Man’s dispersio

Saint Augustine, in his Confessions, talked about a dispersio that happens within a human being. Most of us are familiar with the English word ‘dispersion,’ and the connotation of that word has little difference with what Saint Augustine means. However, the dispersio that he pertains to is the disintegration, the scattering of the pieces of our own selves, and this dispersio misdirects us and hinders us from the realization of God.

Marcel relates to this scattering of the self in his exploration of a concrete approach to the mystery of our own being. He says that to recollect, we must first remember and gather again (re-collect) our thoughts into a unified whole. Recollection is not an easy thing to do, however, and even non-philosophers avoid doing such a thing because it is such a burden of our faculties of thinking. For one to be inspired to do it, one must first experience an understanding that something is lacking, and this only happens when we realize that there is a bifurcation between who we are and what our lives are or when we look inside and realize that we were not ourselves all along.

Before digging and drilling into the abstract too much, I better present an example that would hopefully explain what I mean. Let’s take Max Payne, a contemporary figure of video gaming. Max Payne was a policeman, and he lived a relatively comfortable life. There came a time, however, when his wife and their soon-to-be child was murdered, and even as a policeman he could do nothing to rectify his situation.

This is the realization of dispersio: what seems to be one’s perfect life instantaneously and immediately falls apart at the seams that one is led to question ourselves. This experience subsequently opens ourselves to recognize, finally, that who we are is not what our lives are. Is Max Payne now only a policeman? Is he now only the spouse and father? Even he, however, realizes that he is so much more: he is a man more than merely his functions.

This is what society’s problem is right now: man is reduced to his functions. The only guideline is that he does his functions as perfectly as possible, and he becomes a perfect man: he becomes a god among men already. If one is a student, all that one has to do is to study as much and as perfectly as possible, get high grades and be the top of the class, and he becomes the paragon of humanity. People no longer care if he has an excellent attitude for the most part, or if he is sociable or friendly: they merely see his grades and afterward call him as a good person. This is what Marcel finds as wrong (or if I have interpreted incorrectly, kindly correct me), and what I find wrong as well. People are not machines or automata: they must not be judged according to the perfection in what they do. This is an offense as well as an insult to humanity itself. I once thought it was best to live within other people’s expectations and judgments, but I realized that it was an insult to my being, because only being merely the perfect student, or the perfect son was not the whole of me.

I was so much more. I am so much more. And so are you.

 

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