If there is something that causes me unease, yet comfort at the same time it is the continuously reoccurring drive towards solitude. This feeling isn't new to me. I became aware of this phenomenon years ago, but the fact that I paradoxically feel at ease in this loneliness is new to me. And that feeling exactly is what I want to examine more closely.
A few days ago I came home late as usual. My head felt heavy. It was pleasant, I spend the night with a loved one. Still in ecstasy I sat down in the bus after I had said goodbye. When I'm tired I usually lose the ability to clearly formulate thoughts, so thoughts just plump upon me in a stream of consciousness. I was shocked at the first thought that occurred to me the moment I had left:
´´Finally. Solitude.´´
The empty feeling afterwards felt quite warm and inviting. Its embrace felt much needed also.
It got me thinking, philosophizing, I mean. There is a void, that I see as a place of comfort. A void people normally tend to avoid. Why is this void suddenly so attractive, when it ought to be avoided?
Depressed people often say that the void sucks them of energy, that they can;t take the emptiness of the néant. I, however, experienced it differently. That doesn't mean I don't share their sentiments or at least don't understand them.
Yet, what I want to present is another side to this feeling that people tend to refer to as 'loneliness', 'emptiness' or 'nothingness'. The ambiguous side of loneliness. The feeling that this state of melancholy is a warm blanket that protects me against any impression the world tries to make on me. Escapism in nihilism. Comfort in nihilism.
In this feeling of warmth and comfort I sense that I am careless and lazy. Solitude can be best described as an empty cabin in a far away country that feels inviting after having seen, heard and felt too much. You retreat from the chaos into silence.
Certainly, the silence surrounding you can drive you insane, but it can also serve as a means to process thoughts that have been impressed in your soul.
This being the first factor that drives me to solitude. My soul is impressed by too much.
Another factor that drives me back to solitude and with that back to writing (since I haven't written in months) is me feeling restricted. All these impressions I feel, new ones and old ones, are a lot to process. They pile up and need time and energy to be thoroughly examined.
This in itself is mind numbing, but it becomes even harder when you have no clear morality to measure these impression up against, so you can't judge the position they take inside your life. You're stuck and don't know what to do with them. Yet, time passes. Days go by. The world waits for no one.
So whether I make my choice or not, there is no eternal tomorrow waiting for me to take my time.
So in the stress of time there seem two options available. Either you make up your mind and just choose already. You can either do this by investing time into the choice you're going to make and hope you will be able to triumphantly rise in the end. Or you can just choose and see whatever comes out, while being indifferent to the results and thinking that choices are a form of game you play in life to pass time.
Another option is to look at the other side of the coin and again accept that the world will not wait for you and do nothing about it.
In other words, to solitude yourself, because in the end nothing of the choices you make will matter in the long term, because in the end nothing shall last.
Or as Persian existential poet Omar Khayyam gracefully said:
''There was a water drop, it joined the sea. A speck of dust, it was fused with earth; what of your entering and leaving this world? A fly appeared and disappeared.''
I can understand that option two and three can be condemned if you are a humanist or have a positive attitude towards life. There's nothing virtuous in neglecting the will to live and life itself. Yes, simply seeing life as a game is also a way of neglect. After all, it's you being your own enemy and destroying yourself in the process, one can reason. Not a rebellion against the world, since the world doesn't care. It's you rebelling against that part that you detest in the world. That's how Camus would reason.
Yet, then I think of Kierkegaard. It doesn't matter what we choose, because in the end we will regret it anyway.
Live, don't live, you'll regret it anyway. Love, don't love, you'll regret it anyway. Study, don't study, you'll regret it anyway. Job, no job. Regret. Friendship, solitude. Regret. Fuck him, don't fuck him. Regret.
Yes, Kierkegaard meant this in another way than I am presenting right now. To him knowing we're mortal, meant living to the fullest.
Morior, ergo sum. (I die, therefore I am.)
This is the only life you will get, this is the only chance for you to make mistakes. Love them. Since you won't be able to ever be mistaken again in the same exact way, in the same exact situation, with the exact same you.
