Reflections on Aphorisms #95

Much more productive today, though mostly in the sense that I got a lot of reading and more exercise in. I did get a little bit more writing done, and spent some time on productive extracurriculars as it were, but not a whole lot of finished writing today. I’ve got a few posts written that just need a final layer of polish and a posting, including a review of Bird by Bird and my tablet that I’ve been using to do a lot of my writing recently.

Aphorism 134

The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice. (Maxim 78)

Interpretation

The sincerest convictions are backed up by a willingness to sacrifice the self.

This is one of the greatest forces for progress in the world. Without it, we would not have civilization.

The problem is that our motivations stem not from principle but from desire.

This is something that keeps us from becoming what we could be.

Desire gives us guidance, but it is flawed.

One form of desire is the desire for security.

However, we are not good at evaluating risks and threats. We are wired to be wary of our environments, to see monsters lurking in the dark. Sometimes this is even a pathological element that hides itself within our psyche, a fear of the unknown that cripples us.

This does not need to be restricted to literal darkness, either. Anything that is foreign or alien can produce reactions drawn from fear.

One solution to this is to try to know everything.

This is a flawed path. Our capacities are limited. Our ability to comprehend is limited. Even our use of language to convey information is flawed. The best tool in the repertoire of any living creature malfunctions.

The great problem with trying to overcome fear through acclimation is that there will always be something new to fear. A worse problem is that we assume that knowledge is going to strip away fear. Knowing that the flame burns does not keep it from doing harm. Knowing the proteins that make up an insect do not make it less abhorrent to one with a phobia.

Familiarity breeds contempt, nothing more. We may lose our fear from packaged experiences. We may overcome it through exposure.

Courage is the solution. It requires a willingness to sacrifice. Nihilism is not courage, because the loathing of the self is not the same as the will to improve the world.

Courage is just one of many good and noble guiding principles. Justice is another.

Justice is difficult because even the noblest fall. This is the reason why we recount tragedies. We look at the darkest parts of history and psyche. We tear the veil from our eyes. We remember the dead before we inter their remains. Even if we focus on life, we confront death.

We know that there is a part of us worthy of condemnation.

But we do not live in a world where things can be broken to pieces and survive.

To destroy the worst in us would be to destroy us, even if it is part of a metamorphosis.

In weakness of will, we seek to punish the offenses rather than eradicate their source.

We may not be able to succeed in the nobler agenda.

But we can always look into ourselves and find that which is rotten and wretched.

If we seek justice, we must start with ourselves. We must cut out that which is profane, that which is corrupt, that which is loathsome. Through these sacrifices we prepare ourselves to live in line with our convictions.

Resolution

Do no evil.

Live by principle.

Distinguish between sacrifice and pain. One has meaning. The other does not.

Reflections on Aphorisms #90

Classes officially start for me tomorrow. I’ve already had a chance to log on and preview them, but since it’s a Sunday I haven’t gone into depth on anything. I’m hoping to get disciplined about being done with classes well before the actual due dates, so that I can devote some time at the end of each week to really reflect on and use what I’ve learned.

Aphorism 128

We have more strength than will; and it is often merely for an excuse we say things are impossible. (Maxim 30)
François de La Rochefoucauld

Interpretation

One of the things that always strikes me as odd is that people talk about how “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” in the vein of Paul, but most people actually have the opposite going on in their lives.

We do not push ourselves to our fullest and expound upon our potential. This would be difficult and unwieldy, and we are unwilling to confront the suffering that it would bring upon us. Suffering, however, is not the greatest evil.

There are very few people who actualize their potential. We possess much more strength and power than we give ourselves credit for, and even “successful” people do not bring their best selves into being. This is the cause of much of the conflict in life.

I consider myself successful, in the sense that I do not believe myself to be a moral failure, and where I have deficiencies I am remedying them. I have chosen the sacrifices that I wish to make in order to become a person who is good and God-fearing. Even then I have not lived up to the standards that I have set for myself, both morally and practically.

By what means, then, can we seek to meet our own standards?

According to Rochefoucauld, who seems in this case to be quite correct, we need to realize that a lot of the time it is not our bodies or our minds that betray us but our will.

In his Memories, Dreams, Reflections (which I have written a review of), Carl Jung talks about the case of a mother who infected her children with contaminated bathwater. She had known that the water was not pure and safe to drink, but had permitted them to do so, seemingly out of negligence. Jung discovered that she had developed a complex; she was quite happy with one of her children (her daughter, if my memory serves), but not the other (her son). The reasoning for this wasn’t a matter of mere approval or disapproval; there were correlations and associations that led to her antipathy.

The daughter died, the son survived, and she slipped into such a shattered mental state as to be institutionalized.

She would never deliberately murder her children. However, she wound up in a ward for the insane, deemed incompetent or mentally defective. There was no limit in her capacity, however. She was perfectly intelligent, and in fine physical health. It was only the fact that she had begun to loathe her role as mother and the burdens that her marriage and society had placed on her that caused her to abandon her duties.

Most of us occupy this state. There is no shortcoming in us which justifies our failings. We are actually often surpassed by those who have much better reasons to fail than we do. I recently read Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken (my review), and in an interview at the end of the book she mentioned how she had chronic fatigue disorder and vertigo flare-ups during the writing process.

