Hello everyone!
I am new to this forum. I have always been interested in philosophy and I even have the intentions to study it in school, but I have hit a wall of sorts. I was wondering if any of you may have dealt with or are currently dealing with a similar situation to mine? So… I finished reading the Bhagavad Gita a couple months ago, and came out of the whole experience inspired and aware. One of my favorite topics was the detachment of work, which I absolutely loved… I’m a big… big Emerson fan and what he wrote on the subject was easily relatable. So I am indifferent to the task that I am doing as long as I do it with the mentality of divine presents… So I’m now happy and proud in whatever activity It is that I am doing… okay… I am there on this… but now it seems that because I am indifferent… I do nothing, and I am content. I have no creative inspiration because it all seems to be some ego trip… or the end only serves the purpose of boosting my material existence or other’s perception of me. I have found that in my personal life, I am consistently disappointing those that expect me to be great… whatever that is! and I cant seem to conjure any real creative inspiration that doesn’t seem forced or manipulated. Most of the time I sit around and start things but I NEVER finish them because they seem pointless, why add to the ridiculous amount of needless shit that minds of man has already composed? It seems that everything new is only just something old… just simplified and cleverly packaged… So what is the point? I feel that this level of awareness has hindered my ability to operate “normally” within society. I’m neither happy or depressed. I’m indifferent. Anyone have anything that may get the ol’ creative juices flowing, or is this the end? I am thinking great complex thoughts in the moment, but they never translate into actual language… so I write and then I stop and say what is the point… kinda like what I’m thinking now about this post… I may have been a monk in my past life, and modern obligations have me feeling strange. And to set the record compleatly straight… I am happy… I am content… but the world wont let me be these things easily… with out cooperating and contributing. haha. Help?
Read Alexander Kojeve.
He’s a 20th century Hegelian philosopher who incorporates Heidegger’s Dasien into a theory of man’s creative capabilities. Through the antithesis of a proposed thesis–through the dialectic–man overcomes the given (natural, social, traditional) world, and if man is able to effectively negate the given then one has created something that has never been, a new given. This new given will alter man in relation to it and will alter the world which will now operate in relation to it. And this is done best through work.
I’ll write a more in depth response to this when I come back, tommorow or the day after. Sorry, just a bit late, someone’s waiting for me. And welcome to the forums.
Try the ganj
The philosopher must always be a man of leisure. ( I haven’t read much Emerson since college, well over 30 years ago (( we smoked pot before that morning class ((( nice first post noob))).
Going high into the mountains, one expects to get light-headed. The brief circus act of judging yourself from on high brings with it a classic euphoria (“awareness”, “enlightenment”), in reality justified by nothing whatsoever.
What is that “paralytic humour”, if not a new trapping of the ego? Now “enlightened”, it’s even more effective at sapping your energies; witness how you are back to the first chapter of the Gita, in which Arjuna is very similarly paralyzed! That sensation of one’s rightful work being beneath one. Look there - and clarify the situation for yourself.
-WL