I’ve been different lately.

I don’t look or feel the same. My eyes have changed, for one. I wonder if anyone’s noticed, or if this is something that I’m alone in seeing. I feel heavier than I used to, more bogged down. In a way, I like it, but it leaves me tired sometimes. I spend a lot of time thinking about what my values are, whether valuation has any meaning. In short, reevaluating values, I guess. I wonder why I keep going since everything is, at bottom, meaningless. It’s not, of course, that that’s not an option. Not going on, I mean. I just can’t help but wonder why I choose to go on. Because I want to? Because I’m told I must? Or because I don’t want to accept the alternative as an option on equal footing? I’m not really sure.

An example: It’s hard to know why I won’t eat animals now. I don’t like suffering, I guess. It sickens me. It’s not even a moral position so much anymore as a vague feeling of disgust. The same goes for how I interact with people. It’s not so much that I’m obliged to respond and give them some bare minimum of patience, tolerance, but I do. Pity, I guess. All this is hardly a moral position. It’s patently amoral, which is how I things now, I guess. Hard to really choose one moral system over another at this point. They’re all flawed, all so subjective. I have my aesthetic preferences, sure, but why impose them on others? Certainly I’m not going to win any converts. I’m not sure that my ideas approach any kind of objective or ultimate Truth. I doubt it, really, but I enjoy self-criticism, the critique of pleasures, ideas, superstitions, especially my own. Perhaps I won’t find an Absolute Truth to defend, but maybe that’s for the best? The certitude of one’s right(eous)ness is the basis for authoritarianism, terror. Gulags. I don’t like those things, but I wonder if this relativism is much better.

Ironically enough, despite my protestations toward terror, I think this dilemma (I hesitate to call it “internal,” considering its physical toll on me and its practical implications) is partly responsible for my recent fascination with China. China is an ideological state. Everyone knows that (all states are ideological, of course, but China is remarkable for its honesty in this regard, for it is virtually alone among the nations of the world in admitting its ideological character). Simultaneously, it is incredibly pragmatic. It draws from its own ancient traditions, Western capitalism, and a decidedly eclectic Marxism to create an ethos which is somehow noble for its moderation (whatever criticisms are made of China, it is a moderate state, I think, much more so than the U.S. anyway). It learns from experience what does and doesn’t work. But its praxis is propelled by ideology even as that praxis itself shapes the nation’s ideological program. It’s a difficult dialectic to pin down. Would it be too Western, too naïve, to suggest that perhaps China has transcended the petty determinism of the old Marxism, has transformed this relationship between praxis and ideology into a loop in which the two feed into, shape, and reinforce one another? Perhaps not.

Perhaps this sort of theory-practice is what unwitting postmods like myself really need.  We need an ideology that works (literally, one that practices, that risks itself by entering the world as habits and systems of action) as well as work that is ideological (which is value based, even if those contingent values are subjected to the critique of their own implementation). It’s not a dazzling thought, I suppose. Nor is it fully fleshed out, but I’m toying with it here and there. In any case, I want to keep learning, keep practicing, keep living, if only because I can and desire to. But as for how I will live and think (“ought” seems an irrelevant word), that is something I suppose I will discover with time. Who knows really?

Certainly not me.