The Good In Man

To those who feel resigned by the cruelty of mankind, and who despair at thinking of humanity as evil by nature, it should be pointed out that their very despair is a sign of the good in human nature. For were human nature evil and cruel, certainly none would object to it on the pretense of goodness and virtue, or none would ever be made to suffer due to conceiving virtue as lacking; but on the contrary, the very concepts necessitates their reality. This is true even when we may observe that some express the words of the concepts alone, i.e., speak of good and unselfishness without truly ascribing to the idea, for by the very fact that we may discriminate between empty words and sincerety, we may observe that there is good in man which is different from the deception of man.

Further, to those who ascribe to Nietzsche’s worship of strength; yet Nietzsche never found an incitement for anything, since he made power into a goal rather than an instrument, thus not going to the foundation of mankind’s wishes. For at the simplest level of things, happiness alone is the incitement for the mind’s actions, and while there are minds that are overjoyed by power, yet happiness is not bound to it; for certainly there are countless of examples of happy people who have not been greatly powerful or thought of themselves as greatly powerful, indeed such pleasure belongs (I would claim) only to the narcissist and the fascist — that is, solely to those who conceive power as the source of happiness, and it does so because they conceive it as the source of happiness, since then they acquire their happiness by acquiring their power. In seeing that power is not any true source of happiness, we may conclude that those who acquire happiness through power acquire it through being deluded, i.e., they misconceive power to be happiness, and convince themselves of its excellence, in the same way as an art critic may convince himself of the excellence of one red triangle above another due to the artist’s name.

Indeed, by the living concepts of good, by which mankind is repulsed at the abuse of power, we may learn that the innate goodness of man is also the source of his joy, or, the very zeal for which his power is ultimately instrumental.

Self-fulfilling Prophecies

How is it that the media writes so much about the financial crisis as something terrible in the spirit that they want it to be rid of, to be improved, when, with each disastrous headline, they only make it grow worse? Of course, the media is driven by profit, and the egotism of the masses drive them to inform themselves of dangers so that they can best avoid them, and thus, by their own greed, they bring about their own downfall; for the media tells the masses that the economy is failing, and the masses stop feeding the economy because they do not wish to part from their own wealth, and then the economy fails, and the media reports that the economy is failing etc.

Yet, it is not so that people necessarily consume themselves, but egotism does, and therefore a system which is founded on its principles is doomed to crash. On the other hand, it is difficult to conceive how a species of mankind’s advancement, driven by altruism so that the good of others serve as incitement for each, would destroy themselves in such a disgraceful fashion. That is, altruism achieves the goals of the egotist, who fails in the same — and in this, the evil is truly the fool.

To help others

Seldom do people grow so egoistical as in times of financial hardship, when each one must hold tightly to his wallet so as not to be left defenseless before the egotism of others. Anyone’s perspective, when faced by the possibility of relative discomfort, seems to shrink to include that discomfort alone and thus to occupy the whole mental world of man. “Are you mad?” they say then, when asked whether they should not help those in need, “I have my own problems.”

And certainly, they have nothing but problems, since they think of nothing else, conceive of nothing else, yet if they knew that their problems were really the conceptions themselves, they would not be in distress. However, realizing that their problems is nothing can be done most easily through interesting oneself in the difficulties of others, wherefore it is as a result seldom managed.

Yet, were the stockbrooker to understand the difficulties of the starving children of the world, he would not torment himself over the rise and fall of stocks, and were the vain to know the suffering of the terminally ill of the world, they would no longer fret about looking good, and were the proud to know of the perseverance of those who have been given nothing, they would not be arrogant etc. But this should not seem strange, for in expanding the mind to conceive of difficulties that make one’s own problems seem like nothing, one makes one’s own problems into nothing, i.e., one is relieved of them, for they are no longer conceived as difficulties, but the absence of difficulties, wherefore those who interest themselves in others and help others before themselves will indeed be happier and more content than ever those who live in a mental fortresses.

Choosing free will

While there are many arguments that disprove free will absolutely, yet surely none does it so well as the simple question of how a particular mind with its particular will chose to will in such a way? For certainly, a will, to be properly considered free, would need to have chosen its way of configuration, and even the will which did the choosing must have been chosen in a similar way, and thus a mind would need to precede itself infinitely so that it could dispense its absolute approval of its nature.

