Can we really discuss any type of individualization without being aware of the imposed limitations? Which of these limitations are we willing to acknowledge? Do we acknowledge only those that suit us, and discard the rest as irrelevant or even false? Can we truly – having in mind our habituation to comfort, to company which makes us feel safe, and which we are unwilling to change; having in mind our pursuit of glory, money and reputation, our enchantment with the naked aesthetics based on sexual desire, our ego which demands to be noticed and worshiped, and which will change our opinion and attitudes just so as not to be

called “different”, not to be the one deviating from the norm because it cannot carry the burden, even though it is precisely that burden that gives us the independence and confidence we need in order to call ourselves…

– after all that, can we truly consider ourselves one of those individuals with the golden ration of experience and knowledge which would allow us to leave a personal mark for others to learn from?

Have we actually had any room to learn with all of the aforementioned disorders? Have we actually chosen the experiences that we as individuals need?
What are the lengths we would go to just to relax with our favorite music, sit in peace sipping our favorite drink while watching our favorite show, and eating our favorite food? After classes, school or work, do we even want to burden ourselves with anything else? Even if we have no obligations, do we even want to step outside and shake up our lives with something different? What are the consequences of this stagnation? Due to inactivity and accustomedness of the nervous system to a pattern, the system itself simply decays and becomes more susceptible to chronic ailments. If the mind follows a repeating pattern – it inevitably becomes dumber, tucks itself in and learns nothing, there is no experience to make it feel alive and look forward to a new day; therefore it contributes to the depression that gradually advances alongside the decay of the body.

We are not talking about reading a book here and there, and jogging every day to improve your health. No, that is almost the same as postponing the problem. You have your whole life ahead of you to find the literature, which is surely available, in order to discover what you always wanted to know and explore the foundations of that science and draw your own conclusions. You can also approach your body in order to improve muscle memory and understand body intelligence. You will become aware of your own body, you will know when you are exhausted or when your immune system has taken a pitfall only if you properly dedicate yourself to well-established skills. And there are plenty of them. The question is – why don’t you do it? What is your excuse? Moving on, your company, a company where you feel good, where you are safe, where jokes are always benevolent. A company in which your role is defined. Why do you have only one company? Shouldn’t life constantly lead you into new experiences, therefore providing new challenges for you to handle with new people you can learn from? It is really hard to step outside a comfort zone like that and show up at a new club, go to a seminar or apply to learn a new skill all by yourself.

It is very difficult to dedicate yourself to a specific goal and stick by it, isn’t it, even though it didn’t seem so at first… Do we admit to ourselves that we are afraid to go into the unknown, or do we simply not admit that we are lazy? Furthermore, every person has the need to be noticed. But if we have nothing to offer, what will our presentation come down to? Make up and aesthetic smoothness? How do we acquire money if we do not possess a fine skill which we love, and which is a part of us? How much money do we really need? And what is it exactly that we do with that money? If we have too much of it, we will buy more expensive and more modern maintenance items to keep our comfort even more grandeur and make everything around us seem beautiful. There is an appropriate market for every class. Why not spend it on education and a healthy approach to our body? Besides, why “money”? Someone who has money, a beautiful girl, or a certain business title, someone who steps out of an expensive car in a fine suit certainly leaves an impression. Even though they have nothing to offer. Why? Why do we feel respect towards that kind of power though we know it to be empty? What kind of reputation are we appreciating? Experience in the field of fun, number of partners, number of scars, the amount of alcohol we can take? How we told someone off and whom we put in their place? But where is our place? Who are we? There are so many moulds that it is impossible to process them all in a limited time and space.

We can move from analyzing our own needs and dependencies on those who enable us to live fairly decent lives, we can question our loyalty to those who give us money for our time spent, we can say that people have a need for an invisible foothold in the form of certainty, even if it undermines their purpose, we can display examples of “cultural” programming and how it is actually an obsolete system of the past where you still had to build and create, and how that programming is so deeply embedded into upbringing that it has created subsystems which supplement themselves, so that the need for programming no longer exists; it has become a part of our “truth”… We can even discuss death, we can quote Yeats and say that man has created death and draw a story on how it is all a natural process and how we should release ourselves from unnecessary fears… But we wouldn’t achieve much. Because, as L. Cohen has already intelligently put it, ‘Everybody knows’… So what do we do? Focus on the minority that has the courage to stand up for themselves?

There are THREE basic moulds.

