Archive for November, 2008
A farewell to nonage
I’m not quite sure what I want to write, but I feel I should make some sort of post this night before my eighteenth birthday. As I type this I have roughly five hours until this collection of cells other collections of cells like to refer to as Sean will have been around for eighteen years, the age at which this reasonably liberal society decides that one becomes responsible for oneself and one’s own life, when some rights end and others begin. What will I have achieved in that time? I’ve been fantastically lucky to have been born into the rich western world. I’ve had every opportunity slung at me by enthusiastic family members, I’ve had a pretty good education, and I’m supposed to be planning for a successful career in the eyes of this utilitarian society. I seem to have set myself up as someone who questions and questions and never stops, occasionally suggesting an answer to the mix, and I am proud of the fact that I don’t let myself be influenced quite so heavily as others can be by social tyranny and confirmity. I try to improve things around this plane of existence where I can. In the end I may only be another human and I may be immensely insignificant in the eyes of eternity, but at least I can pretend otherwise and write away on this blog as if I am penning an epic tale.
But this is the point. There have been a thousand eighteenth birthdays like mine, there have surely been equally as many who will have realised this and thought themselves to be philosophically superior. As Charlie says in my favourite passage of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, his friends sitting in a cafe arguing over some issue are merely replaying a conversation had a thousand times before by similar groups. There is precious little originality, and there is precious little variety left in our lives. We laugh at the same jokes and we slot ourselves into the moulds available in society: our education systems turn out doctors and lawyers and managers who then pick from a similar choice of family circumstances. And then we lose our fervour, and become dull and routine, never changing as we plod away at the lives we have chosen. It is oft said that the young are idealistic and unsettled, and that we have ridiculous, ignorant ideas of how we want to shape the world. But this is something we must keep. If everyone just does something that’s gone before and occasionally something new is thought up, why bother? If we settle for what is practical and easy and we don’t instead try our hardest to bring variety and difference and change then you might as well collapse all generations into one and stamp a historical label upon them all as a era of repitition.
The above is probably full of fallacies and I’m sure I’m a hypocrite in so many ways here. If what we have right now isn’t good enough, and never will be according to this model, what is it that we are trying to reach? Why have variety if actually it doesn’t turn out to be very much different for individuals? Maybe by sticking with a routine and what one has one has merely reached the ideal situation. And maybe it is all irrelevent anyway as we all die, and it all ends. Maybe instead of worrying about trying to strike out we should try to achieve that fabled balance between the extremes of progress and conservation, and be satisfied in the knowledge that we’re never likely to divine some sort of eternal meaning, but trying makes us understand things better.
The above is what goes round and round in my head on a day to day basis. When I see a tired looking worker on the bus or a bored school pupil, when I see a stereotypical student or teenager or toddler just going through their lives, I consider these issues. I’m not going to try to pick a side here on the question of what the answer is here. All I would like to hope and set as a goal is that I keep thinking. If we ever put aside questions as unanswerable, there isn’t much point in having the questions at all. And in this again I’m just another would-be philosopher who likes to play around with questions, just someone else who secretly thinks themselves better for doing so, but knows they’re really not. So I’ll keep trying to be original and new, and I know I’ll never likely be happy with how that comes out, and I’ll never be satisfied with the quest. But a life with no certainty and permenance and purpose is infinitely better than one of false surety and contentment. There has to be something more than mere happiness. I suspect I’ll always hold that belief.
I won’t be any different tomorrow morning, but this was worth saying, even if it was a bit garbled and unclear – but that’s sort of the point. Good night.
Real history
Today history will be made, today the world will be changed for better or worse. Today, the most powerful country in a world that divides itself such camps based on concepts of so-called ‘national identity’, culture and even race will decide who it wants as its leader, who it chooses to place in what is probably the most powerful job on the planet. It’s been a fantastically vibrant and involved election. The turnout is predicted to be very high, and there are so many factors involved even today no-one really knows which way it will go. I certainly have no idea. Obama has captured a massive chunk of a conservative nation’s favour through his fantastic oratory. The polls all predict a win. Yet McCain has bounced back again and again, and there is nothing to suggest he won’t manage that again. Both sides have things holding them back. The world is dissatisfied with Bush’s Republican run of the presidency, but Barack Obama faces the question of his race. If America finds itself capable of putting aside the simple colour of his skin, and his unusual name, humanity will have shown itself capable of moving a pretty significant step closer to the end of simple and unreasonable prejudices. If Americans can put aside their tribalistic drives for what is the most important job in the world, even if it is less important than it once was, then the presidency itself will have massive potential for change. America’s credibility as a voice on the world stage that isn’t there purely due to economic might will be enhanced. Racism will seem old-fashioned, and the race-blind young as they are called will flourish and old prejudices will wither and die.
Our world isn’t in fantastic shape at the moment. As in the fifties when the Cold War was at its nuclear peak, we feel afraid of external threats, but from within we also face massive problems. Warzones only get worse across the world: the Congo has recently erupted into full-scale battle; the Middle East is as violent as usual and no-one seems to have any solutions. Nuclear weapons and other such terrors remain stockpiled, and the West hypocritically demands that smaller states cease their quest for them, raising backs more than anything else. In so-called civilised nations, utilitarianism returns to make torture and abuse of human rights morally acceptable as a salve for the fear that grips the countries, once bastions of human rights and civil liberties, that have now sunk into depravity in the name of a little temporary security. And from within consumerism and rampart capitalism maintains the expectancy of the impossibility that is infinite growth, of always getting more for less. Community collapses, education becomes entirely based around capital in one’s later life, and people lose sight of the greatness that humanity can achieve through thought, consideration and generosity to others, rather than a selfish desire to smother pains with ignorance and material goods. And then, on top of all of this, the human race faces extinction from climate change, or from wars against each other over dwindling natural resources. With our free market situation it seems to me that it’ll only become economical to do something about this threat when it’s already too late – at least for some, if not all, of us.
But despite these problems we still have one resource that is so very important and so very powerful. We have people. People might be selfish and uncaring, but they can also show incredible altruism, respect and thoughtfulness. Humans have already achieved so much more than solving the above list of grievances. We’ve constructed ideas and fields of science and technology from a primitive existence in caves and forests. We have thought our way outside of ourselves and outside the confines of this doubtable empirical world, and we’ve struggled for truth in the battlefield of ideas. If we can vote in Obama, if we can show that we’re more than mere nature and biology would define us as, then we’re making the first step onto a path to better things. Come on America. Let us remember this day in history with pride.