MĂDĂLIN MATICA Brackets and digressions NAȚIUNEA PUBLISHING HOUSE  Brackets and digressions --------------------------------------------------------------------- MĂDĂLIN MATICA I say backwards because it seems to me that culturally we are moving forward like crap. Backwards because this is not a book. More importantly, it doesn't have an author, but rather someone who picked and chose from many books. It's not a book because these are just disparate thoughts with no obvious cohesion, just snippets from books I've enjoyed. Rather, it is not a book, but my struggle against forgetting. Primarily of my forgetfulness. Ultimately, of generalized forgetfulness. Looking back, we might understand where we are heading. I don't give lessons. Nor do I claim to have made a book. Here are just fragments that lack a binding. The binder is in the reader, not in the scribe who put these little pieces of mosaic together. There is no "copyright". After all, I don't even believe in the idea of "copyright". It's an imbecility created by the capitalist system. Who do the words belong to? To a people. To whom do one's thoughts belong? To the culture that created it. Behind every "author" lie thousands of years of thought, of forgotten philosophers, anonymous or famous. We all plagiarize something, so we cannot claim to own something. So yes, you can multiply, photocopy, steal, steal, post on the Internet anything from this book. All of it! It doesn't belong to me. Nothing belongs to us but our soul. Sleep well, reader. Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate... ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS The existence of God Story not located in a particular religion, perhaps only in monotheistic religions. So put down the stone. "A wise man is visited by a young man who has a question (the fundamental question): - Tell me, great sage, does God exist? - Since this is the only question you have, I would like to know if the answer you receive will have a major effect on your future life. - Of course it will! - So, if I told you that God exists, would you change your life and way of living? - No, I don't think so. - Then you have already chosen the answer to this question. But my question is, why do we ask questions to which we have the answer and find it hard to assume? The questions are more important than the answers. Our punishment "One of the punishments for refusing to get involved in politics is that you end up being governed by those inferior to you. " - Plato Obsession with death... the basis of metaphysics The most serious questions have, in most cases, the simplest answers. Diogenes the dog was asked if death was a bad thing and if he feared it: - How could it be a bad thing if the one who dies neither suffers nor feels? The idea was to be extensively developed by Epicurus and later by his school along with the hedonists, eudemonians and materialists. Of course, Epicurus is more profound and organized, creating a philosophical system. Which doesn't make Diogenes any less sympathetic. Diogenes, as you can see, moves lightly through cynicism, sophism, Epicureanism and Stoicism. A hard philosopher to categorize, and I'm sure that's what would have annoyed him: to be categorized, categorized, categorized.... The power of evil Indeed, as the Pythagoreans maintain, evil is unlimited and infinite, good limited and finite - Aristotle My own well A simple lesson in self-appreciation: "I am by nature made for my own good; not for my own evil. " - Epictetus Don't you think it's time to start giving yourself more credit? Hell begins, however, when my "own good" is at odds with what society defines as "good". "My own good" vs. "the common good"? The individual vs. the community? Epictetus, being a Stoic philosopher, would have opted for the common one. As an Epicurean, however, I opt for the "own good", which must not, however, contradict "common" rules. Notions which, however, are in flagrant, factual contradiction, for my own good defines me, is particular to me, and my life is dictated to me by my will and desire, not by a generalised opinion. Epictetus, a stoic so Epicurean at times. Independence from money? I admire Diogenes the dog, one of the most sympathetic ancient philosophers. Yes, yes... the one who created the school of cynics was an extremely likeable fellow whose sarcasm could hardly be matched. Though many of us still try. Aristippus (and I like him too) was known for taking advantage of the tyrant Dionysus' wealth, praising him and singing odes of over-greatness. Deh... epicurean cynicism. One day he sees Diogenes washing some lettuce leaves to eat. He approaches him with goodwill: - Diogenes, if you learned to be a little nicer and came to Dionysus' court, you wouldn't have to wash leaves or worry about food. Imperturbably Diogenes continued his work by replying: - I have another perspective: if you learned to wash leaves, perhaps you wouldn't have to serve the tyrant Dionysus. Both are right. It is, after all, a personal choice which path you want to follow. But it's certainly useful to at least learn to wash leaves even if you're going to serve in someone's yard. Heraclitus' Duality in Plato In every man, for example, the force of death and the force of life are at work every moment. Life and death, wakefulness and sleep, only show the apparent preponderance of one force over the other, which it immediately begins to lose to its rival. The two forces act at the same time, for their eternal conflict allows neither triumph nor oppression to endure. - Plato - Phaidon. Pure ideas Like the oracle, it says nothing, hides nothing. It signifies - Heraclitus Constance of change I see nothing but becoming. Don't be fooled! In your eye that does not look far, and not in the essence of things, lies the fault if you think that you see somewhere earth, something firm in the sea of becoming and party. You use the names of things, as if they had a frozen endurance; but the very river into which you descend the second time is not the same as it was the first time - Heraclitus He's alive! We are born only once. Being born twice is not possible. There is no way we can exist in eternity. But you, who cannot be master of tomorrow, postpone joy. Life goes by while we remain indecisive, and each of us, in the meantime, dies from a leisureless activity. - Epicurus Art as an imitation of life Frivolous, frivolous play - art is art only insofar as it is imitation - Plato The gully of deserts Material wealth has limits and is easily procured; the wealth of vain imaginings stretches to infinity - Epicurus Good luck? Fortune seldom intervenes in the life of the wise man; the greatest and most decisive decisions in the life of such a man have been, are, and will be taken by reason, throughout his whole life. - Epicurus The inscription of Oinoanda [...] the cause of death is naturally caused by the soul. If it no longer has the same number of atoms as the body, the soul, made up of a rational and an unreasoning part, takes hold of the whole man as in a rope and binds him, itself in turn being bound as a drop of rennet binds an immeasurable quantity of milk. And this is a sign - among many others - for the ascendancy of the cause. In fact, this is the way things happen: After the body, following a long illness, is forced to give way and reach such a state of weakness and decomposition that the skin, almost dry, seems to have grown on the bones, and the nature of the intestines seems to be empty, devoid of blood, the soul still holds on and does not allow the cessation of life. And not only is this a proof of the priority of the soul, but the fact that the loss of hands, often with arms with all, or legs by burning or amputation, fails to extinguish life. To such an extent our body is dominated by its soul side. ... There are, of course, cases in which, although the body remains intact and suffers no shortcomings, the ability to remain conscious disappears, for when the atoms of the soul do not remain in their supporting quality, the fact that the whole body is still intact is of no use. Man lives as long as we consider that the soul lasts as a support, like a connecting element. If we admit that the ultimate primary cause of life is the soul. [...] - Diogenes of Oinoanda, century BC. Aristip... the philosopher murdered by silence... [...] proof, Plato's silence on the name of Aristippus and his work, even though his shadow hovers over many pages of the Platonic dialogues. Who is this Philebos, for example, who gives his name to an entire dialogue? And why did Plato devote an entire text to the problem of the pleasure of rejecting the Cyrenaic theories without once citing the philosopher's name? [...] An individual on whom Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus are silent when dealing with the problem of pleasure cannot be entirely bad! Nobody arouses so much contempt, hatred, jealousy and envy without implicitly implying that what he says is true... - M. Onfray Self-gratification The wise man, who has been put to the test by the necessities of life, understands that it is better to give of himself than to take from another. This, then, is how he found a true treasure of self-satisfaction - Epicurus Trans-substantiality Think about it. You, by nature, are mortal, subject to a limited time of life. However, through revelations about nature, endlessness and eternity, you can gain insight into the present, the future and the past - Epicurus Ataraxia It is good to laugh and be a philosopher at the same time, to manage your house, to develop your other qualities and, what is more, to never cease to listen to the sound of the words of true philosophy. - Epicurus No guarantees To remain an undiscovered villain is difficult; to gain a guarantee that what has been done will remain undiscovered is impossible - Epicurus Stoic simplicity "The soul is like a havuz filled with water; opinions are the ray that illuminates the havuz. When the water in it is agitated, it seems that the light is the same; yet it is not. So it is with man: when he is troubled and agitated, it is not his virtues that are overturned and confused, but his spirit, which is in motion. If the spirit is quiet, all is quiet. If there is an art to speaking well, there is also an art to listening well. When a raven foretells something to you through its crowing, you think a god is speaking to you, not a raven. When a philosopher warns you, think the same, that a god is warning you, not a philosopher." - Epictetus Sexual dietetics. The teachings of Aristip... ...the philosopher so hated by other contemporary philosophers that we are left with only indirect sources about his doctrine. Enemies sometimes save us from oblivion and anecdotes sometimes sublimate philosophical concepts. For to philosophize without leading a life in accordance with the ideas put forward is just sowing the wind. Lessons from a few anecdotes: Aristip comes out of a brothel and, when someone scolds him for going in, he replies that the problem is not getting in, but not knowing how to get out; To another, who reproaches him for having gone to some courtesans who are a bit past their prime, he replies that from ships that have made many voyages you demand only one thing: that they take you to the desired port; To one who remarks that he is living with a prostitute whose plaything he has become, Aristip says that he possesses Lais, but that he is not possessed by her; Finally, one day he brings three prostitutes to the doorstep, but leaves them at the gate, considering the renunciation as significant as the deed. In all cases, Aristippus advises distrust of the fleshly, not as a fact in itself, but because you lose your freedom with these carnal stories. Measure, once more. However, there is a clear distinction to be made between distancing yourself from exaggerated pleasures and blaming or destroying them. If their destruction were part of hedonism, the Inquisition and Platonic idealism would be its pillars, not its mortal enemies. Ignorance Blaming others for your unhappiness is evidence of ignorance; blaming only yourself is evidence that you are beginning to learn, and blaming neither others nor yourself is a sign that you are already educated. Don't pretend things happen the way you want them to happen, but the way they do and you will always prosper. Epictetus the Stoic The Stoics have their own flavour and, by moderating their extremes and aggressions, provide moral models worthy of following. Their inclination towards pain and suffering is foreign to me and I reject it, a tendency further exacerbated by monotheistic religions. Epictet. Stoic. "We all fear the death of the body; but who fears the death of the soul? If reason, which should regulate all things, is out of order, who will regulate it? Throw insults at a stone, what good will that do you? She won't understand you. Imitate that stone and don't think about the insults that are said to you. We resemble those who make great provisions, but remain weak and empty because they do not feed on them. We have beautiful precepts and maxims, but to expound them, and not to practise them; actions contradict our deeds. We are not yet human, and we want to play the role of philosophers. The burden is too heavy for us. It's like a man who doesn't have the strength to lift a two-pound weight trying to lift Ajax's rock. " Promise... "I will never be an obstacle to myself." - Agrippinus Against the current Diogenes the dog (there were several authors named Diogenes in ancient philosophical circles) used to enter the theatre just as people were leaving the amphitheatre. Asked why he did so, he answered simply: - I'm trying to make you understand what I've been trying to do all my life. Both cynics and sophists appealed to me in this willingness to take philosophy down to the streets. A conviction that Socrates also had while he was alive. Having chosen the hemlock, Plato so altered his philosophy and ideas that I imagine Plato as the most famous ventriloquist in human history. A large part of the blame also belongs to Socrates who refused to write down his ideas, leaving Plato to write down his doctrine. As he wanted and as it suited him. The effects of promoting idealism, as the only valid, acceptable and recognized philosophy for 2000 years, Platonist and then Christian cannot be calculated. Zen versus Diogenes The story of Diogenes, who walked around with a lighted lantern "looking for a man", is well known. But there is another story of a Zen master who walked at night with a lit lantern. His disciples, convinced of his all-powerfulness, which included night-vision, asked him: - Master, we knew you could see at night! - Of course I can see at night. - Then why did you light the lantern? - For all those who can't see at night, don't run into me! Not being an admirer of Eastern schools (I find it hard to call them philosophical schools, most of them degenerating into religions/beliefs/religious schisms) I can at least appreciate the logic and humor of Zen. On politics, Antisthenes said that sycophants are worse than crows because they devour living things, not waiting to die. Self-taught Zeno of Citium (founder of Stoicism) did not escape sarcasm either, even during his lifetime. Unfortunately, however, the Stoics turned the sarcasms of some contemporary philosophers (Epicureans) into veritable crusades of defamation. But about the falsehoods made by the Stoics, another time. Returning, Philemon, author of comedies, parodied Zeno by saying: "What a strange philosophy this is, in which there is a master who teaches you to starve, and so many disciples listen to him ecstatically! I, as a starving man, have always been an autodidact! " Laconism You must understand that a speech, whether long or short, can have one and the same purpose - Epicurus Aristotle's god? "Reason wants to decide what is right, anger [rage] wants to be found right what it decides." Judging without right of appeal and not allowing herself to be judged by anyone, anger arbitrates alone, it alone decides. On its unalterable core it builds its temples of hatred. My Sun In the history of philosophy, the dialogue between Diogenes the dog and Alexander Macedon, who later became the model of the conqueror-warrior-educated, became famous. Alexander wanted to visit the great cynic and ended up in front of him: - I am Alexander, the great king. - And I'm Diogenes, the big dog. - Why did you call yourself a dog? - Because I praise those who give, I bark at those who don't, and I bite the bad ones. The discussion continued in the same style and Alexander, deeply impressed by the cynic's greatness, ended up asking him: - Diogenes, I can give you anything you ask. What do you want? - What I want is for you to step aside, because you're covering my sun. The sunlight you can't give me, but I see you're taking it away. Simple things. Cynicism (followed later by Stoicism) built its doctrine around these needs. They promoted an idealistic diet on the simplicity of life. Unfortunately, however, idealism and simplicity are self-corrupting. Alexander lacked (and his short but stormy life showed this) an understanding of Epicurean ataraxia. Educated by Aristotle, Plato's pupil, he became great by following Platonic ideals. His downfall, however, was generated by his lack of Epicurean, cynical and (with all due indulgences) Stoic measure and aloofness. Idealistic excesses have produced many monsters in human history, but also superb moral, cultural and philosophical models. Friendship We regard as help from our friends not so much the help itself as the confidence that it can be given us - Epicurus The Hedonism of Democritus There is no more hated, criticized, attacked and misunderstood school of philosophy than the hedonistic one. Accusations range from "corrupting the young" (I'm sure Socrates appreciated this school despite Plato-ventriloquist's boundless hatred of it) to accusations of promoting anti-state concepts. The idealist school has made a point of destroying hedonism for the last 2000 years. Looking in libraries I can tell they have almost achieved their goal. But let us try to listen to hedonistic doctrines before condemning them to burning at the stake. "Democritus defines the ideal thus: to spend one's life in the happiest and least dreary way possible. Without measuring yourself against another, but always taking this ideal as a point of reference. And then laugh.... Fear nothing and no one - neither gods nor great ones; not to do anything beyond your powers or means; know your limits and aim for something achievable; not to ruin your soul in pleasures whose satisfaction is certain to lead to dissatisfaction; to desire the pleasure of happy communion with yourself; not to procreate, not to complicate your life with offspring; never get involved in the affairs of the city; not to give in to passions, impulses that unbalance; not to want more than you have, nor to cultivate desires that are impossible to satisfy; to say yes to the joys of existence as long as they fulfill your being; to define what is useful or harmful by the satisfaction or inconvenience it causes; to strive to banish rebellious malaise; to aim for joy... this is the way to use a hedonism that proposes a fine, subtle, elegant pleasure: the supreme pleasure of autonomy - in the etymological sense." - Michel Onfray No wonder Plato hated him, and this hatred was completed, finalized and executed by the idealists and Stoics who followed him, religiously or otherwise. Man as a free and autonomous being, the nightmare of those who believe in government, governance, guilt and pain, centralized rule and slavery (in whatever form it is imposed). Envy It is not good to envy anyone. Good people do not deserve to be envied, and bad people cause themselves so much trouble the more successful they are. - Epicurus About pleasure and excess No pleasure is in itself an evil. But the things that give rise to certain pleasures may bring greater trouble than the pleasures themselves. - Epicurus Something good There are several stories about the meeting between Diogenes the dog and Alexander Macedon. In time, I will tell them all. I find in these "jokes", "stories", "jokes", condensed essences of philosophical doctrines long since destroyed by Platonic or Christian idealism. The great ancient philosophers, whose works have been systematically destroyed (let's just remember that Plato wanted to destroy / burn all the writings of Democritus), have survived only through these fables, and some only through the attacks of idealists. By doing a reverse analysis, we find out, with difficulty and diligence, what they wrote. Enemies can lead you into immortality. Choose them well! Alexander asks the great cynic if he is afraid of him. Diogenes, however, answers the question: - Are you something good or something bad for others? - Something good, obviously. - Who's crazy to be afraid of something good? Why should I fear you, in that case? Sens It makes no sense to pray to the gods for something you can do yourself. - Epicurus Our childhoods... A child puts his hand into a narrow-mouthed bowl with peanuts and figs in it; he fills his fist with as much as he can take and, unable to get it out so full, begins to cry. - Kid, drop half of them and you'll get your fist pretty full.... You are that child. Wish for much and you cannot get it; wish for less and you will have it. - Epictetus Stoic Laconism "Most often he keeps silent, or says only the necessary things, and says them in few words. It may happen, but seldom, that you will have to speak, when occasion demands it, but never speak of trivial and common things: speak neither of gladiatorial fights, nor of horse-races, nor of athletes, nor of food and drink, which are the usual subjects of conversation. Above all, never talk about people, neither to blame them, nor to praise them, nor to make comparisons. " Epictetus - Stoic Hedonistic shamelessness No one could judge the wisdom of another more justly than he who has himself put a stop to the momentary urges of the soul and has been able to master and overcome himself. But he who desires to do his heart's desire in the moment itself, desires the worse instead of the better - Antiphon The hedonistic philosophers accused for 2,000 years of "impudence" and "shamelessness" should be reconsidered. Accusing is easy. To know the "guilty" carefully and in detail is easy if one so desires. The payoff of lying... Aristotle was once asked by a disciple what people gain by lying. "- People's distrust when they will tell the truth." Anyway, if I'd had an appetite for writing I could have told it through the story of the child who keeps crying wolf. But I don't like the story. Aristotle, yes! Key question In the face of all the foolish desires you have to ask yourself the following question: what can happen to me if such a desire is fulfilled and what if it is not? - Epicurus Diogenes the slave-slave Diogenes had a period when he was taken prisoner. Prisoners were sold into slavery. Asked by the salesman what skills he had, Diogene replied: "I know how to command. See if anyone buys a master. " Antiphon, a forgotten philosopher "Unfortunately, not even Freud cites Antiphon of Athens as the first psychoanalyst in human history. Despite the fact that he both did psychoanalytic therapy and explained the effects of psychoanalysis 2000 years ago. Apart from this revelation, Antiphon promoted an individualistic and anti-social ethic that placed him in the "cursed" category of hedonistic philosophers. "Physis contra nomos", natural laws against civil laws, autonomy and freedom of action against submission, obedience and dependence on a legal transcendence, a normative morality - this is the categorical imperative of antiphonal hedonism. " - Michel Onfray Hedonistic imperatives are reinvented in popular revolutions. It won't be long before the protesters rediscover this huge reservoir of ancient wisdom, a reservoir sealed by nearly 2000 years of Platonic idealism. Overcoming He that hath not desired shameful or evil things, nor touched them, is not wise; for there is nothing that he, having overcome, can show himself master of. - Antiphon No comments... Trust in laws Socrates preferred to die rather than break the law. The law that protects you when you are right is the law that punishes you when you are wrong. If you accept her protection, why would you violate it when she defends others from you? There are no Rights without Obligations! Why do you think the tools of the law are good when they protect your life, property and rights, but oppressive when they force you to obey the law? "It is not the power and violence of a tyrant that brings him to power, as many believe, but the very