This book tried to capture the zeitgeist of the 1950s and therefore by necessity over-simplified and added artificial narratives to the decades preceding it. This narrative laid the preamble for the book by arguing that different ages had had different defining psychological hang ups. Whether this is true or similar to a horoscope reading it is up for debate. As a psychologist coming at the problem of identity from an existential viewpoint authentic individuality was the focus of the book. Some points that stuck out to me are:
- We often live our lives like mirrors, trying to react to other’s reactions. We therefore aren’t ourselves, but versions of what other’s want us to be. This leaves us feeling disingenuous.
- Loneliness is rooted in a fear of death, or what I like to call the “big lonely”
- Interesting thought experiment, perhaps the only thing keeping us sane is our meaningless routine. So maybe heaven is just a mildly dissatisfying 9-5.
- Anxiety, in its final stage, presents as apathy, a telltale sign that it may be too late to resolve the underlying cause of anxiety
- Neurotic behavior and thoughts are helplessly repetitive.
- Meditation focuses on being rather than doing.
- Rebellion provides temporary freedom but is ultimately defined negatively so must be a bridge and not a destination. As I was reading this book, I wanted to change his name to Rollo “Quotes alot” Mays. I found it mildly irritating the volume of quotes per page that this book employed to try proving whatever point he was making. To me it is a signal that the things that he was saying weren’t unique thoughts to himself, but things he had learned from other books. As such, some of the best writing in the book came from quotations. The upshot being that now I have a few more books I want to read. Furthermore, he ended up “improving” the quotations in some sense right out of their value in the first place. To quote Kierkegaard myself:
“One must go further, one must go further.” This impulse to go further is an ancient thing in the world. Heraclitus the obscure, who deposited his thoughts in his writings and his writings in the Temple of Diana (for his thoughts had been his armor during his life, and therefore he hung them up in the temple of the goddess),Heraclitus the obscure said, “One cannot pass twice through the same stream.” Heraclitus the obscure had a disciple who did not stop with that, he went further and added, “One cannot do it even once.” Poor Heraclitus, to have such a disciple! By this amendment the thesis of Heraclitus was so improved that it became an Eleatic thesis which denies movement, and yet that disciple desired only to be a disciple of Heraclitus ΓǪ and to go further-not back to the position Heraclitus had abandoned."
One of the most egregious cases of this was on page 85:
“Human nature is not a machine to be built after model and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.” In this charmingly expressed thought, John Stuart Mill has unfortunately omitted the most important “tendency of the inward forces” which make man a living thing, namely that man does not grow automatically like a tree but fulfills his potentialities only as he in his own consciousness plans and chooses."
I was about to count this book as a loss, but then he redeems the book (imo) in chapter 4. He describes the process of growing up in a very succinct and helpful way. Specifically, in regard to rebellion’s creative elements. His take on the story of Adam and Eve in the garden was very compelling. I never considered that they weren’t really humans, but infants until they ate of the tree of good and evil. And by his logic therefore it is immature to wish to go back to that infantile reliance on God. Which if flipped on its head one might think that the introduction of self is what separated us from God. So, you must lose yourself to regain fellowship with the godhead. Depending on your way of thinking that would be admirable or a catastrophe. He then gives some pretty insightful readings of the Greek myth of Orestes as a counter to Oedipus that I found very enlightening. In particular the parallels between incest and actions taken that are done out of tradition. This, and the following sections really hit me in relation to thinking about raising a kid and going through the “rebellious teenager” phase. Where (as long as it is a phase) maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. That better to be a rebel and make your own way, than to be the “obedient” one that never makes his choices himself. Equally appropriate was the warning to not stay in rebellion, as this isn’t true freedom. It is merely the mirror image of the thing being rebelled against. This is the trap that I think most ex-evangelicals fall into. The books ending, talking about time was not very convincing to me. I feel like he trots out the worn-out transcendental line about “eternity being in every moment” blah blah and talks eternal life down to an allegory. All the “enlightened” people say that eternal life would be boring and hellish. My response is “how do you know? We’ve tried dying, and most people aren’t fans of that. Haven’t tried living forever yet, so maybe don’t knock it?” But of course, this too is a healthful delusion. If you can believe that life only has meaning because its brevity maybe, you won’t go into the next world kicking and screaming and maybe that’s ok. Søren Kierkegaard
#book
- #mans_search_for_himself
- #rollo_may
- #1950s_zeitgeist
- #psychological_hangups
- #existential_psychology
- #identity_and_individuality
- #reflection_on_self
- #loneliness_and_death
- #anxiety_and_apathy
- #neurotic_behaviors
- #meditation_and_being
- #rebellion_and_freedom
- #kierkegaard_quotations
- #john_stuart_mill
- #growth_and_development
- #adam_and_eve_analysis
- #greek_mythology
- #orestes_vs_oedipus
- #rebellion_in_youth
- #existential_thought
- #souvenir_press_ltd
- #philosophical_reflections
- #time_and_eternity