The Complacency of Man

One of the themes that struck me as we reviewed the Renaissance and Reformation was the passion in those time periods. Full revolutions were led—on thought, in science, on religion… In our salon, Alexander noted insightfully that “History is driven by emotion.”

It made me think: what happened? Why aren’t I making history?

As Amelia passionately described the things we gained from exploration of new worlds, she talked about folklore, fruit (thank you, Kaylee’s fruit map!), science, religion—that it formed the fibers in the rope of human connection. It struck me that maybe that’s what I was missing: exploration.

The world of a eukaryotic cell

Emma mentioned that before the Reformation, one's religion was their identity. I would argue that nowadays, one's identity is their religion. And an identity in the formal sense would be fine, but somehow "identity" became how many pictures or snaps or posts about it you share from your phone on your couch. How much those posts conform to your established statuses. And we don't discover this identity, we kind of stumble upon it in magazines and Buzzfeed articles.

“We’re all put in boxes,” Amelia said.

It’s hard to get off the couch and explore, because, like Jacob said, “The moment you’re born, all our preferences are handed to us.” We have so many labels now—”feminist,” “conservative,” “demiromantic,” “neurotypical”—that we just use their blocks to build our own box. And then we use our techno box with a touch screen to look at all the boxes on the side of our facebook wall, vacuum-sealed to keep the celebration of man or the ponderings of the human condition from reaching us.

And if we interact with enough boxes and look at enough boxes and build enough boxes, pretty soon, we forget our own humanity in a sea of boxes.

In my opinion, we’ve lost deep introspection because we’ve forgotten how to explore. We see new worlds, but we never rarely search them in depth, putting our pride, worldview, and (worst of all) comfort on the line.

This semester, I chose to go a little deeper and explore cortical blindness for a class. As it was a favorite topic of mine, I thought I knew most of what there was to know. However, as I overturned databases and dug through articles, I felt my heart race. My tiny box had cracked and washed ashore.

The reality was that I knew nothing. I felt so ignorant, young, and vulnerable, but on that piece of soul that peeked through the cracks, a breeze blew.

My wanderlust stirred.

Especially this semester of college, with every new step that I take into the unknown, I realize that as important as it is to know who I am, it’s where I’m going that fills me with a sense of my own glorious humanity, that gives me passion, and that one day—far in the future—that will fill the pages of my history.