The human soul hungers. As a threshold between coming and going, what comes in forever goes out and vice versa. The whirlpool of thoughts and feelings that captures greatest intensity of this coming and going forever searches for greater fluidity; faith, understanding that allow incoming emotions, concepts and information to be processed and stored, reproduced and dispensed with in a manner that puts the soul at ease, rather than leaving it tortured.
Educated Europeans have the benefit of a structured exploration of the depths of the human soul. That is, they are exposed - through their education - to a holistic and historical understanding of how human knowledge - scientific, technical, metaphysical - was built, how turnkey concepts came into being, how contemporary axioms - those truths taken for granted by so many of us - came into being. How previous ideas came to be questioned, how new evidence was explored, how experiments were undertaken, debates engaged, new ideas were formulated.
This is all undertaken not just in the language and forum of science, but also in poetry and literature, both of which are required high school reading from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the Germans, Russians and French writers of more recent centuries. It is systematically read and discussed, taught by teachers who make it their passion. An understanding that this knowledge, this understanding, this nourishment of the soul is of vital importance permeates the classical European education. To produce balanced souls, balanced minds, balanced and responsible human beings, there must be must a digestion of the struggles of those humans that have paved the road upon which today's humans walk.
Americans are deprived such an education. They enter a complex world, replete with technologies and processes, demands on their being so little of which is understood by most, and explained to them by ever fewer. They struggle alone and in groups to make sense of it all, their minds corrupted by entities that feed on their ignorance and desperation by convincing them they are ill and should take medicine, or that they are uncomfortable because they don't have enough spending power and should therefore go into debt. Or that they are hungry for scintillating flavors and should exchange their labor and credit for heavily processed, unhealthy foods divorced from the millennia of evolutionary creation that produced
them.
There is of course Yoga and meditation, and these offer a path to liberation. Unfortunately, this path is unseen and unrecognized by far too many. But even Yoga and meditation do not fully prepare you to cope with the complexities of contemporary life in the "developed" world.
The German novelist Thomas Mann wrote in an essay that the philosopher Nietzsche went mad so that his readers wouldn't have to. That is, he put his struggles into words - struggles that directly faced the conflicts and contradictions in the center of the whirlpool of the human soul. What he wrote gave and gives comfort to his readers who recognize those struggles as their own. They find it easier, then, to say, "life is like this, there's nothing at all wrong with me, I can relax and continue to live."
But most Americans - unlike most educated Europeans - never read Nietzsche or Thomas Mann, never mind Aristophanes or Sophocles. Instead, they have been trained to follow the processes of the machines and the corporate administrations they serve and become hopelessly alienated in the process. This is ironic because it is just these machines and corporations that have relived them of so much burden.
But without balanced minds and souls to lead them, these machines and corporations enslave and destroy human lives rather than liberate them. So many problems facing human beings today are so clearly soluble. But the mechanical and corporate interests tied up in keeping things the way they are block the way. Ignorance and fear collude to stifle the innovations that offer the most promise.
I'm not pessimistic. Not entirely. My next entry will be filled with optimism,
Educated Europeans have the benefit of a structured exploration of the depths of the human soul. That is, they are exposed - through their education - to a holistic and historical understanding of how human knowledge - scientific, technical, metaphysical - was built, how turnkey concepts came into being, how contemporary axioms - those truths taken for granted by so many of us - came into being. How previous ideas came to be questioned, how new evidence was explored, how experiments were undertaken, debates engaged, new ideas were formulated.
This is all undertaken not just in the language and forum of science, but also in poetry and literature, both of which are required high school reading from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the Germans, Russians and French writers of more recent centuries. It is systematically read and discussed, taught by teachers who make it their passion. An understanding that this knowledge, this understanding, this nourishment of the soul is of vital importance permeates the classical European education. To produce balanced souls, balanced minds, balanced and responsible human beings, there must be must a digestion of the struggles of those humans that have paved the road upon which today's humans walk.
Americans are deprived such an education. They enter a complex world, replete with technologies and processes, demands on their being so little of which is understood by most, and explained to them by ever fewer. They struggle alone and in groups to make sense of it all, their minds corrupted by entities that feed on their ignorance and desperation by convincing them they are ill and should take medicine, or that they are uncomfortable because they don't have enough spending power and should therefore go into debt. Or that they are hungry for scintillating flavors and should exchange their labor and credit for heavily processed, unhealthy foods divorced from the millennia of evolutionary creation that produced
them.
There is of course Yoga and meditation, and these offer a path to liberation. Unfortunately, this path is unseen and unrecognized by far too many. But even Yoga and meditation do not fully prepare you to cope with the complexities of contemporary life in the "developed" world.
The German novelist Thomas Mann wrote in an essay that the philosopher Nietzsche went mad so that his readers wouldn't have to. That is, he put his struggles into words - struggles that directly faced the conflicts and contradictions in the center of the whirlpool of the human soul. What he wrote gave and gives comfort to his readers who recognize those struggles as their own. They find it easier, then, to say, "life is like this, there's nothing at all wrong with me, I can relax and continue to live."
But most Americans - unlike most educated Europeans - never read Nietzsche or Thomas Mann, never mind Aristophanes or Sophocles. Instead, they have been trained to follow the processes of the machines and the corporate administrations they serve and become hopelessly alienated in the process. This is ironic because it is just these machines and corporations that have relived them of so much burden.
But without balanced minds and souls to lead them, these machines and corporations enslave and destroy human lives rather than liberate them. So many problems facing human beings today are so clearly soluble. But the mechanical and corporate interests tied up in keeping things the way they are block the way. Ignorance and fear collude to stifle the innovations that offer the most promise.
I'm not pessimistic. Not entirely. My next entry will be filled with optimism,
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