stupidity of the people, for only a city in which respect for law and order has already been lost can fall into his clutches." And philosophers stick to jokes. Or not... One day, Thales of Miletus was asked why he had no children. His answer, typical of a pessimist: - Because I would feel sorry for them. Another story about Thales is that told by Plato in the Theaetetus. Thales was walking along looking carefully at the clouds and the sky, when he was ready to fall into a hole in front of him. A slave girl with enough courage and a sense of humor then asked him: - What do you think you will see and discover in the sky, if you are not able to see the ground beneath your feet? The story has been plagiarized by many people throughout history. Without Plato or Thales being bothered, obviously. Well, La Fontaine, do you have anything to say? Having smiled a bit together, let's go back to Thales for a moment: - Presocratic philosopher (624-546 BC); - According to Bertrand Russel, "European philosophy begins with Thales"; - was among the first philosophers to reject supernatural explanations (deities or gods), thus being a precursor of the scientific revolution (which was delayed, however, by almost 2,000 years); - a leading mathematician (the first to know how to calculate the height of a pyramid or the distance of a ship from the shore), sometimes even called the first mathematician in history. Now that I've spoiled your good mood with so many explanations, read the "jokes" again. Maybe you'll find something other than laughter. Hedonism explained According to Jeremy Bentham the value of pleasures and torments can be examined in the light of six criteria: Criterion 1: Intensity - Superiority of vivid pleasure over pleasure of lesser intensity. No one can say how much quantitative importance there is in what I feel. Intensity gives a certain level on a scale, it constitutes a kind of abscissa in a hedonistic scheme. A crazy night vs. a smile on the street? Second criterion: Duration. Superiority of long-lasting pleasure over fleeting pleasure. Like quantity, here too we have subjectivity in experiencing the amount of time felt by a particular body. A long story vs. one night stand? The third criterion: Certainty. Superiority of probable pleasure over improbable pleasure. Here it's pretty obvious... Take her... Angelina is already married! Fourth criterion: Breadth. Superiority of a pleasure shared by many over solitary pleasure. Yes, you can give it a sexual connotation... and you'll still agree with me. Fifth criterion: Fertility. Superiority of inductive pleasure over time-limited pleasure. Prefer the first night of love, for its potential promise, to all the others that follow, with their prosaic realities. It's spelled "for" not "against", "in spite of"... so the likelihood of chain effects induced by a triggered pleasure. The sixth criterion: Purity. The superiority of gratifications that cost nothing over expensive pleasures. The pleasure is all the purer, as no unpleasantness is mixed with it, or as it is not paid at all, or very, very little, with an unpleasantness. Now you tell me... you seem to be starting to like hedonists and epicureans... but I'm not finished. Differences. Confucius. There are plenty of jokes about Confucius (Chinese philosopher, 550 - 470 BC, by his first name Kong Fu Zi) that are worth reading and then using at parties where you want to look cool. Or, better not... On one of his wanderings, the philosopher's retinue had nothing but problems, from lack of food and supplies to the illness of a few young scholars. Confucius' disciples had already reached a point of maximum frustration, so they went to the great philosopher to complain and seek relief. "How is it that such problems can happen and affect wise people regarded then, now not, as superior to the common people? " Confucius replied, however, that such miseries and problems happen to everyone, but the difference is that ordinary people lose their temper when they have to endure. Also about "journeys", Confucius said: "Before you go on a trip to get back at someone, dig two holes. It doesn't matter how slow you go down a road as long as you don't stop. " You got another one: "What a superior man seeks is found in himself; what a simple man seeks is found in others. " An opinion The soul is not a blank slate with nothing written on it. It is always covered with inscriptions that write themselves and are written by the DIVINE INTELLECT. All mathematics, postulates and geometrical figures are written on it from eternity - Proclos of Lycia. While I strongly disagree with this view, it is worth mentioning. Semper fidelis patriae Indeed, as the Pythagorean Philolaius said, there are ideas stronger than we are - Aristotle The willful blindness of Democritus [...] "By blinding himself, the old man practices a paradoxical wisdom. Of course, he can also act on his desires, to propose a dietetics of them, adding to them, as it were, an arithmetic of pleasures (as Epicurus would later create one) that would allow him to reach a serenity identifiable with the sovereign good. But the anecdote can also serve to demonstrate another thesis: you distance yourself from a certain thing by refraining from looking, by forcing yourself not to see; you identify reality as what it is: a pure and simple conjunction of simulacra that you can evade; you assert your power over your being by means of perceptions; these are all exhortations to hedonistic philosophical voluntarism that allows you, by avoiding occasions of discomfort or disturbance, to construct yourself as a serene and radiant individuality. " "The fortitude of soul to which Democritus urges defines, in fact, the subtle pleasure of the relationship with oneself of an individual who fears nothing and can therefore, in absolute indifference to laws, obey only oneself and live freely. " - Michel Onfray Irrational slides [...] The greatest disturbance in the souls of men arises from the belief that the various heavenly bodies are happy and imperishable. At the same time, will, actions and interventions are attributed to them which are incompatible with this idea. The disturbance also comes from the expectation of an eternal torment, of which we are afraid, either out of suspicion aroused by myths, or out of fear of death that kills sensitivity, as if it would touch us with something. Such a state is reached not by conviction, but by an irrational slippage, so that, if people do not put a stop to their fears, they suffer a disturbance as great, even more intense, than the man whose views on these matters are entirely unclear. Indeed, to have peace of mind means to be free from all these anxieties and to have always in mind the remembrance of the most general and important truths - Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus. Introducing Epicurus [...] "Cannot the scalpel excite and extract the stone that causes immense suffering? That's when the philosopher comes in: if this pain is radical, it will cause my end; if it doesn't kill me, it means it's bearable. Either the suffering is intense, but short-lived, since death comes immediately; or it is of little intensity, and then it can last without being fatal to the body of the sufferer. The lesson does not seem to be very different from that of the Stoics who, given the state of medicine at the time, had little choice... Epicurean algodiceia reveals the possibility of a genuine philosophy lived and practiced as a therapy." - M. Onfray Aristip. A forgotten philosopher The tyrant Dionysius gave him a choice between three courtesans; but he took all three, saying: "Paris paid dearly for the choice of one of the three". But when he had brought them to the gate, he let them go: so much did he keep measure both in choosing and in rejecting. When Dionysus spat at him, he did not show his anger, and said to the one who rebuked him: "Only the fishermen endure being soaked by the sea water in order to catch fish, and I can't bear to be washed by the spit of water in order to catch a meal of fish? " One day, Dionysus wanted to force him to enunciate a doctrine of philosophy, and he replied: "It would be ridiculous for you to learn from me how to speak and yet teach me when to speak." The story goes that Dionysus once got angry and sat him down at the end of the table, but Aristippus told him: "Of course, you meant to honor this place from the queue." Once asking Dionysus for money, he meets his request with words: "Well, but you said that a wise man is never in need," to which he replied: "Forget it, give the money first and we'll talk about it later" and after he got the money: "Now you see," he said, "I'm not in need". Aristippus once made a request to Dionysus for a friend, and when he failed to get what he wanted, he fell at his feet. Someone laughed at him, and Aristippus said, "It is not I, but Dionysus, who has ears at his feet". Responding to one who said he always sees philosophers at the doors of the rich: "Just as," he told her, "doctors stand by the sick, but that doesn't mean that one would want to be sick instead of being a doctor. It happened once that Aristippus was travelling by sea to Corinth and, being caught in a storm, was in great distress. One said to him, "We common people keep our wits; why do you philosophers lose your heads? " "The lives at stake in these two cases," he replied, "cannot be compared. To one who was putting on the airs of a great scholar, Aristippus said this: "Just as those who eat more and exercise more have no better health than those who restrict themselves to the necessary, so it is not those who read much, but those who read with profit who are the outstanding ones." A logographer, who had won him a lawsuit, asked him: "What good was Socrates to you? " "To very much," was the reply, "that what you said about me in your speech may be true. Asked what his son would be most useful for if he were well educated, he replies, "If for nothing else, at least so that when he's at the theatre he doesn't stand like a stone on top of another stone." Another brought the child to his school, and when he asked for a payment of five hundred drachmas, the father murmured, "With this price I can buy a slave." "Just do this and you'll have two slaves." The absence of death. Epicureanism. [...] "How could death be a problem? What is there to fear in it? Since good and evil reside in sensations, and since death implies deprivation of them, it means nothing to us, neither good nor evil.... When death is here, we are already gone. When I am here, it is absence. It concerns neither the living, for whom death does not exist, nor the dead, for whom it no longer exists... So what's the point of fretting? Why suffer for something that is not here? What good is it to go to meet a suffering considering present an eternal absent? Only the thought of death exists and can cause suffering to the soul, but death we shall never meet." - Onfray Epicureanism has become the most hated philosophical current precisely because of the silence it spreads, explains, argues... Without these fears, without suffering, without death, without misery, deistic idealisms become mere masochistic philosophies. In the absence of death and fear, in the absence of suffering, man becomes peaceful and can find his own self. But fears, especially the great fear of death, have turned us into beings who are always anxious, always haunted by something we will never know or avoid. Ataraxia as a path to peace and fulfilment..... Removing suffering "The intensity of pleasure reaches its limit by removing all suffering. When pleasure is present, as long as it is uninterrupted, neither pain nor sadness, nor both these states together, appear." - Epicurus Pure Agnosticism "As for the gods, it is impossible for me to know whether they exist or not, or in what form they exist, for there are many obstacles in the way of knowledge, and the subject is obscure and human life is short" - Protagoras the Abderian. The disengaged silence I hope for, the silence of a pleasant agnosticism, far from the howls of outraged atheism or the conservative obstinacy of an overly assertive deism. Human life is short and there are many obstacles... The serenity of a truth and the recognition of a calm and relaxed position. Perhaps even the recognition of an inability to believe as believers believe. Both they and the rabid atheists I don't know whether to admire or suspect them of ignorance. I would admire them because they have found the answer to one of life's Great Questions. I would suspect them because I don't know how they could have arrived at these (un)beliefs. Cioran was certainly the representative of the agnostics. But let's not forget that he was Romanian. The inner, intellectual tearing, bogging down and slicing unites us across generations. But I am sure that those who have found the answer, whatever it may be, can acquire that dreamed of ataraxia. The quest for immortality "Accustom yourself to believe that death has nothing to do with us humans, for all good and all evil is in sensation and death is the privation of sensation; consequently, a just understanding that death has nothing to do with us makes it pleasant to think that life has an end. This is accomplished by giving life not unlimited time, but by suppressing the longing for immortality." Epicurus - Letter to Menoikeus About death "Indeed, death does not frighten one who has thoroughly understood that nothing frightening is connected with the end of life. Therefore, the fool is he who says he fears death, not because he will suffer when death comes, but because he suffers in expectation of it. That which brings us no harm, when it comes, produces only groundless suffering in expectation. Death, the most terrifying of evils, has nothing to do with us, since as long as we exist, death does not exist, and when it comes, we no longer exist. It has, therefore, nothing to do either with the living or the dead. For the living does not yet exist, and the dead no longer exist. Most people, however, fear death as the greatest of all evils and sometimes choose it as a refuge from the evils of life. The wise man does not necessarily demand to live his life, nor does he fear its cessation. He is not afraid to live, nor does he regard the end of life as an evil. Just as men seek not the most abundant food, but the tastiest, so the wise seek to enjoy the most pleasant time and not the longest. And he who urges the young to live well, and the old to end well, is unwise, not only because life is exhilarating, but also because it is the subject of one and the same concern; to live as well as to die as well. Worse still is he who says that it would have been better if we had not been born and, once born, had passed through the gates of Hades as soon as possible. If, indeed, such a man is convinced of what he says, why does he not leave life? It would be easy for him to do so if he were convinced of what he believes. If he takes everything at face value, his words are foolish, in things that do not admit of such. We must therefore remember that what the future will bring us is not ours, but neither is it completely alien to us. We must not rely entirely on what is to come as something that is implacable. But neither should we hope that they will not happen. " - Epicurus Intensity of pleasure The intensity of pleasure reaches its limit by removing all suffering. When pleasure is present, as long as it is uninterrupted, neither pain nor sorrow, nor both these states together, appear. - Epicurus Different needs. Aristip. Another philosopher unknown to the masses, but much loved by me, is Aristip, founder of the Cyrenaic school. He was a philosopher schooled by Socrates and it shows. Those who know me will conclude that I like the Hedonists and have something against Plato and his school. One day, the tyrant Dionysus, who liked to surround himself with philosophers and reward them, presented Aristippus with a generous sum of money and Plato with a book. Hey, modern moguls, are we learning anything from tyrants? The scholars reproached Aristip for this, considering the gifts inappropriate. Wisely, Aristip answered: "To each his own. I need money and Plato needs books." His humour continued after his death. Aristippus asked that his tombstone be inscribed: "Here rests the one who awaits you. " I think he would be a good and fun friend. But, better to wait to meet him. PHILOSOPHERS CLOSER TO US Reality? But I don't have my image of the world because I have convinced myself of its rightness; nor because I am convinced of its rightness. But it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false. - Ludwig Wittgenstein Ambiguous Nihilism "Nihilism is ambiguous: A. Nihilism as an indication of increased power of the spirit: this is active nihilism. B. Nihilism as a decline and regression of spiritual force: this is passive nihilism." - Nietzsche Let's learn to distinguish between these two types (not even nuances). Nihilism as a creative force... Intrinsic duality. The annihilation of metaphor "With metaphor what happens with fashion happens. There are those who, when they have taxed cev, as metaphor or as fashion, imagine that they have annihilated it and that further investigation is not necessary. As if metaphor and fashion were not realities of the same order as the others, endowed with the same consistency and subject to causes and laws as imperious as those governing sidereal revolutions!" - Jose Ortega y Gasset Serene Hedonism ... "you distance yourself from a certain thing by refraining from looking, by forcing yourself not to see; you identify reality as what it is: a pure and simple conjunction of simulacra that you can evade; you assert your power over being by means of perceptions; these are all exhortations to hedonistic philosophical voluntarism that allows you, by avoiding occasions of discomfort or disturbance, to construct yourself as a serene and radiant individuality". Onfray's masterful work, a counter-history of philosophy, is one of the most vigorous philosophical works to see print since Nietzsche. Moreover, Onfray claims descent from him, but with a superior virulence and analytical force. I keep Nietzsche, however, as a mentor for the beauty of his discourse, and Onfray as a friend in thought and a free philosophy teacher of philosophy teachers. Never has philosophy been more joyous than in Onfray's world. Imbecility "Let us restrain our romantic attitudes and recognize in "falling in love" - I repeat that I am not speaking of love sensu stricto - an inferior state of mind, a kind of transitory imbecility. Without the mind's anchoring, without the reduction of our ordinary world, we could not fall in love. " - Jose Ortega y Gasset. Stendhal would swear at me. But he's an exception: he's never been able to fall in love. Instead, women loved and adored him. To write all one's life about love and romance and never manage to be in love? About torture "Tyrants, in order to do two things at once, to kill and to make their anger felt, have used all their conceit to find the means of prolonging death. They want their enemies to die, but not so quickly that the tyrants have no time to enjoy their revenge.... Anything beyond simple death seems to me pure cruelty. " - Montaigne My salvation "In a world without greatness, without nobility, overwhelmed by pettiness, marked by fragility and ephemerality, in the face of numerous sorrows and innumerable occasions of physical and mental suffering, when one has to endure the pressure of the social and the dominance of the collective from the earliest age, philosophy brings the chance of salvation, offers effective medication. " - M. O. Picture of the portico to the deserted garden of... Democritus vs. Plato [...] "Democritus believes only in atoms and emptiness, he slowly renounces the gods, making room for humans, celebrates concrete and immanent reality and urges a jubilant existence; for his part, Plato preaches ideas, pure concepts, evolving in a celestial world; he worships a demiurgic power and gives the gods architectural power over the world, teaches us to turn our backs on the sensible in favour of the intelligible, finally, he turns existence into a perpetual occasion of renunciation. Two people, two worlds, two traditions that oppose each other point by point." - Michel Onfray The mad animal [...] Whatever else, the man is first and foremost an exception. If it is not true that he is a fallen divine creature, then we can only say that one of the animals has gone completely out of his mind. " - G.K. Chesterton Unfortunately for me, I can't settle for the fallen divine creature version, so I'll stick between the animals gone mad. I can't even get my head around the Grand Plan, Grand Conspiracy, Conjuring etc. Just incompetent people who have lost their compass. No, there is no one "at the controls", forget the illusion of the Great Wizard. Dualism "Let children walk in nature, let them see its wonderful blending of life and death, their happy inseparable union, as the meadows and forests, the plains, mountains and rivers of our blessed planet teach us, and they will thus learn that death is truly needleless, and as beautiful as life. " - John Muir 1797 Public honours "But in this age to be greedy of honors is a thing still more unworthy of a philosopher than it ever would have been in the past: now, when the mistress is the plebeian, when the plebeian is the one who shares the honors!" - Nietzsche - Aphorisms But elitism is hated in contemporary times, despite the fact that the glorious history of Europe and, by extension, of humanity - the culture of humanity being eminently European - was created precisely by these elites. The usurpation of the concept of elites, monarchy, autocracy, meritocracy and the spread of democracy in its pure form has brought humanity to these major impasses. Unfortunately, the decadence of European culture and philosophy is just beginning. Woe betide future generations who will grow up in the impoverished shadow of populism and plebeian culture. Origin of the Trinity Being the absolute origin, the Trinity is the principle, the absolute principle, the origin and beginning of all that exists. And if we admit that the Divine Trinity also has an origin, then it must have its origin in itself. - G.W.H Hegel An art Probably the most beautiful description of philosophy was by Montaigne: philosophy as the art "of learning to die". The hedonistic/epicurean school and doctrine run like a hidden river through the history of mankind, remaining that luminous option, but one that is undermined by official doctrine and the state leadership itself. Somewhere, however, hidden, this current is growing and the effects of the Epicurean philosophical school are surfacing. Preaching a simple life, free of fears, excesses or phobias, hedonism urges humanity to re-enjoy the simple and pleasant living of life and the cancellation of death. Atavism: the war Can there be anything more stupid than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the river, and his sovereign has a quarrel with mine, though I did not quarrel with him? - Blaise Pascal Missed opportunities "Too many people think about safety instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death." - James F. Byrnes Pudibond? "Contempt for the body is the consequence of the dissatisfaction we experience because of it." - Nietzsche - Posthumous Fragments Rousseau and hot water Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). French philosopher. Or not. He was born in Geneva and all his life signed his books "Jean Jaques Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva". The French, however, buried him in the Pantheon in Paris as a French national hero. Yeah. Political enthusiasts will find and admire him in "On the Social Contract" or "Discourse on the Origins of Inequality". Romantics admire him in "Julie or the New Heloise". Education enthusiasts will claim, however, that his novel "Emile" is the most complete and influential text on education, inspiring dozens of generations. The naysayers, however, will say that his influence during the French Revolution on the Jacobin group led to many totally unjustified assassinations or executions. Moreover, they will also bring up the fact that he was an avowed Freemason and hence a whole conspiracy theory. Psychologists will grumble that he was neurotic, narcissistic, hypochondriac, masochistic and had the wrath of persecution. Angry sociologists will say he was a liar, since he was unable to raise his five children and sent them all to an orphanage. A saying should be coined: "Do what Rousseau says, not what Rousseau did!" Hmm... his aura's kind of gone. In any case, he was a