What Do We Make

of the world? Obviously, that’s a loaded question. There are layers. The first layer that presents itself is simply the observational mode of determining what is there in the world and, perhaps—but god forbid—making value judgments. In this mode we stand as in inactive participant. This is, in other words, a rather individual investigation of the ways in which the world works, and it has definite value for, especially, the scientist beginning on his road to analysis. In this particular mode, let it be understood, that there is simply the glance, the feel, the sensation of drinking in the thing itself, and in that this is an experience, it has what could be called value in and of itself. The human experience is unlike anything else in the world: to be an individual subject on the face of a planet with so much to offer in terms of the sensory world, experiencing many and various sensation is indeed a step on the road to understanding our humanity.

The failure of this first mode of operation in determining what we make of the world is precisely that we have only allowed the world to act on us instead of acting on the world and realizing the potentiality of what it means to be a human. From being acted on to being the creator of the action is a terrifying step because there are two very distinct and opposite possibilities: success and failure. The first is precisely the achievement of the goal set forth in the original plan of the action, and the second is the non-achievement of the stated goal. It is to be admitted that these terms lack something, and that something is that they are confined solely to the effort undertaken, and not to the undertaker at large. What this means, quite simply, is that success and failure can only be ascertained in terms of a particular venture into which the subject has decided to take him or herself. Now, there is a way to call an entire life a success or a failure, but this is only generally possible in a postmortem way. In this way, it is possible to say that, “I am successful”--which carries with it the connotation of "right now"--but not technically accurate to say, “I am a success,” because this latter would always have to qualified temporally with a “… right now.”

But, again, the terms success and failure run into opposition there in terms of the whole, and that, at a general level, is precisely because almost anything undertaken, any action worthy to be called a human endeavor is a success from at least one level, and that level is the education of the human character. To be there and alive and involved with that corner of time in the world is to make one’s stamp appear forever there, even if that forever is only in the one’s mind. Human endeavors are generally always life changing.

(I feel like it is important here to point out, simply for clarity sake that a “human endeavor” is first and foremost one that adheres to the (attributed) Hippocratic aphorism: primum non nocere: “First, do no harm”—which would rule out a priori murder, war, terrorism and abuse of any kind.)

Given that a human endeavor is what could, arguably, be closest in relation to the “long con,” how on earth can it always be positive? The answer is that the human creature will always benefit from experience, even if it is an experience of the failing kind that leaves a tinge of pain and hurt in the heart. To quote a few examples:

“Hindsight is twenty/twenty.”

“You wanna go ahead and stick that fork in that light socket, huh? Well, go ahead. I won’t stop you. Hurts don’t it. Won’t do that no more, will you?”

The Scientific Method—whereby the veracity of a conjecture can never be proven, it can only be falsified.

Scientific investigation is therefore the mode of operation that says, “Well, that didn’t work.” Or, to be made more pertinent to our discussion here, “That was a failure.” Life is a little bit like the scientific endeavor: one ought to be out there using their experience to formulate hypotheses, deducing predictions from the hypothesis, and testing. One of the first things Aristotle tells us in his Nichomachean Ethics is that it is a work of Political SCIENCE. It is an investigation into the ways of the world from the perspective of a scientist: “Here’s a proposition. No, huh? Well, how about this? No, huh? Well, it can be derived from this that our proposition was inaccurate, let’s revise, and, in fact, let’s test the opposite and see what happens.”

It is the perpetual looking into the way in which we make our world. “We must work our land.” Our land is precisely the possibilities that we have been provided with as a result of our being on this terrestrial sphere and having the physical and mental capacity to do something with this reality of possibilities. To make our world, what we must do is first accept that at some point, we will all fail—from a purely technical standpoint—and, from this understanding, move on to ensure that this failure isn’t multiplied by fundamental failure in the sense that after the technical failure of the body, the fundamental failure of a human is that all that can be said of a body is that it was…full stop.

No more seek the security of a life unlived. And no more allow failure to have a negative connotation. Actively seek out those avenues that afford one of the potential for the most glorious failure. What’re you busy?

For some reason, and I don’t really know why, but I feel like I need to insert here the idea that attempting to raise a good family unit has one of the greatest potentialities for failure in the world—and simultaneously the most potential for success (and I’m beginning to see that the two are contained in each other). But, if you are not actively involved in the lifelong investigation of what it means to raise a family, then go make something of the world. “Reach for the stars, and if you only make it to the moon, remember there are those who haven’t made it that far.” Make of life a journey, not a destination.