Beautiful. What a beautiful way to turn something so fragile as life, something so uncertain as the freedom to choose into a manifestation of the self. As a way to take life with your bare hands and embrace it for the potential shithole it was, is and might become.
The problem however is, I am not Camus' Sysiphus. I am not Nietzsche's Übermensch.
I. Am. Sara.
Following whatever a philosopher said, simply for the sake of him saying it, doesn't fill my soul. I need more reason.
With this being said, I want to say that I do not wish to be an imitation of a philosopher. I wish to be a philosopher. How do I see it? Of course, inspired by other philosopher, but what is it I want? Nietzsche's position in what it means to be a philosopher is quite right in this sense. He said this.
Quote: ''The actual interest of the scholar, therefore, are generally in another direction - in the family, perhaps, in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not characterized by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, hid morality furnishes a decided and a decisive testimony as to who he is, - that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other.''
-Beyond Good and Evil, page 5
Being a philosopher means to be egocentric. It's also the only job that fully reflects the soul of the individual. In that sense, to philosophy is to exist.
Philosopha sum ergo cogito. I am a philosopher, therefore I think.
To come back to the main topic: the drive towards solitude. The third factor being pride.
Pride is a difficult state of mind, character trait, whatever you want to call it. Pride can be good. It protects you from mental harm. It can cause you transcend yourself, because you are confident enough that there is more in store for you.
Even the act of me writing this is a form of pride, I have something to say that's worth listening to. I can even say I am proud of my ability to formulate these thoughts.
However, would it be better to have no pride at all? Is there something negative to it that outweighs the positive? No pride can lead to nihilism. You have nothing worth maintaining nor anything to lose.
It also seems to me that having pride and arrogance is something that belongs to a philosopher. Do humble philosophers exist or is that a contradictio in terminis? If they exist, perhaps it's a philosopher ignorant of his or her own arrogance.
I, as a matter of fact, know that it is necessary for a philosopher to be certain over a few things. To such an extend that he or she wants to present it to the world as some new discovery the world didn't see, but the philosopher in question did. He or she knows better.
Doesn't that imply arrogance? Am I arrogant writing this? At least to the point that I feel that these words are worth writing down and remembering?
This, however, isn't the only way pride presents itself to me. It also coincides with restriction of the self.
Those two fall under the same main drive that bring me back to wanting solitude: Freedom.
It's amusing how such an empty word still has the power to drive us towards it. What I mean by that is that freedom as an abstract term doesn't carry any meaning outside our frame of reality. I can't point at it; even worse, every individual has an own interpretation of freedom.
Is my red your red? And is my freedom your freedom? The second question can immediately follow the first.
Solitude is also a form of freedom. Not freedom to of course, but freedom from. From humiliation, from labor, responsibilities, embarrassment, pain, studies, loss.
Let us all be free from! So I wish I could exclaim and make life easy. Yet, aside from being an empty word, it is also an ambiguous term.
Freedom from love, pleasure, laughter, warmth, friendship, improvement, encounters, evolution, transcendence. In this battle of overcoming yourself you will see that those words that seem to be polar opposites actually have the option to causally follow each other in a beautiful flux called life.
So in conclusion, what has writing this brought me? Am I closer to anything at all? Or did I just run in a circle?
I can fairly conclude it led to something. Something small, but significant in my eyes.
I have no answers on how to live life. I merely know the questions. At least I know what the inner battle is. That's what this stream of consciousness has brought me.
Thus again I am confronted by wanting two things at once, but wanting neither over all. Thus once again there is the phenomenon I can never seem to outrun,
Ambiguity.
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Showing posts with label freedom of choice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom of choice. Show all posts
Sunday, 6 March 2016
Sunday, 3 January 2016
The State III: The Process
The
State III
The Process:
It is
difficult to put phenomenons, that being social behavior, into words. It is hard to be a confident
writer and still produce essays or books that are completely true. I can see
this in myself. I have read books and admired them, books that show no
coherency to each other whatsoever, but somehow still manage to convince me
that there is some truth in what the author is saying. It was in this small
confrontation with myself, that I could sense the ambiguity.
