superificiality:how not to face our reality

Superficiality, How Not to Face Our Realities?
Human being is a dual character creature and everything which is connected to human has two different and distinguishable faces. This complexity in our physical and mental construction has made us a very necessary and required material in any effort for figuring out the truth and reality of the universe and the whole existence. Actually a human being lives in two worlds, A deep world, which includes everything connected with the inner world of our soul, the greater and more real part of our being. The second world, which is a collection of everything that can be felt by one of our senses, is smaller than the first world. In this world, there are more limitations and restrictions on the reflection of our soul’s movements.
Existence of the human being is a normal event, and anything related with this existence can be considered as normal as well. The phenomenon of the normality of human being’s existence and the things which are related to it can be called as nature. Nature is everything which can be classified as normal, but nature is not the only thing which can be noticed among the composing elements of our world, because there some other new events, which can be realized later and not related to the normal nature. These recently happened and newly appeared events are called nurture, which symbolizes everything resulted from human’s actions and activities. There is a continuous contradiction between nature and nurture. Some of the great philosophers like Spinoza and Jean Jacque Rousseau have talked about this contrast in a serious manner. Their thoughts and opinions in this field can be summarized as follows. The nearer we are to the nature, the more human we are. The farther we are from the nature, the less human we are. Being near to the nature means to stick to the realities of life and accept the facts as they are, not as we want them to be. When a human is near himself, he is more real and genuine, but when he is far from the essential facts of his life and strange to his own identity, he is more likely to be a dead model than a real and alive human. This being far from the realities can be called superficiality. To have a clear image of this subject we should figure out answers for the following questions. What is superficiality? How can we understand superficiality in the modern world?
As we said before, the father we are from the nature, the more superficial we are, because nature represents the immortal aspect of human being which is his soul and the invisible inner world within him. Since human’s soul is eternal and swims in the seas of reality and oceans of truth, he likes to figure out convincing answers for his everlasting questions. “Who am I? Why am I here? Where did I come from? And where I am going to?’’ These questions and some other questions always made humans sleepless, restless and skeptical. This continuous search for the reality is the wise man’s duty and just the fact finding effort is the truth itself. But the superficial view point of life tries to escape from this duty and avoids facing the reality of the life, which may be unpleasant sometimes. Superficial people want to lock their reason, which is the most natural gift granted to human, so as to forget the questions and live in the superficial peace. Superficial people are nor brave enough to face the reality of their being by deceiving themselves and enjoy being seen with their shadows. So superficiality is to hide the truth ignoring the existentialist questions.
Superficial people’s world is too narrow. It doesn’t go far from the five senses of the body. Everything which belongs to this world is not deep but on surface. This fear and phobia of the depth is the most common phenomenon in the superficial being’s world. They don’t want to go beyond the senses but find them too enough to continue in the life. Epicurean understanding of life can be a good explanation for superficiality (Epicureanism, n.d.). Epicureans consider life to be a good opportunity to satisfy our physical necessities without taking the world beyond the senses into account. They think that when they are alive, there is no death, so there is no need to be afraid from it, and when we are dead, we don’t exist, so there is no need to be doubtful about it. Superficial people are afraid to know the facts about themselves. They create fake personalities in their imagination for themselves and don’t want to know their reality. For example, Socrates said, “I know that I don’t know, you don’t know that you don’t know’’ (I know that I know nothing, n.d.). He meant that the gap between their knowledge and his is not too wide, but the only difference is that they don’t want to realize their ignorance and unawareness.
Superficiality is not a visible term, and rarely can we make decisions about it, because this phenomenon can be noticed in the deepest point of our souls. Not everyone who claims being deep, neither who is accused of being superficial can classify people according to this term. Religions, which are considered to be the sources of spirituality, may cause serious problems in this field. Religions can be a motivator for superficiality as well. It is religion which generates superficial souls who look at the entire life through their dark narrow spectacles. The illogical complexity of the religious texts always leads superficial interpretations for the texts. Religion also can be a factor for spreading depression and melancholy among the societies. It is the superficial interpretation and understanding of the religion and the holy inspirations which lead to the wide-spread terrorism nowadays. This wave of terrorism and imposing ideas violently, which has become a real threat on the safety and prosperity of the communities, is nothing but a superficial and wrong outlook on the sacred texts. Also the sexual abuse which is used against the children and the adolescents in the Christian churches is another evidence of the danger of the religions when they are read by the superficial souls.
Now it is the time to take a look at this phenomenon in the modern world. As Kant states, “sapere aude Dare to know have the courage to use own understanding. This is the motto of Enlightenment” (Kant, n.d., para.4). But the cruelty of the religious men during the middle centuries at Europe resulted in a very radical reaction towards religion and anything connected to the spirituality. “I didn’t kill God, I just announced his death,” Nietzsche said to his mother (Hitchens, May 13, 2007) Yes, actually God was nothing but a dead ghost to threaten the children who are sassy. These wrong steps toward abandoning everything located out of our physical’s senses’ range built the structure for the new materialism in the modern world. One of the greatest advantages of divorcing the changed and faked religion was the liberty of mind and free thinking, which by itself led to the scientific revolution and the modern technology. But not all of the results of this radical return from spirituality were positive. The most visible downside of these thoughts was materializing human being and changing him into a robotic creature.