The first one is Power (and everything associated with power).

Control by conquest and constant assertion of your supremacy. However, if there is a force, and if it becomes stronger, this will eventually lead to anarchy as a counter-effect, where the opposing force will become stronger, and so on. For man, this is one of the currently most representable repetitions, which show that humanity is still in its puberty. All of the questions raised above stem from power, which shows us that humanity is only in the first stage of its development and that it is currently closely connected to it.

The next basic mould is Knowledge.

The text you are reading is a type of Knowledge – it represents the map of man’s journey throughout history, a repeating pattern that becomes more dangerous with each repetition. The critical point at which that danger is perceived differs from person to person. Many continue down the path of degradation even after becoming aware of it. Is this the yearning for death? Tanathos (Froyd “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”)? The main disagreement with the field of knowledge is that in the end, it becomes a heartless manipulation of facts. Man becomes a fact. If we combine knowledge with our desire to win, who knows what erroneous heights we might reach. Perhaps we have already reached some…

The third basic mould is Collective Consciousness.

The basic idea here is to emphasize that collective consciousness exists, but also that there is a chance that we are degrading its original strength by forcing it to oblige rules, therefore destroying its purpose which is possibly the closest thing connected to the symbol of freedom. This idea is perhaps deserving of more elaboration, but there will be another time for that.

We will now briefly analyze certain stereotypes, and the consequences that usually arise from them. Upbringing oriented towards making money – a person is sterilized of any type of individual development, unless he/she develops defiance towards the same attitude which can lead to excessive detachment from the attitude, and we still need money to a certain extent. Attachment to aesthetics – if we consider aesthetics to be of the utmost importance, perhaps we will capture someone’s gaze, perhaps people will look our way, but that cannot last. Beauty without experience is just a pretty shell, and if it endures, it does so only because of our ego telling us: Hey, I’ve got something beautiful with me and people appreciate it. But do I appreciate it? Do we ever ask ourselves that question?

Basically, we appreciate what others have because we want to have it too, and when we get “it”, then what? Attachment to comfort – it’s simple, man is not meant to be physically still and rest all the time. If we accept that there will always be a dose of chaos in our lives, and if we stop fighting it, maybe we would lead healthier lives. It is well know that people who live the longest are those who spend almost their entire lives working in the fields, engaging in active work even past their seventies. Attachment to reputation – “My time will come”, or “Do you know who I am”, or “Oh, I used to be the best at this and that”. In short, the past (or more precisely, the forerunner of the present), the present and the future (tense). And all three are wrong because they are based on assertion. In fact, it looks like this: the forerunner of the present – I will learn how to win; the present – I am winning; somewhere in the future – I am defeated because I couldn’t make it. Attachment to company – the emotional and sociological intelligence deteriorates, it does not develop. We do not strive for experience in that field. Attachment to the field of pleasure – if you have never felt the significance of subtle enjoyment through work and gaining experience, and through advancement of your own knowledge, that is recognizing that which is already inside you… If you have never felt that enjoyment, then you are probably still looking for an escape through sex, alcohol, wild nights on the town, and so on… Have you ever wondered why heroin addicts find it so hard to return to their “normal lives”? Do you dare ask yourselves that? The inevitable fall into your own mould – and finally the last and the most interesting mould. The next mould is the final combination of the previous ones. Because what can a person do when he or she realizes that all of the aforementioned makes no sense? Start a family, get a loan to pay off for thirty years; find a job they don’t like, and start dying slowly. And the circle continues. In the end, we can’t be optimistic and say: “Hey, we’ve only got one life, we need to find what we love doing, gain experience and knowledge in it, create something new in that field, we need to raise our children in a way which will help them realize what it means to be an individual, we need to commit, we need to have a passion for our skill, whatever it may be, we need to become aware of the way we communicate with others, we need to recognize the experience of others and learn from them, we need to put our feet to the fire in places where we’re not always welcome…”. It seems it’s not that easy to live the right way after all… doesn’t it? In time, these moulds will exert so much pressure on you (if they haven’t already), that you will create your own version of the mould and call it “the truth”. But it will be just one of many, completely ordinary, completely unoriginal, and completely dead. That is the fate of the mould, and being aware of it is nowhere near pretty, nor should it be. You can perceive this danger, or you can repress it deep inside, but you cannot say you were never warned.

For P.U.L.S.E World: Srđan Mutlak

  Srđan Mutlak, The nature of conflict