Broken Glass

A text from a new friend the other day read as follows:

"Do most of your conversations involve forcing the other person to question their beliefs?"

I responded "Only if things are going as planned."

Indians practiced slash and burn agriculture. I do the same to peoples values and pursuits.

Though I might be studying rhetorical tricks to make my questions land like fresh seeds on black earth, I am in no way intending to curb my relentless slaughter of false ideology and pursuit of people who eschew them. I found this list on a Wikipedia article about Sarte's Nausea (yes, I felt it nagging today) which highlights some common ways people live authentically or simply in bad faith. I certainly share in the sentiments:

"members of the bourgeoisie who believe their social standing or social skills give them a "right" to exist, or others who embrace the banality of life and attempt to flee from freedom by repeating empty gestures, others who live by perpetuating past versions of themselves as they were or who live for the expectations of others, or those who claim to have found meaning in politics, morality, or ideology." (emphasis mine)

I have little patience for those (or maybe just envy) for those who claim to find satisfaction (without deep reflection and searching) in the most common pursuits, who claim righteous indignation based upon values which don't withstand serious scrutiny. It's also very frustrating to meet people who get angry at me when I poke at these papier-mache' shrouds they place around their most sacred values. It seems dishonest and disingenuous - especially when I question these values in the same way they attack others.

Yet, at the same time, I hide in my own way (even if I freely admit it).

from the same article...

"But," David Clowney writes, "freedom is frightening, and it is easier to run from it into the safety of roles and realities that are defined by society, or even by your own past. To be free is to be thrown into existence with no "human nature" as an essence to define you, and no definition of the reality into which you are thrown, either. To accept this freedom is to live "authentically"; but most of us run from authenticity. In the most ordinary affairs of daily life, we face the challenge of authentic choice, and the temptation of comfortable inauthenticity."

While I do not mind shattering others ideologies like old televisions hurled out of office buildings onto faded asphault parking lots, I am quietly reluctant to do the same to my own situation. Is this what it means to be a coward - a scared little dog who recoils at the sight of his master's raised hand? I guess taking the first steps down unmapped trails might be easier if I had others who just shared my view of the meaningless/absurdity of it all? It seems like a pitiful and rather lonely sacrifice to go it alone. What good is authenticity if I must live in some strange form of free-range solitary confinement? It's almost like living in a world of zombies and being the only conscious human being left.