Why Kant I learn about myself?

Today I was reviewing something that I came across during my time while I was unemployed, a passage from Kant from one of his Essays. The Essay is titled

An Answer to the Question:
What is Enlightenment?

I will post a few paragraphs and excerpts, then discuss not only my feelings on them, but how they relate to me as a person and as a man.

Here is how the article starts out. . .

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] "Have courage to use your own understanding!"--that is the motto of enlightenment.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (natura-liter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts.

It is a great opening, and he uses a great allegory to relate the ignorance of society. People are sheep, people are livestock, people live their lives with blinders on never questioning things taught to them by their parents and elders. This is the point Kant is bringing across, and one that should really be looked at in depth not only on an internal basis, but also in terms of how society behaves. It is up to the individual to change their own course of action, and only they can accomplish this by self examination. Questions should be asked at every corner, at every branch, and at every point in ones life. If you stop asking questions, and you stop looking for answers, then you fall in the trap of the sheep, mindlessly heeding to the will of those who rule over you.

You see, the beauty in ignorance is that it really is bliss. People don't want to know how corrupt their government is. People don't want to know a war was started in another country not because of terrorism, but because some rich guys wanted to make a boatload of money. People don't want to know that we tortured people, and they do not want to know the evil workings of our government. All of these things are ignored because ignorance is bliss. When you ignore something, you can completely push it away, and never think about it again. You can stomp it out into nothing, you can hush the raging desire burning from within by never dealing with it. You can, for all intents and purposes, let life pass you by without asking these questions, because it is the easy thing to do.

Life is a group of experiences strung together which make up a soul of a person. Some people have had great experiences their entire life, some people have had horrible experiences their entire life, that is just the way life is. You never know the hand you are going to be delt. It isn't completely random though. You do have the ability to change the next facing card, for better or for worse. One of the ways you can sway the deck in your favor is by looking at life through unbiased eyes. By asking the tough questions in life, and searching for answers. For me, it is things like does god exist? If there is no god, is that necessarily a bad thing? If there is a god is that necessarily a bad thing? How much can I trust the people I back in government? What failures in my life have impacted me the most, and how do I approach my future taking those failures into account? What choices can I make in the future which will make the outcome be more to my liking? These are all questions I constantly ask myself, and by looking inside for some of the answers, I can make the odds that the next card I turn over in the deck of life is one more to my liking.

If instead I go through life blindly, and never ask the tough questions, I am leaving that next card to be completely random as to what it is. I could come out with an ace and live the good life, or I could come out with a three, and be struggling in life. i am not stacking the deck, as I have no idea where the deck will lead me. There are people in life who believe in fate, and that things are the way they are because of some grand plan by someone else. Those people may be a lot happier in life than I am, and they may think that they have all the answers in life. For me, I know I do not have all the answers, but I will never stop asking the questions, that is Kant's message. Never take anything for granted, never stop asking questions, to become truly enlightened as an individual is a lonely place, but it is a honest and truthful one.

I will blog more on this later :)