philosopher with some sense of humour. Diderot, a French philosopher, about whom we shall speak another time, tells how he visited Rousseau one day at his home in Montmorency and learned that he had had thoughts of suicide while sitting on the bank of the pond. Diderot, hoping for some existentialist revelation, asks him simply: - And why didn't you? - Because I put my hand in the water and it felt too cold. It's worth thinking about... "For a man to be wrong, he must already judge in accordance with humanity." - Ludwig Wittgenstein The perfect dungeon! "[...] for no one is so terribly imprisoned, and no imprisonment is more impossible to escape than the one in which one keeps oneself insulted! " - Søren Kirkegaard Trust It is prudent not to put complete trust in something [someone] who has let you down even once. - Descartes The miracle of wonder The greater one's intellect, the more originality one discovers in other people. Ordinary people find no difference between other people. - Pascal Condemning philosophy? [...] Never, when an exhausted nation felt its ties that bound its citizens together weakening, has philosophy succeeded in gathering together the rebellious into a whole. Whenever any man has been tempted to withdraw to one side and to draw around himself a barrier of selfish isolation, philosophy has always been ready to deepen this alienation and to destroy the man who has been alienated by such isolation. Philosophy is dangerous as soon as it no longer enjoys the fullness of its powers and rights, and only complete national health secures these rights - and yet this is not true of all peoples - Nietzsche. Not so much a condemnation of philosophy, but a condemnation of half-measures in its practice and the state/people's understanding of philosophical concepts. Philosophy as the only potent in securing a nation's future, but dangerous medicine that can only be used in clear cases. There is nothing more dangerous for a state or an individual than "flirting" with philosophy and living it. It is not recommended for "selfish isolation", "worn out nations" or selfishness. Philosophy as the supreme weapon only of powerful, "perfect" states and individuals. Lives lost Quid fiet hominibus qui minima contemnunt, majora non credunt? What will become of people who stumble over small things and don't believe in big things? Via Pascal Pascal mischievous... Sarcasm has a very long and narrow boundary with malice. Just a nuance, a tone of voice, makes a remark cross that line. Blaise Pascal, being the great Pascal, is labelled sarcastic. A contemporary of the great philosopher was notable for his body size (he was very fat) but also for his stupidity (he was therefore very stupid). These two characteristics led Pascal (also known for his scientific work) to say: - This shows that a body can have more volume than capacity. If I had said it, it would have been a great mischief. Pascal is also charming when he makes the statement: - When I analyze myself, I hate myself. When I compare myself, I declare myself satisfied. Sarcasm, an age-old constant of intelligence frustrated by immediate reality. Miracles? The daughters of the high priest Anius changed whatever they wanted into wheat, wine or oil; Attalida, daughter of Mercury, was resurrected several times; Aesculapius resurrected Hippolytus; Herakles kidnapped Alcestis from the dead; Heres returned to the world after spending fifteen days in Hell; Romulus and Remus were born of a god and a vestal; Palladium fell from the sky in the city of Troy; Berenice's hair became a constellation... Name me a people to whom incredible miracles have not happened, especially in the days when reading and writing were barely known. - Voltaire - Miracles Feeding-digestion modernity "Modernity under the sign of the feeding-digestion equation. Sensitivity made endlessly irritable (- moralistic embellishment; increasing sense of pity -); quantity of disparate impressions greater than ever; - cosmopolitanism of food, literature, newspapers, forms, tastes, even landscapes. The tempo of this direction of flow is "prestissimo"; impressions fade away; instinctively, we refrain from adopting something, in depth, from "digesting" something; - This results in a diminished capacity to digest. A kind of adaptation to this overload with external impressions sets in; the human being becomes disengaged from action and reacts only to external stimuli. He spends his power partly in the process of assimilation, partly in defence, partly in response-reply. The historian, the critic, the analyst, the interpreter, the observer, the collector, the reader - all are reactive talents - all scientists." - Nietzsche - Aphorisms Contemporary inability to deepen. An admirable critical analysis of everyday life and the shallowness in everything. The worst of all possible worlds The daily dose of optimism comes from Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation): "But against Leibniz's palpably sophist proof that this is the best of all possible worlds, we can also earnestly and honestly provide proof that this is the worst of all possible worlds. For possible means not what we imagine, but what can really exist and last. Now, this world is structured as it would have to be to endure and continue to exist only with great difficulty; if the situation were only slightly worse, the world could not continue to exist. Consequently, since a world worse than this one could not have existed, it means that it is absolutely impossible; as a result, this world is even the worst of all possible worlds. " Strong as the devil "Countless superior individualities are now lost: but he who escapes is strong as the devil. Just as in the time of the Renaissance. " - Nietzsche - Aphorisms Something old, something sublimated... "To be kidnapped is to no longer walk on your own feet, but to feel carried by someone or something. Abduction was the primitive form of love preserved in mythology in the guise of the centaur hunting nymphs that he placed on his crutch. A remnant of the original abduction was also preserved in the Roman marriage ritual: the bride did not enter the marriage house on her own feet, but the groom carried her on top so that she would not step over the threshold. Its ultimate symbolic sublimation is the "trance" and levitation of the mystical nun and the fainting of lovers." - Jose Ortega y Gasset A question of education "Democracy is government by the uneducated, while aristocracy is government by the poorly educated." - G.K. Chesterton - 1931 Causes of ill... "Since boredom is growing and is the cause of all evil, it is no wonder, then, that the world is regressing and evil is spreading. And this has been happening since the beginning of the world. The gods were bored; that's why they created humans." - Søren Kierkegaard Genius "Talent is akin to an archer hitting targets unreachable by others; genius is akin to an archer hitting targets ... that others cannot even see. " - Arthur Schopenhauer The successful man is the one who has the patience to hit all visible targets, at every competition, every day. If he has talent he will hit the visible ones first, then the untouchable ones and ignore the ones he can't see. Genius has, in most cases, the deficiency of focusing on unseen targets. Genius comes with an oversized ego. A late hedonist "Perhaps the best remedy for the fear of death is the thought that life has a beginning and an end. There was a time when we did not exist - an idea which does not distress us in the least; why, then, does it trouble us that there will come a time when again we shall not exist?... To die is nothing other than to be once more as we were before we were born; and yet no one is troubled by regret, remorse or disgust when they think of this last idea. " - William Hazlitt, 1830 - On the Fear of Death Delicate misogyny "The interest in women, as a leaning towards a perhaps more modest, but finer and more relaxed way of being. How fortunate to come across beings who have nothing in their heads but dancing and fooling and cooking! They have been the delight of all deep, highly strung male souls whose lives are fraught with great responsibilities." - Nietzsche Fame and loneliness "Fame has the great disadvantage that, if we want it, we have to organize our lives in such a way as to delight people's imagination. " - Baruch Spinoza - one of my favourites "Only one man has ever understood me in my life... And he did not understand me" - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - everyone's favourite. The sick and the ignorant A doctor comes to a sick man and says: - You have a fever, don't eat anything today and drink only water. The sick person believes him, thanks him and pays him. A philosopher says to an ignorant man: - Your desires are unnatural, your fears base and servile, you have nothing but false opinions. The latter leaves in anger and says he has been insulted. Where does this difference come from? From the fact that the sick man feels his evil and the ignorant man does not feel his. - Epictetus Long boiled thought... "Reduced like a sauce simmered for a long time, Epicurus' thought is therefore sometimes, perhaps even often, reduced to these four theses: 1) we have nothing to fear from gods; 2) nor death; 3) we can bear the pain; 4) and we can reach happiness, So, after this extreme synthesis, we can return to the analysis that allows us to imagine - personally, I keep to the order that follows - Epicurus's thought as built around 1) ethical physics 2) of a quiet atheism 3) of a heathen algodice 4) of a hedonistic asceticism The stated purpose? That of living as a god among men.... " - Michel Onfray Moral ideals. The hedonistic ideal. "Desire supersizes what we want to have; it grows even through unfulfillment - the greatest ideas are those resulting from the strongest and most prolonged desire. We value things all the more, the more our desire to have them increases: if 'moral values' have become the highest values, this proves that the moral ideal has remained the most unfulfilled (- insofar as it passed as that Beyond All Suffering, as an instrument of happiness). Mankind embraced with ever-growing ardour only the clouds: in the end, its despair and helplessness called them Godhead." - Nietzsche - Aphorisms Love ecstasy and the expression of the fool "In the hermetic enclosure of our attention we hatch the image of the beloved being. When, however, the ecstasy of love 'arises' and the beloved is ours, or, more precisely, she is I and I the beloved, that graceful efflorescence appears on the face through which happiness is expressed. The eyes tame their gaze, which becomes elastic and glides over everything, of course, without fixing itself thoroughly on anything; more than seeing, it is more like caressing objects. In the same way, the mouth remains ajar in a universal smile that drips unceasingly from the corners of the mouth. It is the expression of the fool - since it is the expression of stupidity. Having no outer or inner object to fix our attention on, our activity is reduced to letting the vapours rise from the surface of our soul, as from still water, towards the sun that absorbs them. It is the "state of grace" common to the lover and the mystic. " - Jose Ortega y Gasset Existence... an error. Your daily dose of European optimism: Human existence must be some kind of mistake. For one might say of it: "It's bad today, and every day it will get worse, until the worst that can be happens". - Arthur Schopenhauer Loneliness or bad company? So many people complain about loneliness on the Internet, I mean on Facebook, that I am reminded of Sartre's words: "If you're lonely when you're alone, you're bad company. " Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (21.06.1905 - 15.04.1980) was a French existentialist philosopher. He has also successfully played with life as a novelist, stage designer, political activist (here unsuccessfully, even a little silly), biographer and literary critic. A reminiscence of the French encyclopedic spirit, which has not died and I hope it never will. When he was a moron he was a Marxist. Distractingly, he refused to accept the Nobel Prize in 1964 on the grounds that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution". Fun or not, he stole this one from Emil Cioran, who refused all awards and honours, with one exception, the first prize. Sartre was also sympathetic when he said: "When God is silent, he can be made to say anything." / Le Diable et le bon dieu; "Man is a useless passion." / L'Être et le néant; "God is the loneliness of men." / Le Diable et le bon dieu; "You're not human until you find something you're willing to die for. " / L'Âge de la raison; "A child, this monster that adults manufacture out of their regrets. " / Les Mots; "To be dead is to fall prey to the living. " / L'Être et le néant; "Man is nothing but what he makes of himself. " / L'Existentialisme est un humanisme. About today, pay attention to three o'clock, because Sartre said: "Three o'clock is always too late or too early for whatever you set out to do. " Chamfort's pessimism Although it is difficult to include Nicolas de Chamfort in the circle of philosophers, he is, however, a clever moralist and author of aphorisms, it is not difficult for me to appreciate his humour. Moreover, he held ideas that were close to atheism, which, at the time, was not only arrogant but an act of great courage. His pessimism for the fate and "evolution" of humanity was beautifully expressed in: "Only the futility of the first flood prevents God from sending a second flood. " Doubt of thinkers The child learns by believing the adult. Doubt comes after faith - Ludwig Wittgenstein A philosopher unappreciated at the true depth of his upheavals. I know he seems sterile and unwieldy, having a hermetic and didactic style, but in the wake of the fire, powerful streams of philosophical gold remain from the crucible of his thoughts. Philosophy of the word and the meaning of the word in the creation, existence and modification of the world. Talking to organize your silence "Young or old, philosophy always brings you immense rewards: it is never too early or too late to practice the Epicurean discipline. The exhortation has been successful, without, however, producing many effects among philosophers: to live hidden, not to expose yourself, not to make known to everyone the details of your existence, to reveal what is incidental in order to keep silent about the essential and hide it better, to speak in order to organize your silence, to reveal in order to better conceal what must remain hidden. The exact opposite of a life lived in a glass cage, as Plato's Republic would require. " - Onfray The beauty of expression "Correct thinking in a poor form misses its purpose as does trivial content packaged in an impeccable structure. To slander usefully, you have to turn a plausible hypothesis into confirmed reality. Nothing seems easier to present as truth than the plausible. " - Onfray Arrogant loneliness The essence of the philosopher is likely to lead him to walk his path alone. His endowments are among the rarest, in a certain sense the most unnatural, and, by this very fact, rendering him exclusive and inimical even to the equally gifted. The walls between which he reaches himself must be of diamond, if they are not to be broken down and torn down, for everything and everything is against him. His journey to immortality is harder and more strewn with obstacles than any other's; and yet no one can believe with more certainty than the philosopher himself that he will reach his goal - for he knows not where exactly he ought to sit but on the widely spread wings of all time; for carelessness of the present and momentary lies in the very being of the great philosophical natures. He has the truth: the wheel of time can only roll wherever it wills, it can never run away from the truth. - Nietzsche Against academic language It is altogether fitting that all that is great - that is, that has much meaning for one endowed with the rare power of understanding - should be spoken of only briefly and (thereby) obscurely, so that the callous spirit may make sense of these sayings as meaningless rather than translate them into its own meaninglessness. For vulgar spirits have an ugly ability to see in the deepest and richest utterance nothing but their own petty, everyday opinion. - Johann Paul Friedrich Richter I could agree with Jean Paul on this point and accept the academic, didactic, sterile, convoluted language that guards philosophical works with the armour of boredom. Only if I believed that these vulgar spirits would have a penchant for these works. Personally, however, I think philosophy is defending itself against a "threat" that does not exist. No, the vulgar/vulgar is not interested, will not read, will not react, will not twist. He is sovereign and has no need to understand, to read, to attack. He alone provides the majority. We are putting thorns on something that (almost) nobody (anymore) wants, while alienating young people eager for knowledge. Unable to believe it, I remain a lover of simplicity of expression. Herd... herd [...] because what is certain is certain, who has ever heard of a madman taking to the road, without others coming after him? Nietzsche, joking bitterly... Hidden gold - "We like what is naive, we like naive people, but as spectators and superior beings; we consider Faust as naive as his Gretchen. - We value only a little the good, the herd animals: we know that even in the meanest, choicest, hardest people there is often hidden a priceless drop of the gold of goodness that surpasses any trivial kindness of good souls like milk. " Dixit Nietzsche Sign Signum primum. In the beginning is the sign, the intelligible sign, this is the first given and the perfect essence of the One who created everything. - Nicolaus Cusanus Self-emptying the will to live Constantly, the enduring matter must change its form, in that, carried along the thread of causality, mechanical, physical, chemical, organic appearances, greedily pushing themselves to emerge, tear matter apart, fighting among themselves, for each wants to express its own idea. This struggle is pursued through the whole of nature, in fact nature itself consists only of itself. - Schopenhauer The things themselves, in whose solidity and constancy the narrow minds of men and animals believe, have not the slightest existence of their own, they are the flash and flash of drawn swords, they are the gleam of victory in the struggle of contradictory qualities. - Nietzsche Rebellion of the dreamers Imaginary universes are far more beautiful than this real universe, so stupidly constructed - G.H. Hardy Consistency? "Has your lordship any other or better criterion than consistency to distinguish certainly and truth from uncertainly and untruth? Has your Lordship, to distinguish certainty and truth from uncertainty and untruth, any other or better criterion than consistency?" - Locke The enslavement of philosophy "To become a popular religion, a superstition has only to enslave a philosophy. " - William Ralph Inge - British clergyman (AKA "the dull vicar") - The Idea of Progress, 1920 Cons. "Impossibility has no degrees. One impossible conception cannot be especially more impossible than another." - Edgar Allan Poe "Poe is firmly convinced that he has discovered the philosopher's stone, but he is merely reprising the idealism of the mystics who preceded him. In this Southern dandy, in this Gentleman of Wealth and Taste, the synthesis of mysticism and aristocratic sentiment is distinctly reactionary. So we need not wonder at the violence with which the Soviet critic Dinamov condemned Poe, a product of decadence." - Jacques Cabau The best of all possible worlds I am watching the becoming, he cries, and no one has ever watched so closely this eternal beat of the waves and this eternal rhythm of things. And what have I seen? Legalities, infallible certainties, the law always traversing the same paths, the judgmental Erinies, awaiting every violation of the laws, the whole world the spectacle of an all-pervading and demonically all-present justice, subject to them, to the powers of nature. And not the punishment of the become I saw, but the justification of the become. And when was the mistake revealed, the fall into the forms of the unchangeable, into the sacredly guarded laws? Where injustice rules, where there is arbitrariness, disorder, irregularity, contradiction; but where justice and the daughter of Zeus, Dike, rule alone, as in this world, how would there be the sphere of guilt, of penance, of judgment, and alike the place of execution of all the condemned? - Heraclitus of Ephesus Geometry? Joseph Luis Lagrance: After Euclid, geometry became a dead language. Marquis de Condorcet: Dead, dead, but well done. Forgiveness? Forgive others often, never yourself. Ignoscito saepe alteri, nunquam tibi - Publilius Syrus Metaphysics syzygy 150 years of metaphysical revolt! Rivals of the Creator, the metaphysical rebels were logically determined to remake creation at their own expense. Albert Camus Overrated logic Philosophical wisdom is alien to logic. In scientific research, logic often makes sense, but not always. It is not certain whether, in mathematics, logic can be accepted in its entirety. And it is not at all certain whether logic itself is admissible in its entirety - L.E.J. Brouwer Relative truth The truth of my statements verifies my understanding of these statements. That is: if I make certain false statements, it becomes uncertain whether I understand them. What does it matter that a sufficient check on a statement holds logic? It's about describing the language game. The truth of certain experience sentences is related to our reference system. Wittgenstein's "Certainties" The Truth Nothing is great if it's not true - G. Lessing Another definition All love is a compatibilitas incompatibilium, compatibility of incompatibilities - Felix Hausdorff Triangular dilemma According to the "Life of Adam and Eve", confirmed by the Apocalypse of Moses, writings whose authors are no doubt Jewish Gnostics, God would have covered Adam's tomb with an apotropaic stone slab in the shape of an equilateral triangle and endowed with the magical power to ward off evil spirits and demons - Abbé Marigny Vs. The sign of the demon is - according to the testimony of Eusebius' Praeparatio evangelica - the isosceles triangle, the magical Delta of the female aidoion in the Hippocratic tradition, symbol of the abyss of sin and also the shape of the gate of hell. Words The perfect man blushes for fear that his actions may lag behind his words - Lun Yu The meaning of the word As a producer of signs, the intellect has suddenly finished with its intuitive content, giving it a soul of its own. In name, the intellect knows the thing. In its sign-creating activity, the intellect reveals and realizes its freedom and its absolute power to create a world. Hegel, prefacing Wittgenstein About truth [...] "The utterance of the truth (about the speaker) is useful to the one to whom it is related, but disadvantageous to the one who utters it, because it makes him disliked." - Pascal Defence mechanisms... [...] "the unwise affection we have for ourselves, which makes us see ourselves differently than we are. " - Montaigne - On pride. Superb montaignian distillation of the defence mechanism later described by Freud. Daily The greatest sorcerer would be one who would bewitch himself to the point of taking his own sorceries as autonomous acts outside his consciousness. Wouldn't that then be true for all of us? Novalis, discussing solipsism from another point of view Egalitarianism It is not so much the invention of non-Euclidean geometry that is most astonishing - indeed, the inhabitants of the Ivory Tower have always produced enough absurdities - as the recognition it enjoys within official science. Herein lies the expression of the spirit of our age (of its evil spirit, I would say): the expression of the emancipation of mathematicians from philosophy, of their intention to play the philosopher themselves, and, last but not least, of the despicable revolutionary madness of democratic equality, that is to say, of the equality in rights of the sane with the insane. Can two systems of pure geometry contradict each other? - William Fischer And yet... Nihil tam absurdum est in sensu quod ab aliquoe philosopho non sit prius cogitatum in intellectu. In what comes to us through the senses there is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not first conceived it in his mind. - Lucian Festina lens Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience - G. Buffon Whoops! Visual