Ashton McCracken

The words in a story are defined by their context. The story hones the words, molding the meaning of one against the others into interconnected narrative links. To alter one is to alter them all, and to break the links between them is to break the thread of the story itself. In turn, the words contribute to the story, shaping its course as it unfolds. Each word shapes those around it while the first word shapes all those that come after. Indeed, in the beginning was the Word, and through the Word all things were made.

In the same way, the individual engages with the world through association within
institutions. To them he binds himself, subjecting his own ambitions to larger interests and taking on responsibilities which he willingly bears. He encloses himself within the confines of a greater structure, and there he remains to labor for others rather than for himself. As a word within a story, the individual plays a part in the structure, engaging with those around him on the stage as the narrative unfolds. Though more than being limited to those lines written before the beginning, he is of the image of the playwright and is himself endowed with the capacity to sub-create. He is not a static image, dependent in his being on those who act upon him. As the original Word exercised its creative will to begin the story, Man takes up the mantle as the Word’s image-bearer and exercises his own. As a character upon the stage, he is confined by the narrative structure unfolding around him, though he also contributes to it. He is shaped by the drama of Man at the same time that he shapes it. It is a co-creative story, and Man is responsible for the choices he makes that alter its course.

However, as the drama expands and subsumes the individual, he grows restless. At the rallying cry of liberation, he readily unshackles himself from institutions to claim his status as a free man. He endeavors to discover his identity from within, unmolded by the demands of society and free from interfering forces. To guide his search, he looks to his personal ambitions and desires. No society remains to disapprove, no institutions to mold, and no kin to instill inherited values. No duties demand his attention, and all values are his own. Tradition surrenders to reason, faith to agnosticism, and so the individual arises from the rubble a free man.

But the cost of freedom is meaning, for, as the individual retreats from institutions, he retreats from the world. He leaves the creative context of the stage to pursue unhindered his personal desires, but he finds nothing beneath his feet. The foundations that tether him fall away and, into the void without direction, the free man tumbles. He grasps desperately for something to hold onto. From within, he directs his reasoning and questioning toward the object of his struggle, identity and purpose, but no principles remain from which he can reason, nor is there anything left to question. All that is external is deconstructed until nothing is left to deconstruct. Finally, all that remains is the creative self. In desperation, he takes his thoughts and desires to construct internally the institutions he has outwardly denied. An image of his purpose he envisions, and on it he trains all of his mind, but it does not materialize. It cannot. The image is shapeless, and nothing exists in the void capable of molding it.

In the strictest sense, freedom from institutions is the shedding of external constraints. But, in shedding external constraints, the individual also sheds the context in which purpose is found, for constraints form the narrative structure in which Man creates and acts. He therefore has a choice: to participate in the narrative, defining a part of it and allowing it to define himself, or to break free, shedding its constraints to emerge into the freedom to be nothing at all. Indeed, a
word is free when the chapters are stripped away, along with the paragraphs and sentences, then finally the words that immediately surround it. It is truly free, but at the same time truly meaningless. Man likewise discovers meaning in association with those around him. He may free himself from those associations and the institutions in which they are formed, but, as he becomes free, he becomes meaningless. Outside of the story, the individual’s creative actions lose their
end, and he no longer has the power to shape the story. As words have context, Man has association, and, as words and their context culminate in the narrative they define, so Man and his associations are fulfilled in the shared institutions that mutually mark and shape their lives, providing direction and meaning through purpose. He may forsake his part in the play, but, in so doing, he abandons all roles and initiative, and those who remain on the stage must continue on without him. It is his final action, and the narrative with which he once engaged becomes lesser for it.

But the individual is not yet lost. It is through association with community that he
rediscovers meaning, for meaning comes through purpose, and purpose arises through actions guided by an ideal. Institutions external to the self provide the ideal which the individual may approximate through actions that become habit. Within the structure formed by tradition and upon the foundation laid by community, he is truly free, free to pursue meaning and discover purpose, for, in the end, Man is what he does. Only upon this foundation can the individual engage with the world in his creative capacity. It is the context in which he acts. Only upon it can he stand to examine the world, and only through its structure can he reason and question. From the void, he must rebuild the institutional foundations he has denied and enter again into the context of the narrative being acted out around him. Institutions tether the individual to the world, the physical reality to which the mind must adhere. It is the unchanging context in which Man may pursue enduring purpose. Ultimately, the pursuit of purpose within context constitutes narrative. The individual steps again onto the stage, a hero in the story of Man, surrendering the self to discover within his associative framework universal truth. As a character made in the image of the original Word, he reclaims his creative status, rebuilding a community centered on a shared story, a community that instills the individuals within with direction to hold the void at bay.