DON´T READ THIS ENTRY!!!

When you’re working as a YAV in Lima, Peru for a year, you frequently find yourself with a lot of free time (and by “a year,” I mean “3 weeks as of tomorrow”…). So I’ve been reading a little Kierkegaard to pass the time. And by Kierkegaard I mean “Kierkegaard For Beginners” by Donald Palmer, which is basically a comic-book style introduction to Kierkegaard’s work. If you’re unfamiliar with the “For Beginners” series, you should check them out – they’re nifty little books that cover all sorts of topics/people in philosophy and sociology.

Anyway, Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher who lived during the 19th century and is basically regarded as the father of Existentialism. He was Christian, and much of his writings are about religion, faith etc. In one thought experiment, Donald Palmer/Kierkegaard describes how God put Adam and Eve in a garden full of trees and singled out just one of them, saying “THIS tree is the tree of knowledge of good and evil. You can eat of ANY tree in the garden EXCEPT this one.” In doing so, God induced a state of dread in Adam and Eve. But they dread nothing – no thing – but rather possibility. The prohibition made them aware of their own freedom – the possibility that they could, very easily, disobey God and eat from the one tree they were specifically directed not to touch. And of course, living with this dread of possibility was too much for them to handle. So they did the one thing they had the freedom to do, but were prohibited from doing.

Thus the inspiration behind the title of this entry. In the blog-world of “Pensamientos Peruanos,” I am God, and you, the reader are Adam (or Eve). Out of all of the entries I’ve written, this is the only one I EXPLICITLY forbade you to read. Obviously my prohibition made you aware of your freedom to disobey Me (and by now, you’re probably sorry you did – this is 5 minutes of your life that you can’t get back!), and thus the forbidden fruit had to be tasted.

Don’t worry though, I don’t have any virtual flaming swords lying around, so I can’t banish you from my blog forever. You’ll just have to keep reading, and hope that I stick to descriptions of my daily life in Lima rather than philosophical musings.