Tag Archives: dyrkan

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The freedom all to be lords of our own tiny skullsized kingdoms. Alone at the center of all creation.

Ett utdrag av Samuel Gezelius, från David Foster Wallace‘s föreläsing ‘This is Water‘ till 2005 års avgångsklass vid Kenyon College, om vikten av utbildning och hur det kan fostra vår empati

    “The only thing that is capital T truth is you get to decide how to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of real education. Of learning how to be well adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

    Because here is something else that is weird but true. In the day to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

    And a compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spritual type thing to worship, be it J.C. or Allah, be it Jawe or the Wiccan mother goddess, the four noble truths or some inviolable set of ethical principles, is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

    If you worship money and things, if they’re where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth.

    Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.

    On one level we know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables, the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

    Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear.

    Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

    Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful, it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They are the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that is what you’re doing.

    And the so called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings. Because the so called real world of men and money and power, hums merrily along on the fuel of fear and anger and frustration and craving and the worship of self.

    Our own present culture has ? these forces in ways that has yielded extraordinary wealth, and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our own tiny skullsized kingdoms. Alone at the center of all creation.
    This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But ofcourse there are all different kinds of freedom. And the kind that is most prescious you will not hear much talked about in the great oustide world of wanting and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and disciplin. And being able truelly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over. In myriad heavy little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness. The default setting. The rat race. The constant ? sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.”