Increasingly, I find myself identifying with a quote from the film Watchmen:
"Things change...I'm 67 years old. Everyday the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, keep on getting brighter." - Silk Spectre
I don't need to be 67 years old to see the writing on the wall - my best days are behind me. At 37 without access to anything enchanting, meaningful or that I truly want, all I have to look forward to is a job that will sustain my survival needs until I become too decrepit to function and rely on others to prolong my life.
I don't regret the time I spent enjoying myself in my 20's. Rather, I regret the 10 years poured into trying to play the game of life that I felt I must achieve by struggling in jobs that never paid off and simply led me to seek a hermitic lifestyle.
Time waits for no man.
This man isn't going to wait for time.
Monday 5 March 2012
Saturday 25 February 2012
Leviathan Waning - On The Redundancy Of Hobbes
Perhaps the best known misquote of Hobbes is that life is "nasty, brutish and short". People usually fail however to take into account the context surrounding the quote. Hobbes was after all making a statement that without political community (we would refer to it as civil society) "the life of man, [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
All these things make great sense when looking at Cromwell's England in the late 1600s. One can even (with ample empirical evidence) extend the validity of Hobbes idea of social contract as far as the 1950s, for his philosophy on society was truly revolutionary.
I challenge the notion however that his theory holds in 21st century Australia.
I suggest that there are many people who live solitary, poor, nasty and brutish lives. I need only look to my own existence for evidence of it, despite living within a nation with the mechanical functions of a political community.
I live a hand to mouth existence, unable to escape my lowly station of base wage jobs and persue higher levels of Maslow's heirarchy despite my education and faux intellectualism. This has gone on now for a decade. 10 years on I am worse off than I was, for now I am no longer "graduate material" but a meaningless replaceable cog within a social heirarcy based on nepotism and networking. As I get older, it gets harder to escape this artifical limit that my political community has imposed on me.
So my hand to mouth existence dicatated by the civic society I live in forces me to live the very notions Hobbes was stating it freed me from.
The true horror of course is that Hobbes summation that life is short no longer holds validity. By this loss should I follow the neo-catholic schema placed within my society I will be bound to a solitary, poor, nasty and brutish existence for another 50 years, an idea that horrifies me as I slowly lose the ability to be viewed as anything but a drain on my political community as every year passes.
I don't want to be a prisoner anymore.
All these things make great sense when looking at Cromwell's England in the late 1600s. One can even (with ample empirical evidence) extend the validity of Hobbes idea of social contract as far as the 1950s, for his philosophy on society was truly revolutionary.
I challenge the notion however that his theory holds in 21st century Australia.
I suggest that there are many people who live solitary, poor, nasty and brutish lives. I need only look to my own existence for evidence of it, despite living within a nation with the mechanical functions of a political community.
I live a hand to mouth existence, unable to escape my lowly station of base wage jobs and persue higher levels of Maslow's heirarchy despite my education and faux intellectualism. This has gone on now for a decade. 10 years on I am worse off than I was, for now I am no longer "graduate material" but a meaningless replaceable cog within a social heirarcy based on nepotism and networking. As I get older, it gets harder to escape this artifical limit that my political community has imposed on me.
So my hand to mouth existence dicatated by the civic society I live in forces me to live the very notions Hobbes was stating it freed me from.
The true horror of course is that Hobbes summation that life is short no longer holds validity. By this loss should I follow the neo-catholic schema placed within my society I will be bound to a solitary, poor, nasty and brutish existence for another 50 years, an idea that horrifies me as I slowly lose the ability to be viewed as anything but a drain on my political community as every year passes.
I don't want to be a prisoner anymore.
Thursday 23 February 2012
That Was Not An Exit
So, what do you do when you take a wrong turn in life? Do you backtrack? Do you try to make the best of whats left? Do you sit in regret and do neither?
What if all three don't work. What if you know regret changes nothing and it is also too late to backtrack. But what is left is so unpalatable that each day tastes of what could have been if you took the path more travelled by - the path that Robert Frost told you not to?
What do you do then?
Do you continue to live in hope, that someday a chance will be given for your life to change into something wonderful? If so, how long do you wait? One year? Five years? Ten years? Ten years is a long time to hope. Too long to wait. So you make change, right? You try to change things around you to make things work.
What happens when that doesn't work?
Do you try to change your outlook on life, still hoping that you are somehow seeing things askew and that if you only adjust your way of seeing things that what were ashes will become roses? After all, there is always someone worse off than you right? There is always someone suffering in a way that you can't fathom.
Do you accept that your life could be worse and take comfort in the base of Maslow's hierarchy? You can eat while others are starving, you can sleep while others cannot, you are safe from harm while others are not. What if the idea of others worse off does not change your suffering? What if you find no solace in the suffering of others, finding this outlook a redundant masochistic type of schadenfreude?
Are you then selfish? Are you callous? Why can't you see past your own needs to the needs of others? What if the reason you are where you are - right now - is because you put the needs of others above yours in the first place.
What then?
What if all three don't work. What if you know regret changes nothing and it is also too late to backtrack. But what is left is so unpalatable that each day tastes of what could have been if you took the path more travelled by - the path that Robert Frost told you not to?
What do you do then?
Do you continue to live in hope, that someday a chance will be given for your life to change into something wonderful? If so, how long do you wait? One year? Five years? Ten years? Ten years is a long time to hope. Too long to wait. So you make change, right? You try to change things around you to make things work.
What happens when that doesn't work?
Do you try to change your outlook on life, still hoping that you are somehow seeing things askew and that if you only adjust your way of seeing things that what were ashes will become roses? After all, there is always someone worse off than you right? There is always someone suffering in a way that you can't fathom.
Do you accept that your life could be worse and take comfort in the base of Maslow's hierarchy? You can eat while others are starving, you can sleep while others cannot, you are safe from harm while others are not. What if the idea of others worse off does not change your suffering? What if you find no solace in the suffering of others, finding this outlook a redundant masochistic type of schadenfreude?
Are you then selfish? Are you callous? Why can't you see past your own needs to the needs of others? What if the reason you are where you are - right now - is because you put the needs of others above yours in the first place.
What then?
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