das man

heidegger had a phrase for the people who never stop to ask the questions: das man — the they. when you say they say it's bad form to do that, or they think this is what success looks like, or they are the ones who decide what is interesting this year — that's das man. it is not any specific group of people. it is the impersonal social authority that lives between all of us.

most are not avoiding the void out of stupidity. they are hiding from it. facing the actual questions — mortality, freedom, the absolute absence of a script — is heavy. so we wear what they wear, want what they want, care about what they care about. this isn't a character flaw. it's a psychological survival mechanism.

plato wrote essentially the same observation two thousand four hundred years earlier in the allegory of the cave. the prisoners watching the shadows are not stupid. they are doing what their situation lets them do. when one of them escapes, sees the sun, and comes back to tell the others, the others don't believe him. they prefer the shadows. the shadows are what they know. asking them to face the light is, from their point of view, asking them to lose everything that orients them.

the trap on this side of the cave is contempt. looking around at the people busy with their banal monopoly games and feeling superior. i'm awake, they're not. the answer is the opposite of that. compassion. they're sleeping because being awake to the void is heavy. you are strong enough to carry the weight, sometimes. not everyone is, not always. i made this music for the ones who already know, and for the ones who suspect.

they are sleeping because being awake to the void is heavy. you are strong enough to carry the weight. not everyone is.