space is more like the figures of meta-geometry than Euclidean space. Geometry originates in empirical experience. We must, however, make a clear distinction between the intellectual facts and images whose emergence they have stimulated in our thinking. The latter, geometrical concepts, must be compatible with the results of empirical observation and must be consistent with each other. But these two conditions can be satisfied in several ways - Ernst Mach Gnosticism According to the Gnostic author of the Revelation of John, to call the Most High infinite is to remain beyond Him, who is, it says, "much more than that". You would like to know the name of this author who so remarkably saw the extravagant singularity of God - Cioran False herd ideal "It is not the satisfaction of the will that is the cause of pleasure (I wish to combat in particular this entirely superficial theory, - an absurd falsification of the psychological currency of the nearest things -), but the fact that the will always tends to go forward and always seizes what stands in its way. The sensation of pleasure lies precisely in the non-satisfaction of the will, in the fact that, without an opponent and resistance, it cannot reach satisfaction - The Happy Man: a herd ideal." - Nietzsche - Aphorisms The happy man as an aggressively promoted model of a modernity aimed at enslaving him in the mundane, the everyday and the insignificant. Immediate and superficial happiness as an obligation, as the false god of a mediocrity promoted to perfect social status. Freedom as truth of the spirit All the characteristic features of the spirit are a consequence of freedom. Freedom is the only truth of the spirit. The essence of the spirit lies in its freedom - Hegel Festina lens [...] It's true that sometimes walking slowly doesn't reach your goal, but even if you hurry too much you sometimes miss it. Nietzsche trying to be didactic. Reality is personal The fact that it seems that way to me - or to everyone - does not mean that it is so. The question can rightly be asked, however, whether you can doubt it with sense. Wittgenstein or Nominalism at its highest level Don't mess with the Rabbi... "After the judgment of the angels and saints, we excommunicate, banish, curse, and anathematize Baruch of Espinoza, with the consent of the elders and of this holy assembly, before the holy books: by the 613 precepts that are written in them, with the anathema with which Joshua anathematized the city of Jericho, with the curse which Elisha cast upon the children, and with all the curses that are written in the Law. Cursed be the day and cursed be the night. Cursed shall he be at bedtime and cursed shall he be at rising, cursed shall he be when he leaves home and cursed shall he be when he returns. God will not forgive him, the wrath and anger of the Lord will be aroused on this man from this day forward and will pour out on him all the curses that are written in the Book of the Law. God will destroy his name from under heaven, and to his ruin he will blot him out from all the tribes of Israel with all the curses of heaven that are written in the Book of the Law." Subject: Baruch Spinoza. Charge: his philosophy. The anathema was immediately approved by the Vatican and the Calvinist authorities in the Netherlands (where Spinoza lived). Vina: free philosopher. So much hatred did they gather against him that even after his death they pursued him. They dug up his grave, desecrated it and the body disappeared. Did you think it was easy to be a philosopher? About truth and endless discussions My own untruth I can only discover in myself. It is only when I discover it that it is discovered, and not before, that the whole world knows it. Nietzsche rewriting, without great additions, the concept of Protagoras the sophist. After all, Socrates copied Protagoras, so why shouldn't he? Too bad, however, that it lies forgotten..... Momentum "He who does not control his impulses, who does not know how to resist the unexpected occurrence of pleasure or pain, judging by the prism of reason which tells him what he ought to do, lacks the principle of virtue and diligence, and runs the risk of never being good for anything." - John Locke Are you sure? I make statements about reality with varying degrees of certainty. How does the degree of certainty manifest itself? What consequences does it have? It may be, for example, the security of memory or perception. I can be sure of one thing, and yet know what evidence would convince me that I am wrong. For example, I am entirely sure of the year of a battle, but if I found in a well-known work of history a different date, I would change my mind and not thereby become uncertain in all my judgments. Wittgenstein being what consecrated him. Nominalist. Manifest hedonist ... the time that is passing calls for the eternalization of the present densified by jubilation; the fluidity of all that passes is a call to immobility in all that makes voluptuousness possible; death that acts in our being from the moment we are born obliges us to elaborate jubilatory forms of resistance; tragic philosophy, marked by the reality of entropy, justifies the formulation of a volitional, expansive science... Montaigne interpreted, sublimated by Onfray. Nietzsche followed Montaigne's advice and attempted to create "willful science". Sad humanity obsessed with the impossible yardstick of idealism and the cold scrutiny of stoicism Epictetus and the esoteric pneuma "Just as houses on the shore of clear water are mirrored in its clear surface, so external objects are mirrored in our mental pneuma; hence it follows, of course, that they are influenced by the actual state of the pneuma." Epictetus the Stoic, illustrating, among the first, the need to be quiet in order to have a clear perception of life. Optimism could not have found a better ally. Although stoicism and optimism don't seem to have much in common. Concave mirrors When people reveal to us only the imperfections and vices that we really have, it is clear that they are not wronging us, since they are not the ones who have caused them; on the contrary, they are doing us good, helping us to free ourselves from evil, that is, from ignoring these imperfections. We should not be angry that they know our shortcomings and despise us; it is only right that they should show us as we are and despise us if we are worthy of contempt. Pascal, presenting ideal situations of virtuous souls. Attention paralysis [...] Before going into such a tangled subject as the factors that lead to falling in love and the various types of erotic preference, it is appropriate to point out the unexpected similarity of falling in love, as a paralysis of attention, with mysticism and, what is even more serious, with the hypnotic state. - Gasset Global badness [...] "no one has dared to perceive the growth of human wickedness as a secondary phenomenon of any cultural development; in this matter we are still subject to the Christian ideal and we defend it against paganism as well as against the Renaissance concept of virtue. " - Nietzsche - Aphorisms Evil, as a growing global phenomenon, is not at all thought of by philosophers, civil society or religious cults. It is a phenomenon that affects us and whose upsurge today threatens the very fate of the human race. Evil, lack of empathy, self-centeredness, lack of vision, decay of social levers and the human value scale. Human wickedness as an effect of... Animal sacrifices and medieval esotericism A major source of inspiration for medieval esoteric philosophers, especially Giordano Bruno and Lorenzo Vala, the Treatise of al-Kindi, masterfully interpreted by Culianu, ends with an interesting theory of animal sacrifice. "The animal is considered a microcosm whose violent death produces a breach in the macrocosm: through this is inserted the will of the operator, capable of producing a change in circumstances and things. The slaughtered animal is, of course, in relation to the goal achieved. " By understanding the intimate, esoteric underpinnings of certain actions, we understand the medieval world as it was dominated by magic. Magic that still lives hidden beneath thick, untransparent waves. Against all [...] How ridiculous the socialists seem to me with their stupid optimism about the "good man" who is waiting behind the bush to first be overthrown by the "order" of the past and given free rein to all "natural instincts". And the opposing party is equally ridiculous, because it does not recognise the brutality in legislation, the harshness and selfishness that exists in any kind of authority. "Me and my way - the formula that claims to dominate and endure: he who lapses will be removed or destroyed - "here is the sentiment that underlies all old legislation." Nietzsche, the advocate of government based on an illusory, unattainable meritocracy that we can no longer hope for. Between two evils, ways must be found to find the good that underlies them and used. Evil is infinite and easy. Criticism is simple and within the reach of anyone with a mouth, not necessarily a mind. But to find the good hidden beneath political uri, generational differences, differences of political opinion, differences of desire... therein lies the path to normality. There are resources for everyone's needs. Unfortunately, there are no resources for everyone's greed. Because of this, ideologies will take turns leading, satisfying their desires one by one. Then they will be temporarily removed from leadership. The masses have extremely short memories. It lasts two election cycles at most. It's not about erosion but, according to one joke, the concept of "walk it off". The hedonistic anti-stoic argument When they try, no one is obliged to succeed: the obligation is in the effort, not the result. Montaigne, translated by Onfray Men The man is never taught to be a gentleman, but he is taught everything else; and he will never so reconcile himself to the rest of knowledge as he does to his knowledge of being a gentleman. He is reconciled to the knowledge of the one thing he does not know.- Pascal About physical suffering... [...] I am not inclined to believe that anyone who fears physical suffering has ever had the intimate experience of divinity. He who is truly wise and virtuous feels no pain and is perfectly happy - as perfectly as the condition of the present life permits [...] - Grillandi - Sigillus sigillorum I would like to see the esoterica of Giordano Bruno and his contemporaries rediscovered in the service of modern power. Silence Do you want people to think well of you? Don't talk. - Pascal The one who didn't describe how people's silences scream louder than the glibness of the superficial. Silence is a weapon to be used with care. Silent hearing. Silence speaks without opening your mouth. Silence isolates and includes you by excluding others. Speech as suspension of thought... Pleasant existences? Arthur Schopenhauer's optimist: "If life and existence were pleasant, then everyone would approach the unconscious state of sleep with restraint and wake from it with joy. But the situation is exactly the opposite, as everyone goes to bed willingly and then wakes up without a heartbeat. " Hegel's arrogance In my paper Uber das Goettliche Dreieck (On the Divine Triangle), I proved rigorously that the sum of the angles of a triangle is not equal to two right angles. Empirical observations prove that, in reality, this sum is equal to two right angles. So much the worse for reality. Hegel being Hegel. Or why Kirkegaard hated him so much Socialism We probably support the development and maturation of the democratic essence: it cultivates weakness of will; in "socialism" we see a thorn that protects us from convenience. - Nietzsche Misogyny or reality? The goals of their desires, of men and women, are like parallel straight lines, and to hope that they might ever meet would require a Lobacevskian imagination. - Allan Bloom Causalities To describe is to choose; to choose is to evaluate; to evaluate is to criticize - Gouldner About the unwritten law. A controversy To these three kinds of laws (political, civil, criminal) must be added a fourth, which is the most important of all. It is not found engraved on marble columns or bronze plaques, but in the hearts of citizens. It is the real foundation on which the State is built and it is growing in importance... I refer to morals, customs and, above all, public opinion. J.J. Rousseau - a hedonistic position If the law of nature is unwritten, and, therefore, impossible to be found anywhere but in the minds of men, men who, by reason of personal passions and interests, might confound and misuse it, then they will not easily be convinced of their error, unless there is an authoritative judge. Then it will not serve its proper purpose - to determine the rights and protect the property of those subject to it - especially where everyone is simultaneously the judge, the interpreter and the enforcer as far as he is concerned. And he who has justice on his side, normally having only his own power, will not have enough strength to defend himself against injustice or to punish the guilty. Locke - a Platonic position And they are both right, their positions being synergistic and complementary. Scepticism If philosophy of nature begins with wonder, ethics can be said to have begun with skepticism - Grant AND OTHERS PHILOSOPHIZE... The misfortune... "We can form a clear idea of order, but not disorder. Beauty, virtue, happiness, all have their proportions; ugliness, vice and unhappiness have none. " - Jacques-Henri Bernardin, Paul and Virginia, 1790 The power of evil and negativity has overwhelmed human values throughout history. There is something malignant in our being, something Freud glimpsed. But to probe too deeply into these abysses is dangerous. When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back at you. Mephisto... Hell itself has its rights! The seeker... Absurd in what it sought, it was great in what it found - Paul Valery Proportions or attitudes... If Jupiter, the colossus of Olympia, had ever risen from the throne on which Praxiteth placed him, he would of course have poked his head through the roof of his temple. But he always remained seated - Heinrich Heine (a)temporal laws? Ut olim vitiis, sic nunc legibus laboramus. (Once we suffered from our vices, today we suffer from our laws) - Tacitus Genius Genius makes the impossible possible. Genius is the trans-substantiating principle of the world - Novalis Fatigue To win in any battle you have to do one thing. You have to get your mind to control your body. Never let your body tell your mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is tired in the morning, at noon and in the evening. But the body is never tired if your mind is not tired. - George S. Patton Ethical dilemma It's terrible to be a monster without knowing you are. But how does a monster who knows he is a monster manage to live happily? Why did we make him realize that? Poor monster. - Jacques Prevert An ancient secret? They shall die in peace, they shall be consumed in thy name, and beyond the grave they shall find nothing but death. And we will carefully guard the secret, and for their happiness we will deceive them by promising them an eternal reward in heaven. The Grand Inquisitor to his "Saviour" Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov Social contract... What is this contract but the means by which man, as a relatively weak and defenseless creature, can maintain his biological status, which otherwise he could never achieve? H.G. Baynes - Psychological origins of divine kingship. Forgiveness "God will forgive me. That's his job. " - Heinrich Heine Hopes and nightmares I never completely lost hope. Sometimes I tell myself that to rediscover paradise, you have to go through hell. And that in order to find normal life again, after not knowing how to cherish it, you have to go through a nightmare. To go through, that is to say, to overcome. A nightmare without limits would be a futile nightmare, because his teaching would be of no use to you. I remain naive, perhaps, but I want to believe that all nightmares are temporary. That's why I'm talking to you now. I also hope that one day I'll see you as I speak. - Paler Hamlet I count myself king of infinite space, in a nutshell - Shakespeare Rat and saint [...] This is what happens to a rat and a saint. He doesn't know where to pitch his tent. Nor was I resigned, for I never gave up altogether looking at the woods that could be seen from my platforms, nor did I know how to look for a way out. I've always procrastinated, teetering between the platform and the horizon. Metaphysics caught on flypaper, indeed. - Paler Fight and love Love is the battle between two souls and two bodies in which sometimes there is no winner, sometimes there is no loser. And anyway, for one of the snakes, the difference between love and battle no longer mattered. For him it was all over. He would no longer make love, nor would he fight anyone. Death also puts an end to love and struggle. Everyone is then left with what they have loved and fought for. He has time, perhaps, only to regret that he did not love and fight enough, or that he lived like a lonely snake that has not found another snake to love or fight with. - Paler We all know someone who... "Take things too easy. He was endowed with that transcendence of genius that overcomes difficulties because he ignores them. " - Felix Hausdorff Dreaming of glory? Glory is the sun of death - H. De Balzac Nomos There are poems deep within us that seem to be of a completely different nature than the others because they are accompanied by a sense of absolute necessity that no external cause can justify. - Novalis Even Lenin The level of culture is best characterized by the legal status of women - V.I. Lenin Alt royal Valery The arbitrary creating the necessary. But nothing is more beautiful than what does not exist. The animal, nothing useless about the animal. Paul Valery My fatigue... You keep your eyes open, you look at a fixed point, but you don't see anything. Nor do you think of anything but your own weariness of living and dying. Crucified somewhere between life and death, you are good for neither. It's as if you're drifting and waiting to be cast ashore, either of life or of death, it's all the same to you. - Paler Two types of love... ...sometimes, just sometimes, the saints are understanding of the free human spirit and seem to have understood human love in its natural soul form. And not just the metaphysical one. Saint Teresa defines and describes two of these types of love in a pleasant way: - [...] "as if two candles were joined so closely that all the light would be one... Then, however, the candles can move away from each other and two candles remain." Vs. - [...] "as if water fell from the sky into a river or a well and became all one water, so that it is no longer possible to divide or separate the water of the river from that which has fallen from the sky, or as if a stream, if it flows into the sea, is no longer able to withdraw from it; or as if there were two windows in a room through which a lot of light enters, which, although divided, becomes all one light". The breath of madness The most beautiful things are those over which madness blows and which reason writes - Andre Gide Scrappy thoughts "By squeezing the air in your arms, you manage at best to strangle yourself. [...] truth cannot sleep in the clothes of a clown. It would be enough for it to become the privilege of fools to be compromised. And the moment the power to hope is gone, you are lost. Nothing saves you, because you can't wait any longer. By not waiting, you must die. [...] You discover what you knew from the beginning, that waiting has value as long as you wait for something to happen, as long as you can imagine that something will happen, even if nothing happens. Otherwise, waiting becomes empty time. Waiting for waiting? That would be absurd. There is no such thing. Waiting for waiting is death." - Paler Letters to those who teach future generations A word to the teachers. "{My son} will have to learn that not all people are sincere and honest. But teach him, if you can, the wonder of books... but give him time to think about the eternal mystery of the birds of the sky, the bees under the sun and the flowers in the field. In school, teach him that it's more honorable to fail than to cheat... Teach him to trust his own ideas, even if others tell him he's wrong. Teach him to be kind to kind people and tough on tough people. Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd, not to follow the herd... Teach him to listen to all people; but teach him also to select what he has heard through a screen of truth, and to keep only what is good. Teach him if you can, how to laugh when he is sad... teach him that there is no shame in crying. Teach him to be wary of cynics and watch out for sycophants. Teach him to sell his brain to those who give more, but never to put a price on his heart and soul. Teach him to block his ears to gossip... and to fight when he thinks this is the solution. Treat it gently, but don't protect it, because only the test of fire makes good steel. Let him have the courage to be impatient. Let him have the courage to be brave. Teach him to always have sublime confidence in himself, because he will then have confidence in humanity. This is a big ask, but see, nevertheless, what you can do. He's such a good kid, my son! Abraham Lincoln" In the sign of Cancer [...] "To tell the truth, my whole life is a string of failed passions. I've always started from the beginning. Like a real crawfish. [...] The Achilles heel, in my case, extended, like this, over about three quarters of my body. And how pitiful I thought those who piled up their passions, lest they wake up poor. I didn't like to live on a pittance, I had other ideas and other blood in my arteries than they did. " - Octavian Paler CIORAN, THE ONLY... Doses of honesty Friendship is a pact, a convention. Two beings tacitly commit themselves never to speak of what they think of each other. A kind of alliance founded on mendacity. When one exposes the flaws of the other, the pact is denounced, the alliance broken. No friendship lasts if one of the partners no longer obeys the rules of the game. In other words, no friendship can bear an exaggerated dose of sincerity - Emil Cioran Self-destruction The search for Oedipus, the merciless, even unscrupulous pursuit of the truth, the fierce drive to destroy oneself are reminiscent of the mechanism and approach of Knowledge, an activity eminently incompatible with the instinct of self-preservation - Cioran Isolation in the past "What madness to worry about history - But what can you do when you've been pierced by Time." - Cioran Incapable imagination I try to resist the interest she arouses in me, I imagine her eyes, her cheeks, her nose, her lips falling into decay. It doesn't help: the unmistakable charm it exudes persists. It is in such moments that we understand how life has managed to endure in spite of Knowledge. - Cioran Ours... "He who doubts in his heart has no share in this world, nor in the next, nor in happiness." This passage from Ready is my death sentence. Cioran About loneliness How do you know if you are in the truth? The criterion is simple: if others are clearing the air around you, there's no doubt you're closer to the essential than they are. - Cioran Respect for women All civilized peoples have respected women - J.J. Rousseau Bushido Only the falling flower is perfect, said a Japanese man. You are tempted to say the same thing about a civilization - Cioran Pride re-evaluated According to a Hasidic text, he who does not find the true path or deliberately strays from it ends up living only out of "devilish pride. How can you not feel targeted! Cioran Socrates and the flute While his hemlock was being prepared, Socrates learned a melody on the flute. - "What good will it do you?" he is asked. - "So I'll know the tune before I die." If I dare to mention this answer, trivialized in textbooks, it is because it seems to me the only serious justification for any will to know, whether exercised on the threshold of death or at any other time. - Cioran What have I already become? I'm talking to a subhuman. Three hours that could have become a bore, if I hadn't kept telling myself that I'm not wasting my time, that I'm lucky enough to contemplate a specimen of what humanity will be in a few generations... - Emil Cioran Anathemas of the night Of all the unfortunates, only those deserve pity who, in the middle of the night, unable to close their eyes, would like to shake the space, burst into roars or