The paradox of society we live in today.
Last week I found one of my old books about the danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. If you don’t know him yet I recommend that you look into this philosopher. You might know something about existentialism, and Søren Kierkegaard is the founder of existential philosophy. Just to let you know this is not a blog post about abstract philosophy, but an interpretation on what it is to live in the paradox of society we live in today. Søren Kierkegaard wrote about his everyday life (1813-1855), and what he was trying to get people to realise was that the “experts” – at that time e.g. theologists and politicians – actually interpretate e.g. human values for their own benefits. That means that the priest in the church and the politician did an interpretation of text etc for his own benefit and not for the people. Although priests and politicians should be doing their work in the interests of the people, it was not what Søren Kierkegaard observed actually happening.
What was happening was the deceiving of the people and a misuse of power. Trying to get the people to understand this created a paradox in Søren Kierkegaards own life. The “experts” hated him because Søren Kierkegaard was telling the truth about the misuse of power, and their reaction were to ridicule the work of Søren Kierkegaard, but at the same time the people – believing the “experts” always were right, acted by ridiculing Søren Kierkegaard too. So Søren Kierkegaard found himself as an outsider in both groups; the “experts” and economical powerful and the common man (the people) .
If you think that this sounds familiar you’re quite right. What we today looks at as conditioning and conformity in modern society also existed in 1850 and years before that. The difference between now and then is, that now we have technology to use or be misused by, and we as individuals are “forced” to understand the difference between truth and fake. What Søren Kierkegaard was trying to get the common man to understand was, that the “experts” (priests and politicians holding the power) was fake, and this illusion about “experts” telling the truth keep people oppressed. With Søren Kierkegaards word:” There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
We pretend to be unable to understand
What do I mean with “individuals are “forced” to understand the difference between truth and fake? you might ask. As I see it we are all heading towards a new paradigm, where we must turn our awareness and attention to our inner wisdom about truth, and be sceptical about the noise of external “experts”. Let me give you an example: The “experts” says – Cows are farting too much, and that destroys the ozone layer, because of the CO2 and methane that escape from the farting. Is this true or false, what do you think? The “experts” then come up with an idea to the cow farting problem and put Bovaer ( a toxic product) into the cows food (the cows actually don’t like the Bovaer in the food, but that’s another discussion). The question is now; is the toxic Bovaer in the cow milk we drink? The “experts” say no, but if you have a child and you breastfeeded the child, it is common knowledge that what the mother eats continues into the breastmilk and by that continues into the child. So what do you think – is this statement about the toxic “Bovaer is not in the cow milk” true or false? Sometimes you have to think twice, and reflect on who and what interest do the “experts” have in saying the Bovaer is not in the cow milk. It is as Søren Kierkegaard put it: “ We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly“.
We can continue with a lot of other examples where the “experts” manipulate people with utterly nonsense, and it is up to the individual to question the truth. In these days there are headlines about the developers of different technologies (the “experts” e.g. Steve Jobs ) don’t let their own children use e.g. AI, iPhone, iPad etc ( low-tech parenting), but the “experts” sell these products to us as necessary, and we – the people – are supposed to believe that AI, iPhone, iPad etc is healthy for our own children…? It just don’t sound convincing to me. We have to be aware of truth and lies and especially as Hannah Arendt pointed out, when people constantly is being lied to by “experts”, politicians etc, it actually destroys the capacity of the people to think and judge in the distinction between truth and false. According to Arendt is the consequence not that people believe the lies, but that people will lose the ability to believe in anything at all. So now we’re full circle in what Søren Kierkegaard also tried to get the common man in 1850 to understand – it’s about misuse of power. As Kierkegaard pointed out so do Arendt; politicians don’t talk about truth – they talk about opinions! So it might be the reason why we’re lead to believe in mainstream media that opinion and truth is the same – it’s not!
Would you yourself like to be deceived?
So that is why I see that the solution to this outer “experts” illusion, has to be listening to and believing in your inner wisdom and being your own expert. Let your inner wisdom decide on the information you’re confronted with. If “inner wisdom” sounds to fluffy to you, then use your logic on facts. If you create a product you must ask yourself – would you yourself use this product knowing what you know? (e.g. Steve Jobs as a father e.g. iPad for children) if the answer is “no”, and you’re still selling the product you’re using other people for your benefit as they are buying your product in vain. The next question is, would you yourself like to be deceived the same way? – and I guess the answer is “no”, then don’t sell that product without telling people the true consequences of the product. The logic in this categorical imperative is inspired by Immanuel Kant who once said: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as means, but always at the same time as an end” In other words treat people as you yourself would like to be treated. Unfortunately Søren Kierkegaard was treated badly when he actually tried to get the common man to understand the illusions about “experts” telling the truth – it might be what Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out; people prefer comforting illusions, so sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth, because they don’t want their illusions destroyed. The reality is we have to questioning the truth – always!
