Thinkers in the era of “New Philosophy” (a brief era it is, from 1916 to 1927) have anchored on the nature of the group and the individual as a way to understand the mind. It is a transposition. In this intellectual context, although some had discussed the “right way to live,” so to speak, this specific form of thinking has largely been discredited over the years as petty and inconsequential. We only need to observe the change in meaning of the term 闲情雅致.
Only by understanding death can we live. And some Christians may say that only by understanding life may we die. For to pass is not an easy business, and consequently, the Catholics invented the idea of a “Purgatory,” where passing is possibly never complete. Sherry Lindquist, reading Bosch, characterizes his demonic characters as entities in the process of “becoming.” Bosch’s great The Garden of Earthly Delights depicts the human being’s fall from heaven into hell, and allegorically, from life into death. The flying spirits, who, as Lindquist puts it, shit themselves, are another layer of this allegory of the human condition.
To become is often funny, if you look at it from a position of power. Much of stand-up comedy in the States relies on a reconstruction of racial, social, and economic power in society and the destruction of this very same, allegorical structure. Unfortunately, to become, from a subjective viewpoint, sucks to its very core. But that is a social question.
I was toying with the relationship between aristocracy and communism, and found the idea of being to be very entertaining. Aristocracy categorizes men by birth. Being, in this context, is status, and status arises from the first moment of life’s conception. Communism, on the other hand, categorizes men by status too, but this status is defined by economic positions and social judgment. Both represent a profound inability to understand death. Both are attempts to recreate life in life, only to avoid death. As such, we receive the plethora of works titled danse macabre in Renaissance art and, of course, the tireless movements of purges and social cleansing in communist regimes.
Precisely speaking, what is the alternative? Is it Protestantism that encourages hard work and the active construction of being, in Weber’s terms, capitalism? I do not know, but I have had enough with the rhetoric of being. I have developed my own phobia towards postmodern methods immersed in traditional cultures. If it is so difficult to be, then so be it; what will come next?
Kierkegaard, in his Either Or, proposes… a kind of theology. I say the fear of death is hardly cowardly, but rather, a desire to control death. Only when man fully immerses himself in this fear can he say: God has spared my life despite the gravest danger, how could I not believe? Hallelujah! He is now a devout man.