Recently I've had reason to think about people... how many of them there are, how much an individual matters in such a mass... how to feel about things like that. If you're just one of many, how can you really matter? But how could it be possible to live with the awareness of one's utter insignificance?
It's something I could write a lot more about, but as I've only got a few minutes to write this before I'm meeting up with a friend, I'll just say the feeling I got a short while ago, from personal experience. Namely, that even though I've got acquainted to a lot of people recently, been socially active to an unprecedented degree, and all, the fact that there are more people around me these days doesn't really make these people any less significant to me. Or, to be honest, I suppose to a degree it's inevitable that the significance wouldn't be quite exactly as big as in the case of a very few rare people being part of my social circle... but even so, the people I've met, the people I know, they're important to me. Even some I've known only for a short period of time. If any one of them were to die, I'd feel loss and sorrow... if any one of them needed help I could provide, I'd do my best to be of assistance... and even though I do not speak about individuals here, they are individual. My feelings for each of them are unique. Like good music, no two can ever be quite the same. And that just makes each of them the more valuable.
Even though this wasn't exactly an answer to the questions I posited in the beginning, it's something that at the moment I feel is relevant... to myself, and perhaps also to somebody else who happens to read this text.
kanaljee
4 years ago
2 comments:
I typed a response, and when I clicked the Post button, the computer swallowed my text and did not spit it out again. It inexorably refused to give me back my text. So what follows is the second attempt.
I am feeling the same thing toward my fellow-students as you do toward yours. It is a wonderful thing, and it proves that good feeling is more than the absence of bad feeling.
You asked the question, 'If you're just one of many, how can you really matter?' A profound question, which deserves an answer, even though it will be imperfect. I hope I may try to lead you to the answer.
You said that your own perception of the universe led you to believe (or at least to speculate) that there was some kind of higher being, or maybe force, or unity. I agree. If you will grant that, then the next most important question is whether this being is personal, as the three monotheistic religions claim, or impersonal, as the Eastern religions claim.
If impersonal, then the 'individual' is an aberration, a problem that needs to be solved through disintegration. In order to restore unity, the individual must dissolve into nothingness -- into a mass, actually: a faceless, impersonal mass. This goes radically against our experience of personality, and of love.
If personal, then the 'individual' is not an aberration, but a fulfillment, the highest mode of existence attainable, even though we should never forget that the individual always exists in relation to others. Our love for people as individuals ('no two can ever be quite the same') is not flawed and unenlightened, but the most wonderful thing there is. Our experience is right: unity comes only through loving the other (and the Other) as a person.
The article by Peter Kreeft on Buddhism is definitely worth reading:
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/religions_buddhism.htm
Lastly, I would like to quote some wise words from none other than G.K. Chesterton:
'I want to love my neighbour not because he is I, but precisely because he is not I. I want to adore the world, not as one likes a looking-glass, because it is one's self, but as one loves a woman, because she is entirely different. If souls are separate love is possible. If souls are united love is obviously impossible. [...]
It is just here that Buddhism is on the side of modern pantheism and immanence. And it is just here that Christianity is on the side of humanity and liberty and love. Love desires personality; therefore love desires division. It is the instinct of Christianity to be glad that God has broken the universe into little pieces, because they are living pieces. It is her instinct to say "little children love one another" rather than to tell one large person to love himself. This is the intellectual abyss between Buddhism and Christianity; that for the Buddhist or Theosophist personality is the fall of man, for the Christian it is the purpose of God, the whole point of his cosmic idea. The world-soul of the Theosophists asks man to love it only in order that man may throw himself into it. But the divine centre of Christianity actually threw man out of it in order that he might love it.'
(Orthodoxy, ch. VIII)
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