Indeed, it should be no secret to anyone that the reason we consider ourselves to possess a will that is utterly free is simply that we experience our desires and wishes through ourselves, i.e., we cannot experience what’s prior to our awareness, and what determines its operations, by the very fact that they precede it.

Yet, many who consider this type of determinism in the same terms as conventional freedom and imprisonment will find it too terrible and harsh a reality to believe, though in truth nothing about our lives changes. For in the conventional sense of freedom, the man who is unchained remains free, and the one who is chained is bereft of his liberty. That is, if we consider the realization of cause and effect as summoning a prison, we are making something other of it than it is, for it is merely what we are living right now, but with awareness.

The status of status

There is something very quaint about the notion of social status — something which should be immediately clear to anyone and yet seems rarely to be considered. For, certainly, while media frequently bemoans those whom it depicts as doomed to lives of low social status (and in extension “pathetic” lives), and have people shudder at the thought of being so powerless, yet what is the need of social status if not powerlessness? That is, how utterly “pathetic” is not one who frets about social status and shies the loss of it with a fervor, since he by the very act admits himself as powerless before the opinions of others.

By this I mean to say that none can make a forgery of power through attaining social status; for it is the pathetic nature of a man, not his noble nature, that drives him to accumulate it, and that makes him fear the lack of it, and that makes his mind be consumed by it. Thus, those who draw a sigh of relief at having attained a certain social status, so that they are not mistaken for “lowly ones”, are the very lowly ones they hold others to be, though they are too confused about the concepts to realize it.

For how could it ever be said that a man is kingly in yearning a crown, rather than in not needing it; when he depends upon it, he is not even sovereign in his own mind, but on the contrary he is a slave, and all the conventional power he may claim is thus not truly commanded by him. On the other hand, a slave who is unperturbed by the barks of his masters and their opinions of him are to a very high degree sovereign.

But none of this is truly strange, for it should be counted as nothing but mankind’s lapse in reflection that has made him worship strength and independence without realizing how the need for status is the opposite of both.

About the common belief in telepathy

I always found it strange how people generally seem convinced that objects outside the mind are the immediate causes of the affections of the mind, as if there is a communion between an object of the mind and the mind itself which is not simply an idea of the mind. That is, as if human beings are affected by things rather than by ideas, that they must order things in order to find harmony rather than to order their conceptions. Yet it should be clear to anyone, that a man is not particularly anxious about crossing a road if he has not seen the car which is speeding towards him, by which it is not the presence of the physical car that distresses him, but the presence of the idea of it, i.e., there is no intangible bound between objects and the mind, but all things that affect the mind are within the mind.

In psychology, however, the concrete belief in telepathic bounds between outside objects and mind are so firmly consolidated that a state of ataraxia is meant to be a distortion of the mind, as if a mind which has ordered its conceptions in such a way that it is unperturbed by things is therefore ill, because it does not ascribe emotional significance to things in the manner that they mean that the telepathic bounds necessitate, i.e., in the way that they mean objects are charged with said emotional significance.

Do you believe in magic?

It is interesting when people ask each other whether or not they believe in magic, and even more interesting when the answers are so frequently in the negative, at the same time as the term is left undefined. For in order to answer the question, certainly we need a clear conception of what is meant by the term “magic”.

Mostly, it seems as if we mean a force that fullfills the following criteria (i) it is beyond our full comprehension (ii) it amazes us (iii) it is of tremendous power. Yet, when people answer in the negative, they seem to forget that the earth they dwell upon rotates around a ball of fire which is more than a hundred times its size, or that the force of gravity pulls on all the bodies in the universe, or that uncounted suns burn all around them across distances that make their luminous bodies into tiny specks on the night sky.

And indeed, in considering that people are generally amazed if they observe a person lift a weight of two hundred kilos, or if they regard a man who can juggle a dozen small balls at once, certainly they should be amazed at the solar system and the structure of the galaxies, or further, the structure of existence itself, and the lack of constant amazement must thus be counted as nothing but a sign of almost constant inattention.

Therefore the question “Do you believe in magic?” must surely be asking simply whether or not someone has his eyes open.