There comes, on occasion, a time when you begin to question the validity of your existence. It’s not a question of ‘why am I here?’ but a question of whether or not I belong here. It is said that life needs purpose. It is said that existence is the reason to be (or did I just make that up?). Purposeful existence is an oxymoron of the greatest proportion. I exist, therefore I must be.
But what is it ‘to be?’ Science, aka knowledge, has deemed me human, a human being. Lewis Gordon states that European philosophy has taken the ‘human’ and replaced it with ‘white.’ I disagree. I believe that ‘science, aka knowledge’ has replaced Being with human. I exist, therefore I must Be. In Being, I have suffered. My personal suffering has been deemed by ‘science, aka knowledge’ as an individual thing attributable to the shortcomings of my ‘human’ existence. But if I take that suffering as a ‘human’ and transrelate it to Being, then it can no longer be individual. Being is not a human faculty, and it cannot be understood as ‘human’ for ‘human’ cannot create Being. You can be human in the scientific sense but you cannot ‘human being.’ Being is an act. ‘Human’ is a science created in the thought of Being. In science, you can be human; however, Being is not human for it is not of man. Suffering in Being is as universal as the air we breathe. Individual suffering is something we can ignore, explain and/or correct with counseling, drugs, hypnosis, withdrawal in the form alienation and seclusion. But suffering in Being means collective responsibility. For in Being, we all share in that. We are all Being. And in so doing, our Being is connected to that of others’ Being. But this is the primary source and reason of ‘science, aka knowledge.’ For if we deny Being, then we can also deny the collective suffering and make it individual. In denying the collective suffering of Being, we can pursue our individualistic ‘human’ drives. Comments are closed.
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AuthorJust being me. Archives
December 2016
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