I’ve been reading a fascinating historical account of the original existentialist scene featuring the leading figures Jean- Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir along with luminaries such as Albert Camus and pre-existentialist phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Much can be said about all these thinkers and certainly little can I add that is not already known. However, it is interesting looking back at exactly how political they would become. Of course, how could one be alive in WW2 Europe and not be political! Even beyond the war existentialism influenced the feminist revolution, the civil rights movements, and the protests of the 60’s.
I contrast it with now as it feels almost like we are perched on the precipice of WW3 with the war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, and growing tensions in the middle east. I think of our own economy with inflation and corporate greed, a fractured political landscape, eroded workers rights, the list goes on… and I wonder, where are our revolutionary voices of dissidence and hope?
Where are the politically charged philosophers and poets, writers, and musicians? And yes, as a small press writer I know they exist in the underground, but where are the voices on a globally visible level? Do they exist? I’m genuinely curious because quite frankly I am not exactly in tune with pop culture. I’d like to think there are a few out there. Or is it all fake celebrities in a plastic disposable culture?
And regardless, does the artist have a responsibility? If so, what exactly are the obligations?
Me being your humble writer, I am very far removed from being an important or famous voice, but I can only ponder that question from within my own experience. What is my responsibility to the world, if any?
When I first became a published writer was around the time I was thrust into the world of factories and warehouse. This culture shock of being a stereotypical starving artist type dropped into working class America temporarily ripped me away from my youthful language experimentation and set me on a path of straight forward working class poetry. I was often referred to as a working class poet and while I wasn’t overtly political I do believe it shone some sort of light on the working class and our struggles. Outside of my writing, I was very political at this time.
Even as my work inevitably drifted back into surrealism and experimentation, it was still very industrial, reeking of factory despair and bad coffee.
Then it all changed, the factories were still there ( as I was still in the factories) but the writing and my personal journey went inward, more concerned with self discovery and navigating inner space than documenting anything else.
Did I abandon the working class and the oppressed? Did I give up fighting for navel gazing and self indulgent inner reflection?
Some people may think so, but I don’t feel that is the case.
The factories, money, bills… it all broke me eventually That, along with my inability to become what I deem a successful artist, and a long genetic line of depression brought me to become so fractured that I had no choice to look inward not just for answers, but for escape. I had to look to inner space to grow outward. I wrote my best book of poetry, I returned to meditation, I took my mental health seriously.
Old Ta-Mo and even the Buddha himself knew you had to take care of yourself or you were of no service to the world. And I still believe if every human being on this planet explored their own inner space albeit with art, meditation, therapy, etc the world would indeed be a much better place.
I am a work in progress, as we all are and always will be, but I know myself a little better and I have a lot more inner peace.
With all that said I am realizing one can’t stay in inner space forever. One has to turn around or risk getting lost, that was never the point. We live in the now, and this is a common ground for Zen and existentialism, the concrete reality of Now because that is where we reside.
Yes, we are all “en soi” and we have a dizzying and daunting freedom, but we are also citizens of the earth and have the responsibility to move things forward. So much is broken in the world, where does one start? As usual, I have more questions than answers. For right now, all I know to do is to keep writing.
Broken Zen 