when last seen, I was accusing you… yes, you the reader…
of sleepwalking through your life.
and by sleepwalking, I mean that our entire civilization is bent
upon giving you, the reader, cover so you can escape
any type of responsibility or accountability for your life…
for actions done in your name… for escaping crimes committed
by society and by you, because you are sleepwalking through history,
philosophy, economics and social history…
so, every thing this society does is attempt to relieve you of
any accountability or responsibility for event, places, people,
actions…
think of the modern psychology and the self help books
and the type of books favored by such people as Oprah
and Dr. Phil…they are all meant to give you cover and escape
responsibility for your actions and/or inactions…
every thing done is done to relieve you of feeling guilty or believing
you are being held accountable for anything……
for example… let us take Abu Ghraib… never heard of it…
of course not… actions were done by American soldiers
that you paid for, with the approval of politicians
you voted for, with your tacit consent……
But Kropotkin, I was a child then or perhaps your attempt to
escape guilt is to say, but Kropotkin, I didn’t know about it at the
time… when the news broke… did you say anything?
did you protest? did you do anything at all? of course not…
actions were done in your name with your consent with
your money and you did nothing at all except to sleepwalk
through the entire event…it has nothing to do with me…
it took place thousands of miles away… with the army which I
have no control over… all true… and yet it doesn’t make you
any less guilty…
the entire social structure of America today is designed to
allow you to escape any type of guilt or responsibility
for actions taken by you or in your name…
glance at the books on the NY times Bestseller list…
the psychology books there are there because they are meant
to relieve you of the guilt and responsibility of daily life…
those books allow you, give you cover to sleepwalk through
your own life…
modern society only goal is to allow you cover from your own
actions or inactions as it may be……
we are not encourage or even allow to think about taking
personal responsibility for who we are and what we have
done in our lives…
think about Kierkegaard…
what was his mission?
how to be a Christian in an Christian age?
his context was to make one become responsible for being
a Christian… not in just name or a lip service Christian like
our modern Christians… but a responsible, accountable, Christian who
is held accountable for their beliefs in god…
everyone is trying to escape the weight of or the burden of
being held accountable for their actions and their beliefs…
a man commits a crime… how does he escape taking responsibility
for it? he blames his parents, he blames his addictions, he blames his
schooling, he says he didn’t know, crimes… those weren’t crimes…
blunders perhaps, but certainly not crimes…he says, you can’t prove it…
he gets his lawyers to cast doubts on the policeman who arrest him
and cast doubts on the judge who tried him and cast doubts on
the prosecutor who leads the criminal case…
all this to avoid taking responsibility for actions taken…
and all the while, you sleepwalk through your life
and through your morality…to avoid committing yourself to
a position that might require you to actually take a side…
to commit yourself to a what is morally right?
but one will say, but Kropotkin, what is right and wrong?
and that very question is meant to allow you to escape from
committing to a moral life…
the question is designed to cast doubt on the very
concept of right and wrong…we can’t “know”
what is right and wrong… so let us sleepwalk through
our days…
instead of asking the question, attempt to answer the question…
what is right and wrong?
don’t ask it, answer it… take accountability for your thoughts…
take responsibility for your answers…
but Kropotkin, I might be wrong but maybe I am in doubt as to
the answer…… evasions, sleepwalking through life… that is what
you are doing……….
the answer to the question about what is right or wrong, isn’t out there
waiting to be discovered… it is inside of you……
the burden of finding the truth lies within you… and that is mostly
what we are trying to avoid, desperately trying to avoid… taking on
some sort of burden… of escaping the burden of being accountable
and responsible for who we are and what we might become…
our modern society spends it time allowing you to escape
the burden of existence and I and I want to put that burden
squarely on your back…
I want you to be burden with the weight of existence…
that is the point of existence… to feel the great weight
of who we are and what we might become…
we sleepwalk through the great questions of Kant…
we don’t take them seriously…
we sleepwalk through them…
what are we to do? what can we hope for? what can we know?
we must feel the weight of those questions and feel burdened
by the answers we give…
instead of the modern tactic of escaping our accountability
and responsibility, we try a new tack…
we should take these questions seriously and we should feel the full burden
and responsibility of these questions…
no longer should you sleepwalk through the important
question of “who am I” and “what should I do”
and “what values should I hold” and “what should I spend my energy”
feel the burden… feel the weight of the reality of these questions…
what does it mean to be human? don’t sleepwalk through this question…
as you sleepwalk through every question of existence…
if you don’t feel the burden of existence weighing heavily upon
your shoulders, your back… then you are sleepwalking through
existence…
Kropotkin