Last week I learned that Robert Paul Wolff, the philosopher who got interested in anarchism and marxism, died and I wanted to write something dedicated to him — this was the first reason I started writing this. The second one, was to finally finish an essay that I have in my /temp folder for at least 10 years, which my 20-year-old self titled “Why should I care?”. This essay, which came about as a regular attempt to say “Fuck authority!” remained unfinished, as I didn’t feel I was prepared to arrive at the necessary conclusions. Now, I realize why — my thoughts were in strong conflict with most all philosophy ever published, notably the moral philosophy of Kant. And the position of a 20-year-old who is saying everyone else are wrong, is too anti-intellectualistic me to take.

But now I know that I do have some allies, like the aforementioned Robert Paul Wolff, who tackles the same issues in his paper/blog post THE COMPLETION OF KANT’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE TENETS OF THE RECHTSLEHRE. And that guy from Plato’s Republic (more on him later). So, I will attempt to finally express my thoughts of whether we are obliged to participate in society, and to treat all people, and their problems, in a way that society wants us to treat.
As an experiment, I decided to leave what I wrote before unchanged and unedited, and then continue with my current thoughts. So here we go:

I don’t want to lose the human in me, I don’t want to have to see the world through their ways. I don’t want to have to feel through their point of view, To be locked inside it like an alien in a space suit.

I don’t have to lose the human in me. Simply because noone has to do anything. I’d never choose death before life, But if death it is, let it at least be a real one.