What is one supposed to do, after having opened one’s eyes, after having been a child, after having absorbed all cultural patterns , when all of the sudden one is confronted with the similar gaze: that Other one is not this You!
What does this mean for today’s Today (“das heutige Heute”)?
The individuality and facticity -taken here as the only source of happiness and joy for life-, can they even thrive in this awhileness?
For a long time, the “jeweiligkeit” will be something like “putting both sides into brackets”. But this can’t hold for ever. Today’s Today is not a place to live in, it is a structure, form, a way to be.
If putting both sides into brackets means playing cultural differences off against each other internally, like a Don Quichote, and enjoying the spectacle, it will be a poisonous guilty pleasure and the price is high: a paralyzed and comatose consciousness.
One could also accept both dialectical processes, accept both histories and world views and try to sublate what can be sublated. Accepting the defeat as a new origin, moving towards a yet-to-be-defined-center, torn apart and pulled together by opposite gravitational forces, breaking through discursive formations: it is admittedly not the most appealing program for a simple consciousness.
Who wants to join?