“A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.” — Martin

“A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. There’s no generation that has ever escaped the existential question, because there’s no point in time when being human wasn’t 100% fatal. To that extent, I think most people were too busy trying to stay alive to really wonder why they were living. In that respect, not much has changed between the beginning of mankind and now. Likewise, there will always be people searching for an answer, searching for a reason. If we examine this from a psychological perspective, it seems quite simple: there is (supposedly, it’s been a while since I’ve taken Psychology, so I can’t vouch for this) a preventative mechanism in the brain that restrains the average person from committing suicide, in addition to other systems that keep us all alive. Yet there is nothing that is keeping us living, so to speak, only keeping us not dead, which is surprisingly not the same thing. Which is better? To die for a cause or to live for one? Martyrdom shows dedication, and indeed, I think it’s difficult to find individuals with beliefs they’re willing to die for, particularly in “first world countries.” Yet it’s so depressingly difficult to live for counter-cultural beliefs that one could say that it’d be easier to die for them. And in the end, what is there? We can’t keep anything when we’re gone. I was thinking, in class, that though I don’t know who the most blessed individual is, I think I do know the least: Benedict Arnold. His whole life was marked by his “treason” in the Revolutionary War. It followed him the rest of his life, and it has remained the only thing most individuals know of him now. While some may argue that infamy is fame nonetheless, I cannot imagine anyone who wants to be remembered for a decision that may have in fact, been noble. If we framed him as simply being loyal to his mother country, he made no fault but chose the wrong side in the end. It seems such a condemnation that all we remember of this man is that he was a traitor to America. In that line of thought, perhaps Mother Theresa is the most blessed, because she is almost universally hailed as being a “good person.” I know few people who will criticize Mother Theresa. Yet there are not many I know who are willing to follow her example. If she really cared about the poor as I believe she did, I think what would have been a blessing would be to inspire others to do the same, not be reduced to a glorified relic of sorts… I’m sure she did inspire many, and that she did make a difference. But when we commit people to memory and not example, are we really honoring them at all? It’s one thing to erect a statue of someone so they’re always remembered, but it’s another to tell their story over and over and have people say, yes, I want to be like ______“ To me, that’s more of a legacy, a mark that my present can make a difference to the future. That I am not constrained to my time, and that my role models tie me to their times as well, that we are not individual pieces of paper fluttering senselessly carrying out our short stories, but that we are indeed a tapestry, and the strands all weave together to create something bigger. It seems incomprehensible to me that people would live, knowing death is imminent (which it always is - it’s always closer, never farther and though the probability is lower at some points, there is always a chance that death could come the very next second). So what is life really worth? So many people work for money, they work for the future, for this day when they can enjoy the things which they have accumulated. Others live only for immediate pleasures. I frequently am overwhelmed by the profundity of it all. The futility of it all. King Solomon sees it in his later years and eloquently explains the eternal truths, even as Achilles struggles with his own realization in a culture much like ours where there are always things to be gained and achieved, yet a sense of purpose is not included… Do we just stop thinking about it because it scares us? Or has media destroyed most of the meaningful answers? I feel like the portrayal of existential crises is never answered by, "what am I doing for others?” but always be “how can I increase my pleasure?” and involves the individual serving their self-interest as a way out of existential questions, that the answer to life’s mysteries is indulgence so that one ceases to ponder. The answer is always to consume more. We feel enslaved, and so our existentialism is about freedom to love the self, and yet we simply buy back into the system as an escape. What a truly terrifying world we live in. “No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country.” — General George Patton -- source link
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