Credo
Some twenty years ago I plagiarized a pathetic essay by some clever IB student in a distant past and turned it into a credo that was required for my Theory of Knowledge class. I must have been seventeen or eighteen, and then as now I was nonchalantly trying my hardest to do as little as possible and still get ace grades. Mostly this involved panicked late night Word Perfect battles, noisy 8-dot matrix printouts, and a talent for making sense in writing. It didn’t usually involve copying someone else’s essay (just liberal citing), but this time there was something about that pecoral that inspired me into turning it into a haughty and anachronistic credo.
Did I really believe in it? I don’t know what I believed. The credo was full of vague but grand sounding ideas about freedom and responsibility. I can’t remember the details, but I do remember building a lot around a quote by some old philosopher - Locke? Hume? Something about not being able to be free when another man’s will can hinder yours. And then there was the witty sentence about there not being any need to feel terrorized by the laws of nature. Descriptive and prescriptive laws. Some rubbish like that. Lots of talk about freedom with a capital F.
So who’s essay should I copy now, twenty years later? I haven’t read any profound quotes lately, and being witty gets old real fast (just like myself).
A credo should begin with the words “I believe…” but the whole concept of trying to sum your beliefs up in a short and catchy essay seems like a very dated idea. In a postmodern world, confusion rather than belief is the mot du jour, and the grand narratives are dead so who cares anyway?
