The buckets of life
When discussing racism, sexism, cubism, feudalism or polymorphism I invariably turn to my belief in one fundamental human behavior. Our innate necessity to compartmentalize. Anything we can't define we either fear or ignore. Death is a great example. It's tough to put death in a box so we either rationalize it with mythology or accept our inability to classify it and move on. The universe is another hard to fathom concept. In fact anything that borders on the infinite is a stretch for the mind, like the national debt.
Kierkegaard's three stages of life have always fascinated me. He defined these stages as "aesthetic", "ethical", and "religious". He believed that the only way for man to comprehend the true meaning of life was to attain spiritual enlightenment. I too believe in three stages of life but mine differ slightly to Kierkegards. I propose the "village idiot", "spiritual", "unfortunately I get it" model.
The village idiot is the guy who is ignorant to everything. He makes little money, competes obsessively with his neighbors who also make little money, talks a lot about Nascar, fears outsiders and rejects any conversation that may hint at reality. It's interesting because by my reckoning this guy makes up about fifty percent of the US population. Kierkegaard called them aesthetic but I'm pretty convinced they are just dumb.
The spiritual people are an odd group, their God is money. These guys are the establishment and most of us never even get to meet these people let alone experience their world as a life stage. They probably make up less than 2 per cent of Americans. It's interesting because only very few people move from this stage to experience an "unfortunately I get it" epiphany, but some do. Those people are particularly cool.
Since Kierkegaard was arrogant enough to place himself in the "religious" bucket I'm going to consider myself a member of the "those who get it" club. It's not fun to be in this club. We often consider whether being a village idiot would make life easier. We know that the spiritual people are basically running our lives and making decisions we don't agree with, but we don't do much about it. We drink a lot of red wine, it's a prerequisite, and we often try to make our mind grapple with infinitely challenging concepts like the universe, entropy and George Bush. We are definitely in a minority and many of us have one foot in the village idiot camp but we are striving for something.
Problem is I have no idea what it is.
Kierkegaard's three stages of life have always fascinated me. He defined these stages as "aesthetic", "ethical", and "religious". He believed that the only way for man to comprehend the true meaning of life was to attain spiritual enlightenment. I too believe in three stages of life but mine differ slightly to Kierkegards. I propose the "village idiot", "spiritual", "unfortunately I get it" model.
The village idiot is the guy who is ignorant to everything. He makes little money, competes obsessively with his neighbors who also make little money, talks a lot about Nascar, fears outsiders and rejects any conversation that may hint at reality. It's interesting because by my reckoning this guy makes up about fifty percent of the US population. Kierkegaard called them aesthetic but I'm pretty convinced they are just dumb.
The spiritual people are an odd group, their God is money. These guys are the establishment and most of us never even get to meet these people let alone experience their world as a life stage. They probably make up less than 2 per cent of Americans. It's interesting because only very few people move from this stage to experience an "unfortunately I get it" epiphany, but some do. Those people are particularly cool.
Since Kierkegaard was arrogant enough to place himself in the "religious" bucket I'm going to consider myself a member of the "those who get it" club. It's not fun to be in this club. We often consider whether being a village idiot would make life easier. We know that the spiritual people are basically running our lives and making decisions we don't agree with, but we don't do much about it. We drink a lot of red wine, it's a prerequisite, and we often try to make our mind grapple with infinitely challenging concepts like the universe, entropy and George Bush. We are definitely in a minority and many of us have one foot in the village idiot camp but we are striving for something.
Problem is I have no idea what it is.
posted by mochi at 5:06 PM
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