| Emily's Half-Wit Philospohy vs. Things Like Freedom. |
[Feb. 20th, 2007|08:01 pm] |
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Firstly, when I write, I don't write these neat, seven-paragraph, well organized well supported well thought out pieces of shit I'm required to turn in for my English classes. I think all that meticulous planning takes away from the beauty of spontaneity that comes with an argument one merely thinks up on their own, and supports without factual evidence.
In French class, about a month ago, we started reading this children's book. Le Petit Prince, written by Antoine St. Exupery circa the early 1940s. Beautiful, simple text. One should take it upon themselves to become familiar with a book like this, which so effortlessly confronts the stereotypes and constant questions that come with human life in a society...and does so in a way that a young child might be able to grasp.
As much as I respect you and almost love you for your childish genius, Saint Ex, I'm afraid I disagree with you on several things.
"La liberte, c'est un question de discipline".
Freedom is a question of discipline.
I'm afraid that I disagree. Freedom comes not with hard work, but simply with the abandonment of everything to which you owe a responsibility. Freedom is when you are guiltless to all of the ties you've severed. When you're completely alone. When you owe no one but yourself anything at all.
Freedom is the most utterly selfish act that a person can commit...and one of the most beautiful.
Imagine, for a moment, if you will, a life where there is no one to serve but yourself. There is the argument, I suppose, that even then you are chained to caring for your personal welfare, but this is null, I believe. But picture, just you. You live alone. You support yourself in a way that completely disregards the well-being of others - emotionally or physically. You can steal, cheat, rape, fuck, lie...with no negative consequences. If that's how you choose to live.
Because when you get down to it, really, where do your morals come from? Where your need to be a 'good person'? Where your needs for domesticity? Your compelling urges to merely float along, following rules? Your want of good material things and money that you come about legitimately?
Who gets decide what's wrong and right? What is a 'good' person, really? Who needs a permanent home? Who decides that we have to follow rules? What good is money, anyway?
We live our lives serving others. We tell ourselves that this is a necessity. We need to bow down to our authority figures, in order to do what's best for ourselves. We need to have these plastic friends around us at all times, even if they don't really value us and spend all of their time bringing us down. We absolutely have to be held in high-esteem by our peers.
Whenever there is a person who puts their own personal needs ahead of those around them, they are labeled. Egotistical. Vain. Self-centered. Ego-centric.
But really, if you take a peek between the cracks of your tenderly molded opinions, you'll find that the only reason you call them out in such a way is because you are completely and irrevocably jealous. Why not me? You wonder. Why can't I just speak my mind like they can? Dress as provocatively or as interestingly as them? Hold everyone's attention like they can?
The most hated people in a society are the most free.
Those that are overlooked as 'sweet' and 'cute' and 'hard-working', they've lived in the proverbial chains for their entire lives.
I'm not saying everyone should tumble and collapse into complete anarchy, although it would be quite an entertaining chaos to explore. It's not that we should all go to the extreme self-servient being I've described above. I'm saying that people at their core are animals, controlled by some darker urges. We don't want to make love, we want to fuck. We don't want to live behind the systemized agony of a high paying desk job, we want the satisfaction of killing our own food and supporting ourselves in the most primitive of ways. Wooden houses are merely the grandiose substitutes of shacks in the forests that we've cut down. All the modern developments around us are the product of human greed, an inherently natural trait.
All I'm suggesting is that maybe, in order to be more free, we should all tap into that darker part of ourselves, that cess-pool of ancient urges and inclinations, wants and needs. Who needs this highly organized, regimented, ordered, one-must-try-their-best-to-impress-those-around-them society?
Impress yourself. Care for yourself. If you find someone you want to befriend or court, great, but do it because you want to, not because you pity them or feel like you have to be around them. Fuck this forced relationship bullshit.
If you don't like someone, you don't like someone. Be honest. If they're unattractive to you, don't tell them otherwise. You don't agree with their decisions or opinions, let 'em know.
Take a few minutes to contemplate the world more honest. Imagine all of the delicious conflict, the rifts between groups. All the people who would produce all of these thoughts and opinions that had never been voiced before. And yeah, there might be violence, but our history is nothing without conflict. Empires are built and they fall. People are murdered. Cultures collapse and fold under another. It's a natural process.
But we're here to experience. To be free. To live the lives we want and to grab every moment by the neck and squeeze until we get out of it all it has to give. Let's get back to some of this primitive naturality. Demolish some of these buildings.
For real, let's blow up the century city sky-line.
And after that, we can cultivate all of the plants and things we've fought so hard to destroy and suppress for the history of the modern world. We can make everything as anciently beautiful as it once was. We can return to the primitive.
So no, Saint-Ex. Discipline and hard work really bring us nothing but agony.
Feeding our primal instincts, this is real freedom. |
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