Ways of Knowing - Assignment Example

PART ONE: ENLIGHTENMENT/IGNORANCE The Self is created by several factors such as social or psychological forces and upbringing as well, and the Self develops from these factors. In this case, one is relatively freer especially for the reason that he has relatively more power to make his own choices and thus is therefore more in control of his life. However, as long as the Self exists in ignorance, it does not and cannot realize the fact that it is created by several factors. This is then the point where enlightenment comes. For as long as there is no enlightenment in the individual, then he or she would simply believe in something default – that the Self is given by God or destined to be what it is. Nevertheless, enlightenment cannot be exactly known without discussing it in the context of ignorance. When one is ignorant, one is pictured as extremely sensitive and vehemently opposing something without even realizing why. For example, one is into anarchism, or the condition where one is “unrestricted by man-made law” and believes that “all forms of government rest on violence” (Goldman 583). This is actually such a negative standpoint from which to proceed. Nevertheless, the ignorant are relentless in believing that “God, the State, and society are non-existent” (584). This they proclaim while contending that “the individual is the heart of the society” and that “society is the lungs which…keep the life essence” (584). How then can society be the “lungs” that keep the individual alive when in fact it had previously been declared that the society is “non-existent”? Thus, the ignorant do not realize that their principles are actually contradictory. Moreover, if the great French anarchist Proudhon states that “Property is robbery,” then I am not even entitled to own my physical body lest I be called a robber (584). Why then should anarchism be the solution to all the ills of the world when anarchism can in fact totally annihilate everything? The ignorant stops here and cannot answer such a question. This is the problem of having contradictions. Such contradictions may have only been a theory by Goldman but they made up the entire philosophy of Marx and Engels – the philosophy of communism, which was loosely based on opposition. Judging only from their own limited or ignorant points of view, the authors contend that opposition exists among the social classes: “…every form of society has been based…on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes” (Marx & Engels 487). If such oppression did exist in Russia and a few other countries of the world, then it does not necessarily mean that the rest of the world would buy the communist ideology – not even some people in some areas of the world which suffered more than Russia. The assumptions of the ignorant are numerous, especially when saying that “the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class” and that “the social conditions of the old society no longer exist for the proletariat” (486). Just because some people were suffering did not necessarily mean that justice should be meted out to those who allegedly made them suffer. After all, they were not forced to work nor were they not paid. The meaning of justice was so much of an abstract that even the philosophers of antiquity like Plato and Socrates would not be able to exactly know what justice meant or whether justice even meant the same as goodness. Therefore, the ignorant would see the suffering proletariat and pity them and demand justice for them without even entertaining the possibility that it is they who caused such suffering in the first place. Similarly, the ignorant have also labeled the bourgeoisie as the cause of the suffering of the proletariat without even wondering that the proletariat would not be able to survive without the work and the wages from the bourgeoisie. Such is ignorance – it always jumps to conclusions and always fosters opposition. There is also futility in the words of the ignorant, such as in the words: “Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it” (Goldman 587). Surely, Thoreau believed what he wanted to believe but surely voting indeed does cause an effect in something voted for. However, the pessimism of the ignorance and their corresponding belief in the futility of life somehow stems from a selfishness brought about by the fact that they themselves have not benefited anything from the government. Just because the government has not been kind to Thoreau or that he has not been granted his rights, and just because he knows a thousand or even a million others in the same boat, DOES NOT AT ALL necessarily make the government something evil. Nevertheless, the ignorant stubbornly persists in their ideas of futility and embraces pessimism as if a lifelong friend. Such statements of contradiction, opposition and futility in the words of the ignorant can somehow only be roughly explained by Freud’s The Question of Lay Analysis. Yes, there is indeed opposition and contradiction and even chaos or revolution, as the ignorant would contend. The “it” and the “I” would clash against each other because while the first demonstrates pleasure, the second espouses realism (Freud 99). Whatever the “I” decides to repress in the subconscious will eventually rise in revenge someday, just like the revolutionary proletariat who vow to destroy the capitalist bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, Freud implies or rather offers a practical solution – the “I” learns “adaptation,” and “modifying” the external world and many other ways to express the repressed emotions from the “it” (101). There must therefore be some form of unity between them: “They belong together and, in healthy cases, they cannot be practically separated from each other” (101). This is unity and this is the part where enlightenment should be. Enlightenment must take its cue from unity and not from separation, pessimism, contradiction, futility and revolution. Marx and Engels’ revolutionary overthrow of the aristocracy in the name of justice