In Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx claims, infamously, that Religion is the opium of the people, the Heart of a Heartless World, and the Soul of soulless conditions. Religion is the illusion of a certainty in an uncertain existence, meaning in a meaningless routine, an absolute in a world of paradoxes.
But so many of us need to believe in that illusion. It is much like the condition portrayed in The Matrix or as cultural theorist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard claims - a Hyperreality. We need the existence in that simulacra where simulation is the desert of the real. What else is there really ... ? Like inhabitants in the world created by E.M. Forster, how would we live when The Machine stops? What would we believe in then?
I've often thought about that paradox. Even Existentialism - where existence precedes essence - is an ideology and a cult with its own rituals and beliefs.
We hope in people, we hope in our work, we hope for a better life, we hope in love. Yet all these will disappoint. It will fail us - some time, some how. But still we hope for what is life without hope?
1 comment:
sometimes hope is the strength that keeps you going.
sometimes hope is the light at the end of the tunnel. sometimes hope.
becomes reality.
too.
how i wish i could destroy that pessimist in you.
philosphers can be an optimistic bunch, you know?
Post a Comment