even scream, but who have only enough power to whisper anathemas. Cioran, speaking a language common only to those who feel the power and pain of insomnia. Political anthems Let us never lose sight of the fact that the plebs regretted Nero. We should remember this whenever we are tempted by some anthem - Cioran Higher states To a friend who tells me that he is bored because he can't work, I reply that boredom is a superior state and that to link it to the idea of work is to demean it. - Cioran Pushing It's comforting to be able to say to yourself: my life matches in detail the kind of stuckness I wanted - Cioran Negative ataraxia I will not be at peace with myself until the day I accept death as you accept to dine out: with amused disgust. - Cioran Hopes? If everything were going better, the old people, angry that they can't profit from it, would all die of spite. Fortunately for them, the path that history has taken from the beginning reassures them, allowing them to crack without the slightest trace of envy. - Cioran Editing? Perhaps we should only publish what has suddenly been put down on paper, so before we ourselves know where we want to end up. - Cioran Lost heroes I've always been passionate about lost causes and characters with no future, whose follies I've embraced to the point of suffering almost as much as they do. When you are destined to be troubled, your own turmoil, however great it may be, is not enough; you also throw yourself upon the turmoil of others, you make it your own, becoming twice, thrice, what shall I say? a hundred times unhappy. - Cioran Constant erosion Life is more and less than boredom, although in it and through it we see how much it values. Once boredom creeps into us and we fall under its invisible sway, everything seems insignificant beside it. We could say the same about pain. Certainly. Pain, however, is localized, whereas boredom evokes an echo without a specific place, without support, without anything - apart from this unidentifiable nothing that gnaws at us. Pure erosion, whose effect is imperceptible and which slowly reduces us to a ruin that others do not perceive, a ruin that we almost do not perceive ourselves. - Cioran My hidden doubts Anyone who is foolish enough to take up a work, whatever its nature, does not tolerate, deep down, the slightest reservation about what he is doing. His self-doubt is too great for him to face the doubts he inspires in others. - Cioran The biggest vice It's harder to die at sixty or eighty than at ten or thirty. The habit of life, that's the trouble. For life is a vice. The greatest of them all. Which explains why we find it so hard to get rid of it. - Cioran Disappointment You can only talk usefully with the flaming who have ceased to burn, only with the formerly naive... At last appeased, they have taken, willingly or unwillingly, the decisive step towards Knowledge - this impersonal version of deception. - Cioran Badness X. doesn't know what to do. The events are troubling him beyond measure. His panic is salutary for me: it makes me calm him down and the effort to convince him, the search for reassuring arguments, reassures me too. To keep from going out of your mind, you have to be around someone more insane than you are. Cioran Atheist curse Thinking just now of the infinity of time, I did not have the decency in my nothingness to faint. We should not be able to stand by after seeing all that is frightening beneath such a cliché. - Cioran Furies How do we beat the tantrums, the urge to burst out, to move everyone's jaws, to slap the universe? We should take a short walk in a cemetery or, better still, a definitive one... - Cioran Intellectual sterility Sterility makes us shiny and ruthless. As soon as we stop producing, we find that everything others do is devoid of inspiration and substance. Judgment, no doubt true. We should have pronounced it before, however, when we were producing, when we were just doing as others do. - Cioran Melancholia Of all that is considered to belong to the "psyche", nothing is more physiological than melancholy; it penetrates the tissues, the blood, the bones, any organ taken separately. Left to its own devices, it would damage even our fingernails. - Cioran The ecstasy of surrender In the bad nights, there comes a moment when the agitation ceases, when we lay down our arms: then follows a peace - unseen triumph, supreme reward for the terrors that preceded it. To accept, that is the secret of limits. Nothing befits a fighter who gives up, nothing is as precious as the ecstasy of surrender... - Cioran Truth or self-evaluation? "What is truth?" is a fundamental question. But what does it mean besides "How to bear life?" And even that pales beside the next: "How to bear yourself?" - Here is the fundamental question, to which no one is able to give us an answer. - Cioran My books A book must deepen wounds, even provoke them. A book must be a danger - Cioran Discriminate... An anthropologist who had gone to study the pygmies was astonished to find that the tribes living nearby despised him and kept him at a distance because he had relations with an inferior tribe, the pygmies being for them people of nothing, "dogs", unworthy of the slightest interest. There's nothing more exclusive than a vigorous, undiminished instinct. A community is strengthened to the extent that it is inhuman, to the extent that it knows how to exclude... "Primitives" excel at this. It is not they, the "civilizations", who invented tolerance, and will perish by it. Why did they invent it? Because they were about to perish... It wasn't tolerance that made them weak, it was their lack of vitality that made them tolerant. Cioran, under the impression of Nietzsche's ideas. Assassins My job is to kill time, of time, in turn, to kill me. We feel as well as we can between us, the assassins. - Cioran Cynical Hedonism Sexuality is still something. For as long as there has been life, it has to be said, so much has rightly been made of it. How do you explain that you get tired of everything but it? The most ancient exercise of life could not fail to set its seal on us, and we understand that he who does not yield to it is a being apart, a fallen or a saint. - Cioran HISTORY AND HISTORIES Obvious, irrelevant and totally annoying similarities History/mythology/history of religions teaches us that: - The demigod Perseus was born when the god Jupiter turned into a golden rain and entered the maiden Danae; - the god Buddha was born from his mother's hip; - Coatlicue snake lady managed to catch a ball of flakes from the sky. She hid it in her bosom and thus Huitzilopochtli was conceived; - The god Attys was born because the virgin Nana took a pomegranate from the tree that was watered with the blood of Agdistis, who had previously been killed; - the maiden of a Mongol king woke up in the middle of the night, enveloped in a bright light. Then, as a virgin, she gave birth to a son: Genghis Khan; - the virgin Devaki gave birth to Krishna; - the virgin Isis gave birth to the god Horus; - the maiden Maia gave birth to the god Mercury; - but the virgin Rhea Silvia gives birth to twins: Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. ... You write the last one. I sit, drink tobacco and think: how underrated sex is in the mythology of the world. And more importantly, we understand why sexuality has been (and still is) denied, recused, oppressed by the vast majority of religions. Because only we are born of two parents who had sex. They don't... Festina lens σπεῦδε βραδέως (spude bradeos) - Hurry up slowly. Oxymoron. No, they are not intestinal worms. Used as a motto by many Roman emperors, such as Augustus or Titus. Then everyone... In our country it's become "Haste makes waste". Translation problems. It all seems to have originated with Suetonius, De vita Caesarum, who recounts that Emperor Augustus hated the haste of generals and always recommended caution. And since even then the visual impact was of great value, Augustus struck gold coins bearing the image of a crab and a butterfly. Which mischief-makers would interpret as "Fly away crawling"... But the image has caught on, being encountered throughout European history, in Shakespeare, Erasmus, the Medici family and so on... Slowly but surely rushing was the motto adopted by the Indian judiciary (yes, here we go, Indians had and have justice too). In 1205, Moloji Thorat sought justice before a judge. Just 751 years later, in 1966, his descendants won the case. The amount is not known, but I hope it had some interest. A historical oddity. Everyone knows that Immanuel Kant is the philosopher from Königsberg. Few, however, know that the city, the former capital of Prussia before Berlin, is now a Russian city. Today it is called Kaliningrad (Калинингра́д) and is the capital of the Russian enclave of the same name. This is thanks in part to American bombing that almost completely destroyed the city. The Russians besieged it, finished the destruction and then rebuilt it as their own. It did not interest the Russians that the city existed in 1255 and was founded by the Teutonic Knights. Anyway, they expelled all the Germans from the city to finish "clearing the land". The Russians don't really care about the details. Kant, however, was interested in them. He was known for getting up, eating and going to bed at the same time. All his life. And his evening walk was at 5pm, not a minute earlier or later. The inhabitants of Königsberg / Kaliningrad set their clocks by Kant. Unamuno's modesty Unamuno also became known for his arrogance. Not only for his sincerity, which earned him a huge gallery of enemies. Powerful ones. The kind of kings and dictators. When King Alfonso XIII decorated him with the Grand Cross of Alfonso XII (it always annoyed me how both the Spanish and French monarchies were unimaginative in naming their children with the same name, resulting in a history full of alfondos and éldos) Unamuno obliged: - It is an honour for me to receive this decoration which is so deservedly bestowed upon me. The King replied a little surprised at his arrogance: - You're the first to say that! Until you, all the honorees told me they didn't deserve such an honor! And Unamuno's truth-tinged tongue responds: - And they were probably right. The human condition Social masochism, like personal masochism, is manifested daily around us through the choices we make, the rules we accept, the compromises we agree to. Erri de Luca, however, has one of the most plastic descriptions of this social masochism in his novel Montedidio, taken from Neapolitan folk tales: A dog licks a file. The pellet is rough and destroys his skin. The dog's mouth fills with blood. But the taste of blood is pleasant, so the hungry dog continues to lick the pile, although the pain increases. The harder he licks, the more blood fills his mouth, but the pain is also greater. The dog can't stop! How many times do we not act like dogs? "Fiat justitia, et pereat mundus" Let justice be done, even if the world should perish It was the motto of Ferdinand I, Emperor of the (Holy) Roman Empire probably taken from Johannes Manlius' book - Loci Communes (1563). Probably copied/plagiarised from "Fiat justitia ruat caelum" (Let justice be done even if the sky should fall) found in the ancient Roman comedian Publius Terentius Afer (195/185-159 AD). Terentius probably copied it from Seneca. In the book De Ira (On Anger, Book I, Chapter XVIII) Seneca tells how the Roman governor Gnaeus Piso became enraged when a soldier returned from leave without his friend with whom he had left, suspecting him of having murdered him. Summary trial, nerves and, immediately, the death sentence. To be implemented immediately! As the condemned man puts his head under the executioner's sword, the missing man appears! He was simply late. The Centurion stops the execution. But the Governor appears and immediately orders the execution to continue, as a verdict has already been reached. Justice had spoken. Moreover, he also ordered the execution of the centurion who had stopped the execution because he had not carried out the orders. But to see justice done to the end, he also orders the execution of the latecomer, because his actions led to the death of two innocent people. And that's when the Governor felt that justice had truly been done. How many times a day does the same absurd mentality condemn innocent people, just like that, in defence of an intangible justice? Justice is blindfolded, isn't it? Is this how I did justice to Seneca, even if I bored or perhaps amused you? Perhaps this is where the popular Romanian expression comes from: Doing good... Your chain "In my childhood, zoos consisted of cages, not habitats, and animals were actually kept in captivity in the true sense of the word. Once, my father took me to see elephants. A mother and her calf were sitting next to each other, both with one hind leg tied. A thick, heavy chain prevented the calf from moving, but the mother was bound only with a thin rope. "Why is that, Daddy?" we asked. "Shouldn't the thick chain be used for the bigger elephant?". "No," he explained. "The baby elephant has been chained with the thick chain because it is still struggling to free itself. Eventually, it too will accept that the chain won't break and, like its mother, will stop struggling. And the moment he comes to the conclusion that there is no escape, the thin rope will be enough for him." - Piers Steel The power of the press... "Four hostile newspapers have become more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. " - Napoleon Bonaparte Unfortunately, this power is being abused by the new media groups, the employers, the political world. The media is giving up its independence and ceasing to be a (de facto) power in the state, becoming a puppet of the financial powers. Imbalances of power in the state give rise to monsters and monstrosities. The sad history of a humanity that is heading towards collapse due to the misunderstanding of the values of morality, ethics and metaphysics in the development and proper functioning of a balanced humanity. Driving spines Little known today, the fable of Jotham, has made its way into the history of Jewish thought (and obviously borrowed from European culture) through the stark beauty of the parable. It deserves to be retold, even after 2000 years... "The trees have decided that they too must have a king, a ruler of the tree kingdom. The office was offered in turn to the olive, the fig and the vine. The olive refused to waste its time ruling the trees and give up its focus on producing its oil. Likewise the vine and fig refused the honour, preferring to do good by their grapes and figs. Before long, the kingdom of trees found its king: the thistle! He was useless anyway, he had thorns and, above all, he could hurt everyone. " The worlds part and the fig trees retreat to their orchards, driven out by thistles and reduced to oblivion. The thistles spread in all directions and the arrogance of the fruit trees turns into a speech of helplessness in the face of thorns. Sometimes we still weed the land they have overgrown, but without immense effort it is a sisyphean job. The question remains: can we still eradicate thistles? And, if this were to begin, are figs, olives and vines ready to take over? Our culture and spirit can endure for millennia buried under thistles but the life of mortals is short. Like this fable that has been asking a question for over 2000 years. The question remains. The answer, however, is delayed... God's bike "I simply don't have the courage to imagine a being, a force, a cause that keeps the planets moving in their orbits and then suddenly stops to give me a three-speed bicycle. " - Quentin Crisp The gravity of love Saint Augustine, a bold thinker on eros and love, seems to distance himself from the idea of love reduced to carnal desire: Amor meus, pondus meum: illo feror, quocumque feror. My love is my weight, I go with it wherever I go. Love defined by a saint (and) as a gravitational force that causes the individual to be drawn to the object of love, having the intrinsic power to empower both. Distancing himself from sexualized desire (desires which tormented him and which he found it very difficult to let go of) does not, however, minimize the force of love (in this case not love of divinity), but elevates it to the rank of a primordial and omnipotent principle. Something like that... "Patriots always talk about dying for your country, and never about killing for it. " - Bertrand Russell It makes you wonder about this rhetorical error. The dice of the future When you finally reach the right age to choose a direction, the die has already been cast and the time to decide your future is long past - Zelda Fitzgerald So we know that, but what can we do for the young? Regal Valery Nonsense with magnificent resonance. Impossible to think about, this negative is admirable. The role of the non-existent exists. The function of the imaginary is real. Falsehood is not always soluble in truth. What is natural is boring. Evil thoughts come from the heart. Absurdity has its reasons, sir, which reason only suspects. Ideas are born suddenly, from Nothing. Nothing precedes them, nothing foresees them, nothing demands them... Truth is a means. It is not the only one. Geometry is a science of space insofar as space is its own creation. This is why there are many geometries. So we call geometry a simulation of the impossible and even the unimaginable, expressed and unfolded in the forms of a language called logic. The material of these activities is the definitions - Paul Valery The cons A Great Truth is one whose opposite is also a Great Truth - Niels Bohr The bondage of external truths Multitudes are rushing to their deaths, science is making and remaking what exists, worlds are forever departing from our conceptions. But we will never discover reality once and for all. The truth will always be new. If it were otherwise, it would be nothing but a system more miserable than nature itself. That is all. You can't take your father's body with you everywhere. But our feet are in vain to be lifted from the earth full of dead. The monster of beauty is not eternal either. And yet too many painters still love plants, stones, waves or people. We quickly get used to the bondage. The time has come to be our own masters. - Guillaume Apollinaire Alea jacta est The Latin translation would be: the dice were thrown. The quote is still misused to define a situation from which there is no way out, an outdated point from which there is no way back. Situations where you've already made a decision and action has begun from which only victory or defeat results. Of course, the quote had to be said by someone equally famous, and Julius Caesar became extremely famous. The sentence was said when Roman troops loyal to him crossed the Rubicon River, marching towards Rome. Problems, however. The crossing of the Rubicon River was forbidden by the Roman Senate. The law was clear: no Roman army would cross the river and if an army crossed the river then its commander had to relinquish command and the army had to lay down its arms immediately. Julius Caesar hesitated, but finally gave the order to disregard sacred Roman law. And then he "rolled the dice" in violation of the law. It is worth remembering that he had come with loyal legions all the way from Gaul. He was coming to Rome to take over the Empire by force. A coup d'état, in other words. Coups d'état are carried out under the cover of loyal armies and against the decisions of the Senate, violating the laws. Caesar defeated Pompey and took over the Roman Empire. Had he lost, he and the legionaries who followed him would have been killed. Later, it's no wonder he was assassinated by a group of patriots (at least Brutus was) to prevent Rome's fall into an absolute monarchy. The man was murdered and not the stupid idea. Troubled times followed for Rome. But that's another story. Alea jacta est! It can be used in meetings, elevated talks, farewell letters and anywhere you need to appear cultured/elevated. Don't overdo it. Useful tips Alfons de Castile (nicknamed "The Wise" 1221-1284), King of Spain, said: "If I had been present at the moment of Creation, I would have offered some useful tips for better organizing the Universe." As king, this idea was not interpreted as blasphemy, nor was he burned at the stake. Others were not so lucky. And I have a long list to which I add a few suggestions every day if there will be a version 2.0. Hell and Heaven An old African story (no, I don't say it here to disprove the gossip about my racism) shows a young, poor, husky man walking from village to village with a determined expression. In one hand he carried a bucket full of water and in the other an ever-lit torch. Every time someone stopped him to ask him what he was doing, where he was going on his seemingly endless journey, the answer invariably came: - I carry the torch with me to set fire to Heaven, and the bucket of water I carry so that I can extinguish Hell. And I will find them in this life... - But why would you want to extinguish Hell and set fire to Paradise? - Because both are here on Earth and people should stop looking for them or waiting for them elsewhere. Here and now. And he goes on... The absence of hell... A BBC poll found that 52% of Britons believe in heaven. At the same time, only 32% believe in hell. This difference makes me wonder. Not having access to the whole study, I wonder if the remaining 48% are atheists. Apparently, 20% of those who believe in heaven do not believe in hell, which would lead to a simplification of life from a religious point of view: no matter what you do, you still end up in heaven, because there is nothing else. Either another religion or Christian schism emerges, or hedonism has already reached 20% of the population. Either religions have failed to resolve the fear of death, the only explanation or justification for the existence of any religion. "Disintegration anxiety," Kohut would say. This opinion, however, reminds me of a very beautiful story by Borges, "The Disc", in which there is a magical object, the Disc of Odin, which has only one face. It's a short story, well worth reading. Later edit: The approach of Cardinal de Bernis, who evidently believed in both and who said he liked "paradise for the climate and hell for the chosen society", was sympathetic. No, Mark Twain didn't say that... A strange victory Wars, fights, conflicts, altercations and arguments have winners and losers. Sometimes hard to identify. History tends to be written only by the winners, but the truth remains, in most cases, hidden in these histories. There are catastrophic victories throughout human history, and I am not just referring here to victories "a la Pirus", and superb defeats. An old medieval tale tells of how an army commander is hailed by everyone for a great victory. There are marches, balls, parties and the whole town celebrates. The winner walked through the streets to the cheers of the crowd. A simple beggar, however, makes his way up to him and asks: - Who was stronger, you or your enemy? - I was, as it turned out! - But then, why do you keep bragging about beating someone weaker than you? Denigrating our enemies diminishes our victory and halves our fame. Seek out enemies in whose defeat you will find the true measure of your worth. Kindness, people and pets An explanation for the growing number of pets was formulated by Francis Bacon over 400 years ago: "The tendency towards goodness is so deeply imprinted in human nature that, if it cannot be directed towards humans, it will be directed towards other living beings." But the question that will not give us peace is: why is it harder and harder for us to direct our kindness towards other people? Why so many services, NGOs, committees and commissions for the protection of animals and not our fellow human beings in even more degrading situations? We return to the Latin saying: Homo homini lupus est (Man is for man a wolf/predator). The saying was first known in Paulus' work "Asinaria" (ca. 195 AD). Of course, however, Seneca is keen to contradict him by saying that "man is sacred to man". To make peace, Hobbes (in De Cive -1651) said, "To speak impartially, both are right; Man to Man is a kind of god; and Man to Man is a kind of wolf. The first is true if we look at men among themselves as citizens, and the second if we look at cities (countries) among themselves. " Hobbes may have been right in 1651. In 2003, man is a wolf to other men at every level. Except in his own pack. The degradation is obvious and I won't dwell on the obvious. The Dragon's Dream Discussing dreams today, I was reminded of a cute