Hamlet is a play written by Shakespeare, in which the title
character is indecisive, unsure, hesitant, tentative…
the question arises as to why. Why was Hamlet so indecisive?
The ghost of his father has demanded that Hamlet kill the current
king, the killer of Hamlet’s father… This act of retribution, of equalizing
the scales of justice because Hamlet is the only one who can act in
this manner… the source of Hamlet’s indecision lies in the committing
the act of murder… even, even if it is for a “just” cause, as one is demanding
justice for the act of murder by committing another murder…
the “higher” force of the ghost of Hamlet’s father vs the laws
and “Morals” of a people… god in the bible writes:
'“thou shall not kill”… the law of the land is quite clear, “thou shall
not kill” and yet, Hamlet is torn between seeking revenge for his father
and the “laws” of the land, either man’s law or god’s law…
this conflict between two ideals of justice, causes Hamlet his indecision…
that there should be justice for the death of his father, and that
to fulfill that justice requires one to violate both god’s laws and man’s laws…
which law is Hamlet to engage with? But for me, the more interesting
question lies in the fact that few if any today, have Hamlet decision
to make, between obeying one set of law or obeying another set of laws…
to sets of laws that are in conflict… how do we decide which sets of law
do we follow? You have the law of the state… and you have the metaphysical
law of god… how does one reconcile those two laws? but it seems to me to be
a third set of laws we must engage with… the inner laws of our heart, mind
and soul… we are not empty vessels, soulless creatures that lack any ability
to establish our own laws and set of rules…
the law of today, requires me to hold profits as a higher standard
then people’s live…we hold to property right as being of a higher
nature then people’s lives… kill a person and you might get time in
jail… damage a person’s/ or a corporation property and you are guarantee
time in jail…so which set of laws do we practice? we exist in a world where
property rights, which include money/profits hold a higher place, a higher
standard then human lives or human values… this is known
as nihilism, the denial of human lives/values for the pursuit of material
goods including money…
does this conflict between human values and the values of the society, the
state/ the corporation, cause you some indecision?
if not, why not?
my job as checker in a grocery store demands that I follow the
corporate nihilism and put money/profits before human lives…
and I am conflicted…as one who is forced to deny my own understanding
of what it means to be human to follow/engage with the corporate
demand of profits before human beings…and if I fail to follow
the corporate demands of negation of other human beings?
I am fired… as I have no other value to the corporation other than the creation
of profits… my own society demands that I play but three roles,
consumer, worker, producer in pursuit of material goods including wealth…
but what of the person who isn’t interested in performing one of those
three roles, worker, consumer, producer…and the pursuit of the
traditional objects of wealth, titles, fame…
where do they fit into our materialistic society?
Like Hamlet, they are stuck between two competing obligations, and how are we to
reconcile those two competing visions of what it means to be human?
one vision is man as Homo Economicus, where human beings are what
create, build, produce and consume, economically… and the second vision
is of human beings striving for who they are in seeking their possibilities
of being human…going from animal to animal/human to finally becoming
fully human…where we seek the values that define us, be those values
of peace or love or justice or hope…in our modern world ‘‘our’’
values are indoctrinated into us…in the values of nationality, white power,
of god, of race… the search to become human lies in us overcoming
our childhood indoctrinations and arriving at values that are us, truly us…
hence the Hamlet conflict of doing what we hold to be true and right,
and not what values we were indoctrinated with…
The indoctrination that we can best serve the society, the state, the
culture by being economic beings… who consume, who work, who
produce…our value as human beings isn’t in our economic production,
in the creation of profits…but in our understanding of what it means to
be human…to seek the possibilities inherent within us, for me,
Kropotkin to seek my possibility of becoming the best philosopher I
can become, regardless of the economic implications…or even because
of what it might do economically…we just what is right by other values instead
of the wealth it increases or decreases…
the question of Hamlet isn’t about his indecision, but why aren’t more of us like
Hamlet? Faced with competing goals and understanding of what it means to be
human, how else can we face it outside of indecision and internal debate…
what path is the right path and why? do we follow society/the state/the culture
and see what it means to be human as Homo Economicus or do we see human
being as something greater than just economic beings?
Kropotkin