To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Thursday, May 30, 2019
 

I was reading this interesting article If God is dead, your time is everything which expresses the idea, among many others, that “Religion… enforces asceticism in the name of the spiritual; capitalism enforces asceticism in the name of the material.” Basically, if we’re religious, we embrace a sort of asceticism in this life because we believe we will be richly rewarded in another, and if we’re living in a capitalist system (who isn’t?), we embrace a sort of asceticism in spending time doing productive labour. In both cases we in a way give up “present time” in the hope of enjoying a better “future time”.
The author claims that both religion and capitalism are bad for us (and therefore must be overthrown for better systems) because they hamper our possibilities of enjoying life in the moment (and he believes there is no other life). He also questions whether “eternity” or some such realm if it were even to exist, if it is even worth pursuing as a sort of never-ending inert constant state of being? His point is that life or living or experience itself becomes much richer if we believe that all we have is our time here on earth. Because we only have a short time available to us to experience the world and its many pleasures, it becomes that much more precious and brings a certain urgency or poignancy or sublimity or even meaning to our earthly experience. Our sole aim then is to maximise our time, or in other words, to spend the time we have (“only time” we have rather) in the way that makes us most happy…which is difficult if we’re slaving at a job most of the time or putting constraints on ourselves in terms of how we spend our time.
I cannot say that I completely agree. I am not sure if replacing a belief in God and eternity with the idea that all we have is what we have on earth is a good idea for the vast majority of the population. There are people of course who do not need to believe in God and an afterlife and a reward for good acts in the next life to actually lead a moral and ethically conscious life. But, I cannot pretend to be confident that most people fall into this category. In any case, for most people, if believing in something larger, something higher, and something beyond this world helps make sense of their experiences, and acts as a motivation to live out their earthly time in a morally conscious manner, why is that a bad thing?
Also, many people may prefer to believe in an afterlife or something better than this world because this world doesn’t offer them much to begin with. If I were born in a rich family and did not have to succumb my time to a not-so-pleasant job or if I was born with all my faculties so that I could do everything that every normal person could do or if I were born in a country that offered me better opportunities than say a warn-torn region… in short, if I had the best chances for living my time in the best way in this world itself, I would probably not care so much whether the next world existed or not…and it wouldn’t matter to me either way. I also feel that if I were to tell people who have few if any chances at all of living a good life that this is all they have and they must still strive to be good people… because… well, just because …or so that other people who were privileged to have been born with the best chances for a good life could have them… I am not sure if that would not be a rather cruel if not an ineffective argument lacking any sort of motivational bite? I might be accused of being equally cruel if I say that it is better that they have a false reason to put on their best behaviour even if they aren’t living their own best lives… in the shape of hope that a better life awaits them if only they remained patient and good. But, if it helps them make their lives practically bearable, why should we disabuse them of this notion? I also don’t think that this way of thinking should necessarily lead them to live a less engaged life; in fact, it might make them live life with some joy too because they are hopeful instead of bitter and may also have come to terms with their current condition in the “larger” scheme of things.
I agree with the author in the ideal that we need to be able to maximise our free time or have freedom over our own time and how we utilise it. However, we no longer simply read or walk or have conversations or contemplate nature or ideas in our free time… instead we shop, eat out, travel, and so on. In this sense, how would breaking down the capitalist system help us maximise our free time or allow us to enjoy it the way we want to if our very definition of free time or enjoyment of free time in modern times hinges on the smooth functioning of a well-oiled capitalistic engine. Wouldn’t that amount to wanting to have our cake and eat it too?
 

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 10:46 pm 2 comments
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