story from China where a man dreams in his sleep. He dreams of many adventures and, at the end of them, of a cave guarded by a monstrous dragon that shot flames from its nostrils, had huge claws and came straight towards the poor man. It starts screaming: - What will happen to me? Are you gonna kill me? Will you eat me? To which the dragon pauses for a moment and replies very quietly: - Why are you asking me? How should I know? It's your dream, not mine. Sometimes, we all forget that life is ours to live and its continuation is in our power. Not just the dream.... And you, Sir Newton...? Although he was initially delighted by the superb symmetry of the solar system, Sir Isaac Newton began to have doubts about the tendency of such a system towards instability/entropy. Rather than delve deeper into the study of the system, and to calm tempers, he proposed an aberrant theory: God periodically intervenes in the solar system by re-arranging planetary orbits. No wonder Leibnitz was to criticize him aggressively for this pseudo-theory, wondering why God had not adjusted the orbits properly in the first place, if that was the case? My criticism of this aberration of Sir Isaac Newton's would, however, be phrased thus: "We sacrifice reason to God," quoting Ignatius of Loyola. That strange moment when atheists become religious and saints give voice to reason against mysticism. People without ambition The Franco-British mischief has delighted history and one of them lingers in my memory. In a public discussion, Alfred d'Orsay, better known as the Count of Orsay, explains to Benjamin Disraeli, the British Prime Minister: Count D'Orsay: - Sir, I was born a Frenchman, I lived as a Frenchman and I will die a Frenchman! Benjamin Disraeli: - Man, don't you have any ambition? Equally caustic, however, was US General George Patton, who publicly stated: I'd rather have a German division in front than a French one in the rear. Democracy of kings Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-1786) best illustrated the concept of apparent democracy even before it was explained by sociologists: "My subjects and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They can say whatever they want, and I can do whatever I want." King Charles I of England also made a heartfelt statement before he was beheaded - but that's another story: [...] "independence and liberty consist in being under the government of those laws by which their lives and property may be most their own, and not in taking part in government, which does not belong to them of a kind. " Do we still find honest politicians today? Because the actions of many show that not much has changed in the last 300-500 years. Less the man.... (rep.) "All animals except man know that the main purpose of life is to enjoy it - and they enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances allow. " - Samuel Butler - The Destiny of Every Body, 1903 What's coming against us... An Iranian writer (Khanlari) wrote a superb story about the last flight of the falcon. The great bird flies and feels like the absolute master of the sky and the perfect predator for the small animals on earth. Powerful, arrogant, menacing and phallic dominating the sky. But a hidden hunter fires an arrow that hits him square in the face. Wounded to death, the hawk collapses to the ground and, as he feels death overtake him, he looks at the arrow. The murderous object has hawk feathers. Before dying the hawk smiles and says: - Why would I complain? Everything that comes upon us, comes from us. The phrase has become proverbial in Iran: "Ke az mast ke bar mast". Restrictions The Middle Ages. Damascus. A famous scholar was fleeing Afghanistan for fear of Mongol invasion. The scholars of Damascus take him in and give him shelter/hostility. What's more, they organise a big reception inviting mathematicians, poets, philosophers and great men of culture from the city to celebrate the scholar's arrival. The host begins to introduce the refugee in more than complimentary words, praising the Afghan scholar's erudition, inventiveness, tenacity and genius. To take this praise to the max he states: - He is among us the greatest scholar mankind has had since Aristotle. To which the scientist grumbles disgruntledly under his breath: - There you go! The restrictions are already starting! Historical justice A popular French legend describes the fairest way to divide an inheritance between two brothers. According to this story the ideal formula is: the elder brother divides all the assets fairly, according to his own judgement. Then it's the younger brother's turn to choose first which of the two streams of inheritance he wants for himself. Truth and justice are very often hidden in simple and logical forms. Now comes the question: how can you use this lesson of fairness in your life? Making your life rosy An old medieval European story tells of a bored king. So bored that he sent word to the kingdom for someone to come and do something unique, something worthy of admiration, something unique. Something worth a hundred crowns. Someone talented. Many tried, but the king remained bored and time passed until a man appeared who, indeed, did something truly unique. After more than 20 years of training, he was able to throw a thread from a great distance and thread it through the ear of the needle. The King couldn't believe it and made the young man repeat the feat several times. Convinced this time and astonished, the king told the treasurer to give him the 100 gold pieces and the executioner to give him 100 lashes. The man, astonished beyond measure asked: - Great King, for what is my deed worth 100 lashes? - I gave you 100 bucks because what you've done is unique and no one else will. The 100 lashes is because you wasted half your life for such stupidity. Watching so many "successful" televised competition shows reminds me of this feat and how they should be rewarded. Lives wasted in the grotesque/burlesque spectacle of popular entertainment. How we define ourselves... An old Hasidic story tells how a young rabbi is received by a great master of Hasidism who questions him: - Who are you, young man? - I am the grandson of Rabbi Cutare and the son of the great rabbi. To which, the grand master apostrophizes him: - I didn't ask you what family you come from, I asked who you are! How often do we not define ourselves by others? Whether it be family, social circle, friends or political, religious affiliations... Where does one's own context-free identity begin? Viewpoints... and whores The historian Edward Gibbon's view of the social usefulness of religion in his book "A History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" is very interesting: "The various modes of worship prevalent in the Roman world were regarded by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful. " Where have I seen that before? Uh... yes... in modern society... Before giving an attack on my atheism let's listen and: "As soon as the question of religion is raised, people are guilty of all kinds of insincerity and intellectual folly" - Sigmund Freud - The Heir to an Illusion. I know I am hopelessly, and apriorically, in error, for the founder of a church (schism, sect?), Martin Luther (not King, not Jr., but the great Luther, with his Lutheran church and the beginning of Protestantism,) clearly stated: "Reason is the devil's bitch and all it can do is slander and destroy what God says and does" Well, in that case, I'm clearly guilty! Easter Bunny. Bunny? Easter? The tradition of the Easter bunny seems a bit suspect because, as far as I know, rabbits don't really exist/existed in Israel 2000 years ago. The rabbit does not appear as a mystical character in oriental stories, legends, but seems or is a character of European culture. But let's dig into the appearance of this motif/symbol: the Easter bunny. We find the rabbit, however, in many medieval churches. The motif is (yeah... it gets boring, but that's the evolution of European culture) found in ancient Greece where several philosophers (I never said they didn't say a lot of stupid things), including Pliny, Plutarch, Philostratus, believed the rabbit to be hermaphroditic. That is, it could reproduce without losing its virginity! So, here is the immaculate conception. Here is how the rabbit joins the image of the Virgin Mary. But medieval clerics did not just pass on the old beliefs, they modified them, rewrote what they did not like and generated "truths". Among the legends promoted in this way is one in which a small rabbit waited three days in the Garden of Gethsemane for the return of Jesus. On Easter morning, Jesus is said to have returned to his favourite garden where he was greeted by his little rabbit friend. This explanation or the pagan explanation: in most European cultures the rabbit appears as a pagan symbol of fertility, but they had seen that the rabbit also has sex and many offspring. Fertility that is celebrated at the same time of year, after the spring work is finished. POLITICS Modern politics I really wish that today's politicians, not only those in Romania, would be serious, more cultured, more prepared for government and have a thorough education in political science and philosophy. Why philosophy? Because philosophy is the cornerstone of politics and the one that has determined the development of ideas throughout history. But dreams, mother, dreams...! For now. Today's political discussions are a real war fought "live", to the amusement of the masses. Sometimes they seem to me to be nothing more than embarrassing clowns of our inability to promote political values. For politicians who have not had the patience to read Kant, I mean for everyone, here is an idea that could help them in moderating violence: nothing should be allowed in war that would make subsequent peace impossible (Kant - Towards Eternal Peace). If there is an end to politics, it is peace. The war of annihilation waged by political parties and modern politicians is dismantling the very heart of politics. The annihilation of the opponent is the prerogative of totalitarian regimes that have already demonstrated their inability to generate a possible and coherent social life. So what do we do? Can we moderate our speeches while keeping in mind the desired possibility of future peace? Politicians "People in power don't have time to read; and yet people who don't read are not fit to be in power. " - Michael Foot - British politician Notice to beginners... ...in the games of politics and lobbyists: Betrayal never flourishes, and do you know why? If it flourishes, no one dares call it treason. Thrasymachos, 2000 years ago. Ἄκουε δή, ἦ δ᾽ ὅς. φημὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ εἶναι τὸ δίκαιον οὐκ ἄλλο τι ἢ τὸ τοῦ κρείττονος συμφέρον. When betrayal flourishes, it's called strategy or thoughtful decision or negotiation. For the common good. Or the high. Or the welfare of the nation. But woe to him who fails in his treachery! In the area of politics, things are even more complicated, as Socrates describes: rulers rule for their own prosperity, and justice is the name given to obedience to their laws, which means serving the interests of others. (via Guthrie) The definition of society... notice to politicians "Society is indeed the result of a contract... it becomes a partnership not only between those who are alive, but also between the living, the dead, and those who have not yet been born." Edmund Burke wrote this idea, with which I am in complete agreement, in 1790 (Reflections on the Revolution in France), seemingly anticipating the mistakes that today's governments make by putting future generations in debt. Of course, both the commentary and this whole text is relevant only to those who have already read Rousseau's Social Contract. Donkeys, horses, generals and politicians Antisthenes was, despite general ignorance, the founder of Cynicism. The name derives from the name of the school he founded - Cynosargus/ Spry Dog, probably in memory of "Diogenes the Dog". A pupil of Socrates, Antisthenes continued his philosophical ideas with the Cyrenaic, Megaric and Erythretic schools. Plato did not. I have something with him. I'll explain why another time. Like the vast majority of ancient philosophers, he had a highly developed sense of humour. A sense that has atrophied over time, disappearing completely nowadays. Have you ever heard a contemporary philosopher joke? I have. Another time I'll tell you who it is. At an assembly of the Citadel (like which citadel...? There was only one, written in capital letters in philosophy: ATENA) demanded that by a decree, which today would be called a Government Decision, I believe, the donkeys be called horses. Murphy's Laws - Politics Even if a million people believe in something stupid, it's still stupid. It is easier to fight for your principles than to live up to them. For each action there is a government programme of equal intensity and opposite direction. If two people agree on everything, you can be sure that only one of them is thinking. A man must forgive his enemies, but not before they are hanged. Politics is the art of getting votes from the poor and electoral funds from the rich by promising protection to some from others. An honest politician is one who, once bought, stays bought. Those who sit on a fence have few directions to choose. Once you've given up integrity, the rest is simple. A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell so you look forward to the trip. Garden or politics? "I can't help but marvel at my own foolishness when I thought it was worth giving up my books and my garden even for a day in the House of Commons. " - William W. Grenville, former British Prime Minister Enlightened despotism Today I could say quoting Helvetius: "My homeland has finally known the yoke of despotism. " "What is despotism? Any power disinterested in the public good and the general interest, in the Oriental Divan or under the great canopy of the throne of Versailles; any political practice which has abolished the distinction between right and wrong, personal whim and general law; any regime which prohibits freedom of speech, expression, publication; any government which controls the emission, dissemination and circulation of ideas; any administration which concentrates wealth in the hands of a small group; the king, his court, his courtiers, his favourites, his metres, his political supporters. " Clear ideas expressed over 300 years ago by one of the greatest unknown philosophers and so beautifully commented by Michel Onfray (A Counterhistory of Philosophy - The Extremists of the Enlightenment). History is repetitive and, unfortunately, leaders are just as illiterate and half-witted then and now... Otherwise, they might have understood the course of history, the dangers and temptations of power. Today, as yesterday, political power is losing its coherence and falling into the clutches of despotism, enlightened or not. Smart administration "Asked who would guard the bandits who were to be deported to Guyana, Napoleon would reply: Some bandits bigger than them. Vidocq (1775 - 1857), a former criminal, became the first director of French Security and founded the first private detective agency in history in Paris. Therefore, an intelligent administration sometimes knows how to use even criminals for the public good" - Via Eugen Ovidiu Chirovici. Papal message... "To the illustrious Herr Adolf Hitler, Fuehrer and Chancellor of the German Reich! As we stand at the beginning of our pontificate, we wish to assure you that we remain committed to the spiritual well-being of the German people under your leadership. During the many years we have spent in Germany, we have done everything in our power to establish harmonious relations between Church and State. Now, when the responsibilities of the pastoral office which we occupy offer us greater possibilities, we pray even more earnestly that we may achieve this goal. May the prosperity of the German people and their progress in all fields be, with God's help, fully realized!" Pope Pius XII's message to Hitler four days after his inauguration as pope in 1939. Issues: 1) The Pope considers himself the direct representative of God on earth. So God supported Hitler? If so, why did he lose the war? Did he change his mind? If he didn't support him, then isn't the Pope his representative on earth? 2) Would it be useful for the papacy to apologize for these statements and for supporting Nazism both before and during the war? 3) Perhaps the public denunciations of the agreements with Mussolini in which he recognized Catholicism as the only legal religion in Italy would also be useful? 4) And, if we apologize, do we also acknowledge the immense efforts to save the Nazis after the war? That, only already, history knows who took them to South America. PS: The new pope will hopefully have a better flair for alliances and (non)involvement in politics. WE THINK ABOUT IT... My critics... An old saying - old, because we first encounter it in Heraclitus - says: "Dogs bark at the one they don't know." Why should I be angry with you? Prejudices and pre-judgements We pride ourselves on our ability to process information and make quick decisions. What we don't take into account, however, is that in the vast majority of cases we confuse reasoning with prejudice. Far be it from me to underestimate its value! We could not function without prejudice. We simply don't have the ability to analyse every single thing that happens to us, every new piece of information and determine its truth value. All the more difficult to provide a solution. Prejudices save us from an ordeal that would overtax our mental capacities. But what saves us can also destroy us. For prejudices are either personal preconceptions, based on experiences already had, or group/community/culture preconceptions. And they can be wrong. Or it changes. Their truth value is in any case questionable. To live without questioning everything and going through one's own judgement is a lack of life, of living one's own life. Rejecting prejudice and trying to judge everything leads to madness or the impossibility of normal functioning in society. Old unanswered dilemma... Confession... "Citation is always subordinated to a principle of embedding. Used for hagiographic, critical or disparaging purposes, it illustrates, constitutes testimony for or against someone or something, but always benefits the user." - Michel Onfray More than that: the citation brings powerful, recognised bands, endorsed by a recognised authority, into a polemic. It thus becomes your ally and positions your opponent's logic as inferior. Hard to penetrate, the quotation is a method of protecting, hiding, retreating behind universally recognised figures. Preferably passed into oblivion. Quotation dissipates you in the spirit of another. Quoting helps, distorts, manipulates and alters. It is a form of ventriloquism that, used skillfully, proves anything on any subject. Especially if the opponent does not know the entire corpus of the quoted master. Context gives value to a statement. Removal from context corrupts, destroys, can anathematize. An easy example is Nietzsche's statement: "God is dead". Context, however, shows us that Nietzsche was referring to the death/omoradiation of Eudemonist/Hedonist/Epicurean metaphysics by the Socratic spirit and the idealism it generated. An (otherwise cordial) polemic between two philosophical currents (the official, mainstream, idealist one against an almost extinct, hedonist one) brought the great philosopher a misguided condemnation from Christianity. "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still haunts us. How can we, the murderers who perpetrated the greatest crime, be redeemed? What was most holy and greatest in this world has bled under our knives: who can cleanse us of this blood? What water can cleanse us? What manifestations of worship, what holy games must be invented? Is not this task too great for us? Must we not simply become gods in order to appear worthy of the deed? " (my own translation) Necessity or freedom? Necessity, not freedom, drives the life of society; and it is not by chance that the concept of necessity has come to dominate all modern philosophies of history, in which modern thought has sought to understand itself and to find its philosophical orientation. - Gasset Unfortunately, however, this leaning towards necessity has led to a philosophy that is dry, inapplicable, and does not offer the necessary vision for the development of humanity. Necessity is the leaning towards the real and the immediate. We live and can survive the immediate, but we are moving towards an already unknown destination. Philosophy betrayed humanity when it abandoned "freedom" and the vision of human development, opting either for academic arrogance or necessity. The last coherent view is that of Plato's Republic. It still applies and has been implemented for the last 2000 years through the clear/ brutal intervention of monotheistic religions. Unfortunately, we can already state without doubt that this vision is a utopia whose implementation has led to obvious aberrations. If the idealist vision, to which the Stoics, the Sophists, the Cynics, have rallied, has proved to be a loser, is it not time to examine the hedonist vision? Not necessarily (only) the Epicurean one, but the whole hedonistic school, with a greater leaning towards Democritus. If we were to stay true to the idealistic vision, could we at least take it to its pure form? Even if it seems extreme? Sartre vs. Socrates I hate victims who respect their executioners - Jean-Paul Sartre In saying this, Sartre declares his hatred of Socrates. The executioners, the accusers, the judges, can only be the representatives of the law and of the laws of the polis or country, ideally. If enjoying the rights granted by law seems pleasant, I don't see why bearing the rigors of the same law is reprehensible. Sartre commits a logical fallacy while leaving the circle of hedonists who do not recognize the divine/indisputable/binding character of law, nor is he supported by idealists who consider it a given of deity or society. Jaspers commits the same error in his booklet on the life of Socrates, nullifying his philosophical thesis by axiomatically affirming the divinity of law. If Socrates were alive today, according to his style, he would be a great blogger. Dialectics in the Internet Age. Triskaidekaphobia And a new word to add to the vocabulary today: triskaidekaphobia. I mean fear of the number 13. The word is a compound word. In Greek tris = three, kai = and, deka = ten and phobia = fear. Not to be confused with fear of "Friday the 13th", which would be said (if you can somehow manage to pronounce it) paraskevidekatriaphobia. Good. Try again... Tough, isn't it? I only got it right the fourth time. Fear of the number 13 would have served NASA well when it launched Apollo 13 at 13:13. Apollo 13 exploded on April 13! They pushed their luck, didn't they?... The first time in history that the number 13 was avoided is the Code of Hammurabi (1780 B.C.E.), from which the law with the number 13 is missing. If you liked the Thor or Avengers movies, then you must know Loki. He is the 13th god in Viking mythology. The Templars did not escape the 13th either, for on Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered their arrest. It being 2013, should we be worried? This scared the Irish because the Irish Car Registration Office decided in 2012 that the number plates (plates showing the year of registration, with the last two digits, 2012=12, 2011= 11 etc) would show 131 this year and not just 13. The Irish government has approved this proposal. Government in serious trouble.... The problem of Gnosticism "I don't choose what I am, I just support what I am, just like everything else in the order of the universe. " A striking Gnostic statement that explains the Catholic anti-gnostic rage: the categorical denial of the possibility of free will because of the astral determination of the individual. Rivers of blood, burnings at the stake and excommunications make sense in the light of this non-negotiable vision of human destiny. The remnants of Gnosticism are modern horoscopes. In the Middle Ages a mere reader of them would have been condemned. Kant's a joke... Although I'm not a big fan of his (I'm not a Kantian), Kant was certainly one of the great philosophers of mankind. Exasperatingly rigorous and over-the-top rationalistic. Having logical demonstrations and clear ideas that are hard to argue against. But which are not necessarily also truthful. It also has a complicated language, a convoluted logical thread, which, although it is found