As I move through life and listen to public discourse I must admit that I am almost overwhelmed by the non-thinking ideological polarity that now dominates. This ideological polarity is characterized by shallow antagonistic binary viewpoints limited to the constraints of a set narrative.
Individuals are not using their faculties of critical analysis and of reflection. We are forgoing our individuality for the crowd, for ideologies – and for shallow ones at that. We are consciously or unconsciously choosing to identify with groups. These groups can arise around physical, social, political, etc. characteristics or around certain narratives themselves. We live by the group’s propaganda; its good and its bad, its heroes and its villains, and also the more subtle (and perhaps sinister) aspects of its conditioned worldview. I think this is disappointing.
Why? Firstly, because when we do this we are denying our Selves. We are betraying our ability to think and to feel for ourselves. We allow someone else to do our thinking for us. We trade in our ability to reflect and to reason for the comfort or the habit or the ease of the group.
Each individual has a unique understanding and being that they can unravel and develop and shine. By denying this and ascribing to an ideology, we really are forgoing and denying the potentialities for our own intellectual growth and inner genius.
“Sapere aude!”
We also deny others. We no longer identify as neighbours or as humans, but as members of groups. People are not treated as people first. They are denied their humanity. We get plain hateful, even violent. Are You so perfect so as to judge others? To spread hate? But even worse, we pass judgment and spread hate not based on our logic or our understanding or our being which we deny, we do so in betrayal of these sacred things. We do so merely as a member of a group, of the crowd.
We all have to answer for our choices. We all have to stand before ourselves, or before our conscience, or before our personal manifestation of the eternal. We can keep busy and try to repress this internal reckoning but it is inevitable. Repressing it only causes anxiety and neurosis and unhappiness: a duality, essentially.
Will you excuse yourself of your judgment and hate because you acted as a member of the crowd? Because the group you found yourself in ascribed to a certain view? You do not stand as the crowd when you stand before yourself. We must remember this as we move through our lives.
We must honour ourselves. We must honour our ability to think and to feel. We must be true to ourselves and feel at one with our actions. We must do so because in the end, we answer for no one but ourselves.
Lastly, we also deny possibility. We swallow the dominant opposing narratives created by the powerful at face value and eschew the possibility of alternatives. We take one position or the opposing position, close our minds off to our own or any critical analysis, and vehemently vilify the opposing position.
Humans are extraordinary beings. We can create infinite numbers of alternatives to any issue; alternatives that are nuanced, open to change and improvement, do not pit us against each other, and that raise our collective consciousness.
Let us all take on this responsibility to let our inner genius grow and shine, to let us be happy and at peace with our choices without need of repression, and to bring a little more humanity, love, and respect back into our discourse. As humans, our similarities far outweigh our differences. Let us break off the shackles of groups and ideologies, use our faculties for critical thinking, and create a better alternative, together.