How odd
it was reading two completely different philosophers, who were opposites and
still find yourself nodding in agreement, once you read their arguments and
stream of thoughts.
With
every book I read, I did not feel at all that I was being presented wisdom,
rather I felt that I was being confronted with my own ignorance. With every
book, conversation or lecture I became more aware of how shallow my thinking
process in actuality is. The world is much bigger; the people inside it have
much more going on inside their head than they show.
It
struck me with every conversation and it still shows how incompetent I am when
it comes to discussions, because there is always a part of me that can see the
reasoning behind one's thoughts.
No
matter what I say, due to the complexity of the world and its people, we are de
facto wrong when it comes to choosing the way we want to life; it is difficult to evaluate which values are superior to others. Ideals in itself are brilliant
and we will happily nod in agreement when one exclaims: ‘’Liberté, egalité et
fraternité.’’ Yet, the methods to get there often make us blind to remember
what even the ideals were we so proudly stood for.
What is
the reason for the failure we go through as human species? Is it perhaps that
what we see as noble, actually is a handicap of some kind?
Life is failure,
without ever having had the opportunity to even see the finish line, we will
never be victorious. It is always an inner struggle between wanting two things
that contradict themselves, but on their own are flawless.
Individualism,
socialism, chauvinism, humanism, nihilism, freedom of speech, mutual respect,
values, freedom, morality, rebellion, diversity, unity, nobility, patience.
It is a
harsh way to see life. One could say that, but I would object. However, there is
still some small candle light at the end of the tunnel.
Even
when I was confronted with my own ignorance, I had discovered that in some way
there are certain truths that we all share, that instinctively feels right and
just.
The idea
that one becomes aware from the push and pull movements of life, is only
possible when one takes a break from life itself and tries to transcendent whatever
world he is living in. Seeing everything not from a biased view, but seeing the
world as followed:
The
realization that we are part of a big flux that connects one another, in which
our existence bases itself upon the choices of the generation beyond us and
that our choices form the base for the generation after us. With other
words, there is a bigger picture than just that which fulfills our individual
needs, but ambiguously we still need to take those individual needs into
consideration.
That is
such a hard task in itself and is sometimes too demanding.
Not too
demanding at all if you ask me. The reason for this, is that coming to this realization
takes the most essential part of human nature in question. The ability to
think, to be an individual between the herd, yet be one with the herd based on
your individualism.
It is
true that social behavior and political movements base themselves on the idea
that certain ideals are more true, because they fulfill the goal they want to
achieve, but that does not mean that the ideas of the rival don’t have the same
source.
They
still do, there is always some truth in the other, even if it not presented in
the desired way. The only way to see that we are all going after the same idea
in life, is eliminating the passive thoughtless behavior that many have, that
has its root in the inability or refusal to think, therefore denying one’s own
individualism.
And why
do they do so? The reason being that it is easier to let someone else carry you
to the goal and blame it on him if the possibility is open to failure, instead
of owning up to one’s own mistakes.
There is
no blame in mistakes, but only in being too coward to make them and owning up
to your responsibility.
Tuesday, 8 December 2015
The State I: Introduction
I've caught myself thinking these days as I was walking from work to home about certain things that have been bothering me these days. These little things that have annoyed me, have all bundled up into a collective annoyance and light hatred against humanity.
What an odd claim, isn't it? To say to you hate humanity at the pathetic age of 19.
'What humanity?' one might ask. 'The three people around you? That's your representation of humanity? Oh, please. What can you know of life, choice and humanity?'
Quite a common reaction one could say, one I often even get honestly. Frankly I can't blame them and I can see where they are coming from.
