So…What’s the @&#*!! Point?

This article appeared in the April 16 issue

 

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

Karl Marx, 1845

 

Maybe I’m not so idealistic.  Maybe you’ve each in your own way reached the same conclusions regarding love and fear and happiness and living your life, blahblahblah.  In some imaginary conversation where I’m drawn to ranting, you choose to unflinchingly agree with it all.  “Yes, of course, and yes, yes, yes, I’ll grant you everything you’re saying.  Soooo…”  (why do I think you sound exasperated?) “…what’s the fucking point?”

 

The question bloats personally and collectively, ripe with context:  given said accumulated answers and some grand agreement to those answers…what would you intend any of us to do?  More importantly(?), can it move from intent to execution?  Perhaps MOST importantly, why hasn’t it already?  Why hasn’t it worked before, and how are you convinced it can?  You’ll need that convincing for the execution part, you know…

 

Wait, before you answer that…it doesn’t matter.  You already know the answer.  You can already hear me fervently explaining my genuine belief and need to explore and talk about it all, and blahblahblah.  You might already understand and empathize, perhaps even share some common beliefs and to some extent appreciate the effort.  The salient point comes from combining the individual answer’s relevance with the growing, immanent question:

 

The gap between, say, Plato or Nietzche and the average human is greater than the gap between the chimpanzee and the average human.  The realm of the real spirit, the true artist, the saint, the philosopher, is rarely achieved.  Why so few?  Why is world history and evolution not stories of progress but rather this endless and futile addition of zeroes?  No greater values have developed.  Hell, the Greeks 3,000 years ago were just as advanced as we are.  So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential?  The answer to that can be found in another question and that’s this:  Which is the most universal human characteristic – fear or laziness?

Louis Mackey, 2001

 

Each day…untold numbers suffer and die from fear (hate, greed avarice, evil), moving the answer further away; we elect to take no necessary actions to evolve our ideas and halt this maddening march.

 

Each day…our personalized version grows in hypocrisy; we do what we wish and make no necessary sacrifices, leaving ourselves only to witness to our collective willful disregard.

 

All the quotes are out there.  All the clichés, all the epiphanies, all the simple truths are – now, thanks to technology – right at our fingertips.  Pick an elevated person and the language of their perspective can be laid before your virtual feet.  Can’t you help but wonder, just a little bit, though, how all this has been realized and been said and has been available since first captured…and yet somehow remains so brazenly ignored?  I mean, Jesus Christ!

 

Good example – he had some nice ideas.  2000 years later and all we’ve managed is to fuck the whole thing up, some convinced it was with his blessing (something of a “day one” irony).  A thousand years before that the Greeks were talking to each other about utopian societies and philosopher kings and beauty and justice.  Eastern philosophy has had this all down for just as long (if not longer), and yet for all our possibilities we’re dumbfounded at our own ridiculous hopelessness.

 

As we continue our unfettered proliferation (population control being the biggest and toughest nut to crack), we expand the difference between our greatest potential and the lowest common denominator of our stupidity.  The bulge of our bell curve swells – the part that has us perceived as a virus – and a larger percentage of our “best and brightest” elect to serve their individual best interests instead of the greater good.  The challenge to ascend past our animalistic instincts steepens as we continue to hold aloft our individual rights, ignoring how our fears drive our choices and foment our “Me first!” attitude.  Some portion may achieve enlightenment, but without the critical mass that might overcome our collective vices such enlightenment dilutes to wishful thinking and self-preservation.  This raises “What can I do?” to even greater relief.

 

An answer – perhaps even the answer, if one might be so bold – can be found first in faith; faith that we can somehow persevere, get out of our own way and let our greatest virtues triumph.  It appears that this can only happen one person at a time.  As much as your individual challenges and fears beset you, as much as your efforts towards love and service to others might seem anomalous and lacking in similar efforts from others, our best chance still lies with each person internally overcoming those obstacles and doing with love, compassion, and moving ever further from fearful living.

 

I’m afraid we’re losing the real virtues of living life passionately, the sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feeling good about life…the more that you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented or marginalized, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. When [existentialist Jean-Paul] Sartre talks about responsibility, he’s not talking about something abstract. He’s not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It’s something very concrete. It’s you and me talking. Making decisions. Doing things and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It’s always our decision who we are.

Robert Solomon, 2001

 

Louis Mackey & Robert Solomon quoted from the 2001 film Waking Life.
Karl Marx quoted before we could film him.