Every man
needs the freedom of other men,
in a sense, always wants it,
even though he may be a tyrant;

the only thing he fails to do is to assume honestly
the consequences of such a wish.

Only the freedom of others
keeps each one of us from hardening
in the absurdity of facticity.

-excerpt, The Ethics of Ambiguity
By Simone de Beauvoir p. 77

I am reading de Beauvoir’s work, a meditation upon the ethics of existentialism — how should we live with others.  This is the conundrum, the opportunity and problem.  Remembering Hegel’s insight that each consciousness desires to fill the world with itself the author says, “If I were everything there would be nothing beside me; the world would be empty.”  An empty world, containing only my expanded ego, with nothing to possess, is troubling to imagine.  Eliminating the opposition of others, relieving myself of irritation, comes at a frightful cost.  Others, as free as I aspire to be, are necessary to oppose, to collaborate, to co-create and reveal a world.  I also like this line from de Beauvior very much:  “No project can be defined except by its interference with other projects.”

What is the alternative to a world of free agents, madly engaged in co-creation and opposition?  The ultimate nightmare, would be a frozen world, one of blanket stasis, a hard world where the becoming of “being” is no more.  Such a world, a state of affairs unqualified to be designated as a “world,” represents the temptation which I must resist: god-like, filling all with one encompassing will.  We have various terms for this condition:  tyranny, monopoly, one party rule, despotism, misogyny, racism.  Such terms are snap shots of a “world” desiccated of difference, of others, authentically distinct in personality, taste, and purpose. 

I have known men, who have been, and who are proponents of such horror.  Monomaniacal in viewpoint, practicing a scorched-earth-no-compromise attitude toward others they are deaf to music, blind to color.  Is intransigence the result of sunk cost, a co-dependency forged over years of only one way of thinking?

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Two photo’s were captured in front of the old Kane County courthouse on 3rd street in Geneva.  Look closely, behind the welcoming, festive sculpted letters evoking hope, — are two vintage naval guns, mounted beside the memorial to war, to the dead whose voices were silenced by war.  Always, always look closely.