Modern man has this distinction: he thinks he is important. And he runs to a psychologist when he unconsciously suspects that he is not. The depression he suffers at forty begins in childhood and extends into youth, when he grows up bombarded with lies, feeding in his mind a false vision of himself. He smiles because life offers him wonderful prospects; “future” is always an auspicious word; he starts to believe. And with the years, he has to face severe frustrations. Is it life’s fault? Obviously not: life has nothing to do with the animal’s presumption! Life is the victim of an epidemic falsification, a frightening incomprehension, and an unprecedented demeaning. A young person is trained, like a dog, to give certain answers to “what will he do with his life,” socially admirable answers, and learns to see the world in a mediocre light, valuing that which has no value. He begins by making mistakes about himself and ends up making mistakes about life.
Tag: philosophy
Blessing or Weakness?
It can be admitted without much difficulty that a dog is capable of thinking. However, a dog certainly does not believe. I say this and I notice a human differential. A differential that I cannot summarize as a blessing or weakness: belief elevates the human being above all other animals to the same extent that it makes him susceptible to error and evil. If I have great esteem for skeptics, I realize that they lack something. Sometimes it seems necessary to embrace a weakness to transcend the mediocrity of the concrete…
Nietzsche Symbolizes Freedom of Spirit
It is very difficult to recognize the autonomy of those who seem unscathed by Nietzsche’s outbursts. They like to stone him, take him out of context, detach him from the nobility of character that is peculiar to him. Nietzsche symbolizes freedom of spirit, power, intellectual courage. To undermine him seems to me, above all, to undermine these three very noble qualities.
The Modern Monster
Mário Ferreira dos Santos, about Nietzsche, in free translation:
He was the adversary of the State, the modern monster, the Moloch of our days, the devourer of men and consciences, the most brutal creation of human weakness and who will end up totally tiring it, to the point of one day abhorring all forms of oppression, and destroying them with an impetus that will make the pages of history tremble. It will not be easy to understand this for the man of today, this captive who licks his shackles, this “Haustier,” this domesticated animal who has grown accustomed to worshipping the monster of which he speaks.
The note is dated 1957. What to say? A little over half a century, and we can verify the accuracy of Mario’s brilliant observation. The collapse of the modern state is inevitable, however… the “captive who licks the shackles” continues, passive, to lick them, in a state of admirable unconsciousness in which he does not show the slightest sign of exhaustion. The situation has only worsened: the monster has grown, its dominion has expanded, and it no longer has any shame. The question, however, remains unanswered: until when? On the one hand, the reaction is inevitable; on the other, awakening seems distant. What is clear is that, as Mário predicted, the day will come when the “devourer of men and consciences” will be faced with a violent and extraordinary explosion, coming from an apparently perpetual lethargy.