I was fairly sure the above title (minus the punctuation) was the name of an album by some cliche band from my school years, but it took me a google search to see that it was the debut album of Matchbox 20. Not a big fan, but whatever.
Given that there are final exams coming up here in Cape Town, I was asked by an acquaintance of mine (I'd hardly call him a friend) to provide my services to help him tutor math to some students, because he had 'opened his own tutoring company', but appears to be severely restricted in what he is able to teach. Of course, he has already revealed to me that his intention is to eventually run a company where others do the tutoring for him and he takes his cut. Not surprising given the general global economic attitude that I have criticized numerous times already, and definitely not surprising if you knew the individual in question.
Anyway, after struggling to get a time when we could meet, we finally met this morning. She picked me up in her brand new BMW, and took me to her very large apartment with an amazing view over UCT so we could do a bit of math. We covered some amount of math, and in between we chatted a bit about our various backgrounds, academic and not. I asked her the usual question of 'if youre not interested, why take it?' to which I got the common answer 'first I feel its important to be 'educated' and second because my parents want it that way.' Given the amount of wealth that her parents seem to regularly endow her with (her family is from Joburg), I understand that she would probably want to please them, though perhaps a heart-to-heart wouldn't be such a bad thing. After the session, I departed and we agreed to get together tomorrow to continue.
She also passed on my number to a friend of hers who was also struggling with mathematics, and after a bit of a mix-up in terms of where we were meeting, she picked me up in her Polo and took me to her (and her parents) place that also seemed fairly large and well-endowed.
But the second individual was much more interesting than the first, as she had revealed to me that she REALLY didn't like doing the accounting stuff that she was learning to the point where she wished she could study something else. This was after I told her about my academic background and such. We did some math and also chatted, as I had done with the other one, but it soon became evident that this second one was really quite sharp. She talked about living 7 months in Hollywood during her gap year and seeing the qualitative differences between the homeless in either place, telling me that growing up in Cape Town, she shouldn't be too shocked to see homeless people per se, but the manner in which a lot of them were basically victims of drug addictions brought on by the 'Ferris Wheel of Shit' led a certain tragic air to their predicament.
After these exchanges I thought 'wow, she is a pretty amazing individual in so many ways,' and, as often happens, I began to daydream, in this case about the plausibility of some sort of relationship. Not so much because I thought that I had any sort of hope, but more so because she seemed like such a cool customer.
But as I thought about more and more, I thought about the vast difference in ages (she's probably 19, while Im... well... several years older). First I thought of it in terms of social taboo, but then I start to think about it in terms of a more existential critique. I started to think 'well if I (hypothetically speaking) truly 'loved' this individual, then surely it would be one of the most selfish things I could do to demand some form of binding relationship with her'. The reason for this was because on the one hand I would be depriving her of the manner in which she is able to go out into the world with a natural curiosity and come to her own opinions and interpretations about it. I've already had one of the most existentially full post-high-school periods that has allowed me to come to a lot of my own conclusions about the world, etc., and so it would seem that there would be a certain 'existential lopsidedness' to such a prospect. If you have young people of about the same age together, they are on similar footing, with curiosities about similar things and how they should be interpreted, but if the difference in ages is several years, and you plan to have an extended time together, then there is definitely a certain 'information imbalance', whether that information is 'wrong' or 'right'. Along with that would come a similarly lopsided interpretative nature to it (so it seems to me), because without that period of existential curiosity, you become heavily dependent on others to interpret the world for you, something, for example, that arises in the educational relationships between parents and children, such as, for example, the daughter in one of my recent posts putting her very young brother on the spot about the existence of God. And suddenly this stream of thought turned into a tributary of a main river.
Just as Kierkegaard explained, in my opinion in a very accurate and meaningful way, the element of 'faith' in religion is the major cornerstone. However, if you come to that faith due to someone else's 'teachings' or 'arguments', then your faith is not in God, but rather in this person; i.e. this person, and not 'God', is your god, because your belief is in this person's rendition being accurate, and not about God directly.
Applying this argument to the above scenario, it seemed that if I was to spend a fair amount of the future with someone a lot younger than me, then surely they would have to be a very strong individual in order not to begin to become 'like me' in terms of my interpretations of the world, and the things that I value, given my 'experience' in traveling the world, studying a number of academic disciplines, etc. And indeed, for those sheep-like minions who refuse or ignore the call to critically engage with their environment, instead taking whatever hegemonic interpretation of the situation as the correct one, what sort of claim do they have to a 'self'? Because there is a space between their corporeal bodies, and so they are, at the very least, physically different? Can we say that these people are actually unique individuals, or simply approximations to other beings, as we would see the difference between the outer features and behaviour of, say, two house cats, but in the end we group them into the general category 'cats' and the role they play in the home?
It is interesting to see how the radicalization of individualism, as seen, for example, in Ayn Rand's 'Objectivism', actually seems to end up coming full circle back to a very un-individualistic social reality, where the pursuit of 'individual happiness' and 'rational self-interest' ends up being a constant fight to occupy the same rungs of the same ladders, with no one stopping to consider that their 'individual' self-interest and happiness might be dependent on a less orthodox social strategy than whatever social algorithm happens to dominate the present day (for us, it would likely be something akin to 'schooling', 'specialized schooling/training' (e.g. university, technical institutes, trade schools, etc.,), career, house, family, 1.7 children, retirement with occasional jaunts to Mexico or Florida to lie on the beach for no real purpose except to demonstrate that you can, death).
In fact, one can already argue that Objectivism was criticized sufficiently over half a century before its inception by Nietzsche. One could argue that 'The Last Man' described in 'Zarathustra's Prologue' of Also Sprach Zarathustra, could represent a world that follows Objectivism:
I will speak unto them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is the last man!"
And thus spake Zarathustra unto the people:
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope.
Still is his soil rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon.
Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man - and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.
Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you the Last Man.
"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" - so asketh the Last Man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the Last Man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the Last Man liveth longest.
"We have discovered happiness" - say the Last Man, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loveth one's neighbour and rubbeth against him; for one needeth warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death.
One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wanteth the same; everyone is equal: he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse.
"Formerly all the world was insane," - say the subtlest of them, and blink thereby.
They are clever and know all that hath happened: so there is no end to their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon reconciled - otherwise it spoileth their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.
"We have discovered happiness," - say the Last Man, and blink thereby. -
It is odd how this is, I must say; that the more people try to be different, the more they become like each other. But it is easy to see why this might be so, namely that they all have the same general goals, and there are only so many different permutations of how these goals can be reached. More risk may provide more benefit, but it usually leads to more loss; so instead of taking such a risk, too often it seems they just follow the well-worn path, leading to a highly similar behaviours, with highly similar paths, and, except for the lucky few, highly similar outcomes. Such is the price we pay for hegemony: our soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon.
And in this way, it seems that where individuals are at different stages in their lives due to differences in age, culture, academics, or some other such matter (and this is in general, not just as a byproduct of my particular reflections about the hypothetical scenario above), Sting's words do indeed ring true, namely "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free".
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