Modern Romanticism

It starts with the individual. It must. Everything started with something singular until it finds purpose within the plural. It had to find purpose and meaning for its own existence within a space that shares its own values. Like-mindedness is almost a necessity. But if catered to too much, it becomes a force where closed-mindedness has also been achieved. The one thing a person who values their little bubble has closed themselves off to is themselves. As in, they’ve become enriched through mistaking power for a well-earned right that they’ve forgotten where they had first come from. Their power is now in numbers. Their weakness is in being alone, in being forced to see who they are. Their right to see it has always been around, but they’re too enriched, too “empowered” to want to see it.

Everyone’s true value is themselves. We don’t wish to be exposed, though that exposure is often believed to be higher in prominence when we are left with seeing ourselves for who we are. Faulted, imperfect human beings, and we escape not into ourselves, but towards that bubble where we find comfort. We close ourselves off to ourselves, while believing that as long as there are other people who share our pain, we no longer have to feel it at its deepest level.

We are responsible for ourselves. We are not meant to be responsible for others, just as others are not meant to be responsible for us. There can be aid from those who are close to us, and we can provide that to them as well. But there does not need to be dependence. Activism sees what the group sees within itself. Sharing histories, while together in that circle, means that they’re free to be alike. By wanting for social justice, individual justice goes ignored if an individual does not want to blame themselves. Social justice is the same as wanting to blame others, because if personal or individual justice were favored over social justice, we’d have no need for activism. Activism wants the world to change to suit those deemed as “victims”. If the individual changes themselves, the world would also change in accordance with their example. This must mean that the common activist wants the world to change to suit not the individual, but the group. Groups can be divided and categorized. To activism, it tends to divide groups between victims and villains.

It’s a convenient route this desire to seek justice within a society. It’s convenient and quick to want to see others as better for a finger to be pointed at. That’s when social justice replaces individual justice. A person must see themselves as at fault for individual justice to be preferred. But to divide the world between villains and victims means that the victims will always blame a different group, being the villains, for their faults. This is convenient, and we do live in an age of convenience; but is it efficient? This might be when like-mindedness turns into less of a necessity. This might be when such like-mindedness is more of a luxury.

Were a person to understand the value in being responsible for themselves, they’d not need this factor of “dependence” in anything involved in their life to sustain everything. When we get into ourselves, we see some ugliness that we are avoiding. We might even call that ugliness a beautiful thing. If we call ugliness something beautiful, we might not ever wish to see our monsters and want to tame them. Instead, we might wrap ourselves with them and expect the world to accept what we look like after that.

But to wrap ourselves in our demons might present to our bubble, our group the idea of enforcing this like-mindedness. For if we were to see that we are as much a villain or a demon as we are a victim or an angel, we can be responsible for our own errors. Enforcing anything else other than this further closes ourselves off to what we are within. A demon, one that we have become, all because we didn’t see it for what it was.

Acceptance takes time the same as trust takes time to build. The desperation from a person who sees themselves as a victim, as someone who is oppressed, might be because they have been seeking validation. But why is it up to those around this individual, among those who don’t belong to their own group, to accept something new? It’s new for the world, while it is old for the individual. Indeed, they have to have been ignoring this side of themselves for some time. Is it that they want the world to make sense of it, hence the desperation?

Victims can be villains, meaning that they will be against themselves. This enforces the perspective of the villain, while the other method in enforcing the perspective of the victim is because the whole world is one big villain. In this age where social media has caused people to not want to connect with themselves, just for a different route to be about being like others in a superficial online connection, villains appear to be the most honest aspect about oneself. Why would one want to be viewed as a victim under the desire to see alienated and foreign online connections, called “friends” or “followers”, to see them for what they are? There’s desperation in that, and there’s a need to fill a gap in the perceived errors of their environments and of people they don’t personally know. It’s when such a desire for the world to suit the so-called “victim” turns an individual’s blind eye to the possibility for themselves to be the villain.