in most modern and contemporary philosophers, has led to an isolation of philosophy in an ivory tower. Not reading it, however, means not having a philosophical culture. Dixit. It is, has been and will be one of the cornerstones of the construction of philosophy. It had, however, a fine and pleasant humour. Kant came from a modest family and had a deprived youth. It was not until he succeeded in becoming a professor at the University of Königsberg that he saw his finances secured. Asked why he chose celibacy, Kant replied: - "When I could enjoy marriage I couldn't afford it, and when I could afford it, I wasn't in a position to enjoy it. " Marriage as an exaggerated financial burden generating pleasure. Sounds like a brothel. Despite the fact that he behaved admirably towards the fairer sex and maintained a pleasant tone in his writings, we can suspect Kant of misogynism. He says he can prove that women don't go to heaven according to the Bible. In the Revelation of St. John it is stated that silence was left for half an hour. "Such a thing would have been impossible if there had been a woman there," Kant demonstrates. Dilemma? No, trilemma! Epicurus pissed off a lot of people. Dante put him in the Inferno in pride of place. The Platonists wanted to destroy his entire oeuvre. They succeeded. Everything we know today about Epicurus is taken from enemy quotes. Enemies, as you can see, can carry you into posterity, and even save you from oblivion! Being so annoying, of course Epicurus is among my favorites. Please don't start with "you've opened parentheses again and are getting off topic". That's why I've given my writing a certain name, to go around in circles. Read the name of the blog... Anyway... Epicurus' trilemma is known to us because a scholar, a high priest, Lactantius, was cursing him. If he kept silent, the trilemma disappeared. So it haunted the whole history of philosophy. In short, Epicurus states: Does God want to stop evil but can't? Then he is not omnipotent. Maybe, but doesn't want to? Then it's a bad God. Can and won't stop the evil? Then why is there evil? Neither willing nor able? Then why do you call him God? Checkmate the king! Before you serve me your opinion, I say "forget it..." So many people, like Leibnitz and Hume, have struggled to find a coherent answer and failed. Some of the more habotnici, like Lactantius, said: God does not meddle in the affairs of men, and they still failed. To end the discussion, my friends, let's just say that Epicurus lived between 341-270 BC. That is, before Christ. So he was talking about another God. Problem solved! Sadness Love dies only because its birth was a mistake. European scepticism Buddhist prayer wheel. Mani-chos-'khor. Abbreviated Mani. Or Wheel of Dharma. Basically cylinders with a mantra inscribed on them. Buddhists believe that by rotating these cylinders, they substitute for saying a prayer. A sutra. Understandable if you don't know it. And especially if you can't read. OK, it's hard to learn to read, but the "great sutra" is overwhelmingly four words: Om Mani Padme Hum, which usually translates to Om (hello!), Mani (a jewel), Padme (in lotus blossom), Hum (hello!). So it is impossible to teach them. Or in order to attain stillness and restore your karma, it is difficult to recite the above sutra. The effort to repeat it is too great. So we write the sutra on a cylinder and spin it. Spirits will be delighted to hear our devotion. Or to hear a cylinder squeak. But we can do it faster if we feed their movement through a water or windmill. Maximum religiousness is reached more recently by putting an electric motor on it. Imagine the cacophonous noise that should drive the "great minds" crazy. In the mirror, I propose we record the daily prayers on Mp3 player-e and put them on auto-repeat. Buddhism turns out, on closer examination, to be a mere religion with no spiritual depth deeper than a puddle on the asphalt. Simple facts promoted to the rank of philosophy and a pseudo-functionality that we Europeans only imagine. Eager to find something there, we delude ourselves. We know that beyond the most advanced philosophical theories and concepts lies simplicity, and we have deluded ourselves into believing that Eastern religions and philosophies have achieved it. No, they haven't even started. They remained in the infancy stage, thus being stuck in the logic and depth of thought of a 5-6 year old. We look outside our culture for something that is only inside it. We are too quick to accept anything 'outside' in a rush to deny our obvious cultural potency and power. European culture vs. oriental culture or Beethoven vs. Indian manua. Hic Rhodos, hic salta! Although it appears in Aesop's Fables in Latin, the original should have been in ancient Greek: "Αὐτοῦ γὰρ καὶ Ῥόδος καὶ πήδημα" and would translate something like this: This is Rhodes, jump here. It is about an athlete who boasted in public that he had achieved an incredible, unparalleled jump in a sporting competition on the island of Rhodes. What's more, the performance would have been seen by many people. Then, suddenly, the annoying attendant in the audience said simply: This is Rodos, jump now! The expression was and is (still) often used in politics, but not in Romania, at work, and sometimes even in the privacy of bedrooms. This usually leaves serious disappointments. Perhaps that is why it is ignored nowadays. Here is a philosopher who wanted to play with this expression, namely the famous Hegel. In the preface to his "Principles of the Philosophy of Law" he mentions it, but without explaining it or linking it to its context, first in Greek, then in Latin. He then makes a comment that speaks of "skipping over Rhodes", which would make us suspect him of some stupidity. Well, you wouldn't think so... Then the great Hegel returns with his own adaptation in German (Hier is die Rose, hier tanz - Here is the Rose, here it dances). And with this he throws us into a fog, linking to the rose on the Christian cross in the Rosicrucian tradition and the utopias promoted by this sect. Rhodos-rhodon-trandafir... jump / dance - jumpus / jump... Get it? But as if they hadn't played enough and Marx comes along and quotes it "Hic Rhodos, hic salta". That's half from Aesop and half from Hegel! Let's get this straight... Both Hegel and Marx knew the expression very well. They just played with it. And with our minds. That's what a philosopher does. Read between the lines! About envy... Unfortunately, we have nothing left of the philosophical work of the great sophist Hippias. As in the case of the hedonists, the sources are either quotations from ideological opponents or references made by idealists to the antitheses of these two schools of ancient thought. Plutarch, on the other hand, saved Hippias' view of envy, which is of two kinds: one right and one totally wrong. It is right to envy a bad man, but totally wrong to envy a good man. Both praise and material accumulations are fully justified in the case of the righteous man, and are a source of encouragement to the young. It is hard to feel envy in this case, the proper feeling being that of pride and hope. Remember also that the envious person suffers twice as much as the rest of the people: firstly because of their own unfulfillments and problems and secondly because of the "luck" of others. Hippias, however, is more drastic in speaking of slander, which he considers a curse and accuses the law of being too easy. Slander is worse than theft, for it represents the theft of two of the most precious things in philosophical life: friendship and goodwill. Slander can destroy both. The Sophists, a forgotten philosophical current, but one that could correct our modern social errors. We will suffer as long as we refuse to learn from the past. Nihilism Causes of nihilism: 1) The lack of the superior species, that is to say, the one which, with inexhaustible fertility and strength, keeps alive the trust in man. (Think of what we owe to Napoleon; almost all the higher hopes of this century.) 2) The lower species ("herd", "mass", "society") loses its modesty, inflating its needs into cosmic and metaphysical values. In this way, the whole of existence becomes vulgarised; for, to the extent that the mass dominates, it tyrannises the exceptions, so that they lose faith in themselves and become nihilistic. All attempts to imagine higher types fail ("the romantic", the artist, the philosopher; contrary to Carlyle's attempt to add the highest moral values). As a result: resistance to higher types. The decay and uncertainty of all higher human types. The fight against genius ("folk poetry" etc.). Mercy towards the lower world and the suffering as a measure of the quality of the soul. The unmistakable Nietzsche. The sad reality confirmed nowadays, of the swelling needs of mediocrity and the systematic destruction of exceptional values. The sad inability to generate meritocratic systems by eliminating, marginalising or excluding the 'atypical'. The sad exaggerated democracy that has led to a levelling of the individual. Noica would tell us that we have destroyed our archers and make too many arrows. Cioran revealed, perhaps best of all modern and contemporary thinkers, the silent despair of humanity, of the human species, in the face of the constant destruction of the peaks. Bricks in the walls... Late notice. Epicurean manifesto. For 2,000 years, the Epicureans and Hedonists were banned, their works destroyed and attempts were made to erase them from the history of philosophical thought. Idealistic people will not cease for a second to take their thoughts and deeds to extremes, extremes being intrinsic to monotheistic or atheistic idealism. Probably the most constant accusation is that of promoting 'pleasures' and corrupting 'young people'. Strange accusation levelled at the Epicureans, it was they who condemned to death the man who laid the cornerstone of Platonic, and later Christian, idealism, Socrates. But having clarified this 2,000 year old problem, let us listen to Epicurus and judge the accusations for ourselves: "Let us think better that some desires are natural and others are groundless: of the natural ones, some are necessary, others only natural. Of the necessary ones, some bring us happiness, others are beneficial to the body and others to everyday life. A thorough knowledge of these things can relate any preference and aversion to the assurance of bodily health and spiritual tranquillity. This, in fact, is the goal of a happy life. Indeed, by all our actions we seek to be free from suffering and fear. Once we have achieved this goal, the storm of the soul is calmed and man no longer needs to seek what he lacks, nor to seek anything else by which to acquire happiness of body and soul. We feel the need of pleasure in its absence, or when pain comes. But when pain does not come, we no longer feel the need for pleasure. We therefore call pleasure the beginning and goal of a happy life. Consequently, we find that pleasure is our first good, which is our own. We take it as the starting point of every preference and every aversion, and we turn to it by appreciating every good with the help of our affections, taken as criteria. Because pleasure is the first of the innate goods, therefore we must not choose every kind of pleasure, but often give up many, when they result for us in greater unpleasantness. We often consider some sufferings preferable to pleasures, if the long endurance of some torments brings at last a greater pleasure. Therefore, not every kind of pleasure is to be chosen, just as not all or every suffering is an evil. Therefore, not all suffering is always to be avoided. All these things must be judged in a measured way, comparing them with each other and taking into account advantages and disadvantages. In some circumstances, we treat good as evil and evil as good. In the same way, we consider it a great good to be independent of external things, not just to be content with a little in all circumstances, but to be content with a little, if we do not have more. " "It is well to be fully convinced that abundance is enjoyed by those who need it least. That whatever is natural is easily procured and only that which is without real value is hard to procure. A simple food brings us as much pleasure as an expensive one, as soon as the suffering of lack of food has been removed. Bread and water give the highest possible satisfaction if they are given to the bearer of their want. That is why, getting used to a simple and cheap food fulfils all that is necessary for health, enables man to cope without hardship with the necessities of life, disposes him when he is sometimes faced with a rich meal and makes him no longer fear the blows of fate. " "When we say that pleasure is the aim of life, we do not understand the pleasures of the vicious, nor those consisting of sensual pleasures, as some reckon, either from ignorance, inexperience, or misunderstanding. By pleasure, we mean the absence of suffering in the body and of disturbance of the soul. It is not the uninterrupted necessity of feasts and orgies, not sensual love with boys and women, not the feasting on a good fish or other delicacies of a rich meal that makes life pleasant, but sober judgment, the search for the reasons of every choice or rejection, as well as the banishment of those opinions by which the greatest disturbances take possession of the soul. Of all these, the first and best is wisdom. Wisdom is therefore a more precious thing even than philosophy; from it spring all the other virtues, for it teaches us that we cannot lead a contented life unless it is also wise, kind and just; nor can we lead a wise, kind and just life which is not a pleasant life, for the virtues go hand in hand with delight, and the pleasant life cannot be separated from the virtues." Male excesses... Women have many opinions about men's excesses. But these we have learned to ignore. It's harder to ignore other men's opinions. An old Chinese proverb says that there are two kinds of good men: dead men and men who have not yet been born. As you have already gathered, I despise Asian pseudo-philosophies because they have not risen above the comprehension of an 11-12 year old. Naive and retarded philosophies which, not surprisingly, are gaining ground these days. Today's mankind finds it difficult to pronounce even 40% of the words of European philosophy. Another huge advantage of "Eastern philosophies" is that they fit into a picture that can be posted on Facebook. Returning to the subject, the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico wrote around 1730: Men first feel the need, then they seek utility, then they crave comfort, then they indulge in pleasure, then they indulge in luxury, and finally they go mad and waste their substance. So, on Vico's ladder, where have you landed and what's next in your life? Update 1, Aeschylus: "Zeus, hear us! Remove the excess of men... Favourable to the cause of women, renew the legend of your goodness!" Romania today... Consensus omnium contra omnes, the consensus of all against all - Thomas Hobbes Inevitable change Heraclitus said that no man can step (swim) twice in the same river. The water of evil flows and you will not enter the same water. But man changes in the same way. Both man and evil are in motion, motion/change being the only constant in the universe. I would add here Borges' superb metaphor: The Book of Sand. The book in which, every time we open it, we read something else. The book, however, having (essentially) nothing magical. The magic comes from the inability to understand. The book changes. The reader changes. Like the book, the music changes. Old songs, re-listened to, seem new and seem to mean something else. Our minds are changing and something, big or small, changes. Maybe that's why I obsessively hit the back button before a song ends. I want to relive it when I'm almost the same. Eventually small changes bring a big change and I abandon the song. Atomic physics shows us (scientifically) this constant change at the atomic level. Medicine shows us that, including at the dermal level, we are in the midst of renewal and renewal, change. The only constant: change. The only certainty: death. Also change. Otherwise flow, transformation and instability. We leave and return to places that are dear to us and seem changed. They are. But the major change is intrinsically new. Accepting change teaches you the course of nature and life. By clinging to the "constants" of life and anchoring yourself to "solid ground" you only oppose the natural course of the universe. Float with the river. With Plato about atheists There are, indeed, men who do not acknowledge the existence of gods, but have a just character by nature; they hate the unjust, and, being disgusted with injustice, some are not bent on committing such crimes and flee from unjust men and love the just. There are others who, besides the condition that everything is godless, show unrestraint from pleasures and weakness from pains, and have a sound memory and great insight of spirit. Their common disease is that they do not believe that there are gods; but the former seem much less injurious to society, than the latter. Indeed, the former will speak of gods with much freedom, as well as of sacrifices and oaths, and, mocking others, can easily make others heretics, if they have no responsibility; but the latter, having the same opinion as the former, but full of wit, makes use of cunning and craftiness. From among them are recruited fortune-tellers and all sorts of miracle-workers, sometimes also tyrants, orators, generals of armies; likewise, the hunchers of secret cultures and sophists in their deceitful reasonings; for the species of this second class of heretics are innumerable. But two laws will suffice against them. The crime of the latter, who feign a faith which they do not possess, deserves not only one, but even more deaths. For the former, rebuke and imprisonment are enough - Plato - The Laws. I said earlier that I would continue my approach in explaining why I hold Plato responsible for a certain distortion and intransigence in European religious politics and practice. We are not talking about religions, but about practices. The Inquisition, however, loved Plato and the mirage of his Republic still haunts the collective European subconscious. Idealism at its highest level prescribed... the killing or imprisonment of atheists even if, see the beginning, it recognized their benign character for society, even perfect moral conduct. Although they publicly state and advocate a tolerant position and policy, it is intrinsically impossible for idealists to take any position other than the extreme. Promoting and believing in an ideal does not admit half-measures or tolerant principles. The candlesticks of the Middle Ages bear witness. Tolerance as the exclusive prerogative of hedonists, eudemonists and epicureans. Then of the sophists, gnostics and libertarians. All condemned at one time or another by Christian or merely philosophical idealism. Plato, sometimes so far from the profound serenity of Socrates, so envious of Democritus and his hedonism. Good luck to the copyists of the Middle Ages, who almost succeeded in erasing them from the history of European thought. Almost... On the other hand, good luck with all the accusations of the aforementioned philosophies, which can now be reconstructed only from the charges or quotations used in support of the idealist cause. Idealism, even religious idealism, is a death drive, not a life drive. The power of ideas Rousseau's ideas had a decisive influence on the French Revolution both in terms of democratic reforms and the excesses that occurred. A revolution inherently contains excesses and cancels out the middle way to the restoration of order. Or the establishment/establishment of a new order. One story shows Carlyle having lunch with a businessman to whom he presented his revolutionary ideas. But the businessman becomes tired of Carlyle's talkativeness (i.e. he talked a lot... check the DEX) and apostrophizes him: - Ideas and words, Mr Carlyle. Just ideas and lots of words. Not facts. Obviously annoyed, Carlyle responds: - My dear sir, there once was a man named Rousseau. He wrote books full of words and ideas. Then the ideas and books became reality. The second edition of his book was bound in the skin of those who laughed at the first edition. More powerful than armies: words and ideas. Perhaps that is why all tyrants have been diligent in attacking the intelligentsia. Myth busted: the stories/stories about Auschwitz books and lamps dressed in human skin turned out to be false. Only recently, through DNA analysis. Mozart. Baby Einstein. Every time I listen to Mozart's music I feel my IQ rising. If you've ever played Mozart's music to your child, if you've stuck a pair of Windex on a pregnant woman's belly, you know you've taken an important step in your child's genius. There are companies all over the world that make a living out of it - selling your child's cognitive development in the form of Mozart's music. So, for example, is the rather famous and wealthy "Baby Einstein" in the USA: parents all over the world flock to buy these CDs. The more computer-savvy ones download them for free from the Internet ready, as nothing should be spared in the effort to develop their offspring. And, lo and behold, so came the Mozart effect, not to say psychosis. It all seems to have started in 1950, when a doctor by his first name Albert Tomatis claimed to have had results in treating patients with speech or hearing disorders, or even both, just by exposing them to Mozart's music. It wasn't until 1990, when the University of California at Irvine tested 36 students who listened for ten minutes to Mozart's sonata before an IQ test, that the change in mindset occurred. According to psychologist Dr Gordon Shaw, the results showed an eight-point increase in scores after 'exposure' to the music. And suddenly, boom! A musician, Dan Campbell, comes up with the idea of recording as a mark of the therapeutic process, printing CDs and books based on this concept. What's more, he finds supporters including in the state governments of Georgia, Florida and Tennessee. Millions and millions of dollars... But, as in the academic world, as well as in the real world, envy does not give you peace, and counter-studies immediately appear to disprove the grandiose claim. The mischievous Dr Frances Rauscher demonstrates in another series of studies that exposure to Mozart's beautiful music does not improve anything. Nor any other classical, pre-classical or symphonic music. Nada, nothing, zip, zero, what the hell, you're a scam! Despite the myth being debunked by the scientific community, it persists. And do you know why? Because you're a super-parent doing it! The envious bickering between researchers continues, proving that their exposure to music has not made them any smarter. Q.E.D. PS: I'm going to listen to Mozart, therapeutic or not. Don't listen! Never LOOK too closely in a physics lab! You don't TASTE anything in a chemistry lab! Don't MIROSE anything in a biology lab! Don't ADD anything to a medical lab! But... most importantly... Don't LISTEN to anything in a philosophy department! Man the measure of all! Protagoras, the sophist, firmly believes that all value judgments are purely subjective. The meaning of his philosophical beliefs states that what seems true to each individual is his or her only reality and the real world is different for each of us. Both Anaxagoras ("things will be to you as you suppose them to be") and Empedocles and Permenides are in complete agreement with Protagoras' statement: man is the measure of all things, of those who are what they are and of those who are not what they are not. Dramatic and harsh statement generating currents and heated philosophical discussions. In the Platonic dialogue Theaitetos, Socrates asks Protagoras if he has read his own statement(?). I've read it, and many more times. And doesn't he say something like: as each thing is shown to me, so it is, according to me, and according to you, as it is shown to you, for we are men, you and I? Of course, Aristotle has his own interpretation, and, in order not to be accused of mono-valent advocacy, I also reproduce the text from the Metaphysics: "Protagoras held that man is the measure of all things, which is tantamount to saying that what appears to everyone exists in reality. If this were so, it would follow that the same thing is and is not, that it is bad and good, and that all contradictory statements are equally true, because often the same thing seems beautiful to one, while to another it seems just the