I Must Know Myself

"What is worth knowing?"

On Thursday my chemistry teacher asked the class: “what is worth knowing?”

The following is my unedited response, which perfectly met the 250 word maximum.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

—Socrates, while on trial for impiety.

In the context of the zeitgeist in refined, capitalist society, what’s “worth knowing” is constituted generally by information and skills that contribute to the attainment of power and success (the former usually causing the latter).

Knowing how to impress and win others, complete school satisfactorily and conduct your overall state of being in a pleasant process will go a long way in society, but the ultimate target of doing these things is, again, the attainment of power.

But I’m of the hedonistic opinion that the point of life is to be fulfilled: to be happy, and I don’t think that power or the very narrow cultural view of success–or even my view of success–is the way to achieve that.

Power is used to distract people from their own engrained vices and complexities.

Therefore, I don’t deem manners or any of the things listed above as worth knowing.

While, of course, for a good life one could argue that having politeness, etc., is worth knowing and doing, I would retort by stating it’s not necessarily required to have a good life: (and I feel requirement is in the spirit of this question) rather, knowing thyself certainly is.

Rather, I must know myself.

Without knowing myself and the dynamics my brain operates in, I cannot do anything.

My existential dread is too large and the impending doom of my body is too soon for me not to pick apart every inhibition and every depressive episode–this is all of what art stems from and I consider art to be life: to be meaning itself.

A person that is not out with lanterns looking for themselves: looking for the essence of their being: looking for their point; their will to live, will never have any proof that they were a person at all.

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