Still my instant reaction out of pride would be: 'Everything! I'm dedicating my life to reading, I spend my days in reflection, I try to understand, to know, to feel and to transcendente my current existence. Logically this would mean that my opinion is of more worth, right? Since I am making the sacrifice of trying to think in nuances, with the aim to understand, not to convince. It is only logical to say that relative to all this black and white thinking, my thoughts are worth listening to. I have the answers. I know what to do. My ideals will guide us there. It's just that you don't want to listen, goddammit!'
As you see, pride plays a big role inside of me. No matter how much I twist or turn it, I can't keep myself from burning inside when I catch someone in disagreement, after I've given an opinion or a statement that I have put so much effort into.
How dares that person not see the billiance and nuances? How dares he or she still vastly want to swim inside a milky, muddy, turbid lake, when there is me, who can give them a clear and sparkly ocean?
Pride and hybris can be such a cockblock to any conversation. It causes me to loose my rationality, I grow furious, I explode in anger, I damn the humans for not wanting to understand. To say it another way, how dare they not understand me? Me and my thoughts, who just want to preserve those values, that guarantee the integrity and dignity of every single human life. Isn't it good enough that I want the best for them?
Oddly enough, pride is also something I've worked hard on gaining and keeping. On a positive note for example, I am happy I am so proud. It makes me want to transcendente whoever I am at the moment, even if that means taking distance from a statement I hold onto dearly for the sake of gaining a better understanding of the world.
I've associated pride with those thinkers who had ideals and were not afraid of persuading them. They have made their own ideals into gods they worship, ideals that I am so proud of having. Ideals unfortunately that consist out of paradoxes.
Right now there is no denying that there is a clash going on in the world in terms of morality. Terms as freedom, free will, offense and justice have gotten a new understanding to them. To me it seems that these terms mostly present themselves into contradictions. Either side or interpretation of these terms clashes with the other side, therefore making the existence überhaupt impossible.
For example, is it possible to become so free, that we become unfree? Is this a complete wrong actualisation of the Camus' quote in which he asked us to become so free that our freedom becomes an act of rebellion? Why does it feel, that every stranger I meet and see suffocates me more than ever? Is the age? Is it my character or is it our new understanding of freedom?
I have to be clear that I am a sceptical when it comes to giving generalising statements regarding a certain trend. There are always exceptions, let that be clear. I solely speak of those that fall inside the category I speak of.
I can say that the general crowd is suffocating me, that I am afraid of speaking my mind, because I know that the complete freedom, causes some form of restriction. It is not possible to be completely free, in the sense that the existentialists meant. Freedom, in the sense that we are damned to freedom and have to create our life. The so called "My freedom begins, where yours ends"-mentality.
Is time changing and have we become so free, that we are suffocating each other? What if we need less freedom in one sense, to enlarge the freedom elsewhere?
Namely the freedom to make mistakes. It seems that our new interpretation of freedom has caused us to become more strict when it comes to respecting each and every individual. Democracy is at its peak, everyone is a part of the system. It has been celebrated enough, I am the first to rise, when it comes to applauding democracy. But isnt it also time to highlight the ambiguity? The contradictions that exist when we make certain ideals into absolutes? This can lead to serious problem, especially when the people leading the world at the moment are not leading the will of the crowd in accordance to the rationality of the politician, but that the politicians themselves are falling into peacock behaviour.
There is an illusion that saying whatever you like is performed by all. However, only in accordance to what most want. Being politically correct, but insofar as it is redeemed okay by those leading the media.
Neo-conservatism with other words, but dipped in a sauce of liberty.
Isn't that a paradox? This has made me scared of writing. I fear to make mistakes out of scare of offending someone. This so called new notion of freedom, has made me want to shut my mouth close. Never saying anything, because the term "offense" in relation to "freedom" has lost so much meaning, that I don't dare to say what I want.
I am not going to lie, I feel very detached from the world.
However, I have often seen myself as a reasonable person. Since I believe I am in a minority, I have more than enough reason to reconsider everything I said. Perhaps there is more to it.
Maybe it is in our right to be offended. It shows progress in first world countries, since it's explication of individualism. He, who can be offended, has dignity that can be touched. He who has dinity has been acknowledged by society as an individual, who's worth existence.
