Connection 2
Life as Art: Personal and Social
Reality, Thought and Ethics
I have proposed in my writings that at least one way to lead a fulfilling life is to participate in a universe we come to see as overflowing in difference.
The first step towards fulfillment is a vision of the universe, our environment, as pure flux.
Our vision of reality informs how we see our place in it, how we can be fulfilled.
If we can think difference, we can experience and participate in reality experimentally and creatively, and construct original thought in relation thereto that is life affirming.
Life affirming thought is our second step towards fulfillment.
And life affirming thought about the universe that lives through us, activates vital forces within and without, and is exercised creatively in our personal and social activities, generates critical freedom.
By embracing an ethic of difference in all our actions, we take our third step towards fulfillment.
Perspective
The vision described is a disposition, a perspective on life, that places us in a field in which we are free to pursue what each of us believes is a fulfilling life. But it is not the end of the story.
It goes without saying that in order to lead a fulfilling life, we must learn to live in this life, this world.
The necessities of life require that we engage in our existence by applying not only creative thought, but creative thought that is practical. We pursue fulfillment in a social context, one that is informed by history and science.
Practical thought that stays with the problem, that does not seek objective truth, but at the same time encourages open debate and seeks an intersubjective coherence is a necessary aspect of leading a fulfilling life.
And the lesson we have learned from history is that thought that abstracts, that is closed, leads only to authoritarian ideology and the destruction of life.
Social and Political
Practical thought, applied in the context of the political, leads to a liberalism that affirms freedom, equality and fairness.
In a social and political context, the pursuit of fulfillment must be guided by a common view that affirms life as a whole.
In our pursuit of a fulfilling life, it is incumbent on each and every one of us to respect the ability of others to pursue their vision of a fulfilling life.
This implies a political landscape that adheres to a sense of justice for all; but a justice that is alive, is debated, coheres and evolves with a universe informed by difference.
We pursue fulfillment in life in society. We seek to connect with others and think with others and experiment and create with others. And as we do so, we personally experience fulfillment inside us and in society.
Authenticity
Interior life and exterior life, what’s in here and what’s out there, are made one through living a life authentically.
Authentic existence embraces desire as abundance, goes to the limit of what we can be, and is expressed socially. Engaging wholeheartedly in our vision of life as creativity and our projects as experiments in life creates meaning for us personally and in society.
But that meaning is always temporal, unfolding back into a process of becoming that is eternal.
The Eternal Return of Difference
An ethic of affirmation of the eternal return of difference is an ethic of how to live life to its fullest.
Living life to its fullest is both personal and social. Personally, a fulfilling life is experiential, emotional, intelligent, internal, spiritual. Socially, a fulfilling life is expressive, creative, productive, it connects each of us to the necessities of history but also to the openness of the present moment.
The eternal return of difference is affirmation of the now that is open and new, the radical freedom of the present moment.
Immanence
There is no dichotomy or dualism between the inside and outside. There is no mind-body duality.
Duality is an illusion that results when thought is trapped in a false loop of transcendence.
To become, to exist, to have one’s genesis in the immanent field, is a monism and plurality all at once; it is to care.
A living philosophy of becoming assists with opening up a reality that incorporates our need to care, about all of life; our need to think that our existence and all of life matters.
Creativity
We think and re-think our lives, engage and re-engage in our lives, we reflect and act, and create in a universe in which everything overflows in the radical freedom of the return of difference.
In doing so, we stay with the problem and cling not to solutions.
Experimentation and creativity reside in the problem, the process of engaging in problems in such a way as produce something new in the open whole.
In doing so, we engage naturally in our lives as if they were works of art.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!
Tomas
Please join my email list here or email me at tomas@tomasbyrne.com.
Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2023 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.
