University of Colorado - Coloradan Yearbook (Boulder, CO)

Page 13 text:

A private man? Who might this be? A “self,” an autonomous entity apart from the in- fluence of ravages of society and system? A given, like Jung's collective subconscious, or the Buddhist void,or the soul? Something preceding the existential choice of becom- ing? Something that suggests, in Tillich's phrase, an “eternal now? What a strange problem for modern man. Instead of social roles, a concept of being, not in the future, not from the past, but always in the present moment; the confines of reality. Does that sound strange? What other time exists except the present? The past and future are only memory and projection; products of abstraction; products of the mind. That's the hard thing about the mo - ment.lt can't be circumscribed. It only is. Coming from nowhere, going nowhere. A weird sort of abstract debate to be con- cerned with daily hassles. But our source of problems may be our fantasies, our abstrac- tions.