YOU AS A PERSON, YOU AS AN ARTIST

OVERCOMING

Stormy sky above Srebrenica, Bosnia 31 July 2022 photo: Robert Golden

THE SEARCH

From novels, poems and plays, the search for oneself seems for centuries to have been a profoundly difficult problem to resolve. And now, in this terrible post-covid period, with more austerity, growing debts, higher prices, poorly paid jobs, the greatest threat in 60 years of assured thermonuclear destruction, and if all that is not enough, the climate crisis and poor leadership together describe an uncertain world of narrowing options and perhaps a sense of world weariness, fatigue, and eventually nihilism*. For me, stealing the dreams and aspirations of youth is one of the major crimes of this present neoliberal’s Establishment’s control of the western world’s economies, governments and culture.

To find a way forward, to heal oneself I think there are several questions one may ask oneself. The following is an intellectual critical thinking approach, but there may be other valid ways to do the same through psychology. I know too little to say that is so, but I do believe that the following may at least help people on their way to self-discovery.

This is because I believe people need to clearly see their place in the social/historical/political world that surrounds them, to understand where they are in relationship to society (other people), to the underlying assumptions one makes (common knowledge) and to one’s own aspirations and values.

QUESTIONS

Putting aside the first question one must ask, which is, “what is the first question I must ask”, the second question can be, “why do I believe what I believe to be true is true?”. This is important because our point of view and its perspective is driven into us by our parents, our contemporaries, the 24/7 managed and framed news, the popular culture, the schoolbooks we are forced to read, the nature of education, and of course by the dominant political, religious and secular values they, the Establishment (as above) who bombard us every day with their goals and their values for us to absorb. 

Nothing is true for long, nothing is true for everyone at the same time, and more importantly, the nature of truth serves those who own it.

In today’s world, people have been convinced:

•that the ‘I’ is more important than the ‘we’;

•that to define oneself as a consumer is more important than to define oneself as a producer or contributor to society (‘I wear this brand so I’m cool’ as opposed to ‘I am a plumber and proud of it’ and I am even more proud as I help at the local foodbank.) •And that we learn of ourselves through the individual processes of psychology rather than the collective realities of history.

These three conditions create personal and social neurosis, creating an intellectually malaise and spiritual emptiness. Neuroscientists now know that our species are naturally built to be communal rather than individualistic, that we are built to be collaborative rather than competitive, and that our brains are more susceptible to stories rather than to facts.

Once the second question has been asked, if answered in ways that recognises truth is not only relative and to a large degree fabricated by others, but that it is actually owned by others and not oneself.

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

These realizations offer freedom but also loneliness. They create an awareness of the inner meanings of life and according to the French writer and philosopher, Albert Camus, one becomes aware of the need to revolt against oppression in search of what the Czech poet Vaclav Havel said was the quest for the complete freedom of truth, which is essential in an oppressive world. But there cannot be complete freedom without truth nor complete truth without freedom.  I have seen that truth combined with freedom liberates the imagination, leading to a state, even if momentary, of beauty.

Once you become aware of the above, you approach a fork in the road of life. You can go towards the right, keep your head down, drown your values deep inside yourself and in return for this imprisonment of your own soul, you may perhaps be acknowledged as a worthwhile contributor to maintaining the myths of the dominant ideology. The safe quiet life is accompanied by self-oppression which leads to neurosis, which can lead to psychoses. Is there any wonder why our society is so deeply unhappy?

You can turn to the left, committing yourself to embrace your own community and those who need a hand to survive while you shout ‘No’ to the emotional and social control of the status quo.

But there is no hesitating at this point as you claim to be non- or unpolitical. Why? Because to say that you will do nothing you will be submitting to the status quo. Doing nothing allows the Establishment to force you to serve them.

Meanwhile we continue to be surrounded by many forms of bondage which hide in the open, as invisible structures of oppression. We are here because of who we were and whom we have become. What we decide today may heal the unborn, to be certain they can inherit a beautiful life and a beautiful earth. We can become dangerous angels, creating a beautiful local community and coset our children within, or…

This is perhaps one of the main tragedies of our time.

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*Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It leads to extreme pessimism and a dark scepticism that finds no meaning in human existence. Nihilist have no belief in shared human values and have no loyalties but to their own sense of doom, and more dangerously, they have no purpose other than a tragic urge to destroy.

**to be more precise, there is the .05% of Anglo-Americans who are multi-billionaires. Through their wealth they have taken control of politicians and political parties, and in doing so have corrupted Democracy. They use the upper 10% (more of less) of the population to control, via the media, education, the news and popular culture production, the security services, and the legal system. This has led to the creation of a culture that maintains the essential myths of the Establishment, as above, and this becomes the unconscious or conscious cultural canon of all people practicing any kind of cultural production. This is sometimes referred to as the dominant ideology of the time or the maintenance of the status quo.