10:18 pm
Dear future historian,
Let’s stay a bit more on the topic of self-creation. *
I agree with Jean-Paul Sartre’s key ideas. **
In contrast of a chair, humans create their blueprints themselves. Using materials from their ancestor’s genes and legends, and each of them combines that with their own experiences, shaped by their choices, to create the prototype for the next generations. They, when their turn comes, will keep changing that ideal, to leave their legacy to their progeny. In a way there is a shape-shifting archetypal ideal, that perpetually changes, and each of us takes part in its endless creation.
Moving from the historical perspective to the personal, I do
agree that we are free to play our cards and make choices. And that these
choices are the way to create ourselves, from the potentially of our cards, our
genes and our environment.
I also believe that the opposite idea, the belief that we do
not have free will and we are only a sum of genes and circumstances, is one of
the main reasons for the increase of mental health issues and suicides. It can
lead to nihilism and depression.
As for the power of genetic and environment and ‘how are we supposed
to shape humanity, if we are so predetermined?’
I think evolution gives the answer to that. Even if there is
human nature, we are not, neither have been, static as species. So, through the
millennia, by choosing a mate and stuff, we actively determine what 'human
nature' will be for the generations to come.
If we do that as species, it seems more plausible to me to
be able to evolve individually, by our choices. Maybe we are born as a certain,
specific baby, but neuroplasticity (also effected by our choices,) 'creates'
the adult that we become.
On the argument of how free a prisoner can be.. well, I
think that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago (***) and even The
Island (****) can answer that better than me. Obviously, the list of differences
in the lives of a prisoner and a freeman is vast, yet equally wide is the responses
that different people have in freedom, or in captivity. Thus, promoting the
idea that everything is predetermined seems like a very well calculated and
misanthropic plan, to rob people from the hope that their efforts matter,
leading them into self-destruction.
Alas to the society that can't evoke awe and inspiration to
their youth with the basic-hero-myth. Why be a hero if it doesn't even matter?
if even if you do save the world.. it wasn't even 'you' that can take the
praise, I was only your genes and your environment.
Philosophers and writers, I believe, are called to promote
the sense of responsibility that the idea of self-creation leads, in order to
avoid a future society of chaos and distraction.
That is exactly what Storytelling mostly is. A reminder that,
even if it looks like there is no choice, somehow at the end the 'hero' has a
chance to overcome his ‘dragons.’
I almost forgot my YouTube example. I wrote it a while ago(*****.)
Imagine you are a result from the algorithm of your genes and your environment,
and the outcome is something like and auto-play YouTube list. It keeps playing
videos, non-stop, according to what other people watched after what you are
watching (doing after what you are doing,) or something like that. Yet... there
is always a search button! A choice to change the video. To overcome the
algorithm, and consciously create yourself.
* https://dearfuturehistorians.blogspot.com/2020/08/every-choice-reveals-what-we-think.html
*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago
**** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(play)
***** https://dearfuturehistorians.blogspot.com/2020/07/weeping-angels-survivors.html
& https://dearfuturehistorians.blogspot.com/2020/07/existential-terror.html
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