Last week I gave a girl a tremp from the Technion campus to the junction near the kibbutz she lives at. I asked her if she was a kibbutznik and she replied that her parents are. She is planning on leaving the kibbutz when she moves on. She said that the idealism is mostly gone and the beaurocracy is way too suffocating. When she grows up she does not want to have a committee decide on everything that she wants to do. She needs more freedom of movement. I suppose there was probably some sort of disagreement in the kibbutz about her going to to the Technion, but it could be a lot of other things as well.
I explained to her that there is a tight framework around everything in life and the kibbutz is probably just an exaggerated example. I gave her the example of my life, in which I have a wife and 5 children and work. I enjoy my life, but there is a very tight framework deciding what I do and when I do it. Even single people with few responsibilities cannot go and do whatever they want. They have to get up in the morning for work, they cannot just decide to take off whenever they want, etc..
I also explained that with the responsibility and framework comes all the benefits.
She was unconvinced and I wished her luck in her future.
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3 comments:
My reading of the comment is that the problem is not the framework itself, but rather that the idealism surrounding and justifying it is gone.
Most of what we put up for in terms of framework we don't do for the sake of the framework, but because either we need it for survival (money, food, etc) or it is in some way a value/ideal for us (families, religion, etc).
When people see things that they don't perceive themselves to need as ideologically bankrupt or even just not particularly valuable, the framework is always hard to justify.
I agree with you, but in the end if you are leaving the ideal with the excuse that it is too restraining, you may find yourself just as restrained without the ideal.
A strong shot of nihilism can go a long way to redefine what it is we, as individuals, bring to the "table" - and we bring it not because the "table" is wearing the emperor's new clothes, i.e. it is empty - but because this is who or what we are, our core. So yes, restrained and without the ideal - but with the core that is left. That, in my view, is a positive so long and may offer a window into the next "framework".
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