[Kirism is the contemporary philosophy of life that I’ve been developing over the last several decades. It is psychological, philosophical, and existential and takes into account human nature, the human predicament, our contemporary understanding of the world, and our pressing individual and species-wide challenges. I hope that you’re enjoying learning more about it in this series of posts. To learn more about Kirism, please take a look at Lighting the Way, in which Kirism is introduced. To be in touch with me about Kirism, please drop me an email to [email protected].]
Society is no benign thing. Nations, tribes, work cultures, fraternal organizations, religious sects, communes, country clubs, towns, neighborhoods, stand poised to judge their members, silence their members, and ostracize their members.
Can you plot your escape from society and culture? You will discover that you can’t. How, for instance, will you get sufficient funding for your science lab if you don’t play the game of grant proposals and if you don’t kowtow to funders?
How will you travel from here to there without those travel documents that societies demand, those passports, visas and identity cards? Could there ever be a world where you are free to roam and not be fettered by society’s rock-hard borders?
While briefly working in a government job, I thought it would be right to do more rather than less in the service of the veterans I was helping. I was informed by my bosses in no uncertain terms that doing more was completely unacceptable. We were to work at a certain pace—that is, slowly. I left soon thereafter.
While briefly teaching at a university, I made my thoughts known at faculty meetings about the department’s shortcomings. I doubted that we were doing the best job we could at serving our students. I described certain easy-to-make improvements. I wasn’t rehired.
You’ve had your experiences, too. You know that they’ve infiltrated your system and brought you sorrow. When you take even a single step outside your door, you find yourself in this or that culture, with its secret handshakes, ironclad rules, and swift punishments.
You can’t escape culture. Even trappers in the wild have their rules, their tensions, and their culture. Even a lone trapper and the beaver and otter he traps have their culture! We know this; we live this; we experience this; and sorrow follows.
We know this. But we can also be made to forget. Mass culture is a brilliant hypnotic mechanism excellent at entrancing us and soothing us into forgetfulness. That beautifully-made television series just about makes us forget that we are living in poverty. What an amazing job it does!
Every culture creates a cultural trance that hypnotizes its citizens, soothes them, and ensnares them. Folks around the water cooler are hypnotized into talking about that new hit television series and not about rebellion or revolution. Who made them do that? No one and everyone!
A Kirist is bound to get caught up in the same cultural trance affecting everyone. Maybe she’ll fall in love with a Disney movie that she knows is manipulating her. Maybe she’ll crave techno-gadgets that she knows she doesn’t need or want. Maybe she’ll choose a prestigious profession that supports the status quo, even as she knows that her ego has kidnapped her values.
How could she not trip in these ways? Culture is the air she breathes, it is everywhere around her, it seeps into corners and slips between seconds, it is messaging her, commanding her, bathing her all the time. It is cajoling her silence, her money, and her allegiance.
Even though we understand how culture is created and what its objectives are, we can still fall for it just like the next person. That we both understand this and are too often duped and seduced by culture disappoints us and deepens our sorrow.
Like anyone, Kirists can fall for well-made fairy tales. Kirists can crave comfort and prestige. Kirists can prefer tenure to ostracism, year-end bonuses to whistle-blowing, security to daily warfare with the powerful. The why of all that is obvious enough.
This can produce an almost constant tension in a Kirist’s psyche. She wants to watch that slick new television show. But she knows that she shouldn’t. So, to prevent herself from watching, she throws out her television. Then she buys a new one, because she misses being entertained. Life!
The world is like that. As we decide on our life purpose choices, as we make our meaning investments and seize our meaning opportunities, as we create and honor our self-obligations, as we engage in our absurd rebellion, we must factor in the world.
We know that a day of plague is not like any other day. We know that a profession that sounds ideal may prove spotty in the flesh. We know that our own personality is susceptible to the blandishments of society. We know to factor in the world, culture, society, and the nature of species.
How do we factor it in? Do we think a thought and then add, “And what about the world?” Yes, we do exactly that, subtly, silently, and consistently. We stay alert, as part of our efforts to function in as clear-eyed and intentional a way as we can.
Comfort is not in the cards. The world does not provide ease and comfort and our efforts to remain alert will hardly relax us. Such vigilance! But it is a vigilance that we demand of ourselves. It is one of our necessary self-obligations.
To learn more about Kirism, please take a look at Lighting the Way, in which Kirism is introduced.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
