Identity, experience, world travel, nothingness

6/30/11 Armenia, Colombia

Identity, personality, these are all fake things, a result of the city, a result of modern civilization. Our 'progress' comes from identity and personality. We evolved and were wired for exploration and constrant pursuit--it is the authenticity that Sartre spoke of, but could not get at in a direct way because he was a sitting man of the city and cigarettes. Miguel spoke of constant challenges, constant struggles which require constant recovery--not just keeping the 'self' sharp. No, doing so much that the self is destroyed. There is no self, there is only nothingness--the great ninja master conquers nothingness, this is what is meant by conquering nothingness. Sartre said consciousness is nothingness, correct also. Buddhism has this as the central theme. We were wired to explore, to keep things real. When someone says travel is a form of escapism, they are expressing the growing pains of authenticity, or they are entrenched in an inauthentic form of behavior, and are clinging to the falsehoods of personality, identity, time, self, and others. Reflection that takes the self as an object is the genesis of this problem, and it comes from existential anxiety, or angst: we are afraid of our own freedom, and so we hide in things that are not us--identity, personality, personal history, perhaps language itself. Why do I travel? Indeed, I am escaping my past, indeed, I am escaping my identity, 'who I am,' indeed, but this is authentic behavior, it is primal and primitive. Those who kick and scream and 'want you back,'--'Maximin, come back to who you once were, you have changed, you are not your self,--it is the corrupted and unauthentic form. We are wired to throw ourselves into the abyss. There is a reason why fear immobilizes a man when he must fight--it is a form of sickness. And what do we do with fear? We settle down, we slow down, we give up, we forfeit the fight, we form villages, language, reflection, Relationships, computers, digitize love and existence, create supermarkets and checkout lanes, make men women and women men, until our fear has truly killed out souls, has truly killed the tragic indeterminacy of nothingness that is who we are. Who are we: we are nothing, we are nothingness, but it is the most sweet and exquisite, beautiful nothingness that you can have, that you are. We are what we aren't and aren't what we are.
I want to go to the mountains and visit the tribes, go to the jungle and be with the tribes. My excuses are time, language, resources, planning. Missing my flight. My real excuse, of course, is fear of losing my identity, fear of my facing my own freedom and my nothingness, my beautiful nothingness that is me.