As I drove to work this past week I saw a distant, oncoming car strike a squirrel in the road. As I appoached I was horrified to see the unfortunate creature writhing in the agony which were its throes of death. By most any commonly accepted definition of the word “intellectual,” it is clear that the squirrel was not having an intellectual moment. In his book, Enemies of Hope, Raymond Tallis writes
â€In toothache, I am as remote as possible from being a lens on the universe; I am a place of toothache…To be in severe pain is to be rolled in the brazier of anti-meaning.â€
I don’t reach out to connect with the cosmos while I’m in pain; instead I contract into a little ball of suffering. My entire universe shrinks to the dimensions of my suffering. Pain is the antithesis of intellectual activity.
One plus one equals two. There, I’ve just spoken a truth. Was that truth painful to read? By your account my statement of this truth signifies my bravery. By your account my third grade arithmetic teacher was a heroine.
Why don’t you point him to the correct passage in one of Nietzsche’s books, so that it can cost him only $20.
You are a walking advertisement and proof of what happens to needy, weak minds who suddenly find themselves exposed to strength.
It’s the feminine psychological disposition of ideal worshiping.
They get addicted to it and they fall in love with the pusher that provides their fix.
It is a homo-erotic relationship, where one male attaches himself to another male, with undertones of sexuality, mimicking his demeanor or what he understands of it, hanging from his every word and having orgasmic fits every time he perceives himself fulfilling one of his prophecies.
Not quite. The biggest mistake has been to create a welfare system that allows the excessively numerous offspring of low quality parents to all survive. The gene pool is deteriorating even as we speak!
The truth can be one of the most frigthening and painful things ever to happen to the mind. Fantasy and “untruth” are the most pleasurable, securing, comforting and safe.
When the education-system is given to cowards, it becomes lies and cencorship, eventually teaching lies as truth, so that it can be comfort or ease, instead of being the bitter facts which people need-most to know.
One reason why people automatically oppose what Cezar says, is becayse Cezar has direct confidence and is very affirmative. Everyone else is usedto self-doubt, and they dislike to see someone else without a doubt, so they seek to oppose the other’s confidence.
So, what did you do?
Did you put the squirrel out of its terminal misery?
Did you pass on by, thereby leaving the poor squirrel to continue writhing in agony?
Did YOU have an intellectual moment, as a result of the squirrel’s suffering?
if so, did that intellectual moment involve any suffering?
I say let nature take its course, the world will sort us out when it is ready.
Unfit humans will die off and the fit will survive. Until then make darn sure you and yours stay fit. Not hard to figure that out.
“One half of the children born die before their eighth year. This is nature’s law, why contradict it?” Rousseau
Nature may be “red in tooth and claw,” but are free to oppose it. We thwart “nature” whenever we raise an umbrella over our heads. We thwart it when we immunize children against childhood diseases. Here’s a case-in-point of of what may be achieved when we refuse to allow “nature to take its course.”
"Nepal…has one of the highest rates of curable blindness anywhere in the world. ‘It’s just accepted that when you get old the hair turns white, the eye turns white (because of cataracts), and then you die…’
The reasons for the high cataract incidence are unclear, but may include genetics, intense UV sunlight exposure, malnutrition, or other factors. The effects are more apparent. ‘Without a family to take care of you, you die right away…’" National Geographic, 2003
Half of Tibet’s population is blind by the age of 70 and many are blind by the age of 40. In most cases, a simple and inexpensive (approximately $120US) operation is all that’s needed to restore their sight, and in many cases, save their lives. Some 130,000 operations have already been performed by the Himalayan Cataract Project (click here), whose staff and supporters have determined, at least in this case, that they aren’t content to simply allow nature to take its course.
It seems to me that the course nature will follow is now being determined by the law of human nature. The course for nature we seem to have determined does not appear to be headed to a point where “the world will sort us out”. “Self-destruction” seems more likely. There is evidence that suggests it is possible to once again “allow nature to take its course” to apparent “self-realization”. All we have to do is remove the obstacles we have placed in its way.