Thought as the brick in the masons hand…the mason as the creator of ego:
Just an elaboration or abborhation of a rather “innocent thought”. I would love to hear peoples opinions on my recent musings/ramblings.
Thoughts are like waves coming ashore. There is a driving force behind them but we just pay attention to that pretty cap on the top that spashes and draws our attention. We are rarely conscious of the source or cause of these thoughts.
Some of us even consider thoughts to be causes in themselves(free will).
When your driving your car down the road what are you thinking about? The other cars in your path, obstacles, the breakfast that didn’t settle right, the song on the radio?
Man is a frail and fickle creature who is easily lead astray…but to say we are lead astray implies we have some sort of predetermined direction or destiny? Who fashions this destiny?
I think it could be said that thoughts are a synthisis of sensual impressions and imagination, in whatever sense you take such a systhisis to be possible i.e. neuron connections or the conflicts of soul, ego and instinct, with one eye to the future and one to the past.
To view life as an evolutionary process, not necessarily in the biological sense, It could be said that a man, is only the “same” man tomorrow, if his inner and outer self is free from conflict and in a position to fully realize its untapped potential.
The man who is the most pure or the most at one with his self, is the one who flies furthest from the sources of conflict only to re-emerge with the resolve needed to bring into chaos, the order which he himself devined. In other less glamourous cases we posses an exploratory sense of self or an adventerous sense of self discovery which can lead to failure and misory if we don’t tread lightly and execute enough care and attention.
Man has the ability to re-invent this “self” every day and the building or creating of the self or the ego is an ongoing process.
If we can take what has been said as true, man has the ability to dream of great hights and fall to the greatest depths. Further showing his fickle and precarious nature. A mans nature, a mans ego, a mans inner drive should be both his greatest asset and liablilty and only the strongest of wills can claim to be completely consistent from one day to the next.
Some examples of will pushed to these extremes mostly come from literature and direct evidence for the actual existance of these people is scarce, yet intriguingly credible. Jesus and Socrates are such people. They both, through 3rd person accounts, had the moral fortitude and integrity of charactor that Nietzche would dream about regardless of the apparent conflicts he would have with the “source” of that vitality.