Modernity

May 7, 2009

A distinctly modern sentiment is a response of fear in the presence of doubt. One can thereafter submit to the doubt or rebel against it. Both achieve the end of lessening the disagreeable feeling of fear, the former through acceptance of the disagreeable phenomenon and the latter through rejection.

The expectation that one can know everything there is to know is juvenile. The great figures of modernity have, frequently, been juvenile.

Is it courage or cowardice to submit to what you fear?

Those who claim it is cowardice describe submission as willful forfeiture, voluntary defeat. Those who claim it is courage describe submission as willful forfeiture, voluntary defeat.

Cowards forfeit something that is already theirs.
Courageous people forfeit something they want but could never have.

Cowards lose a game they would have won.
Courageous people lose a game to win a greater one.

The modern sentiment wants control and feels itself powerful enough to take it. When you are the only resident in a vacuum, its easy to control everything--because there is nothing there. It is easy to be powerful when there is nothing to be confronted by.

By eviscerating reality, relieving it of everything that opposes the mind with finality, everything that outstrips human capacity, the modern sentiment steals victory.

A man watches a child's joy over winning a game of tic-tac-toe. The child thinks himself superlative in prowess; the man thinks the child superlative in self-satisfaction. What does it matter to win a game of tic-tac-toe against an opponent who is meanwhile putting you in checkmate?