Prologue to Demian

This quote from the prologue of Hermann Hesse's Demian is truer today than the year it was written (1919):

“To be sure, people today have less of an idea than ever before what a really living person is; in fact, human beings, each one of whom is a priceless, unique experiment of nature, are being shot to death in carloads. If we weren’t something more than unique individuals, if we could really be totally dispatched from the world by a bullet, it would no longer make sense to tell stories. But each person is not only himself, he is also the unique, very special point, important and noteworthy in every instance, where the phenomena of the world meet, once only and never again in the same way. And so every person’s story is important, eternal, divine; and so every person, to the extent that he lives and fulfills nature’s will, is wondrous and deserving of full attention. In each of us spirit has become form, in each of us the created being suffers, in each of us a redeemer is crucified.”

Life is cheap. We're all fodder for roadside bombs and crumbling buildings. We're accident statistics in actuarial tables, line items in company spreadsheets. But Hesse insists we are, we have to be more than that. If the human race is going to survive, we have to recognize that a unique, valuable, potentially vital world can exist in anybody. But individuality is not conferred upon birth. You're going to have to earn it by developing the latent forces of humanity inside you.

“Every person’s life is a journey toward himself, the attempt at a journey, the intimation of a path. No person has ever been completely himself, but each one strives to become so, some gropingly, others more lucidly, according to his abilities. Each one carries with him to the end traces of his birth, the slime and eggshells of a primordial world. Many a one never becomes a human being, but remains a frog, lizard, or ant. Many a one is a human being above and a fish below. But each one is a gamble of Nature, a hopeful attempt at forming a human being. We all have a common origin, the Mothers, we all come out of the same abyss; but each of us, a trial throw of the dice from the depths, strives toward his own goal. We can understand one another, but each of us can only interpret himself.”

I know Hesse's books aren't as popular as they were in the 60's and 70's, and I fear that this message of human potentiality is out of step with the hyper-mediated times in which we live. Nowadays, life is shaped and beamed into you. All you need to do is login, watch, listen, and be assimilated.