PODCAST: The knot of antagonismIn my previous podcast titled, The way we think, a fresh look, I addressed our ability to mediate and refine our subjectivity. Let’s continue. We are looking newly and inquisitively at the narrative manner in which we recognize ourselves. And we’re looking at what we talk to ourselves about.
Before we embark on a planned journey to have the life we want, we have the life that happened to us. No doubt, part of it happened willy-nilly or by hook and by crook—by any means possible. And part of it probably happened under the watchful eyes of parents, teachers and other caretakers. In any case, we’re well programmed (our brains etched by habit) by the time we want to define and refine the life we DO want.
So, we are the way we are. What’s next? It takes a lot of motivation to create a refined and profound sensibility—given the momentum, automaticity and negativity of our biological and cultural heritage. Think it over. We’re not just wedded to the specific material circumstances that we inherited or choose, are we? We are also hitched to social and familial expectations and tethered to narrative viewpoints that may subvert our autonomy. And finally, we are seemingly tied and inextricably knotted to the willful and reflexive manner by which we submit to immediacy.
So let’s begin by taking the generous spirit (our figurative sword) to the knot of antagonism. Because it subjects our responsibility for intention, control and transcendence, we want to address the reflexive, antagonistic manner by which we submit to immediacy. Indeed, willfully or reflexively, we forgo control of our happiness and our stability when we don’t learn to transcend the immediate.
Of course, antagonism and negativity are natural. Yet, under their pervasive and persuasive influence, our autonomy is subverted. Each of us wants to be the authority in our lives. We hate to feel subjected—under the thumb of others or of convention. And we hate it when we subvert our own responsibility for defining and refining ourselves and our lives.
In fact, what we don’t like about others and what we don’t like about ourselves is the unexamined antagonism that infests our thinking, speaking and action. It’s a poor, nagging fit for those of us who understand that meaning, happiness and stability are a function of creative control and of substance.
Moreover, antagonism is really a cover-up. We who are hostile, petty, disagreeable or worse don’t acknowledge that we’re unable to manage our thoughts and emotions. Instead, we blame our meanness of spirit or general discontent on someone or something. But when we live this way, it is we, ourselves, who are deplorable. And no wonder: it is a shoddy way to be.
If we are committed to live life from and with a generosity of spirit, and we are, we take it upon ourselves to get over the compelling authority of our immediacy and the unmediated antagonism in our biological and cultural nature.