It's a Concept

My plea in @WIRED for social media executives to take in loco parentis more seriously. Made-up and bigoted junk is monopolizing their platforms. We need responsible parental mindset to distinguish between fact and fiction: https://t.co/HZ397djJqv

— Alexander Heffner (@heffnera) June 30, 2019

So is this:

It is the opinion of all, and so far as I dare permit myself to pass judgment it is also my opinion, that is is not the highest thing to enter the monastery; but for all that it is by now means my opinion that in our age when nobody enters the monastery everybody is greater than the deep and earnest souls who found repose in a monastery.  How many are there in our age who have passion enough to think this thought and then to judge themselves honestly?  This mere thought of taking time upon one's conscience, of giving it time to explore with its sleepless vigilance every secret thought, with such effect that, if every instant one does not make the movement by virtue of the highest and holiest there is in a man, one is able with dread and horror to discover and by dread itself, and by dread itself, if in no other way, to lure forth the obscure libido which is concealed after all in every human life, whereas on the contrary one lives in society with others one so easily forgets, is let off so easily is sustained in so many ways, gets opportunity to start afresh--this mere thought, conceived with proper respect, I suppose, must chasten many an individual in our age which imagines it has already  reached the highest attainment.  But about this people concern themselves very little in our age which has reached the highest attainment, whereas in truth no age has so fallen victim to the comic as this has, and it is incomprehensible  that this age has not already  by a generatio aequivoca [breeding without mating] given birth to its hero, the demon who would remorselessly produce the dreadful specatacle of making the whole age laugh and making it forget that it was laughing at itself.  Or what is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?  And for all that, what loftier emotion has the age found since men gave up entering the monastery?  Is it not a pitiable prudence, shrewdness, faintheartedness, it has found, which sits in high places and cravenly makes men believe they have accomplished the greatest things and insidiously withholds them from attempting to do even the lesser things?  The man who has performed the cloister-movement has only one movement more to make, that is, the movement of the absurd.  How many in our age understand what the absurd is?  How many of our contemporaries so live that they have renounced all or gained all?  How many are even so honest with themselves that they know what they can do and what they cannot?  And is it not true that in so far as one finds such people one finds them rather among the less cultured and in part among women?  The age in a kind of clairvoyance reveals its weak point, as a demoniac always reveals himself without understanding himself.  If it really were this the age needed, the theater might perhaps need a new play on which is was made a subject of laughter that the person died of love--or would it not be rather salutary for this age if such a thing were to happen among us, if the age were to witness such an occurrence, in order that for once it might acquire courage to believe in the power of spirit, courage to stop quenching cravenly the better impulses in others....by laughter?  Does the age really need a ridiculous exhibition by a religious enthusiast in order to get something to laugh at, or does it not need rather that such an enthusiastic figure should remind it of that which has been forgotten?

Johannes de silentio, Fear and Trembling, tr. David Lowrie.  4th Printing, Princeton University Press, 1973, pp. 109-111.

Or what is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?
....
How many in our age understand what the absurd is?  How many of our contemporaries so live that they have renounced all or gained all?  How many are even so honest with themselves that they know what they can do and what they cannot?  And is it not true that in so far as one finds such people one finds them rather among the less cultured and in part among women?

There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.