Does Progress Depend on Us?
“Do, think, and imagine that which nobody else can” goes the contrarian imperative. Otherwise, if your best ideas and actions could have come from anywhere, if they don’t depend on you, what value have you added to the world? You’re just a bot, a cog in a machine, etc.
But such a line of thinking is radically modern. It assumes that the best things we can think and do are, at their core, contingent, not destined. The modern virtue of innovation presupposes a world in which there is no necessity or providence—only luck and hustle—to the best ideas.
A different (ancient) way of thinking would say that we should do that which precisely must be by necessity or fate or divine ordinance. We should do precisely that which someone else could do. The glory comes from the fact that we are the ones to do it.
Think of the Platonic idea of the soul—if you don’t have your very children, someone else will. Alternatively, if your parents didn’t have you, some other parents would have. Such a view makes no genetic sense, but, for a Platonist, genetics are superficial—the only thing that matters is the form of the person (hardware), not their quirks (software).
A classic example of the ancient way of thinking can be found in Esther 4:14. Mordechai tells Esther:
“If you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis.”
On its face, Mordechai’s statement is contradictory—on the one hand, Esther is not special (deliverance will come from somewhere else, if not her); on the other hand, she is—God has elected her for a specific purpose. Can both be true? Perhaps.
But if it’s possible to be both original and dispensable at the same time then contrarianism is somewhat of an illusion (a noble lie, if you will). Still, it may be a good motivator to ask, “What’s something that if I don’t do nobody else will?” If we felt dispensable, we might slack off.
Could this piece have been written by someone else? Probably. Should it matter? You decide.
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