both Iam and Meno have interesting if not slightly different takes…
today, I shall offer up another thought…
as I have written that the world is Marxian… which is to say,
we are just as negated under Marxism as we are negated under
Capitalism…and vast forces which we have no control over dominate
us… the Coronavirus begins in China and wrecks havoc all over the world
and we, as individuals, have very little control over what may happen in regards
to governmental responses to the virus or to what the business we work for might do…
when vast forces such as capitalism act, we individually, have very little control over it…
I call that a Marxian world…… but the other choice is a Kierkegaardian world…
which is to say, what happens out there is of far less important then what happens
inside of us… is far less important then the choices we make about who we are
and what it means to be human and what our values are going to be……
To balance out the world, we need to balance out the Marxist world out there
with Kierkegaardian choices…I see this as a balancing act… when the world
takes our control away, we must immerse ourselves in our choices, think of this
like those famous scales of justice… which must balance… if the world goes way
out of line then to balance the scales, we must go the other way in making choices…
if the world makes few demands of us, then we don’t have to go to extreme lengths
to balance the scales…
if the world is moderate, we too can be moderate in our response to the
question, who are you and what does it mean to be human?
if the world is extreme, like it is now and demands all our time, money, effort,
to help maintain the world as it negates and dehumanizes us, then we must react
in extreme ways to deny the world its devaluation of human beings…
this sounds abstract but in my mind it isn’t… I can clearly see how the world
has tried to deny who we are by the demands of the world that we sacrifice ourselves
to create profits/money…
and the world shows us this devaluation every time it places money or profits
or material goods before human beings and their values…
when people demand that we put taxpayers money before
human beings, then we are devaluing people and their values…
when the state places private property before people and their values,
then we are devaluing people… dehumanizing them…
that extremism must be fought… and we can fight back with
Kierkegaardian choices…K. question was this,
how can one become Christian in a Christian world?
He felt that becoming a Christian was an individual choice, made
individually within the confines of our possibilities…
ask yourself, what choices do you make that exist outside of
confines of what society demands? for example, as a young person,
you must at some point decide to “do” something because that is a choice
society demands on all of us… become a “productive” member of society…
if I am asking myself what does it mean to be human and what are our possibilities,
but the standards of society, I am not, not being productive…I am leaching off
of society…in asking personal, individual questions of existence…
Society/state demands that we are productive members of society…
but in that “being productive” we must sacrifice ourselves, out bodies
and soul and that is where I draw the line…I must contribute to society
and that contribution must be in energy and effort and time into creating
profits… and that is the only option available to me…
I have no other value outside of the creation of profits…
and yet I deny this… I can contribute by laying out the ground work of
what it means to be human in out modern age… but Kropotkin, you aren’t
really being a “productive member” of society if you don’t consume or produce
in ways that create profits…and that is a Marxist/capitalist vision of what it means
to be human…
the Kierkegaardian vision of being human asks ourselves, what does it mean to be human?
what are my possibilities? to engage with god is certainly one such possibility
but that is frowned upon within society because it doesn’t create or consume
in ways that creates profits…
to think about what our possibilities are isn’t about creating profits
and that is the question K. asked…
he engaged with one of the human questions and his answer was god…
but Kropotkin, tell us what questions we should engage with?
I cannot… I can only tell you what questions I am engaged with…
each of us come to this individually, with our own questions about what it
means to be human and thus I cannot tell you what questions are yours…
and this choice, this possibilities of choices is Kierkegaardian…to engage
with your own possibilities is Kierkegaardian and not Marxism or capitalism……
and that should we engage with something that doesn’t create profits, is
against the prejudices and biases of our modern age…
Kropotkin