Then who am I to go against this basic human right? A right that has been created in our era of Enlightenment, the right to be provided in our most basic human needs, the right to study, to have freedom of speech etc.
Me giving any form of criticism that offends society is a stab against those ideals, isn't it?
My reply to this, is a clear no. If there is anything I admire in the world, it is the progress the western civilisation has made when it comes to the notion of human rights.
I would never say those ideals are wrong, if anything, liberté, égalité and fraternité are what I redeem one of the core principles of my ideal state. So, what is actually my concern?
To put it clearly, I have the fear that people have become too proud.
In the beginning I’ve stated my own pride as something I see as a restriction, but also progressive. I am glad I am proud. I am proud that I am proud in my thoughts and opinions and I don’t expect anything else from the world.
This is however the case, my pride served as an analogy as to what has angred me. The hate I carry against humanity, is a hate that I don’t oversee from a higher point. It is something that I recognize.
Not only that, but this pride ignites anger and rage, that is self destructive. And it creates the most inhumane acts known to man, the inability to think. Therefore, letting yourself get carried by those who can fulfill your need to satisfy your pride. I can only name 1939 as a number to spark your memory.
And I know that we will go down in history as a dark age, if we do not realise the ambiguity of our pride, the ambiguity of our freedom and let ourselves be carried by egocentric pride.
Tuesday, 30 June 2015
Contemplation During a Lonely Night
''Il y a des jours où Dieu est si loin, qu'il semble absent''
There are days where God is so far that he seems absent
-Simone de Beauvoir
Unfortunately for me He never felt present. Fortunately maybe, however that's hard to tell on days where you feel like a raindrop falling from far only to be hit by the solid cold ground.
Never have I felt more alone, than realising that growing up doesn't mean solely growing up as a child, but mentally as an adult.
God would be the father figure making sure that all goes well, that I am safe.
For now I feel like I'm an orphan of life. Nothing seems to satisfy me in the slightest. Even worse, I feel empty and joyless. Sucked and drained, but most of all I am afraid.
I barely have enough energy to enjoy anything, but just enough to spend my nights contemplating and worrying. Wasteful nights if you ask me.
Some people weren't made for human interaction, I think I'm part of them,
I never am more confronted with my loneliness and angst than in the middle of the joyful crowd.
I know that escaping and isolation are meaningless, but what else is there in life?
I believe that's indeed what we see as growing up and facing the challenges of a possibly meaningless and empty life, yet giving our all to it.
Amusing if you ask me, for I can't judge whether that's genius madness or mental madness.
Even now as I am writing I can finally sense a form of peace overwhelming me; I am safe.
It has the same cosy feeling I had when mother would hug me tightly before going to sleep, the same warmth, the same isolation inside my own little world.
Growing up is leaving the safe spot from mother's nest and moving on to sharing the bed with a dozen strangers at the off chance that one might be the one for you.
Is it bad? No of course not, for who is there to judge you and your choices?
To say what is right from wrong, to comfort you when you spend your nights crying and seeking for some kind of answer to your ignorance of life.
I sense a balance between not caring at all, very nihilistic of course and on the other side a lot of fear for the unknown. Fear for mistakes I might never forgive myself.
Indeed, there is no God to judge me, but that makes it worse because I know myself.
There where He would give me comfort and salvation, I would never forgive myself. Not because I am perfect, but because I would not be able to look myself in the eyes and see nothing but filth.
And suddenly I would lose my touch for existence, because I apparently never knew what it meant to be alive as I indeed made those mistakes.
They haven't happened yet, but this would indeed be how I would reason with myself.
Oh desperate times, lovely lonely times.
Please world, leave me at rest and I will never provoke you again. I too bear fault at being curious, but not being able to forsee and accept the consequences of my childish curiosity.
Eventhough I am very doubtful in terms of morality, I can't forgive myself for seeing the world and its people as my toys any longer.
I used to be nihilistic and an opportunist, only using the world to satisfy my own needs, but even that doesn't work as much as it should.
