In thinking about the relationship between my chosen
path, which is Philosophy, and myself, I am often left
to wonder at what am I missing?
Of philosophy, I look at ancient Philosophy,
and I see the various schools of philosophy,
Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Epicureanism,
Cynicism and Skepticism…and in the East,
I see Confucianism, Taoism and the Indian philosophical
schools, Nyaya, Vedanta, Buddhism and Jainism…
But in reading these many schools of thought, none
appeal to me…exactly the same way that the modern
schools don’t appeal to me, with one exception…
and that is existentialism … and why does existentialism
appeal to me? Because it investigates areas of life
that other schools pass by… it investigates areas ignored
by philosophy… like love, and the magic of music, the need for
beauty in our lives, and the very unphilosophical opinion
that perhaps, we don’t need to justify our existence in life…
It might be enough for us to live and love and become
dreams in our pursuit of beauty and ART…
It might be enough for us to just be, entranced by what
beauty and hope does exists in our lives…
Just as surely, we need to examine and explore our world and
its treasures, we also need to examine, with the same intensity,
the inner world of the soul and beauty and ART…
We are unfulfilled as human beings today, the malaise that
entered our world when we abandoned beauty and the soul,
in return for the trinkets of existence… our world is empty
because we pray to empty values like money, titles, material goods,
power and fame…to pray to those values are empty because
they are not inside of us, they are external values that bring us nothing
useful into our lives…
To create, such as ART and love, is to approach what it really means
to be human… and to those who pray to metaphysical beings,
they too are no different than praying to money or property,
it is empty calories that fill our soul when we pray to the
trinkets of existence… perhaps it is enough for us to
just accept that we are not complete as human beings until
we hold to the truth of the soul, that our lives is more than
money or cars or material possessions… the cry, the human
cry is for the emptiness that has descended into our souls…
and why are we so empty?
Because we have walked away from the real mysteries in life,
the act of creation, the finding of love, how do we fill our souls?
to those who say, I am full and complete and whole, I say,
have you examined your soul?
the existence of human life is about the incomplete,
the part, the missing side of being human…
we are not complete because that is impossible…
the entire human mission is a pursuit of the part,
the diverse elements of the whole being is not there
and it has never been there… we are incomplete because
that is all human beings can ever be…fragmentary, insufficient,
fractional, imperfect, lacking… there is no magic bullet that
will make us human beings complete and whole…
and we can never become whole and complete until we
seek out the other side of being human, which is seeking out
love, mystery, beauty and ART… the quest is not to fill the body,
but to fill the soul… and we cannot look to any metaphysical
objects to fill our soul, for finding god is still just holding onto
the part, the fractional, the lacking… and until we make love
and beauty as important as logic and rationality, we will remain
partial and incomplete…
Life is an equation… and for both sides of the equation to match,
become equal, we must have the correct numbers on both
sides of the equation… so, it looks something like this:
Rational, logic, philosophy = love, beauty, ART…
and until we balance the equation, we shall remain
half, partial, unbalanced… fit only for the malaise that
has infected the society since the Industrial Revolution…
for there we lost the balance that makes life worth living,
that we only live to be workers, producers and consumers…
and the equation is lost…
Kropotkin