She’s written two award winning books (both of which have been turned into movies) with chronic health conditions that make even getting out of bed a burden. I’ve never read Seabiscuit, though I can vouch for the quality of Unbroken, and I think that her aptitude is a good model of how far the will can carry someone.

Most of us don’t have that will; I know that I certainly don’t yet. Fortunately, I don’t believe we’re static beings. We change and grow. At the very least we have seen that people are capable of disintegrating. However, every day and every hour we have experiences that change us, even in our dreams. If we capitalize on our experiences and avoid those things which bring us to moments of weakness and psychological disintegration, we can move away from weakness and toward strength.

Resolution

Find and do things which serve a greater purpose.

Don’t pretend that weakness is an obstacle.

Every time I want to stop, ask why.

Reflections on Aphorisms #43

Time for another set of reflections on aphorisms. Today was more productive than yesterday, though there were a few setbacks. My new goal is to make tomorrow more productive than today.

At this point, who knows how much I’ll have improved by Friday?

Aphorism 68

Force is not a remedy.
John Bright

Interpretation

Well, this is certainly a goldmine.

There’s three things that I think we should look at here:

The “force” of fitting things into the human mode.

The “force” of political systems.

The “force” of our own wills.

The first is probably the most dangerous. We have a way of contemplating the world that is human-centric. This is only natural, because it’s where our values lie, and I’m a proud human supporter, so I don’t think it’s immoral either.

The problem is that our world is not cultivated and improved like a bonsai garden. There’s a line in C.S. Lewis’ work about Aslan, who’s sort of a God/Christ figure that takes the form of a sapient lion.

“He’s not a tame lion.”

Barring the commentary about God, it’s also true about the universe. We’ve got our views and perspectives on the universe, but in the end we’re grasping at straws. To grasp is better than to abstain (and we may even by fluke get close to truth), but it is still mere grasping.

The force of political systems is something that’s become a big concern for me recently. I hate talking politics, but I feel like something has to be said.

The first step in making the world a better place is to remember that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and it’s not just a literal hell. We’re coming off of a century where the action of government created the closest thing one can imagine to the metaphysical state of Hell, and we’re pretty close to doing it again.

Everyone should take a step back and ask if their actions really work, abandoning all pretense of coercion or forcing others into compromises. It’s going to (perhaps literally, at least spiritually) kill us all if we don’t.

Last but not least is the force of our wills.

One of the concepts that haunted me in my youth and later came to be known by me in more practical, identifiable terms is the archetypal notion of the Dragonslayer.

The Dragonslayer is an archetype that is defined by tragic confrontation; it’s embodied by Beowulf, Captain Ahab, Coriolanus, and even Christ (in a sense, since the sacrifice of the cross came with spiritual torment as well and would have shattered Christ’s lessers).

It’s what a person looks like when they bring their full force of will to bear on a problem, and one of the things that I’ve noticed is that where we see the Dragonslayer we rarely see slain dragons, or at least not ones that were slain without great sacrifice.

The will itself doesn’t do anything. It’s the sacrifice that does. Trying to use force when surrender is called for can doom the Dragonslayer to destruction.

Resolution

Don’t point at others’ things and say “Mine!”

Remember that it is sacrifice, not willful opposition, that makes the world go ’round.

Before knocking down the door, check if it’s locked.

Aphorism 69

There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself.
Montaigne

Interpretation

I’m not quite sure what the best way to approach this is, but I feel an affinity for Montaigne so I think I understand what he’s saying here.

Side-note: Apparently everyone who reads Montaigne thinks they have an affinity for Montaigne, so take this with a grain of salt.

The idea here is that there’s a purpose to everything, at least in terms of utility (though not necessarily cosmic destiny; that’s going too far).

One of the important things here is understanding that it’s a matter of perspective. You can look at things a bunch of different ways, and there are ways to view things that definitely have a negative impact (e.g. catastrophizing) or a positive ways.

It’s a call to see the silver lining in the clouds, basically.

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay. You want a visual metaphor? I’ll give you a visual metaphor!

Another point is to engage in some lateral thinking. We’re in an incredibly complex system and things work together in ways that are more complicated than the individual parts (and even the individual parts may have more to them than they at first seem to carry).

One of the things that seems counter-intuitive is that working less may wind up being more productive, because overworking oneself leads to burnout and fatigue.

Case in point: uselessness (at least in the right context) is useful. It’s good to delegate tasks to others as is fit and also to embrace a little time for rest and relaxation, so long as it does not become destructive to other opportunities and endeavors.

The secret is this: there is no secret. (Welcome to cliche-town!)

Really, though. It’s not about becoming obsessed over some grand secret, some alchemist-esque magnum opus that will lead you away from the rigors of everyday existence. It’s not about some grand third-eye awakening (though there’s also a mystery to everything that the strictly rational miss out on).

You just have to realize that you don’t know as much as you think you do, and broaden your search.

Resolution

Never assume that you know what something is for.

There is a utility to be found in everything.

Adapt to what is around you, and remember that a change in context can be a change in everything.