Therefor my subconsciousness only desires punishment of the Self.
Egocentric behaviour should be considered as a lonely act, therefor damned to a lonely existence.
And honestly, loneliness has never sounded more liberating.
Sunday, 7 June 2015
Desperation
Short Story
Yes, life is hell, a never ending hell that has solely one torture in mind for me; as if it was specially selected for me. Iteration, endless, mindless, ignorant, oblivious iteration; forcing myself to wake up, forcing myself to sleep, doing my tasks in a continual cycle of life. Making myself get adjust to this mindset in life, although I can't discriminate myself from who I was and who I am now.
Yesterday was today and today will be tomorrow; always the same morning always the same evening, always the same dreadful night.
During the early morning, I stand once again in the kitchen and prepare food for a lazy bastard who can still not pronounce my name correctly. I cringe every time I hear him say my name in that deep grunting voice, that always seems to be short of breath, with a slight slur to finish it off. "Sedaf...my tea." I hear him moan from the other room. I close my eyes for a second. His groans and puffing make me lose my appetite. Sedaf, Sedaf, Sedaf. Indeed my slave name is Sedaf. My real name is Sadaf.
With a cup of tea filled with enough sugar to provide a whole chocolate factory, 2 eggs, bread, milk and cheese I am sit next to him. He attacks his food like a foul pig, stuffing all the ingredients in his mouth at once, turning and twisting it with excessive saliva and washing it all away with his tea. I smile tenderly at him and stroke my hair to one side. "Sweetheart, should I bring you something else? A piece of extra bread.. coffee? Perhaps a little bit more, to stuff your tummy t?" You piece of garbage.
He looks at me with empty eyes and mindlessly shakes his head. Then he takes a look at me from top to bottom. I might as well be naked by the way he looks "You ain't eating?" and I shake my head. "I..." Before I can say more, the television is turned on with the sound blasting loudly an indication for me to be quiet and leave.
Good.
I go off to the kitchen. I have accepted it. No, there is indeed no escaping from this prison. Denial is pointless. I will live here, die here and rot here. For me this home is my state and that man, whom I call ‘husband’, is my master, father, mother and brother, all at once and much more. I adore him. Yes, I love him. I love him.
Whenever I feel I have the privilege to contemplate my existence, I remind myself there is no place in my life for happiness or sadness.
Only survival.
At those rare moments I do contemplate I tell myself:
"My dear sweetheart, does it even matter whether it is you touching yourself in the shower, with the thoughts of a stranger in your head, or the forceful penetration of your husband?"
Those times, I tell myself, when the light of my cigarette is the only thing illuminating the room:
"My dear, my love, it is all the same."
And yes, that is indeed the only explanation I can give myself.
Whether it's the pain of the mind caused by a love one without her intention or the pain of the devil, who awaits to punish me some more every night,
I can see nothing, but the darkness of inner core my mind, bouncing back to me from the others due to my impure thoughts and acts.
And for some reason, even the enjoyment of this cigarette disappears and it becomes as foul and bitter as my mind.
"The better", I sigh and I inhale deeply, as tears drip from my cheeks.
Lucky for me the sound of the TV is loud enough for him to not hear me hit my head against the wall.
Monday, 2 February 2015
Essay on Freedom (Existentialism)
Theme 5 - Ethics
‘All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly. It is ready to pay up. In other words, there may be responsible people, but there are no guilty ones.’’
-Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Whenever I think of Camus, I wonder what stops us all from committing suicide. After all, according to the existentialism, life has no meaning.
Life is always an intense battle between becoming someone you want to be and coming to consensus with whom you were in the past.
Thrown into the world without an essence and forced to use the world to your advantage as disadvantage to become who you want to be.
This paradox of existence is something that only a human has to undertake, because we have the fortune as misfortune of being able to reflect on who we were, who we are and who we want to be.
With this grand task that has to be carried out throughout our whole life, what exactly is this paradox I am speaking of?
The paradox I am speaking of is the paradox of freedom in our existence.
