There is a remarkable difference between having a “cause” and wanting to impose it on the rest of men. It is possible to say, at first, that this difference is character. But it can also be said that the more the feeling inspired by the “cause” is true, the more its “benefits” are clear in the mind of the one who has it, the more will be the natural impulse to want other men to have it too, or to “enjoy” it. Here, then, we come to the imposition. There is no way to interpret it, regardless of how it is practiced, or how it is founded, if not as a primary violation, a direct attack on the freedom of the individual. The imposition will never be noble, and after the tyranny has been perpetrated, those who have suffered it can no longer be called free men.
Tag: philosophy
At the Same Time that Prudence…
At the same time that prudence demands attention to the future, peace refuses to appear in the mental room where it is present. The future, coldly analyzed, is the end and the possibility of the end. In a lower instance, it is the present uncertainty materializing into a nightmare. For there to be peace, there must be no apprehension, and apprehension can hardly be avoided when one glimpses tomorrow. In part, the tranquility of the Buddhist who has nothing and fears nothing is understandable; but unless there is a total break with attachments, something almost fanciful, it does not seem possible to be so and not also be irresponsible.
The Modern Obsession With Sexuality
The modern obsession with sexuality, which considers it a matter of first importance and cannot bear half a dozen words that do not highlight its primordial character in the human being, only validates the old, very unpleasant and unpopular affirmations of numerous thinkers over the centuries who have noted the greater distance between the superior man and the common man than between the latter and a dog.. There is, to put it like Pessoa, a difference in quality, an inevitable repulsion, and to the former the concerns of the second will always seem contemptible and degrading.
Going Back to the Past
It is a very amusing irony the fruitful tendency of the “new sciences” to turn to the past in search of foundations and answers. We see, for example, psychology, which has become another after Jung, much more complex, interesting and effective, thanks to the deep investigations that Jung made in various terrains of various ancient cultures. And this phenomenon is not limited to the “new sciences,” being present in literature, philosophy and wherever we turn our lenses: the answers that man needs seem to be present in the most primitive traces of his existence, the expansion of his knowledge being limited to giving new forms to conclusions—not to say truths—already perceived long ago.