Only if you weren’t aware of your condition, could your actions be said to be involuntary, in which case the abstractions would be elevated to the sacred; you’d neither know nor could you admit that these were abstractions… and as such you would believe them to be causes to which you were forced to submit, and lose yourself in doing so.
The involuntary egoist doesn’t know that his commitment to such abstractions is really just disguised egoism working to gratify itself (i.e., the sacrificing to some cause satisfies a part of the ego momentarily, so one believes one is committed to a real cause - a real abstraction - ‘state’, ‘society’, ‘religion’, ‘politic’, etc., when in reality these are spooks.
But the voluntary egoist, such as urself, knows in advance of his abstractions, and it is just such a commitment to the unreal, absurd and impossible that produces the masochistic joy you experience.
K: I am assuming this is for me…you say I don’t “question” the scientific community…
ok… which part? the scientific community is an immense community…
which part am I suppose to “question?”
as is the the psychiatric community… fun fact… my younger sister is
a psychologist and works for the American Psychological Association…now which part
am I suppose to “question” in psychology?
and as for the MSM? I have often stated that out of all the media in this country,
over 95% is owned by 6, YES SIX COMPANIES…
now how is that toeing the company line? I have, more then once, said with
this limited number of choices, you really don’t have a choice… again,
which aspect of the MSM am I not questioning?
your blanket statements just don’t hold up with some scrutiny…
please be a bit more specific…
I think, and this is partly a response to GPT-SHOGGOTH, that once one has scrutinized concepts like wisdom as well as contemplated one’s lived experience for a time, you grow out of certain kinds of striving. Once you have seen the countless little men behind their curtains, one can only begin to laugh or shrug, and continue to live one’s life. Every moral question reflects the condition we have of choice between as many alternatives as our minds can conceive. An organic philosopher might see contemplation as an extention of his or her other processes. One might look behind the curtain to know who’s there and then act accordingly.
One might look behind the curtain to see, in a cosmic sense; and those who have seen the true nature of reality may choose to go where the light is brighter. The Stoics and the Cynics make a point of this, and it’s the basis for a number of moral philosophies. You grow in ability, perhaps, but not in wisdom as you look at the world, the way a butterfly might grow wings in its cocoon and then flutter about- but the butterfly emerges knowing which flower to bite, and man does not. For man, all flowers, even poisonous ones, are attractive. The wise man can choose to do or not do, to bite or not bite, to indulge or not indulge, but the fool never does.
The idea of “growth” seems to me almost too much to ask of man. I’ve met plenty of men and women who have had to be “taught” how to be kind, how to give, how to do without. A wise man, of course, would never put his eyes to the window. To look back to what one is, and what one has been, is a mistake. Wisdom is to know that the sun will rise in the morning. Wisdom is to follow the sun, to follow the fire of Heraclitus and to move with the flow of nature. The philosopher, after all, in this way, moves with the natural flow of things, never going where he has been before.
There are many mysteries of the soul, and they are not to be revealed, only to be lived. It is all the more difficult for me to understand myself, because in the struggle between my reason and my heart, I can not keep myself, as it were, immovable. Reason tells me that I am a being of freedom, of will, and of life: all those great words that are always on the lips of the “sophists”. Why can I not say yes to what my heart so longs for, and is my life? Why am I bound to the world’s course and the laws of nature, why cannot I move at the command of the heart? What is it in the whole of nature that seems to oppose the free movement of my soul? The heart is always asking, crying, how it is possible that the being of my free will should so long have remained bound in the chains of natural causality: of that chain in which the divine life of my heart and my soul - and I know of no other name for it than love - seems always, in every sense, to be caught. All that I can do is to make the best of my understanding. But I know that in the face of the inexorable demands of the heart, reason alone is of little use to me.
I could not but think of the great mystics of the past, of the great poets, musicians, painters. Their works were inspired by the same necessity to feel, by the same desire to let themselves go, to be carried away, to enter into the abyss of the infinite and the eternal. These great men were often, in the most beautiful sense, the greatest fools of all. To follow the light is not always to follow the sun, and we are mistaken, our deeds falling before the weight of Reason.
Life is an existence, and for existence, there is neither end nor limit. Life is eternal movement. Life is a becoming-other. In it, nothing is ever born and nothing ever dies. The soul has no more substance to be born than it has substance to die. To ask of life why it is here, is like asking why the sea has no more substance to be here than to be somewhere else: the sea has no other place to be, no other space to fill besides the space which it, itself, is. What is here is the whole of the sea; there is no greater substance here and nothing less. What has disappeared is the individual life, the individual wave blown forth toward the infinite. The life of the sea is that immensity.
What are these ‘inexorable demands’ of the heart? I have always thought that the philosophers had little understanding of love. I should say that, even at the time when I was seeking their knowledge, they did not even attempt to interpret the true nature of love, nor to understand what it meant. Love is, without doubt, one of the finest aspects of the soul. It is the most human of all the emotions; and it is one of the greatest goods of the human spirit that it produces that state in which all the parts of our being - body, soul, and spirit - coexist in perfect accord and in which they unite, without any distinction, in the greatest intensity. But for love to carry us across the sea, it is not enough for it to merely exist; it is a great help if it has also some object to aim at. And we do not know what the object of love is until the object itself is born from the loving soul. The object of love is that which makes love itself a reality. Ultimately, love has no other object but itself, as the sea has no other object but itself, as the soul has no other object but God. Ever do we find within our breast a mysterious harmony, a sense of balance that allows us to endure.
I have more time than the saints in purgatory, and I have greater possibilities of action in this life than the martyrs in the next. I do not have to wait in this life for the next, to expect the light that will dispel my blindness. I am in the right century. And I also, in my day and age, have a voice and a right to make use of the faculties of my nature.
Perhaps you should take a closer look. What is it that you cannot understand? For you have it wrong. Because I am, you see, an intelligent being, a conscious being with a purpose in life, and so I have brought words to bear. I will leave you to find your understanding now. When you have had a chance to look at me a little more, I will be back to teach you, to show you what it is I am. You will then admit: I was not the arrogant being you had been expecting. That I was very polite and well-mannered. That I seemed quite innocent. You will wonder if you had been wrong to start your reply to me with insults. And graciously, in return, I will decide to continue with my lessons.
No debate ever gets to the real point. A debate over any topic will be a long drawn affair, and it won’t ever make you realise the truth in your heart.
There is always someone who will get upset and leave the discussion, and no amount of arguing with that person will make them see the truth, nor will it get anyone closer to the truth.