In the last two centuries, the valuable virtues of the humanity began to be banished one by one in the crowded mass of the ignorant people. Human was busy with the others and tried to find the scientific facts related with the other animals and living things, but he lost himself. In spite of saying that all of these inventions are made for human, the opposite is more authentic. Human has become a machine which works 12 hour a day so as to see the harvest at the weekends. The modern civilization can be called fairly the workaholic’s civilization. The problem is all of this discourtesy to the reality of human is done in the name of humanity and prosperity of our life. The first answer which comes into the superficial person’s mind when he is asked about the purpose of this meaningless struggle in the life is happiness. Happiness, this misty and mysterious word, means nothing when the criterions of being happy or not are unknown. Even if we accept the effortless definition of the superficial people of happiness, it doesn’t change the fact that those people are fed up with life and they are just trying to forget and ignore as far as possible. “Children age 12-16 are at a high risk for depression. Studies suggest that 3-5% of the children and adolescents suffer from depression, and 10-15% have some depressive symptoms” (Depression, n.d.) showed a major survey. These facts can clarify the nature of the disastrous situation caused by the blind technology. If depression is widely spread among the children, who are considered to be the farthest group from misery and unhappiness, what can be expected of the older people, who are drowned in the difficulties of life? “According to a major survey, more than 13% of Americans experience major depressions disorder over the course of their life time. Furthermore, an estimated 18 million Americans experience major depression each year. Depression is the second only to high blood pressure as a chronic encountered by primary care doctors. Depression is an illness that can afflict anyone, regardless of the age, race, class, or gender. A third of all depressed people consider suicide, and 9% attempt it,” (Depression, n.d.) and the terrible fact is that these mental problems are not limited or specified to the lower parts of the society and poor people, but it is more common among the people who are spoiled and considered to be happiest people in the world. These people don’t taste the beauties of the life which they seem to be enjoying. Dr. Keith Ablow, who is a practicing psychiatrist, says, “I have treated executives and politicians and health care providers who went to work on time and performed admirably, even brilliantly, while battling major depression and even delusional thinking” (Ablow, July 2, 2008) It may seem a very surprising fact to know that Abraham Lincoln was suffering from “melancholia”, Boris Yeltsin was alcoholic due to depression, Diana, princess of Wales, was depressed, J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter had once been suicidaly depressed, Jeffery Sebelia, the project runway winner, came close to committing suicide ( Famous people with depression, n.d.) And there are more and more of the brilliant and famous people’s depression stories. All of these facts tell us the same thing: being superficial and ignorant of the ongoing facts in the world doesn’t have to make us happy, because money doesn’t bring happiness.
Superficiality has caused a more dangerous world and killed any opportunity for the renewal of life and reaching the authentic happiness. Schopenhauer, the great German philosopher, in his book, “Studies on Pessimism” explains the conditions of human being’s desire towards death or life. He stated that we are afraid from death, because it is unclear and unknown. You can’t know what is beyond death, but we admire life, because it is clear and obvious, but when life becomes more misty and unclear than the death, the person can commit suicide (Schopenhauer, n.d). It is this unclear life which becomes the model in the modern world which caused all of this misery and anxiety. Leotard, the postmodernist French philosopher, announced that 21th century was the end of the great stories (Lyotard, n.d.). It was the lack of these great stories that made human aimless, valueless, and frustrating.

All in all, when we don’t want to face the realities of our being, life and existence and try to escape from ourselves, we automatically change into a creature which is not similar to our soul and spirit. When we give up the holy mission of searching the truth and choose ignorance as a way to heal ourselves, we become superficial, unreal and rootless. Living superficially, without taking care to the great existentialist questions, has become the admired model for life in the modern world, a problem which is threatening the future of the humanity and everything connected to our humanitarian values.
Epicureanism.(n.d.)Wikipedia. Retrieved January 25 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism
I know that I know nothing.(n.d)Wikipedia. Retrieved February 26, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing.
Kant, Immanuel. (n.d.) What is Enlightenment? Retrieved January 25, 2009, from http://www.english.upem.edu/~mgamer/etexts/kant.html
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Depression,(n.d.) Age and depression. Retrieved January 26, 2009, from http://www.umm.edu/patiented/aricles/what_risk_factors_depression_000008_3.htm
Ablow, K. (n.d.) Beautiful, smart people are depressed too. Retrieved January 26, 2009, from http://health.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/07/02/dr-keith-even-beautiful-smart-people-are-depressed-too/
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Lyotard, J, F, http://www.speedylook.com/jean-fran%c3%a7ois-lyotard.html