Sunday, October 18, 2009

An Individual Struggle

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche German philosopher (1844 - 1900)

We are surrounded by tribes, manufactured by them, identified by being a part of each with labels that speak to our being a part of the collective consciousness of the tribe itself, not a separate and distinct unit but one part identical to the other parts, a cog, a wheel, a piece of metal, wood, liquid which lives and breathes but is considered to be that which must fit within the realm of the whole or be lost. Yet we go about thinking to ourselves that we are somehow different, but how can one be different when one identifies with the tribe and how difficult, how dangerous is it for us to be separate from the others, the other members of the tribe to dare stand out alone and differ from the mass. Frightening, yes? But we must if we are truly to live, to be alive. We must at all levels be ready to challenge to think outside the reality which seeks to enslave us. To never allow the others to compress us into a statement of what the tribe believes to be true for itself and for its members. No. We must dare the arrows to be shot at us else we are nothing but shadows of the hand that could and should write of lives greater than the dust covered grouping of what once was made up of individuals now is a book with a blank cover and the pages are empty without a drop of ink spilt on them to say that any man or woman had crossed that way. Dare to be different. Dare to stand alone. Dare to bear the pain and the scars and the world will be a better place for all of us.

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