war a higher priority then peace, and makes injustice a higher priority
then justice……
my individual conscience is in conflict with my duties of being
a citizen of the state…I must make a choice… and here lies
the individual of Kierkegaard and Ipsen who claimed that
untruth lies with the masses… I am but one man who must make
a choice between my conscience and my country……
and how do I resolve this conflict?
any actions I take will be met by swift and dire punishment from the state…
any calls I make for an ethical treatment of human beings receives
rival calls of being a traitor and unpatriotic and unamerican…….
so what choice should I make? should I risk the malice of my fellow citizens
or should follow my conscience and denounce my country as having abandoning
the values that make America the shining city on the hill?
where does my individual priority lie? with the state and being a citizen or
with being a human being with an obligation to other human beings regardless
of their being brown or from Mexico or being gay or immigrants to this country?
silence is an abdication of one choice… but for many,
cowardice rules the day and they simply follow the path of least resistance
and they stay quiet……. fearful of choosing between their conscience
and the state………dammed either way they think and so silence
becomes the rule of life…
but choice is all we have as human beings… fail to choose and there
is no point in being human…… fail to choose, so why do you exists?
if you don’t make a choice, you have no reason for living as a human being
choice is the marker of being human…
“What am I to do?” “What should I believe in?” What values should I hold?"
“What should I hope for?” “On what should I spend my energy on?”
all these questions demands one to make a choice…
so who is this Kierkegaardian being I have spoken of?
they are someone who has realized that choice is the essence of being human…
so, what do you choose? your individual conscience or playing the role of citizen?
Kropotkin