The enlightened person flees. He revolts. But he dodges a fight that sooner or later he always has to face: the fight against the absurdity of life. That is the feeling of permanent lostness, permanent homelessness. The past, childhood, the sheltered home – all that is gone. It does not come back. The future, on the other hand, presents itself as an uncertain something that reduces hope to a farce. To hope is to soothe oneself with wishful thinking, to lull oneself into a sense of security, to surrender to a drug.
The enlightened person flees. He revolts. But he dodges a fight that sooner or later he always has to face: the fight against the absurdity of life. That is the feeling of permanent lostness, permanent homelessness. The past, childhood, the sheltered home – all that is gone. It does not come back. The future, on the other hand, presents itself as an uncertain something that reduces hope to a farce. To hope is to soothe oneself with wishful thinking, to lull oneself into a sense of security, to surrender to a drug.
For an enlightened person, today has become a cold and harsh present: it is about the meaning of and in one’s own life. It is about fear, fear of the inescapable freedom of the self, which one often feels as nothing more than lostness. Meaning in one’s own life is a hopeless search. That is the consciousness of an enlightened person. An irreversible process: the path to bliss is blocked once one’s own mind enters into contradiction with simple being – once it steps into the light. Unlike a plant, unlike an animal, the human being is burdened with an ambivalent relationship to the world, with accepting that he alone is responsible for himself and his actions.
No one tells us how we ought to act. We may know how we can act. Many pray to a supposedly rational power, others put events down to Ananke – fate – and reduce their decisions to the vegetative minimum. These are not enlightened people but fearful ones. “He who does not know how to put his will into things at least still puts a meaning into them – the principle of belief”, as Nietzsche put it.
In fact, only faith helps us keep calm. Religion is not always involved. Ideology is nothing else either – a collective figment of the imagination. We’ve been there before. Today, in the 21st century, we find ourselves in a new kind of faith: that science and technology will save us from a bleak future. Or we simply don’t think so much about the future any more, because today has become so comfortable that we count on a tomorrow in the same rut. Science, so we believe, will help us out of every misery. We have given things a name, categorised them, and we command the elements. That takes away our fear of these things. This frenzy is so overwrought that we think we rule the world and its elements. On the one hand, animals are no longer dangerous to us now that we have effective weapons; people are not dangerous to us because they are (supposedly) civilised and we have given ourselves rights – a kind of social contract. Diseases will be conquered sooner or later – with pure scientific logic, so we believe. The weather is laid out a week in advance, which easily tempts us into believing we have it under control as well.
Interesting and at the same time defiant – sobering is the fact that enlightened people with enough hard-boiled nerve use their own enlightenment as a calculation and leave everyone else to their belief in freedom, religion, ideology etc. Those who preach water can only afford their wine at the expense of others. That is cynicism.
The illusion of an intact world, in which catastrophes at least do not arrive without advance warning, lets the unenlightened sleep soundly today. Hurricanes, floods and famines are only shocking to the “first world” when they hit people of the “first world” themselves. School shootings in which five or fifteen people die shock us more than the 3000 children who die of hunger in the Third World every day. We have little in common – “that’s just how it is over there”. This illusion turns into perversion – especially when we can buy ourselves free of our bad conscience with indulgence payments (also known as donations).
My generation flees. My generation is enlightened – and jaded with it. It is cynical, and it loathes institutions. At least that goes for a good many of my friends. But this generation is mistaken in thinking it can flee from enlightenment. Its mind will not find the meaning it is looking for in any place in the world. The absurdity of life follows the individual, along with his mind.
Oh, and: paradoxically, we are not even fleeing from enlightenment, we feel like the enlightened ones. Because we can pass judgement on historical facts and recognise the patterns of eternal recurrence. In fact, though, we are being used – or why else are we – despite our university degrees – poor cynical swine?
For an enlightened person, today has become a cold and harsh present: it is about the meaning of and in one’s own life. It is about fear, fear of the inescapable freedom of the self, which one often feels as nothing more than lostness. Meaning in one’s own life is a hopeless search. That is the consciousness of an enlightened person. An irreversible process: the path to bliss is blocked once one’s own mind enters into contradiction with simple being – once it steps into the light. Unlike a plant, unlike an animal, the human being is burdened with an ambivalent relationship to the world, with accepting that he alone is responsible for himself and his actions.
No one tells us how we ought to act. We may know how we can act. Many pray to a supposedly rational power, others put events down to Ananke – fate – and reduce their decisions to the vegetative minimum. These are not enlightened people but fearful ones. “He who does not know how to put his will into things at least still puts a meaning into them – the principle of belief”, as Nietzsche put it.
In fact, only faith helps us keep calm. Religion is not always involved. Ideology is nothing else either – a collective figment of the imagination. We’ve been there before. Today, in the 21st century, we find ourselves in a new kind of faith: that science and technology will save us from a bleak future. Or we simply don’t think so much about the future any more, because today has become so comfortable that we count on a tomorrow in the same rut. Science, so we believe, will help us out of every misery. We have given things a name, categorised them, and we command the elements. That takes away our fear of these things. This frenzy is so overwrought that we think we rule the world and its elements. On the one hand, animals are no longer dangerous to us now that we have effective weapons; people are not dangerous to us because they are (supposedly) civilised and we have given ourselves rights – a kind of social contract. Diseases will be conquered sooner or later – with pure scientific logic, so we believe. The weather is laid out a week in advance, which easily tempts us into believing we have it under control as well.
Interesting and at the same time defiant – sobering is the fact that enlightened people with enough hard-boiled nerve use their own enlightenment as a calculation and leave everyone else to their belief in freedom, religion, ideology etc. Those who preach water can only afford their wine at the expense of others.
The illusion of an intact world, in which catastrophes at least do not arrive without advance warning, lets the unenlightened sleep soundly today. Hurricanes, floods and famines are only shocking to the “first world” when they hit people of the “first world” themselves. School shootings in which five or fifteen people die shock us more than the 3000 children who die of hunger in the Third World every day. We have little in common – “that’s just how it is over there”. This illusion turns into perversion – especially when we can buy ourselves free of our bad conscience with indulgence payments (also known as donations).
My generation flees. My generation is enlightened – and jaded with it. It is cynical, and it loathes institutions. At least that goes for a good many of my friends. But this generation is mistaken in thinking it can flee from enlightenment. Its mind will not find the meaning it is looking for in any place in the world. The absurdity of life follows the individual, along with his mind.
Oh, and: paradoxically, we are not even fleeing from enlightenment, we feel like the enlightened ones. Because we can pass judgement on historical facts and recognise the patterns of eternal recurrence. In fact, though, we are being used – or why else are we – despite our university degrees – poor cynical swine?
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