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Modern man is prone to destroy his own possibility of happiness by adopting a nihilistic framework of belief - that is, Man adopts a set of basic, metaphysical assumptions about reality, which makes-impossible anything more than momentary and unrelated 'incidents' of 'subjective' happiness.
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In contrast, we need to recognize that
1. We are not separate from reality, we personally are part of the whole manifestation of everything. What applies to reality, also applies to us as individuals.
2. We are not accidental. We are purposive; there is reason for things being the way they are, happening the way they do.
We are thus an intentional part of all the on-going schemes in the universe.
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We are also free agents within this scheme - we are each a source of causation, not just a passive consequence of other causes.
We are each an active part of a kaleidoscopically-evolving pattern.
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If we saw things aright, then the perception of synchronicity - that paradox of meaningful coincidence - would be normal, not exceptional. We would know it, not guess it: learn from it, not doubt it.
We would recognize that although life is a matter of problems; alienation and nihilism (subjective-isolation and meaningless-purposelessness) are neither of them real problems - they are modern pseudo-problems: implanted in us by a false, destructive, self-hating, self-annihilating impulse.
Having reduced modern man to despair, modernity then offers the palliatives of pleasure and self-forgetfulness via the mass media, self-medication and sex - that is, those momentary and unrelated 'incidents' of 'subjective' happiness we started-with.
If happiness is defined as subjective, and when happiness is momentary, and when each state of happiness is seen as detached from each other - neither linked in a pattern nor organized by a purpose - then happiness itself becomes a source of despair.
Which is the modern situation.
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You most probably already know all this, in your innermost true and real self - yet that real self is not in control; and instead the real you is being passively-carried from one state and situation to another, by a false personality self that was supposed to be a servant to your real self, but has ended up as master.
So now, your automatic responses to the world have become organized and linked-together to make a formidable obstacle to your real happiness. Something which is, and ought to seem easy - i.e. recognizing that we are apart of a purposeful reality - has come to seem absurd and impossible.
The simple act of recognition of the meaningfulness and purposefulness of all things and our intrinsic place in this scheme... this simple mental act has to work-against a net of linked illusions and the inertia of entrenched habit - it is so 'natural' to lapse back into the prevalent illusions of nihilism and alienation; and if you don't you will be seen as dumb/ crazy/ dangerous by those who are paralysed and passive.
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In the end, it is up-to-you and your-responsibility; only you - the real you - has the power to make the necessary decision to recognize and acknowledge your true situation.
You have the power both to recognize it or to deny it.
And the worst of all uses of this power is to deny-to-yourself that you-yourself have this power - but instead to pretend-to-yourself that you are merely a passive, contingent, sense-less, self-deluded, momentary spark in a void.
That is the ultimate in alienation and nihilism; and it is ultimately self-imposed.
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1 comment:
A wonderful sermon.
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