Monday, May 30, 2011

I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on.

The answer to the seemingly-unanswerable questions I constantly find myself going back to seems very simple: To save the world of man, one has to become more than man.

Is the world really so gray as we seem to want to think? To chose a side makes one 'ignorant' and 'close minded' for denying other options. But to sit around and forever contemplate which action, if any, is truly "more valid" than another in an attempt to find one that would produce the desired, positive results without altering this very fragile system of "freedom" and "equally-valid" choice is absurd.

I wish I had the answers. I wish I had just an answer. To something. Anything. But every time I think I have one I find ten more unanswerable questions. And I find that one answer does not fit all. But what does that mean? That we are meant to go through life endlessly searching for non-existent solutions to problems of the human condition? I don't know the answer. But I refuse to accept this as a fact of our condition. I refuse to believe that we are meant to walk around this planet merely moving from one distraction to another, each in different direction, with no end in sigh to our plight as a rational being. How can reason exist in the world yet be used in such self-destructive ways? How do you affect true change in the world? How do you break the cycle of pain and ignorance that has existed since mankind's inception without having to resort to the tactics of the very system to do so?

But perhaps I've been refusing reality for too long now. Perhaps I am the one who is blind, not society. How do you reconcile the needs of the one, with the needs of the many? Much the same, how do you do it for desires? For dreams. Hopes. Aspirations. How do you create true understanding among beings seemingly incapable of such a thing? How do we transcend the limitations of language?

"I just want to know what blurs and what is clear to see."


I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes somebody great. For me personally...for society...from any perspective really. I desire greatness. I covet it. I covet the power it brings. Not the power to be recognizable as a celebrity, but rather the power to enact real change. To mold the world in the image I perceive as being most beneficial to it. But how selfish of me is this dream? Why should my desires and ideas be any more valid than another person's. At the same time, why should I, as an individual, even care about the opinions and desires of others. If I could be so lucky to make this dream a reality, then does that not simply speak to the extent of my skill and luck in relation to others who have less power?

How do you create a world with equal opportunity for all, yet with consequences for each action we take? And how different would this world really be from the one we currently live in? For all the talk of government totalitarianism, money-oriented class disparity, and education gaps, who is the real captor of our spirits? We are. Ultimately, I believe each choice we make is ours, and ours alone. Thought we may have a number of biological and environmental predispositions, ultimately, we are fully in control of our destiny.

And what of family? I think about my grandmother who is now in her seventies. She lives alone. No family anywhere near. Her two children are thousands of miles away with no way of visiting her. She is in bad health. When she gets sick, she has nobody to even bring her a cup of water to her bedside. And these kinds of thoughts seem to bring a glimmer of clarity. Perhaps I am just as lost as the masses I espouse these empty platitudes against. Though I ask of society why it is so polarized in one direction or the other, I myself am seemingly fixated on "fixing the world." But how polarized is this view? I know that I am no wiser or better than any other human being, philosophically speaking. But pragmatically, I can't help but see myself as such. But maybe this is not a bad thing.

I am only a man. I accept this. I accept the limitations of this condition. Yet I refuse to accept that this condition will remain in this state forever. I refuse to accept that I will never be greater than this.

I am awake. I am unburdened. I know who I am.