Life and its Being

Often in popular perception, we find ourselves accosted by frequent and unending depictions of life as a sort of thing that exists in a certain manner, in a certain aesthetic, and under certain rules and percepts. That one must exceed one’s peers to be remembered for time immemorial, that one must be successful for social status and esteem, that one must, in the multitude of scales of worth and prosaic adjudication of soul, that one must altogether abide.

Yet, is this so-called “Life” really something to be so apprehended and conquered?

Often, in the face of the cruelties and difficulties of life, we are forced to reckon with the conditions we face and adjust our expectations accordingly. And at this, I bear no opposition — to do the most, or to best the most, even do nothing so long as that is somehow fulfilling to you — as this is something that finds its roots in the deepest crevices of our minds. Yet there is something else that we also face — the face of institutional custom.

Institutional custom — as I like to call it — is something that, while under prior conditions, has thrived to become a valiant force of social upheaval and liberation in a meaningful way, had eventually become outdated to changing social, material, and ideal orders and realities, becoming more entrenched as we get too used and accustomed to its precepts. Institutional custom, shedding its roots in initiative, reason, and regard for the conditions, is passed down to the next generation, passed down to them without much thought. Yet this is precisely what we must criticize and analyze to the fullest if we are to properly liberate ourselves from such dogma.

From the Classical Period to the Age of Enlightenment, in the enigmatic and antique halls of the Baghdad House of Wisdom, to the tranquil and modernist architectures of today’s universities, all forms and fields, and all thoughts and ideals, find their roots in one thing: ideas.

And our modern world is no exception. It is not something complete in itself, rather, it is something coherent: it is proper enough that it functions together into a distinct society of different ideals and traditions, but it is not perfect. The greatest injustice we may do upon ourselves is to assume that the world as it is represents the absolute good and bad of the time and that one shall not go against it, lest one be labeled as some deviant. But ideas are not founded by the number of people that they believe in; they are founded in the human faculties and cognitions that are at the foundation of all possible within the human sphere.

“Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: — How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the MATERIALS of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either, about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the MATERIALS of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.”

― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

According to 17th-century Philosopher John Locke, the founder of the Empiricist School of Philosophy, the mind is not born with anything inherent to it — not of customs or tendencies except those by genetics, not of any ideas or esteem or worth, but what it prescribes to itself. This clearly is in opposition to modern notions of worth — that all humans exist within the framework of today’s ideals. Clearly, this is not the case. Any person, born in any era, shall incorporate the characteristics of those ages into their cognitions. And any human, no matter where they may be from, or anything innate to them like genetics, finds themselves to exist and develop within the context of the environment that they are born in.

As John Locke says:

“Whence has it all the MATERIALS of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE.”

And so we must finally realize that there is nothing inherent to human life, but life itself, and that nothing may prejudice the value or inherent worth in human life categorically, but life itself. And that includes you.

No matter who you are, or where you are, given your existence, and given general adherence to what is properly and independently good and moral, you, as a person, shall not derive your living worth from the institutional customs of others. Instead, much like your forefathers, or at the very least, some, find a path of your own, and carve the future of the next people that shall succeed you. And if it still yet succeeds in the current cause with another set of institutional customs, at the very least, those ideas have changed, and have laid the groundwork for the progress of humanity and its ideas.

The mind of itself, inhabits a world of all others, and then, becomes a mind of others.