At a time when it had already happened that common sense was officially and factually condemned to banishment, that wit and wisdom as a quality was, as it were, forbidden by law, that knowledge was devalued and degraded to the status of official certificate and superficiality, that apparent references to it were hermetically packaged and deposited in archives, in order to turn ethics into a facade (external appearance) and sold at public auction for attention, position in social hierarchies, money and a self-deceiving penchant for “power” tactics, when the absurd and the farcical become the prevailing social reality; then “madness,” especially in tragic-comic reflection and self-reflection, embraced by intelligent cynicism and sarcasm, is probably the only remaining Something that keeps man from sinking and going mad, that “the film in the head tears,” and He or She a whole, naked and exhausted, slips into uncontrolled self-destruction – sooner or later officially, medically confirmed (which in itself is not “something bad,” but it is a problem that requires heart and mindful care and rescue).
That’s when humour becomes oxygen.
Then, when everything is saturated with “bullshit,” Man may only be able to keep Man, Mankind, and Humanity within himself either with (desperate and benevolent, but by no means self-sustaining, mentally lazy and degrading!) rebelliousness, even though he breaks his head at the first leap into one of the innumerable, thick and high, though distorted walls, or with a conscious and determined, as-soon-as-possible-achieved-“stubborn” resolution to take nothing fully and truly SERIOUSLY.
Except for those Others who strive to keep the Human and the Humanity in themselves; by their doing, not by cleverness and charging or by naked rhetoric, moralizing, and pseudo-referential self-descriptions. And, of course, because it cannot be otherwise, especially not with lies, deceptions, delusions, baseness and barbarity.
If a Man does this, if He or She succeeds, then One can afford himself ‘cleverness’ and at the same time remain clever, he can ‘load up’ rhetorically and thus – unload loads, he can ‘moralize’ but within himself, and he can act morally but hidden from the public: when no one sees him, not notices him or hears him, when no one knows what he is doing at all.
Then he can act ethically, but without a clear goal and incalculably – without finding ‘meaning‘ and without conditioning his actions with positive, good outcomes that produce such actions in the public sphere.
Yet this is not the beginning of Man. Not even a fleeting and ephemeral episode in Man’s journey. It is an End that has crossed the line into the beginning of the end with a wide and deep footprint.
When something ends, something else begins. So it must end and begin again. From point zero. Again. From the beginning. Different. To “go back” two steps forward (this is neither an oxymoron, nor a contradiction, nor a paradox – but perhaps “nonsense”).
That is what Man must do – for himself.
If He or She succeeds – and only then – then One can devote the rest of his time and energy to other people. The reverse order – it is an idiotic self-deception, a fatal error.
(Reading proposal; Joe Dispenza: Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. 2012.)