Alexandersmap

    Tag: Soren Kierkegaard

    • Beyond This

      “What labels me, negates me.” ― Soren Kierkegaard

      There is no them
      There’s only us
      — U2, Invisible

      It felt like we were winning at one time in our collective history. But even then there were angry people. Bitterness must be fueled, and a whole industry rose up to feed outrage to those who needed a taste of it. But it’s all so addictive, isn’t it? Soon the consumers are themselves consumed. Those of us who abstained barely know them anymore.

      And there we are; us and them. It’s easy to label them, even as we’re angry at the labels they put on us. Add separation, where one isn’t looking into the eyes of the person they’re calling one of them, and we all become dehumanized. And so it is that technology, once our great hope, has become our undoing.

      Is the genie out of the bottle? It seems that way. But I’m a believer in forward progress. Sure we take two steps back now and then. God knows we’ve regressed lately. But have hope. This too shall pass. The pendulum will swing back again.

      It’s easy to label, it’s harder to seek to understand. If we are to get beyond this, we ought to get over our anger and our labels and get to know each other instead. Even writing that it sounds naive, but tell me another way forward?

      Things are darkest before the dawn. We aren’t quite as dark yet as we could be, and the trend is shockingly downward, but when enough of us say, I’m not going down there, we may level off this spiral and find a safe landing. From solid ground we may climb once again.

      There is no them, there’s only us. Put enough of us together and soon there is no more them. Or we could just go back to shouting at each other, seeing how well that’s working out. We get to choose, at least until it’s too late for choices anymore.

    • Here We Are

      “A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”
      ― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I

      Those who pay attention know the score. Those who don’t are happy with the distractions the world flashes in front of them one after the other. They don’t want to know the score, they want to be entertained in the moment. Let the world crash down later as long as we all have a good laugh now. And here we are.

      To pay attention is to watch a story where you know the ending but you just hope maybe there will be one of those Hollywood twists that make everything all right. Whoops, the scientists forgot to carry over the extra value! Climate change is magically fixed! Only a clown would believe that, and here we are.

      The only answer is to build a resilient life for ourselves. Live in places that put us in the best position possible for the best or worst case scenario. Invest well financially, but also in our knowledge, our network and in our physical and mental health. Resilience is a way of life, not a lock on the door. It’s seeing how high the flood waters might rise and building ever higher than that. Yes, here we are, but maybe we need to move up and over there.

      The stoics went through their version of all this themselves. That they wrote about it offers us a light in the darkness with which to navigate. We too may be writers and thinkers and live boldly individual lives apart from the whims of a distracted society. We’ll be fine or we won’t, all we can control in the universe is how we react. Amor fati (love of fate). And here we are.