will therefore not amount to anything, as it is now. There is no absolute justice in this world – but only perhaps in the afterlife as some religions promise – and with the absence of absolute justice comes the illusion of human freedom. The illusion that one is free is mere ignorance but the belief that man isn’t free is proven by “the increasing success of a science of behavior” (Skinner 117). Skinner’s behaviorism destroys the ignoramus’ “principle” that he is free and instead shoves on his face that the freedom that the ignoramus knows is simply a feeling that is “determined by positive reinforcement” and hence a mere feeling of being free (115). Freedom, in short, is nothing more than the feeling of being free and is dependent upon positive factors. When there is actually no freedom, then there is nothing to fight for and nothing for which man should destroy his fellowman. Everything is merely an illusion – there is no freedom to be had and no justice to be meted out. Without the idea of freedom comes the idea of responsibility – for now that one cannot blame his fellowman for his misfortune and suffering, then he can only rely on himself as his own refuge. Enlightenment always begins and ends with the Self. The Self develops through “the process of social experience and activity” (Mead 109). This is the avenue by which the Self grows, yet it is not directly involved in the process, or that the Self does not dissolve into the phenomenon of experience: “…the self is not necessarily involved in the life of the organism, nor involved in what we term our sensuous experience” (109). The Self therefore experiences and grows with this experience but it continues to separate itself from the experience. The Self then – or the individual who possesses it, through experience, knows himself “from the particular standpoints of other individual members” and “from the generalized standpoint of the social group as a whole” (110). This is enlightenment – born out of experience. Ironically, then, as the Self distinguishes itself from the rest, it does find its place within the larger context of things and finds unity in the process. The ignorant can only see opposition and everything else negative. PART TWO: ENLIGHTENMENT/IGNORANCE IN MY OWN LIFE’S JOURNEY In my case, through the experience of ignorance and enlightenment, my identity evolved prior to my experience in higher education and through my academic work. The first part of my life was made up of moments of ignorance but the latter part of my life was a period of intellectual realizations and clearly a moment of enlightenment. It has actually been a wonderful journey worth telling. The first 18 years of my life has been lived in ignorance. Clearly, there was opposition in terms of the illusion of freedom. I thought I had freedom especially when I was in high school when I practically wasted my high school years by not taking it seriously. I sort of began looking for that freedom that I have always dreamed of – something that a high school teenager like me had been wanting to have. Enamored by such an illusion, I went on to become a D student until I fostered in me the belief that school could not teach me anything useful at all. There was a silent “anarchism” in me the way Emma Goldman would have perhaps thought (Goldman 583). There was also Marx and Engels’ communist revolutionary spirit in me – the feeling of being oppressed by the school and the academic system, and the feeling of vindicating myself one day. Nevertheless, like Marx and Engels on the proletariat, I did not even dare question why I was suffering and who or what exactly brought about such suffering. Moreover, I began rationalizing my academic failure and hid behind other excuses to cover up my own ignorance of things. I never stopped convincing myself that there was freedom for me somewhere and that one day I could somehow get it, hold it in my hands and bask in its glory. Nevertheless, no freedom came and eventually I was made to realize Skinner’s practical definition of the word “freedom”: “a simple personal experience” that one is free, no more no less (Skinner 117). With such a realization and with the insight I have gained from the contemplation of my past, I knew it was my own incompetence that had caused me to suffer in the first place. There was actually no one else to blame but me. I felt so happy when I realized this because I thought I did not reach the climax of my illusion of freedom or the revolution part of my once communist attitude. This was my enlightenment. With this enlightenment came true freedom of spirit and mind, and as I was finally able to realize that my suffering was all about me, I tried to make up for all the lost time and for all the times that I had not been a good student. However, the futility of it all somehow almost thwarted my plans of self-renewal as I knew it would be a little too late to start changing things and making up for lost time. Nevertheless, as I realized that futility was only a term that existed in the context of the ignorant, I replaced it with faith – that someday, somehow I could still be somebody. The experience of higher education and my academic work so far have both been steps to correct what I lost in the past. It may have been too late for me to rectify the wrong things I have done in the past but at least I was enlightened and I knew that it was not other people to blame for what I had been through but only me. Top of Form Bottom of Form Works Cited Freud, S. “The Question of Lay Analysis.” Reassessing the Presidency. New York: Prentice Hall, 2008. Print. Goldman, E. “Anarchism: What It Really Stands For.” Reassessing the Presidency. New York: Prentice Hall, 2008. Print. Marx. Karl & Engels, Friedrich. “The Communist Manifesto.” Reassessing the Presidency. New York: Prentice Hall, 2008. Print. Mead, George Herbert. “The Social Self.” Reassessing the Presidency. New York: Prentice Hall, 2008. Print. Skinner, B. F. “The Illusion of Human Freedom.” Reassessing the Presidency. New York: Prentice Hall, 2008. Print. Read More