The Art of Intellectual Fasting
Parents, siblings, friends, communities, society, government, and the world—various elements constitute our external realm. Yet, there exists a final, unexplored frontier that extends boundlessly for us: the internal world. Within this internal domain, there also exists a world of parents, siblings, friends, communities, society, government, and the globe. I ponder this internal world daily, continuing these thoughts even amidst ordinary actions. The more I live my daily life holding this sensation, the more painfully I realize that the greatest characteristic of the modern era is separation. Day after day, I contemplate how to breach this divide.
History is a curious thing. when treated merely for the accumulation of knowledge or the display of erudition, it becomes nothing more than a dead history, devoid of life. This is because history does not reside in the array of letters signified in documents. Even if one stores and memorizes such knowledge in the brain while stagnating in that superficial recognition, it is not true scholarship. Only by re-perceiving everything from the perspective of living history does the form of living scholarship emerge; yet, we realize we have long lost this living scholarship. That is to say, only by diving into history—or into the figures who lived through those eras—and carefully deciphering, through assimilation, the tension that existed between their internal and external worlds and how those tensions were generated within human conduct, can we finally relativize what we call “the era.”
The inquiry into history is the finest mirror reflecting one’s own self across time and space.