We have had moralist and theologians and thinkers,
all voice their opinion about what is the “proper” life…
many have stated that the “proper” method of life is to abstain,
negate life and avoid the things that “god” opposes and that list is
a long one…dance and merriment and gambling and having joy
in something outside of god…this ascetic vision of life is common
and has been a common refrain since before, long before Jesus…
for example the Buddha has also called for the ascetic life…
both east and west have called for the “proper” goal of life
to be ascetic in nature… deny, negate, abolish everything that doesn’t
directly lead us to god…….that is one vision of the “proper” life…
the next vision of life is the aesthetic life… where we live life
aesthetically… Nietzsche felt this as has many thinkers have…
we don’t live life to worship god but to create beauty and that
beauty may or may not celebrate god… but it does create beauty…
and that beauty can be created by plays or poems or art or even in the
creation of one’s own life…….this creation comes out of the fullness that
one feels…… we overflow from the beauty and mystery and our engagement
with life, and in, in that overflow, we create and in that creation we create
the aesthetic life… where the act of creation is the important thing……
so we have two distinct and separate visions of “what we are suppose to do”
by no means are these the only vision of “what we are suppose to do” but
they are common themes…….
so let us look at the first, asceticism … the negation of anything that doesn’t
lead us to god…as I mentioned asceticism has a long, long history
within human history…this asceticism is generally religious in nature…
but if you know your history, you will see that the call for asceticism
from the religious generally hasn’t been answered…the “common”
human being may tighten their belt for a short time, but very quickly
the common person will return to their life and that life isn’t
about asceticism…but what I find most interesting is this,
we have heard for thousand of years what is the best course of
action for human beings, and for thousands of years, human beings
have simply ignored this call…and yet the moralist and the theologian
have continued over and over and over again to convince the average person to
reform their lives and the average person has simply said, no……….
and you can’t make me…………
if we have heard this call to reform our lives, our entire history of
human existence and yet we still can’t do so, this would suggest a couple
of things… one, this call for asceticism is simply an empty call done
by failures in life trying to drag everyone else down to their level…
the message itself is a non starter with human beings for whatever reason…
the other possibility, one of several, is that people just don’t want to hear
that message…it doesn’t resonate with people… it is not what “people” want
to hear or a message they will follow…
in communication, you have three aspects, the speaker, the listener
and the message… so, does the failure of people to head the call
of asceticism lie in the speaker, the listener or the message itself?
when we hear about Nietzsche and Kierkegaard calling for
people to live the aesthetic life, what do you hear?
to become who you are is an aesthetic mission……
this call for the aesthetic life is one that is relatively recent,
this call really first began during the years of Voltaire when
thinkers and philosophers began to see the aesthetic as
being real…
if I craft my life into a “beautiful” thing, that is the nature of
the aesthetic being put into practice………… do you practice
the “aesthetic” in any area of your life?
I listen to music every chance I get, my taste is rather catholic
in nature, I listen to jazz and classical and rock and alternative…
the types of music I can’t stand is rap, opera and country…
in my listening, I am attempting to create an aesthetic
balance in my life… I have no artistic ability of any kind…
I cannot paint or draw or carry a tune… so I must find my
artistic fix in the ability of others…………
as for my life itself, I have not tried to attempt to
create an “aesthetic life” for myself…
I have tried to create an philosophical life, but that leaves me
the question of, what exactly does a philosophical life consist of?
am I suppose to negate like the religious types demand or do I
create like the aesthetic demand?
or perhaps as always, a third path is required…… and even a fourth
path or even a fifth or sixth path is needed in our lives?
now some may suggest that I/we must engage in a
just or a freedom path…… we can pursue justice as a
goal in our lives or we pursue freedom or we pursue some third
path of honesty or integrity or Arete or some other value???
we can pursue love and many do exactly that or we can pursue
money or some material value…but this pursuit of the material
has been called out since the beginning of time by the moralist
and thinkers and theologians… as mentioned……
but if we look honestly at people’s life, they have been the ones
who have pursued the material life… not the thinkers or moralist
or theologians, the average/common person has been engaged in
this pursuit of the material life since the beginning of the modern era,
since the French revolution………the rise of the middle class, the bourgeois
has driven the materialistic culture for over 200 years……
so where does all this lead me? I have absolutely no idea……
sometimes all we have is questions…
Kropotkin