Tag: behavior

Thomas Bernhard, in Extinction, makes a very sharp reflection on what can be called the practical man and the thinking man. According to his reasoning, the practical man hates idleness and usually identifies it with the thinking man. However, the practical man, unaccustomed to thought, only conceives of action as practical action, and therefore cannot understand the absence of practical action as anything other than idleness. But the truth is that idleness does not exist for the thinking man, because it is precisely under the appearance of idleness that he experiences his states of greatest excitement. This, however, is far beyond the comprehension of the practical man. The curious thing about all this is that, in fact, it is precisely the practical man who slips into the idleness that he hates so much: incapable of thinking, only for him does the absence of practical action mean genuine and absolute inaction.

The problem with utilitarian man is that he believes that everything is necessarily for sale, just waiting to be negotiated. That is why he ends up, sooner or later, breaking his face when he comes up against his will against a nature that does not share his convictions. So he lashes out, wages war and sometimes insults what he does not understand; in all cases, however, whether he thinks he is triumphant or not, he is forced to swallow his own smallness.

It is now commonplace to say that hypocrisy is the substance of public morality, and that social relations are impossible without it. Fair enough, although not because of the consequent impression that it should be tolerated in its entirety. There is a limit, just as there is hypocrisies. Hypocrisy, like lies, is only justified when it prevents us from crossing the border of civility. Otherwise, what it does is differentiate men from scoundrels, and it cannot be admitted without also admitting the complete shipwreck of one’s own value.