The question really is how much of our personality is society and how much of it is what we actually are. If we take the collective knowledge of all humanity, which has been developing continuously not for ten thousand years, but much longer, the answer is incredibly complicated. It is inevitable that from the moment we are born we are not influenced by others and that they do not shape our personalities. I believe Jung said, and I do not think he was wrong, that it is not people who have ideas, but ideas who have people.
Many people who consider themselves conservative, liberal, right-wing or left-wing, or rather believe themselves to be, do not even realize that these do not come from them and do not represent who they really are. They are just following schemes and slogans that were invented over decades or centuries by those who were also influenced by others. Not to mention religions, because there we are not talking about centuries, but millennia. And these, as determinants of culture, have become ingrained in human vanity.
However, a distinction must be made between a person committed to an ideology and a person under the influence of a number of intellectuals and thinkers. The one suppresses the truth-loving part of his personality, the part to which he could say that he is truly me, no one else, and becomes corrupted by the half-truths and moral relativism of a given ideological narrative. The other searches passionately for the truth, which is never enough for him, and when he comes to a crossroads, between truth and ego, he never chooses ego.
Because what does the ego say? You are not going anywhere. You are a god, and it is impossible for you to be wrong, your mistake is equal to the destruction of your personality, which you cannot afford, which you must avoid at all costs. But the ego lies and deprives all those who believe in their own infallibility of the meaning and beauty of life, therefore of life itself, of the challenge that comes with life, and become victims of their arrogance.
Die for your faith, because it is a virtue. However, it is not about the fact that you may at any time be found out to have been wrong, that you may at any time be found out to have believed in nonsense, and that you should die for nonsense. From this point on, it is no longer about faith, but about ego. Don’t get me wrong, the existence of ego is important for survival, but only up to a critical point, beyond which stubbornness prevents our further development.
On the other hand, the soul says, you are free, you go where you want, choose life and light, not darkness and destruction. And you can meet your soul in its purest form in your dreams, which is not confined by the limitations of your consciousness.
If you are infallible, you cannot be free, because you have no right to your own mistakes and to progress through them. You are doomed by yourself to be a slave of your own errors. As for ideologies, which I have written a lot about so far, in this case ideology is nothing more than a justification for our own selfishness.
When a Canadian bisexual girl coined the term incel in 1997, she had no idea what kind of genie she was releasing from the bottle. Incel means involuntary celibacy and mainly refers to sexually active men who desire women but are unable to have them, blaming women for it. This then rose to the level of ideology over the decades, and a movement was built upon it. Although the phenomenon is not new.
Although I don’t know whether Arthur Schopenhauer was an incel or rather an anti-natalist, I don’t yet know the full pathology behind Schopenhauer’s philosophy. But whatever it was, it was a clear sign of the allure of ideology.
Just take a closer look at this phenomenon and you will realize how inhumane it is. You are a sexually active man, knowing you’re unable attract women sexually, yet you feel entitled to get woman, having right to her body, time, energy, vagina, denying her right to them. Instead of feeling urge to change, or accepting your limitations with humility in case you cannot change anyway, you blame women for not having desire to eat crap.
And if this wouldn’t be enough, you justify this horrific cruelty with fabricated ideology, as a male supremacy, woman subjugation, humiliation, and slavery. And finally you are looking for opportunities to harm women, causing intentionally as much suffering as possible. Apart from the obvious fact, that sexualizing anyone without his or her consent, is absolutely the bottom which opens door to rape culture, this is the purest form of ideology, manifesting resentment, selfishness, bitternes, and horrific malivance.
Regarding antinatalism, which holds that bringing children into the world is a moral offense because they are born to suffer, a disturbing question arises. Is it moral and just to kill those already born, sparing them further suffering? Because the ultimate logic of this ideology refferes to this. Not to mention that this ideology, like all ideologies, ignores the fundamental truth that individual reality is the only reality that exists, and this reality is ignored by ideology.
Suffering does not mean the same thing to everyone, and no one feels the suffering of another. Some people bear great suffering with dignity and are grateful for life, while others are dissatisfied with even the most banal things. Accusing someone of moral wrongdoing for having children, who otherwise feels completely comfortable in their own skin and is satisfied with their life despite the difficulties, clearly leads to ignoring the reality of that individual.
No one can be expected to view life from someone else’s perspective and make decisions accordingly. If someone does not see and feel that life is a suffering that is no longer worth living, they will want to give their child this chance, and they will never understand why they cannot to do so, and this should not be expected of them.
The soul, on the other hand, does not judge, does not boast, is not vain, and does not want to force its own truth on others. The soul wants you to be free and live. The soul wants you to follow your dreams and your conscience. The answer to how much of our personality is society and how much is what we can say is ourselves is the soul. The soul is what you are. The soul is what wants the best for you. You can recognize what is at work in whom, because it is quite obvious who is speaking from the ego and who is speaking from the conscience, and that determines how you relate to it.
Thank you for reading, I wish everyone a happy and successful 2025!