[Kirism is a contemporary philosophy of life that I’ve developed over the last several decades. It is psychological, philosophical, and existential and takes into account human nature, the human predicament, our contemporary understanding of the world, and our pressing individual and species-wide challenges. I hope that you’ll enjoy learning more about it. In the first four posts of the series, we looked at the idea of absurd rebellion. In these four posts, we look at the issue of individuality, an idea that matters to Kirists. This is the second of those four posts. To learn more about Kirism, please take a look at Lighting the Way, in which Kirism is introduced. To be in touch with me about Kirism, please drop me an email to ericmaisel@hotmail.com.]
Kirists prize their individuality. They also recognize the attendant challenges. There are challenges that come with suppressing their individuality and challenges that come with expressing their individuality. Two very rough roads to travel!
We choose the rough road of self-obligation, self-authorship, and self-expression. We need to know for ourselves, do for ourselves, expose humbug, and stand up to oppressors. We choose the rough road of radical independence.
Even if you choose what looks like a conventional goal, say, to be an elementary school teacher, you will still need to pursue that profession as a radically independent individual. Who else but a dedicated individual can stand up for the children?
You must stand up because you know that you must. And the results? Much less gorgeous that you might have hoped for. You can’t control your principal’s temper, the smallness of your curriculum, or the financial straits of your school district.
You can’t change the fact that your work pays a thousandth of what a fund manager earns. You can’t control the fact that your students come in sick and that you get the flu. You can’t change the fact that your summer vacation keeps shrinking.
And when you stand up as an individual, arguing that religion has crept into the curriculum, that energetic children shouldn’t be labeled as disordered, or that a popular teacher is doing too much touching, what’s most likely to happen?
You’ll likely get reprimanded or rebuffed. Sick in bed with the flu, tired of the battles, decades from retirement, and no longer certain that your choice is tenable or makes sense, there you are, living ethically but not at all happily.
In a hundred smaller and larger ways, your investment in classroom teaching will likely be threatened. Can you still extract enough satisfaction and coax enough meaning from your choice? That may prove a lifelong challenge.
Your hunger for individuality is no blessing. But it is a moral and psychological imperative. You can’t both do right and be quiet. You can’t both unleash your imagination and conform. Kirists accept that they must be the individual they must be.
We make our value-based decisions and then we try to live up to them and live with them, simultaneously feeling proud and blue. We’re careful not to inadvertently call this state of sadness, agitation and insufficient satisfaction “depression.”
Our malaise is no “mental disorder” but rather the natural consequence of dropping a passionate, energetic, creative, moral, and lively creature into this tiny little world, a world full of roadblocks, tyrants, disappointments and ordinariness.
So, the results we get do not match our hopes. Ideally, we would get excellent results from choosing righteous work like teaching and tackling that work as an engaged individual. Ideally, we would find ourselves smiling a lot and even happy.
In reality, we’re likely to get very mixed results and do a lot of frowning. This is why the life a Kirist leads will not look like arithmetic. When we do math, we get a satisfying answer like “Four.” When we do life, our answers look very different.
Instead of four, we get: “I intend to write my poetry, even though it will never pay, I intend to live in love, even though I’m only mediocre relationship material, and I intend to raise children in love, even though I’m terribly scared of my critical nature.”
Or: “I see that I’m responsible for the whole world, which is ridiculous, and that I must call out every injustice, which is a fool’s errand, and that I’m obliged to do great work, even though my first efforts have been completely awful.”
Or: “I need to live in this community, because my loved ones reside here and won’t leave, but this community is tyrannical, dogmatic, and anti-rational. So, I’ll stay here but resist, even though that is bound to threaten me and my loved ones.”
None of this sounds like fun. Nor is it. Individuality is not a cheerful game or a stroll through the park. It is a tight-fitting suit that nature has fitted you with, making every step of the way half-uncomfortable. No need to thank nature for this tight-fitting suit!
To learn more about Kirism, please take a look at Lighting the Way, in which Kirism is introduced.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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