The wikipedia definiton of the word "praxis" states as following: "is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, or realized".
In everyday life this might look like this: First John studies economics,this is the learning phase. But when does learning transform into practice? One would ordinarely say that this happens when he gets a job, as a economisist.
I have noticed this about people who play their roles well: "they seem to become what they do". As in the famous carpenter example by Heidegger, the human becomes the hammering, it is only when something goes wrong with the hammer, that he stands back and inspect his tool. And at the same time, the carpenter is now inspecting himself. When one is in the fluid state of doing something well, one does not think of the self. All effort is put into doing the work, this is after all what marks any master of a trade - the prolonged and intense concentration on the task at hand. And this is, I would say, where the lesson becomes praxis. The carpenter becomes his craft, he wills it due to his love for the craftmanship. And so we say that people are what they do, as in "He/I am a carpenter".
But, anonther dimension to this is the fact that many, if not most people, dislike what they do. Do you really want to be a McDonalds employee? Most would say no, and yet they are forced to do this due to what one would ordinarely categorize as forces outside oneself, that is to say, which class one belong to, ones intelligence and so on. These are factors that one are born with and into.
So the fundemental question, what do one do if one is in such a situation as the McDonalds employee? One is in a constant kind of stress, where the "outside" does not match the "inside".
What I'd like to put forward is this: While the carpenter can do well in life in terms of what we ordinarely consider to be positive: A good job, a wife, a house and so on, the McDonalds employee has an oppertunity that the carpenter does not. The carpenter becomes comfortable in his position, and so he is likely to believe that this is it: he is a carpenter, a husband, a homeowner. He embodies his craft and becomes it, without being aware of it.
It is only when the hammer breaks, that he has the opperunity to step out of this spell and look at himself. Now, one would not expect a McDonalds employee to go on such a journey. But the possibility is always there, in the case of the carpenter, the more he embodies his practise and becomes it, the less likely he is to question himself. He can just go with the flow of things.
So, what is the meaning of going against the flow? cause this is a big thing in life. There are so many people who go against the flow, their whole life their going against the flow, in a constant state of stress. It seems to be that the "going against the flow" is a initiatory state of being, that is ment to initiate the questioning of oneself and the universe.
I myself is for example constatnly asking this question: "What the fuck!". it is a going against the flow. If i went with the flow I would be doing something like, say,fucking instead of goinf "What the fuck". Still, this state of always asking this question seems to be a way of delving into the depths of the world. I am always asking "what the fuck!" even while fucking.
Well, thats enough for today.
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