“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” – Mary Shelley

Reminds me of Socrates’ dialogue on people unable to willingly do evil acts unless out of ignorance. I think Platos’ Gorgias dialogue?

The Value of No Answer

After reading a few posts recently, as well as reflecting on my own writing style on various issues I’ve come to realise there is quite an appeal to texts which explore a situation or question in depth, without even attempting to provide or guide the reader to a certain conclusion or explanation, or not even revealing the authors conclusion, if they have one to begin with.

This kind of writing style feels much more realistic. Humanity is not so much about answers as it is more the pursuit of them. We rarely ever encounter a solution or answer and then everything ends. We are always becoming, always searching, always yearning for some answer but we never end that pursuit.

“Man Is Nothing But That Which He Makes Of Himself.” – Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism 

In an existential framework I think that is quite fitting, and touches on the idea that Sartre gets at in the above quote. As Sartre puts it, we are condemned to be free. In each and every day, we recreate ourselves, and start the process anew.

To really embrace this, and to be authentic I think is to throw off the idea that we will ever really find that ‘answer’ that will somehow solve all our problems. Answers exist of course, but they are never the end, and they certainly never end the pursuit of questions, least of all the question the answer actually answers! If it were, we would stifle all progress in our own life, and grow stagnant and dogmatic. To fully embrace our freedom, we must recognise that there isn’t anything intrinsic to ‘be’ other than being itself.

To look at ourselves as a blank canvas first and foremost, and each and every day we paint on ourselves and renew what we are, but what we truly are is that process of painting, and while it can hurt struggling to find the right painting to place upon ourselves, and hurt worse when we lose the painting we’ve cherished for so long, that pain only serves as a reminder that the ‘answers’ and roles and certainty with which we cover ourselves in is not permanent. The pursuit to renew ourselves never ends.

We are not who we are, and we are who we are not.