Awakening From Complacency

Awakening From Complacency

Topic of Choice

April 8, 2016

According to ancient Hebrew wisdom literature, “the complacency of fools destroys them.” The self-destructive nature of complacency is phenomenologically evident in all of life. An apathy towards life produces a stagnated soul that is unwilling to change and grow. This is the state of mind we so often find ourselves in. I call it the “machine mode” of existence, appealing to the fact that it is a nonhuman way of operating within the world by virtue of it’s anti-relational project. The fool, according to Proverbs, is a self-determined, self-reliant, self-made man; exactly the kind of individual society has taught us to become. He follows the autonomous agenda of Nietzsche’s overman. Under “machine mode” man acts without consciousness or presence. Complacency causes us to operate rather than live. The first step to awakening is a movement towards openness, vulnerability, and teachability, all of which long for something “other” than themselves. Awakening is the recognition of an eruption and creation of something new from within. It is the ability to respond to the strangeness of a new discovery within one’s internal landscape. Most importantly, it is a gift that none of us could have asked for or ever expected. It reminds me of that feeling I used to get when I would wake up on the morning of my summer vacation. Living demands a constant agreement and receptivity to that which is boundless in scope. It is the condition under which we thrive and mature as individuals. To the wise man, awakening is a mode of existence; a radical openness to the interconnectivity of all things.