Page 39 - locotrip-001

locotrip 38

by reasons, by conscious pur- what we care for, but the how:
poses, which are my own, not the process. If the how is not
by causes which affect me, as it shaped appropriately, the result
were, from outside. I wish to be is a general feeling of meaning-
somebody, not nobody; a lessness, estrangement, and
doer—deciding, not being de- powerlessness, and, with Marx
cided for, […] I wish, above all, again, loss of connection to the
to be conscious of myself as a products of one’s own hands.
thinking, willing, active being, Alienation is always leading us
bearing responsibility for my back to questioning of how we
choices and able to explain want to live and directs us to
them by references to my own ways in which individuals’ lives
ideas and purposes. I feel free can go either right or wrong. In
to the degree that I believe this order to construct an account of
to be true, and enslaved to the the alienated individual we
degree that I am made to real- need to reconstruct all that has
ize that it is not. Something like been said above in this section.
a goal can be identified here: it Self-alienation of the individual
is a healthy, integrated, self- is a condition, in which I am un-
affirming subjectivity, where I able in various respects to ap-
made the world my own, where propriate my life and fail to
I understand (and, as a part of maintain command of myself. In
the appropriation, accept the this state, I am unable to ac-
conditions under which I find cess myself, and to understand
myself), where I am the master as the author of my own ac-
and creator of my life. But the tions,1 as much as to develop
term goal is misleading. For it is an appropriate understanding
not the what (to achieve) is of events around me. However