Thomas Merton & Chuang Tzu (2)

 "Personalism and individualism must not be confused. Personalism gives priority to the person and not the individual self. To give priority to the person means respecting the unique and inalienable value of the other person, as well as one's own, for a respect that is centered only on one's individual self to the exclusion of others proves itself to be fraudulent." (The Way..., p. 17)

I hope, in my life and work, to cultivate a culture of personalism with those I am given to know. It is a big ask, work for a lifetime (and then some!), and strongly counter to the prevailing forces of our time, magnified as they are by (anti-)social media.

1. Fearful conformism

If it really comes down to “me vs. everyone else”, then the two prevailing options that have manifested themselves so robustly really are the fruit of this tree - individualism. The first, selfishness, is the driving force of our [By “our” I refer to contemporary America. Yes, it is a gross generalisation. But it is also plainly present and “infects” a wide swath of our society.] politics, our economics, our religious practice, our foreign policy, our cult of “celebrity”, our willingness to embrace all kinds of contrary-to-fact ideas because they appeal to the self as singular and unique, worthy of indulgence and adoration.

The second, fearful conformism, is a particular problem among the young. Seeking a stable identity, they latch onto what their peers have collectively come to proclaim is the “good of the day” with as much fundamentalism as they ascribe to and denounce in their elders.

It is ironic, then, that at the heart of this individualism lies such a corrosive collectivity. We are angry and resentful because we have been influenced or told to be so by the angry and resentful social environment we immerse ourselves in.

The culture mirrors the politics which mirrors the culture. It is so very ugly, poisonous, and dehumanising. And then we think that pursuing artificial intelligence and genetic manipulation to create “better” (And no one is thinking this through, either. Where are the social philosophers and ethicists to think deeply and debate the nature of this “improvement”?) versions of ourselves either biologically or virtually is going to solve anything. It is indeed fraudulent.

A part of the cure doubtless involves a (re-)embrace of personalism. A few year ago, I read a book by Susanne Antonetta titled “A Mind Apart: Travels in a Neurodiverse World”. She has bipolar disorder and is friendly with a group of folks who have various mental health issues. She worries, as do I, that something unique and valuable will be lost to the world if medical science and treatments are eventually able to eradicate any such phenomena before they have a chance to appear in people.

    “Anyway, I have bipolar disorder and have to tolerate lots of odd, unruly things happening in my head....But with the challenges come the gifts. And the sense, often raised by my correspondents, that the word cure is the wrong word, and that we must begin to respect the mental processes of the individual, think in terms of helping to get the gifts to emerge while the challenges become as manageable as they can. We need to develop new terms of value and of tolerance, especially as medical work in the alteration of the gene makes possible the eradication of our kind.” (Antonetta, A Mind Apart, pp. 3, 9)

In like manner, there are over 6000 extant languages spoken on earth today. A statistic posted on NationalGeographic.com says that one language “dies” every 14 days. And with it, something of the culture, the history, the way of perceiving things, dies with it. That is a great tragedy.

I was going to continue on with two other subheadings: “the tyranny of the immediate” and “the abjuration of responsibility” both of which are symptoms of the above discussion and are exacerbated by our uncritical embrace of social “networking”, but I think I'll stop here with a simple clarion call to embrace a life of personalism, to reject the “vanilla-isation” (though I don't accept the pejorative of “vanilla” as a synonym for plain, basic, or uninteresting as I think it has a marvelous aroma and flavour...but I digress) of discourse, of humanity and to embrace the authenticity of those who don't fit in. Please don't try to advise or, God forbid(!), “fix” us. Just be okay with our existence and know that we are doing our best with what we have to work with and we would wish the same for you.