Becoming Aware
Hannah Arendt emphasizes that it is important for people in the world to engage themselves in active thinking. Most of the thinking humans usually do is passive and ultimately makes us less human, as Arendt might say. She argues that active thinking is, “…a highly engaged form of thinking that prepares one to act in the world… it is in itself already a form of action, since in the very act of thinking in this manner, one is aware that one is a responsible participant in the world.” This idea of awareness is an important factor in what active thinking can allow us to have/do. She also states, “the brain’s default position is that an easy answer is also a true answer, and that a quick judgement is a right judgement,” explaining the way most individuals in society let their brains work and lead them in daily life. I think this is one of the major factors that create problems in society among people that carry differences. Snap judgments and seeking out quick, easy answers prevents us from being able to learn more about the world, others, and shuts our brain off from creative thinking, leaving us in an “auto-pilot” state as we go through life. That is why Arendt may say, “thinking is dangerous,” because we may not all think in the best and most beneficial ways. Thinking can overcrowd the brain, and, “Arendt hoped to liberate thinking from the hands of thinkers, so to speak, and to hand it down to the individual for the development of their capacity to actively think.” Learning to exercise our minds in a way that makes us more active members of society will not only serve ourselves but the entire community. I understand that I have the power and potential to shift what my thinking can do for myself and others. I know it is important to continue to question and analyze the world around me with a critical eye so that I may exercise my role as a human and living “participant in this world.” Arendt also wants us to know that it is also important to never stop thinking, for that will increase our capacity to do wrong in the world, as with Eichmann’s example, “it was the absence, the vacant space, the lack of thought, which had enabled Eichmann’s evil.” Turning off our thinking caps will never serve us, instead we must look consciously at the way we tend to think and try to shift and practice thinking more actively to create more of a presence for ourselves in the world.
I understand my responsibility to others, to the community, and the meaning of my own life to be something sacred each in their own ways. Obviously, my responsibility to others is going to be different than my responsibility to my own life, but they are both vital in being able to help create a community in which we are active beings. From what I’ve taken away from this semester, a big part of my responsibility to others lies within the act of listening. I would also add the “perspective-taking” idea that was brought up earlier on in the semester. I have found these two things to be imperative in being able to open yourself to others and therefore becoming a more active participant in your community. For when we have the capacity to listen to others, we are able to receive them and become more aware of their lives and how they may differ from our own; this then can lead to critical thinking which can lead to us questioning the structures that create these issues that are so deeply embedded in society. I think, in terms of my own life, it is my responsibility to myself and the meaning I want to have in my life to let go and put myself out there, and be more eager to look around and open my eyes and ears.
Butler brings up the questions, “Who counts as human? Whose lives count as lives? And what makes for a grievable life? Within her writing she has us, “looking at a dimension of political life that has to do with our exposure to violence and our complicity in it, our vulnerability to loss and the talk of mourning that follows- and with finding a basis for community within this.” One of the main ideas in this chapter is the idea of dehumanization and how we determine, in a political sense, whose lives are worthy of being noted, “if a life is not grievable, it is not quite a life; it does not qualify as a life and is not worth a note. It is already the unburied, if not the unburiable.” Here she talks about the ways in which our nation grieves, and the lives it chooses to honor/remember and what becomes of the lives that go unnoticed when violence takes them. The ways in which our nation deals with violence and how we handle the aftermath of it, generates ideas in the minds of Americans on whose lives are significant, and who we should be afraid of, therefore ultimately instilling a sense of racism within us. In her discussion about violence and how its perpetuation continues, she reveals that the way out of the circle of violence is to, “…demand a world in which bodily vulnerability is protected without therefore being eradicated and with insisting on the line that must be walked between the two.” I do agree that these experiences of loss, vulnerability, and grief she speaks about are universal for humans, and with each generate their own “moral” response, or what we learn to be “moral.” The “othering” Butler talks about I think is seen among any community on some level, whether we recognize it consciously or not. That is why we see the social issues that stem from the structures and institutions that govern our social lives. There is always opportunity to make some effort to expand and connect through sharing human experience, it is about taking the step to do so. The sense of “othering” in society may never fully and completely fade due to the nature of our circumstance and everyone involved, but there is always opportunity to embrace one another and encourage shared human experiences and connection.
