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
Friday, January 31, 2020
 

I have started dabbling a lot more with sociology since going the academic way. I always had an interest in philosophy—might be interesting to think about how that came about—but it is only now that I have started thinking more about phenomena at an earthy plane or physical level rather than on an abstract or metaphysical level. Not to say that my interest in philosophy is in any way diminished at all, quite the contrary actually. Even in sociology I am drawn to authors who take something of a philosophical or idealistic perspective.
I was reading a bit of Marx the other day. It made me think about the nature of work especially since I have worked in the corporate setup for a number of years and over the years I realised that I needed to do something else with my life. I couldn’t really put my finger on what about it dissatisfied me really… I mean it wasn’t that I couldn’t see my contribution or that I wasn’t allowed to make decisions or that I was not valued or that I did not enjoy certain aspects or that I wasn’t getting a good pay or that I couldn’t have some work-life balance… for a lot of people it might be these things and fixing these rather practical things but for me there was just a sense of restless angst… when the alarm rang in the mornings I just couldn’t see the point of waking up and dragging myself to do what I typically did at work…. There was this sense of my work lacking meaning in the larger scheme of things… a sense of not fulfilling my potential though I couldn’t say what this ‘potential’ was… I couldn’t see what I was contributing to in a larger rather than instrumental sense… If I looked back on life I couldn’t really say what was the purpose of it all… though why I needed to have a purpose or whether human beings even have a purpose beyond actually living moment to moment, day to day, year to year, till they die I couldn’t say… most people at least seem to live a life whose purpose is to live itself or to do everything that makes this living a comfortable sensory experience … there doesn’t have to be a larger point to it or at least they don’t think about this point which makes it easier to do the day to day, year to year thing I guess… 
Marx’s view of how we are all in a sense slaves in a capitalist system except that some of us are better paid makes me think about my earlier angst in the work world. It’s as if we are no longer able to define the meaning of our lives because the very imperative to exist forces itself upon us, and there is no way to exist outside of giving ourselves up to it. All our thoughts, all our minds, all of our consciousness is directed to this question of existence which existence is not possible without opting into or buying into this system and once one has bought into this system, all of one’s consciousness is directed at surviving in it or making a success of it. We start defining the meaning of our lives by the successes or wins or accolades that the system provides us with an opportunity to earn never stopping to think if these are the successes or accolades that really matter to us or intrinsically have any value for us. It is as if we give up our time which is the same as giving up our life in exchange for life itself or subsistence or comfortable living which is paradoxical because the life we get in exchange is only to be given up. We cherish our weekends because that is perhaps the only time or life we have in between the time that we do elsewhere… our life is just made up of sleeping hours and weekends and not even that because we think about our day when we are asleep and we think about work on weekends… when do we have the time to think about the meaning or purpose of life and even if we could somehow muster up the time where is the ‘life’ to which we may shape a meaning or purpose? Our time or our life is not our own. In fact, it seems to me that time and life are the same or coextensive; your first breath is your first second and when you breathe your last, it is as if someone says, “Time’s up!” 
The following extract from a speech by Bill Watterson, known for his Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, broods on similar lines… 
“Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you’re really buying into someone else’s system of values, rules and rewards… Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success… You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. …To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.”

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:14 am 0 comments
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