Sooo, you wanna know what I learned this week?
Honestly, I have gotten quite philosophical.
Sometimes I think we have lost the ability to think. To sit in front of a question and imagine an answer. I think I myself have lost it. It’s one of the reasons I started Finding Thoughts and Weekly Thoughts. And it shocks me every week how hard it is to formulate a thought. ONE thought. I don’t aim for groundbreaking things — just a thought. And I struggle.
I am constantly overwhelmed by information, opinions, movements, analyses, and everything in between, yet a day later I can’t remember them because new ones took their place. I don’t find the capacity to sit in the information, make my own analysis — or let’s not go so far, just to make my own thought. It feels like it’s just rushing past me and not a single one of my brain cells has recognized the rush. It leaves me in a constant state of heart racing, of running behind yet never starting the race. I make excuses that life got in the way, yet where is that life and what is it supposed to be?
I started reading the philosopher Camus. He asks the simple question: “What is the purpose of life?” — I know, light literature — but he finds an interesting starting point: suicide. Have people that commit it lost the sense of life or found it? Are we not all living our lives in anticipation of the future and at the same time in fear of death? He writes how, instead of facing that question, we run towards routine, to distract ourselves from that conundrum. Because if you are not thinking of it, it’s not there.
We find ourselves in Sisyphus work — Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday — filled with routines and passing by and no creation. Creation, in any shape or form it can take, he sees as the purpose in life. Because creating life is the purpose. The creation that makes death worth it. He sees suicide as giving up on that purpose.
I feel like we have lost that creation in the stream of data. The stream that gives us everything and, in turn, nothing. The stream that makes words mere points and not creation. A stream that aims to make creation accessible for everyone but, in turn, makes it fruitless. We are supposed to create for ourselves, for our life, and consume creation. Creation of life has always been shared, but not with the whole of humanity.
The amount of creation we are faced with daily leaves us in frozen routine. We try to simplify. Like I did for my last thought about theories. They are these huge works, studies, creations at the end of the day, that analyze our whole world (be it with a focus on politics, economics, or our social system, but always with the interconnection of these things in mind), and all I needed was a couple of words to summarize them. Because I needed the summary to understand the point. But I was left only with the point and no understanding.
I never took the time to read one of those pieces — not because I didn’t have it, but simply because I didn’t see the need for it. Why rummage through thousands of pages of Marx’s theory if a five-minute YouTube video can break it down for me? And I mean, there is truth to it. Now I have many different points, and I can kind of tell you what the author said about them, but go deeper than the surface and I am gone.
And you know, life will not end if I don’t understand scientific theories to their deepest depth. But I think the same problem applies to many things in our life. We take the point of something and build our opinion around it, pretending we understand the depth of it. And the less we do, the louder our opinions get.
And I mean, it’s understandable. We need to have some opinions — where else do we find our creation? The problem with that is that opinions based on a point will be very narrow, with little surface for discourse and compromise. And with the current digital world, we are faced with more and more of that problem.
The number of opinions has segregated the world of creation into clear spheres that stand against each other instead of enhancing new creation. And as the whole world can never be put into one point, we are left with an opinionated, segregated, constantly moving world that leaves only our routine — the one thing we can control — for creation.
We are faced with a world that discredits and dismantles the only tool we have for true creation: words. Don’t laugh at me now — it’s true. They are the only way we can create a world we could all strive for, that connects us and is, in whatever shape or form, worth compromise. But that creation will never fit into one point. And maybe that’s the reason it doesn’t exist.
You wanna know how I got to this point, by the simple themes I was confronted with this week? Yeah, me neither — because what difference does it make? But let’s just leave them here as documentation for myself:
• I learned about all the critiques the UN is facing. You know, the institution that was put into place after the Second World War to sustain peace? Isn’t that going great. And instead of advancing this work (creation), it’s being discredited before even giving it a proper chance. And why? Because the human routine of putting a thought to the ground is hard.
• I learned about the thoughts of geopolitics that connect geographic conditions (natural resources, region, climate) but also social conditions (religion, ethnicity, etc.) to understand the drivers of politics. And how are the drivers put into motion? You guessed it — words woven together as national narratives. Put some ribbons of weapons on the cover and you’ve got yourself a win.