Every single one of us, no exceptions made, has been thrown into this world without our consent or our disagreement. We never had the choice to reflect on the world we are thrown in. Namely, for such a thing to take place it is necessary for us to be able to have a consciousness, that makes us take every step we are going to take in consideration and then ask itself the question: Do I or do I not want to be a part of this world, as this person in this environment?
And this isn’t the case. Consciousness and self-reflection can only take place the moment it can even out events to one another that take place in the subjective and physical world and to then take the conclusion whether its actions and the consequences of these actions appeal to it or not.
Which simply means, there was no I before the existence.
I can now state that we have been born completely freely, without any strings attached to us that swing us towards the path of life we are obligated to follow.
The paradox of existence is this: with every decision we take, we become less and less free.
With every observation and thought we encounter, we are filling ourselves with information and becoming less free. Less free in the sense, that it is difficult for us to begin from a total point zero and then work towards an alternative style of thinking and living.
The unfortunate part is, that we can’t blame the invisible strings for what we have become. We can’t blame our environment either.
After all, weren’t we thrown freely into the world to make any choice we want?
Sartre would be nodding yes, because you always had the choice to do something else; now that you made your current choice, it is necessary for you to take the consequences and live with it.
With that said, with every step we are taking we have become less and less free. We have become a slave to our own existence, because there is no escape and there is no one else to blame except for you.
This raises the next question: why don’t we all just commit suicide?
Life sounds difficult, it seems pointless and I have just shown you that we have no one else to blame except ourselves.
The answer I am going to give you is very simple.
Although many claim that suicide is an act of freedom, it is in my eyes an act of imprisoning yourself forever.
By committing suicide, you are not freeing yourself from this world.
No, you are taking away any possible chance of becoming another you. You are taking away your freedom of choice, how limited those choices may seem; because by being dead there is no chance that a person can realize and manifest himself in this world anymore.
This shows us that we have no choice but to exist.
And this is the grand paradox of being human and the freedom of choice.
Camus states: ‘’A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly. It is ready to pay up.’’
-The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
With that said, he has made a select group of people who have this special mindset and they are willing to take any consequences that come out of their actions.
Suddenly though, he draws the line from this select group of people, to all the people that exist.
‘’There may be responsible people, but there are no guilty ones.’’
What does this say about his statement? I can only conclude that Camus assumes that every person on this planet thinks about every action he makes and is willing to accept the consequences that it brings.
That is not the case and I will explain why.
The moment we have been thrown into this world, we had nothing to work with. With that I mean, we had no moral structures, we didn’t even have the ability to speak. Is it possible to accept of a baby to take full responsibility of his actions, when there was nothing before his existence and almost no information after his existence?
Now let me extend that a bit more.
In our life, we never are able to predict all possible outcomes of every possible action in whole the world. Instead we merely narrow down, by past experience, the best possible action we can take at that moment without being one hundred percent sure of the outcome. We only assume the most plausible outcome possible.
That is why I used the baby as an example. We have nothing to work with at the beginning, but the more we live the more narrow our choice of actions become; this doesn’t mean that we can be more certain about the outcome with every year we age.
With that said, what Camus assumes is not something that is, but how it should be.
It is very important to make this distinction between something that is the case and something we think should be the case.
And unfortunately what is the case is the fact that we can’t take full responsibility of our actions.
However, as I have stated before, we can use the world to our advantage and make ourselves into something we want to be, with the unfortunate side effect of always being in risk of being guilty of immoral behavior.
Fortunately though we can narrow down this risk by learning the system of morality and using it to our advantage.
After a large period of time we have learned more and more and we will never be finished with learning, because there are always unpredictable situations that urge us to learn more about our morality and ourselves - although having learned enough to function properly in our society.
With that said, we have learned that behind every action lie consequences that we are responsible for.
However, I can’t make the claim that we aren’t guilty, because we are.
This merely means that with every immoral action that goes against the systems of morality, we learn where we can line the borders of our freedom.
And everyone that crosses that border has never understood the long and hard road that took us towards the border of the systems of morality.
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