Category: Human Predicament
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Great but Wretched
That one has has a soul to sell indicates one's greatness. That one sells it so cheaply — for money, power, sex, pleasure, fame, mere physical longevity – points up one's wretchedness.
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Spiritual Complacency
The world's transiency is sufficiently stable to be soothingly seductive. One dies, no doubt, but one is still here and has been for a long time. One exploits the gap between 'one dies' and 'I die.' A feeling of pseudo-security establishes itself. The hard and intransient truth of transiency is kept at arm's length. Hence…
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What is Man?
He is an animal, but also a spirit — and thus a riddle to himself. He reasons and speaks, he objectifies, he says 'I' and he means it. Thus he does not parrot the word 'I'; uttering 'I' he expresses self-awareness. Man has a world (Welt), not merely an environment (Umwelt). Man envisages a Higher…
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Eric Hoffer, Contentment, and the Paradox of Plenty
Eric Hoffer as quoted in James D. Koerner, Hoffer's America (Open Court, 1973), p. 25: I need little to be contented. Two meals a day, tobacco, books that hold my interest, and a little writing each day. This to me is a full life. And this after a full day at the San Francisco waterfront…
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World’s Oldest Man Dies at 114
"Accept death," he advises. Easy for you to say, old man.
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The Difference Between Me and You
I'm sensitive, you're touchy. I'm firm, you are pigheaded. Frugality in me is cheapness in you. I am open-minded, you are empty-headed. I am careful, you are obsessive. I am courageous while you are as reckless as a Kennedy. I am polite while you are obsequious. My speech is soothing, yours is unctuous. I am…
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The Mighty Tetrad: Money, Power, Sex, and Recognition
Money, power, sex, and recognition form the Mighty Tetrad of human motivators, the chief goads to action here below. But none of the four is evil or the root of all evil. People thoughtlessly and falsely repeat, time and again, that money is the root of all evil. Why not say that about power, sex,…
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Not Brute Enough
There is the fear that one is not brute enough, not animal enough for this brutal world, a world in which nobility, refinement, kindness, objectivity, reasonableness, impersonal pursuit of truth and justice are perceived as weakness, and brute force, tribalism, onesidedness, and blind loyalty to one's own are admired.
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Of Kripke, Kuhn, and the “Ashtray Variant” of the Argumentum Ad Baculum
Very interesting in what it says about human nature. (HT: Peter Lupu)
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Life is Hard
Even if your life is easy physically, economically, psychologically, and socially, it is bound to be difficult ethically, religiously, and philosophically. Having solved the lower problems, the higher problems loom. Two misfortunes. One is to be so burdened with the lower problems that one is never in a position to tackle the higher. Think of those…
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Too Deep to be Merely Social
The evil of human nature runs too deep to have merely social or environmental causes. This is a truth illustrated by the willfullness of those who refuse to understand it.
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The Value of Enemies
One can sometimes learn best from one's enemies since they will most certainly attack where one is weakest.
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Putting On One’s Face
Before leaving the house one must put on one's face. The step into the social is by dissimulation.
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Exception and Rule
It is regrettably the rule, not the exception, for a person to make an exception in his own case.
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Irreconcilable Differences
Accept that there are differences among people that are nonnegotiable and irreconcilable. We are not all the same at bottom. We do not all want the same things. We are not equal physically or intellectually or morally or spiritually. For example, bellicosity is as it were hard-wired into some. They like fighting and marauding, raping and…