this use of a narrative to guide one is a basic fundamental
aspect of human existence…political narratives are democracy,
monarchy, oligarchy, dictatorships…
economic narratives are capitalism, communism, socialism,
mercantilism, feudalism, statism….
myths are a narrative…myths are quite often, traditionally anyway,
stories about the gods…a narrative about the gods…
an American myth of my childhood was of George Washington chopping
down the cherry tree and then admitted to it instead of lying about it,
that myth was about how children should always tell the truth…
it was a narrative about telling the truth…
philosophy is a narrative about our place in the universe…
existentialism is a myth about how we are condemned to be free
and the reason for much unhappiness is the fact that we
do not have a “authentic” relationship with both ourselves
and others…we are not “authentic” because we hide behind
masks and customs and social convention so that our “real” self
isn’t discovered or seen…we play act our lives and in doing so,
we don’t reach or become who we are…the life we are living
is a lie because it doesn’t reflect who we really are…
I present a mask at work… we all do… we cannot be who we are
at work because work demands that we must follow certain rules to
ensures the company makes a profit… the restriction of denying
our “authentic” comes about because the company must make profits/money…
my company is always preaching us to be professional…
whatever that means, but we are to present ourselves at all times
being professional…to ensure profits/money……
to wear a mask…corporate America is all about the wearing of mask…
the company itself wears a mask… to hide its corporate greed, the company
will often advertise itself as being committed to helping people……
most commercials are about the mask a business wears…
trying to present itself in positive light… buy our product because
we care about you… lies, dam lies and huge fucking lies…
read a corporate mission statement, any corporate statement and
within the first 4 lines of any corporate mission statement will come
the very reason for the existence of companies… to make profit/money…
the corporate use of commercials to present itself as honest, benevolent,
kind, worthy of trust…is a narrative, mythmaking……
so we have several types of narratives that exists within modern life…
we have narratives about the society we exists within, narratives about
our political system and narratives about our economic systems
and narratives about our social systems… in America, we can become
anything we want to be if we work hard enough… and other such lies…
America land of equal opportunity…
and we have personal narratives about who we are…
each of us tells ourselves and others, stories about who we are…
where we came from and where we are going…
the entire point of a narrative, myth, story, ism and ideology,
is to provide some context of our lives, both individually
and collectively…
who we were, who we are and who we will be…
a narrative/ism creates context of our beginning and our current
status and what is to be our goal, our final destination…
and that is a very important aspect of a ism or narrative…
to create some sort of goal or destination to us to reach,
both individually and collectively…
think of Catholicism… it is a narrative about our beginning, Adam
and Eve and the bible creating context for who we were…
and it also creates a final goal, a context for which we can become…
we can be “saved” and then be in heaven for the rest of eternity,
worshiping god… personally, I considered that to be the worst
possible outcome ever for an eternal resting… give me hell rather
then heaven for at least hell won’t be as boring as heaven…
perhaps, perhaps instead of reaching for some fantastic and outlandish
goal, we should be more aware of more human goals…
the narrative that we should be engaging with should be narratives
about us engaging in more human results like who we were,
animals, who we are, animal/human and who we should become,
human, fully human…
to be animal means to engage with instinct and raw emotions…
to be animal/human means we can, to some extent, control
our instincts and our raw emotions… to be animal/human means
we are still in the process of becoming something different…
we are still trying to reach our goal… and this may take another
million years to reach…
to become human, means we control our instincts, we have control
over what it means to be human… it means we react within the context
of the situation…we engage with situations and other people with
with inclusion, not exclusion…we react with people with the positive
values, not with the negative values… we engage with hope, love,
peace, understanding, justice, charity……
to say it another way, we no longer will need masks to engage with
other people…for the use of mask hides our real nature, hides who we are…
and sometimes with a mask, we forget our real nature… we begin to see
the mask as our real self and it isn’t…
the battle is to become our real self, our engagement is to be
as “authentic” as possible… we no longer rely on masks to cover
up who we are……… for to be human means we can become who
we are…if I am strange and weird, and that is who I am, we don’t
use masks to cover the fact that we are strange and weird, let us
be that…let us become who we are… without fear or fear of
estrangement…….acceptance of who we are regardless of
what it might mean……
now one might argue, that means that if we are serial killers, then
we come out of the “closet” as it were and begin to kill people without
any punishment, no, not that isn’t what I mean, it means we
come clean about who we are…if I have feelings and urges to
kill and maim people, I don’t hide behind a mask to cover up that fact,
if I am to be an authentic person, I must reveal who I am… I can no longer
hide behind some mask of normalcy…
we reveal who we are… that is seeking the light…
and that is what the Greeks for example saw as truth… the
dropping of the mask… the coming into light…
Aletheia is truth or disclosure in Greek philosophy. It was used in ancient
Greece. Aletheia is variously translated as “unclosedness”
“unconcealedness” “disclosure” or “truth”
for the Greeks, light was truth… and darkness was untruth…
the dropping of the Mask is “disclosure” we see the truth…
for us to achieve becoming who we are, we must “disclose”
who we are… we can no longer hide behind mask and “inauthentic”
behavior and beliefs…
the struggle in modern society/culture is the struggle from our
attempt to hide our real self …… from both ourselves and
from others…….
it could be said, that modern society is our attempt to
hide who we really are… that to move beyond modern society is
to move past our need to wear a mask…
we are alienated and disconnected from society/state/ourselves
because we hold onto the mask that we use to be a “good” citizen…
to be a “good” worker, a “good” consumer… the roles we play in modern
society also requires us to don masks to play these roles of modern
society…
my alienation comes from the fact that I must hide my real self from
myself and from society… my alienation comes from my being forced
to wear a mask to fit into society/state……
human beings at heart are strange, weird beings…
instead of hiding that, we should become who we are…
let us become who we are and if that is strange and weird,
let it be…
if we repress, as we have, our true nature, then we create
the exact problems of people who have repressed and not come
to terms with their “issues”. Freud believed that much of our
“Modern” problems stem from us not coming to grip with
who we are…
we may, may be able to understand modern history, of our World Wars,
and the alienation and disconnection of modern society, with our
inability to become who we are… by using masks to hide who we are,
we create and continue the neurosis that exemplify our modern era…
until we cure our “soul”, our modern soul, we cannot continue to
become and engage with the continuation of becoming who we are…
we are “soul” sick, and we will continue to be “soul” sick until we
actively begin to seek solutions to our “soul” sickness, we will continue
to be alienated and disconnected from both society and ourselves…
I cannot become healthy until I can drop my mask and be who I am…
and you cannot be healthy until you drop your mask and become who you are
and society cannot be healthy until it drops its mask and become who we are…
so, what mask/masks do you wear? are you prepared to, finally, drop your mask
and become who you are?
Kropotkin