If historically there is, as Thomas Carlyle says, an evolutionary process where the false repeatedly perishes, one must conclude that society is bound to erect and overthrow lies. Otherwise we must ask: why does something equally false always overlap with the overthrown falsehood? Or even: how many more millennia will it take for mankind to get rid of this evil cycle? On a collective level, any outline of a solution seems impossible.
Tag: philosophy
The Ever Corrupting and Oppressive Effects of Group Psychology
Analyzing the ever corrupting and oppressive effects of group psychology, one can conclude that honor requires solitude—that is, a flat refusal to join any collectivity. Collective thinking is detestable, the collective imposition on the individual infamous. But the path is a thankless one: there is always a price to pay. Society, with its shameful history of persecuting solitary rebels, denying them the possibility of refusal, always subjecting them to its vile tyranny, cannot be better defined than as the spreading manifestation of evil. It would not surprise to discover that those who rule this world put dead people to wake up inside the coffin.
What Is Universal in the Human Being
What is universal in the human being is his vain, hypocritical and greedy manifestations. This today as yesterday, and yesterday as tomorrow. There would be exceptions if the human being were not thrown, as a rule, into situations of pressure and risk, when he is forced to act by the instinct maliciously developed over the centuries and capable of freeing him from more severe discomfort. The world does not allow him peace: it hunts him and demands a reaction. And the reaction, always, manifests itself in vanity, hypocrisy and greed—the defense mechanism that corrupts souls and becomes vice. So it would be good that behavioral psychology uses moralistic philosophy as dogma: however, doing so would invariably lead the student into depression.
The Irony of Rational Thought Is That It Tacitly Demands a Conclusion
The irony of rational thought is that it tacitly demands a conclusion. Otherwise, it is to declare itself useless, to conclude that it has not advanced. And the conclusion is precisely the impossible, the false step and the defeat! By concluding, one loses the game, one buries beforehand future possibilities, one declares the end of mental activity. From this we extract: if one is to fail and give up, let one fail and give up late, only when faced with the presentiment of failure and if seized by an irresistible impulse. Schopenhauer, a brilliant mind, did himself harm by doing this too early: he would have had more peaceful days had he not walked, for almost all of his adult life, carrying the weight of his conclusions.