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Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

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Suzy Kassem
Suzy Kassem

Suzy Kassem is an accomplished writer born on December 1, 1975, in the United States. Her works span across philosophy, psychology, and personal growth, captivating readers worldwide. more

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“The novel was born with the Modern Era, which made man, to quote Heidegger, the "only real subject," the ground for everything. It is largely through the novel that man as an individual was established on the European scene. Away from the novel, in our real lives, we know very little about our parents as they were before our birth; we have only fragmentary knowledge of the people close to us: we see them come and go and scarcely have they vanished than their place is taken over by others: they form a long line of replaceable beings. Only the novel separates out an individual, trains a light on his biography, his ideas, his feelings, makes him irreplaceable: makes him the center of everything.”

KnowledgeIndividualityHeideggerThe Novel
Book:Encounter
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“Romantic literature often presents the individual as somebody caught in a struggle against the state and the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them. The market provides us with work, insurance and a pension. If we want to study a profession, the government’s schools are there to teach us. If we want to open a business, the bank loans us money. If we want to build a house, a construction company builds it and the bank gives us a mortgage, in some cases subsidised or insured by the state. If violence flares up, the police protect us. If we are sick for a few days, our health insurance takes care of us. If we are debilitated for months, social security steps in. If we need around-the-clock assistance, we can go to the market and hire a nurse – usually some stranger from the other side of the world who takes care of us with the kind of devotion that we no longer expect from our own children. If we have the means, we can spend our golden years at a senior citizens’ home. The tax authorities treat us as individuals, and do not expect us to pay the neighbours’ taxes. The courts, too, see us as individuals, and never punish us for the crimes of our cousins. Not only adult men, but also women and children, are recognised as individuals. Throughout most of history, women were often seen as the property of family or community. Modern states, on the other hand, see women as individuals, enjoying economic and legal rights independently of their family and community. They may hold their own bank accounts, decide whom to marry, and even choose to divorce or live on their own. But the liberation of the individual comes at a cost. Many of us now bewail the loss of strong families and communities and feel alienated and threatened by the power the impersonal state and market wield over our lives. States and markets composed of alienated individuals can intervene in the lives of their members much more easily than states and markets composed of strong families and communities. When neighbours in a high-rise apartment building cannot even agree on how much to pay their janitor, how can we expect them to resist the state? The deal between states, markets and individuals is an uneasy one. The state and the market disagree about their mutual rights and obligations, and individuals complain that both demand too much and provide too little. In many cases individuals are exploited by markets, and states employ their armies, police forces and bureaucracies to persecute individuals instead of defending them. Yet it is amazing that this deal works at all – however imperfectly. For it breaches countless generations of human social arrangements. Millions of years of evolution have designed us to live and think as community members. Within a mere two centuries we have become alienated individuals. Nothing testifies better to the awesome power of culture.”

IndividualCommunityCapitalismIndividualityStateMarket
Book:Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
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“Here’s the fundamental problem: group identity can be fractionated right down to the level of the individual. That sentence should be written in capital letters. Every person is unique—and not just in a trivial manner: importantly, significantly, meaningfully unique. Group membership cannot capture that variability. Period.”

IndividualityUniquenessJordan PetersonGroup IdentityGroup Membership
Book:12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
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“Lorsque Spinoza encore écrit sentimus experimurque nos aeternos esse, il révèle une impression très profonde que l'être individuel éprouve. Et pourtant, nous sentons aussi que nous ne sommes pas éternels, que nous sommes fragiles et transitoires, que nous ne serons plus pendant que le soleil brillera encore sur les rochers au printemps d'après. En face de la vie naturelle, nous nous sentons périssables comme la frondaison des arbres; en nous, le vieillissement de l'être qui passe fait sentir la précarité qui répond à cette montée, à cette éclosion de vie rayonnant dans les autres êtres; les chemins sont divers dans les voies de la vie, et nous croisons d'autres êtres de tous âges qui sont à toutes les époques de la vie.”

DeathEternityIndividuality
Book:Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (Volume 1)
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“Vanity and ambition as education. - So long as a man has not yet become an instrument of general human utility let him be plagued by ambition; if that goal has been attained, however, if he is working with the necessity of a machine for the good of all, then let him be visited by vanity; it will humanize him and make him more sociable, endurable and indulgent in small things, now that ambition (to render him useful) has finished roughhewing him.”

AmbitionIndividualityVanityUtilityCommon GoodCareer PathCycle Of Life
Book:Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
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