The book and movie Fight Club was an interesting commentary on human beings' substitution of natural pain with artificial materialism, and the resulting backlash. To see clearly the state of one's existence is to feel that one is alive. Without feeling the sensation of being alive, we are essentially walking corpses.
But the feeling of being alive means more than just experiencing pain. We as human beings desire love, success, friendships. We want to feel exhilaration and acceptance and security.
But for those who seek pain either consciously or otherwise, the masochists, they create a dichotomy within the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
If you enjoy or need pain, and you are a golden rule adherent, doesn’t that mean you will cause pain to others? And to people who don’t want it?
So where does that leave us? In a world where violence and pain are often the status quo, how can we ever live in peace? How can we treat others respectfully if we expect them to hurt us?
It comes down to knowing ourselves. How do we know ourselves? By looking at ourselves from the outside. How do we do that? By listening. How do we listen? By loving and respecting. How do we love and respect? We examine the great souls of the past. Yeshua, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr. The Saints. The Idealists. The Givers. Our ancestors who inspired us. Strangers who surprised us.
The irony of academic discussion is that improving the human condition is easy to illustrate via an essay, but in practice becomes horrifically challenging. It takes the full responsibility and dedication of every human being to make it work. We are, as CS Lewis said, all ships in a fleet heading towards the same destination. If one of us goes down, the entire fleet is weakened.
Objectivists may disagree, and argue that our innate selfishness is what inspires our compassion for our brothers and sisters. We only care because we get something out of caring, and we should only care if we are getting something. But, this sentiment only serves to strengthen and perpetuate the ego within each of us, further separating us from the natural wonders and the eternal connection of all living beings and all inanimate matter.
Academics, critical theorists, commentators, and college students with cause affectations, seize society’s flaws as if their own existence requires a state of imperfection. And that is, once again, a terrible self-perpetuating masochism. The idea is to come up with ideas that sound profound, because to actually create change would negate their existence.
So the real question is this: Why bother? If we made a change, we’d have nothing to talk about. We’d have no cause, no purpose. This isn’t a call for nihilism, but rather a call for singular and universal consciousness. Even in America where the oligarchy’s presence is hidden behind progressive and humane causes, where we limit ourselves by apathetic consumerism, where violence in the media maintains a bull market, where volunteers are used to create record profits while maintaining high unemployment rates, where images of computerized strangers affect individuals’ self-esteem, even here, positive change has conditions of acceptance. We can only improve x if y is unaffected. Or else, we will have to create z to combat the unintended consequences of x. And so it goes. The snowball of invention in the name of Utopia eventually crashes and leaves everyone in a melting pool of ignorance.
Let us revolutionize our minds. Let us begin the long process of understanding each other. Let us transcend borders and cultural barriers and reveal the true beauty that lies beyond the dust of the war machine. If we can see with our neighbor’s eyes, if we can hear with more than our ears, we won’t want to feel pain anymore and we won’t seek to be hurt. We will finally become alive.
July 12, 2007
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