opposite. And what appears to each of us is the measure of things. " I firmly believe that Aristotle is in serious error and is committing a violation of the principle of individual diversity and uniqueness but, to take up Protagoras' thesis, what seems true to Aristotle must necessarily be true for him. Not for me. The moment we nullify Protagoras' claim, we open the way to tyranny and the imposition of a single vision. History records rivers of bloodshed generated by these ideas and this intransigence. IV or IIII I love watches. Treacherous mechanisms that seem to grind time or give us the dimension in which it grinds us. Outside it, we would adapt to the more normal flow of astronomical, solar time. In its mechanism we are trapped with an eternal Memento mori next to our hearts. I wanted to talk about something else. I have always been surprised that the Roman numeral IV (4) appears on the dials of some watches, but not in the standard IV, but as IIII. Initially (much younger as I was) I thought the stupidity was great. But age teaches you to question all your ante-pronunciations. And then you start looking. The explanation is perhaps simple: the oldest clock in the world, the Wells Cathedral clock (built between 1386 and 1392, but first mentioned around 700) shows the number four through IIII. As a mark of respect to this veteran clockmaker, the hidden world of clockmakers has adopted the "wrong" sign. But it's not like me to stop studying. I'm curious to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Why did the builders choose the "wrong" sign? We remember that the sign IV - of the sign 4 - was used by the Roman world as a sign of the god Jupiter (IVPPITER). Paganism and Christianity. Maybe this is the truth or maybe just to avoid confusion: IV and VI are confusing. Other history diggers think it's just a matter of symmetry and beauty. He who grinds our time grinds our mind and truth remains shrouded in mystery. Alchemy, esotericism and mechanics. That mechanics adored by ancient Greek philosophers. Because buried in the banality is our hidden science. Why I love watches. How we bury ourselves... A colleague in my office told me a wise saying about documents, business, and especially public authorities: "The dead are buried with earth and the living are buried with papers." It's worth thinking about it a bit... Yeah. What's worse than living in Romania? To live in Romania and to be immortal. Inconvenient truths In practical reality the opinions of two people may be equally true, but not equally valuable. Despite the pro-state and pro-democracy views of the Socratics, the Sophists have always been right in their analyses of practical inter-human relations. Perhaps it is precisely Plato's accusations against them that reveal not weaknesses but strengths in the philosophy of the Sophists. Life lessons... Hedonistic reality seems closer to life than Platonic idealism, which has been promoted for the last 2000 years under various names. According to the hedonists and sophists, the only reliable basis for an alliance is mutual fear and not an impossible to define concept of justice, law or social contract (sorry, J.J.Rousseau!). I would add this excerpt from the Corinthians' speech to the Athenians: "Don't think that, even if your interest makes you understand differently what we say is right, this will lead to war" or the bitter speech of the Plataeans to the Spartan conquerors: "If you evaluate what is right according to the principle of your own immediate advantage, you will prove to be servants of self-interest rather than true judges of justice." Beautiful times when philosophy ruled the life of states and not democracy so incapable of promoting its elites. The place of each opinion There are points of view generated by one's social position, one's level of culture, one's existential aspirations. Different, sometimes even apparently antagonistic, but essentially complementary. The need for "social" dialogue, a problem that has been troubling philosophy for over 2000 years. "Don't you like being politically equal to the crowd? But is it right to deny members of the same state the same rights? I am told that democracy is neither wise nor just [literally, equal] and also that the rich are best suited to rule. But I will answer first that the demos means the whole state, and the oligarchy only part of it, and second that the rich may be the best defenders of property, but the best advisers are the intelligent people, and the best listeners and judges of arguments are the many. And in a democracy all these are on an equal footing, whether acting separately or together." Nice explanation used, according to Thucydides, in the speech of Athenagoras, the democratic leader of Syracuse. As another clarification: what I like as an idea in his speech, for example the idea mentioned above, does not automatically represent what I believe. Democracy, the sublime utopia of mankind, doomed to constant failure. I can agree with the argument that oligarchy is the best defender of property. I am saddened that there is (no longer) a social category of "intelligentsia" (sophists, philosophers, people of culture and genuine thinkers), but I do not think that "the many" are the best judges. A beautiful utopia that has, however, caused more social suffering than many exacerbated oligarchies. The absence of another, or new, social system will, however, keep democracy as the only form of government until we find a more natural way. Unfortunately, again, no one seems to be actively seeking this path to the new government. The rebuke, however, is not to politicians, but to modern philosophy and "intelligent people". The Ivory Tower as a condemnation of humanity. The only form of government trying to gain ground is religious dictatorship. Sad humanity that you have marginalized your thinkers thus putting yourself at the disposal of excess. Greek tragedy If words rank with what is happening, if, as it is said at the end of Antigone, "great words" respond to "great blows from above" and avenge them, then what is happening is itself great and worthy of remembrance and fame. Speech, in this sense, is a form of action, and our fall can become a deed if we cry out against it at the very moment of our fall. Greek tragedy - its drama, its staged events - is based on this fundamental belief. Note to myself I always forget, in the moments when I struggle to explain to officials, authorities, leaders, concepts, strategies and visions that: The donkey likes straw better than gold. I need to remind myself more often to get rid of frustration. Donkey just wants a fan. He dreams of hay and only recognizes hay. Gold is useless to him and he has no ability to understand it and finds no use for it. Let's repeat this until we fully understand it. Three kinds of life Ancient philosophy clearly defined, repeatedly and continuously, three kinds of life, three choices, three different dynamics: a) theoretical life, disinterested research; b) life dedicated to political action, and c) the hrematic life, devoted to business. I don't believe that the purity of following one direction can bring happiness, only Plato thought so, but the mixture of two such choices having, however, a predominant component. This mixture leads to peace and reconciliation but almost always prevents excellence. There is a great price for this and it should only be paid by those who are well-informed and who would consciously assume existential unhappiness. Of course, you'll notice that most people don't fall into any of these categories. But I don't bother to write about them. Neither I nor the others... Checkpoint 43. Scrappy thoughts. My gift. What have I learned lately... Time does not exist. But there is a dynamic to your life. I have lived the experiences of years in the course of days. And I have months that vanished into nothingness. A man's age should be calculated by how long he has lived. How much life is in his age. Desire for life is overrated. Faced with nothingness we are moving towards and having nothingness behind us from which we have come, the desire to hang on for another year is comical. Quality of life vs. quantity/length of life. People are beautiful as they became and as you knew them. It's not their past that defines them, it's who they are and how they are when they intersect your life. Similar experiences make some angels and others demons. No foreknowledge. There is no measure to judge. Anything. People, ideas, actions. Procrustes wanted the destruction of mankind. Nothing is as simple as it seems. Wishing and doing good bring good into you. Instead, the notion of good is specific to everyone. Don't judge, but try to understand. People come in and out of your life periodically. It's neither your fault nor your merit. Everyone's path is their own, not yours. Enrich the one next to you with kindness, quickly. You never know when his road will turn and what you have given him may help him then. Accept his gifts sincerely. You need them on your journey. There are, however, few who walk the same path with you. The roads merge and become wider and easier to travel. Cherish them at their true value. They share with you and the problems before you and they share the same scars as you. Stop together to admire the beauty of the road from time to time. Politics without ethics and morals corrupts. There is no left, there is no right. There are people who want to do good and still have the desire to extend the general good. Self-selected to crucifixion are the only ones who keep society from collapsing into chaos. Anonymous atheists who experience much pain and little joy. Inner. Embrace the serious issues that come up in your life. They are the thorn through which you will sift your friends. And they are the magnifying glass through which you will see yourself in your inner nakedness. Strength must be tested, not asserted. Learn your limits. Learn to stop before you give up, so you can fight again the next day. Exhausting yourself, dying, giving up may seem like heroic actions, but leave the day ahead without defenders. Cherishes silence. When you're silent you begin to hear. But don't be silent for fear of hiding yourself or what you think or who you are. Regardless of what others will interpret. You are who you are and that must come through in your expressed thinking. Those who seek to denigrate you will alter your speech and silence anyway. Your deeds, however, give truth value, not words. Life gives you what you need, not what you want. Learn not to complain, but to enjoy what you get. Learn to find meaning in what happens to you. It all comes from you, from your actions, non-actions, affirmations and silences. It is an expression of who you are, who you have been and determines who you will become. Express yourself. Explain clearly what you are, what you want, what you like, what you dislike... Don't assume that you've "made your point". Frustrations arise from these assumptions. What is obvious to you is hidden from others. Ask clearly what is expected of you. Even force clear, explicit, naked, terse communication. We are all different. Fortunately. Beliefs, political and philosophical opinions, social affiliations do not separate us and do not define us exactly. Find out what a person is from direct interaction with them. Without prejudice. I felt closer to ideological "enemies" than to those in the same (formal) circle of beliefs. There is no Good and Evil. There is my Good and my Evil. There is our Good and their Evil. Find your values. Don't nail them down. They can change. Embrace change. Carefully that it is yours, emanating from you and expressing you. Let you be the change and not the world be your change. The greatest loss you can have is for you to lose your spirit. To become the form devoid of your own substance. Change does not show lack of character or consistency. It shows that you are alive. The river changes shape, speed, depth, clarity on its course. And it stays the same. The dying is beautiful, but I want to experience it in death. Repeat mantras: I want to be able to struggle with what I can change, reconcile with what I can't change, and have the wisdom to tell them apart. Use diets. In food, in desires, in expectations, in pleasures, in work, in hatred... Excesses are not to be avoided, but they must be taken carefully. Think. As much as possible. Thinking changes your life. Thinking is the source of your pleasures, your disasters and the dynamics of life. Without thinking long and hard, you're a driver on the road of your life who doesn't know which way to go. You are going, not the road is taking you. Otherwise, you'll end up somewhere. I don't know where. Maybe it'll take you right. I don't know. And don't forget to laugh and enjoy being alive and life in you. It won't take long. Philosophy of law From the point of view of the free thinker, the philosophies of law created by the idealists, and in particular the ideas promoted by Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer, must be overcome with particular grace, thus migrating to a hedonistic vision of it. To contrast two other great modern philosophers with those mentioned above, we would bring Hobbes and Rousseau before mankind for support. The hedonistic contract of law, and obviously, as a direct consequence, of politics, is founded on three concepts laconically expressed as follows: - there is a natural right that teaches us to recognize immediately what is useful in order not to do harm or to avoid suffering and aggression; - there is no damage, injustice or fault if the faggots involved have not entered into a contract; - Human justice does not have an intrinsic existence, but only according to a certain bilaterally agreed contract. Simple ideas capable of changing the world. Individual freedom elevated to the level of religion and a simple modus vivendi accessible to free and educated people. Two unfulfilled needs that have led to the creation of a blind, inefficient and arbitrary justice system. And perhaps an annulment of that Fiat lux et pereat mundus which has led to the excesses of justice at the expense of justice. Do not confuse Right and Justice. It just sounds similar. WE JOKE AROUND... Bread, butter and cat Although they sound boring, astrophysicists can be fun. Michel Casse, obviously an astrophysicist, had the following dilemma: a) it is known that a cat always falls on its feet; b) it is known that a buttered slice of bread always falls with the butter on the floor. So... how does a buttered cat fall? The world and trousers Every time I remember the beginning of Samuel Beckett's The World and the Trousers -1989, a broad smile comes over my face. The dialogue is delicious: Client: God made the world in six days, and it took you six months to make me a pair of pants! Tailor: Yes, sir, but look at the way the world looks, and look at the trousers I made! Festina lente, my friends... Away from... After the Second World War, jokes also appeared, the horror being very well fought with a bit of humour and/or sarcasm. Two Jewish Holocaust survivors meet a few years after liberation on a street somewhere in Europe. Happy to see each other again after the camp, they begin to recount their lives. But one of them has very good news: - I managed to get a permanent immigration visa! - Excellent! What country are you going to? - In Argentina! - In Argentina? Well, isn't that far away? - Away from what? Specialists and computers Sometimes, specialists screw up badly. Sometimes really badly. That's why I think it's good to believe in your dream and keep going even despite the great advice. "There is no reason for a man to want to have a computer in his home." - Ken Olson, President Digital Equipment Corp. 1977 "I think there's a world market for about five computers. " - Thomas J Watson, president of IBM... An ethical issue... A Jewish father teaches his son about business and arrives at the word ethics. - To better understand what ethics and ethical issues mean, I will give an example. So, a customer walks into our store, shops, pays, leaves but leaves his full wallet on the counter. The ethical issue that arises in this case is: should I keep all the money found or share it with my associate? Help? Jokes as life lessons There are jokes meant to provoke laughter. There are jokes that are the distillation of life lessons, business lessons, moral lessons. Lessons of wisdom for everyone. These delight me. Maybe you've heard them before, maybe you haven't. A mouse was being chased by a hungry cat. Running through a farm yard, he eventually ends up in the barn, where he asks a cow for help: - Please kindly help me to survive, for the cat is chasing me and I have no hope but you. The cow thought about it, and then she had an idea. She told the little mouse to get behind her and stay still, no matter what. Then the cow dropped a big drool on the frightened little mouse. The mouse's tail, however, remained in sight. Immediately, however, the cat appeared, suspiciously. He sniffed the whole barn but there was no scent. He did, however, see the mouse's tail. He pulled it out, killed it quickly and swallowed it instantly. Moral 1: Not everyone who gets you into trouble wants to hurt you. Moral 2: Not everyone who gets you out of shit, wants your good. Moral 3: If you're going to get into shit, get into it! The dark room Defining human types, the behaviour of each in a room in total darkness, three typologies are identified: A) If in this darkened room, you are looking for something you think exists, you are a scientist. B) If in this darkened room, you are looking for something that does not exist, you are a philosopher. C) If in this darkened room, you look for something that doesn't exist, but you find it and shout "I found it", you are a believer. Petitio principii (AKA vicious circle) Two devout Jews told of the qualities and praised the work of their rabbis. One of them said: - God speaks to our rabbi every Friday. It is an endless source of divine wisdom. - But how do you know that? - Well, our own rabbi told us so on several occasions! - And you're sure the rabbi isn't lying? - How can you believe that a man who talks to God every week can lie?! - You're right... (Adapted from Jose Antonio Marina) Specialists and phones I was saying the other day that the experts are still screwing up. Let's listen to Western Union's opinion expressed in an internal briefing note: "This phone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered a means of communication. The device is completely worthless to us." Yes, screwing up requires an analysis by a committee of experts. Gullibility... A medieval story shows Srulek running to the rabbi... - Rabbi, Rabbi, God has spoken! - Did he talk to you? - No, no. God spoke to Itzik. He told me himself and told me everything. - Srulek, don't you know that Itzik has the reputation of a liar and can't be trusted? After a moment of deep thought, Srulek responds with increasing wonder: - Well, that's what was bothering me. Why God spoke to this liar. Persuasion and the starting point difference Two priests, heavy smokers, decided to try to get the Pope's approval to smoke and take the vice off the blacklist. Enter the first priest, the classic Catholic, and, asking the Pope if he is allowed to smoke while praying, he receives a very stern No and, as a bonus, a long series of penances. The Jesuit, however, washed up, also enters. He comes out, after a brief conversation, smiling. They both leave the Vatican and start talking on the way: - Have you received the same many penances? - No, I didn't get one. - But did he get mad at you like he got mad at me? - Not even. - Then you certainly didn't ask him if we can smoke while we pray! - Yes, it is. I asked him. Only I changed the order a bit: I asked him if, while smoking, I could pray and he agreed. Smile and then think about it. Life lessons come in many forms. Country doomed to failure... Emil Cioran, in his typical style, defined us as a country doomed to failure and to eternal sisyphean work without obvious completion of our work or our ideas. A joke I heard today conveys the same idea, but in a mundane way of writing (or rather speaking): A peasant shepherd sat tactically watching the progress of a hang glider. It suddenly starts to lose altitude and crashes into a church steeple. Meditating, the shepherd whispers into his beard: Shitty country. Even the bombings are shit here. An optimistic hope... In an extremely serious situation we will have two opinions: Pessimist: It doesn't get any worse than this! It's a catastrophe! Optimist: Wrong! It can be done! It can...! Hope dies last, right? MANAGEMENT Saving the starfish One of life's most enjoyable lessons, of cheerful wisdom, that delights me every time I remember it. And I do it quite often when I have meetings with NGOs, social workers, eco-entrepreneurs or civil servants not corrupted by the system. A hurricane has washed up thousands of starfish on the ocean shore and they are beginning to die under the sun. Two men walk along the cliff on their morning walk. One of them often stops and throws a starfish back into the sea. Then another. More walking, more throwing. The other, intrigued and in a hurry, stops him: - What are you doing here? There are millions of starfish washed ashore! You want to throw them all back in the sea? They're already dying! It's impossible to save them all! You're crazy! But the benefactor responds calmly: - I wonder, though, what the opinion is of the starfish I've already thrown back into the ocean. Do they think I'm crazy too? Toxic leaders Leaders in management run their organisations by imposing or creating deep emotional rhythms. History has shown us political leaders who have used these skills to bring their organisations or peoples to a disastrous end. We could recall the furies created by Hitler in Germany, by Pot Pol, Stalin and, more recently, Slobodan Milosevic. They managed to unite whole peoples with a powerful but destructive emotional message. They also had the political-economic crisis configuration that breeds such monsters. It is precisely in the nature of the message that the difference between the resonant leadership I mentioned in previous posts and demagoguery lies. Compared to leaders, demagogues try to achieve the same results by spreading a negative and destructive message, a message that is based on a mixture of fear, anger and, ultimately, hatred. "We" are threatened by "them", "they" want to take what "we" have, "we" are attacked and our position is endangered by "them", "we" have to fight "them", "they" have to disappear for "us" to exist, "they" are different than "us" and so on. This kind of message only polarizes the organization and its members around a fight, not unites it for a positive common cause. Polarisation is created based on survival instincts and the "fight or flight" challenge. This type of leader-demagogue bases his speech on the intrinsic resentment of the members of the organization at a given moment, on the arrogance of pseudo-powerful leaders, on a false charisma of the demagogue, on statements and not on explanations. Gustav LeBon, more than 100 years ago, described this type of message very accurately in his work "The Psychology of the Masses". Working with primitive emotions, a work written 100 or 1000 years ago has the same value today. This type of leader-demagogue (dissonant leaders, obviously) is marked by an acute lack of empathy and creates an aura based on sociopathic manipulation, humiliation of people, rumours and tyrannical abuse. Of course they will pose as the "man of the people", popular or rather populist, modest and "in their place" (remember Ceausescu) and very often they are unaware of the negative impact of their methods on the organisation. Some of them are charismatic and then they ensnare many naive people. Demagogues cast a spell over the organisation, a spell built from these destructive emotions, and their manipulative and tyrannical style (ultimately) prevents any real creativity. They rely on stealing ideas or technologies from competitors, which is then presented as the exclusive property of their genius. They do not shy away from borrowing the very discourse of the competition, modifying it so as to carry with it the seeds of hatred. Being expert fools, they will never explain, but affirm and impose their conclusions. In the business world, they create internal tensions in their industry and in their own organisation, they fire all their creators and manage to eliminate their partners through trickery or Machiavellian machinations. The effects of the methods used (rumours, gossip, underground attacks, innuendo, political and media intervention) are seriously damaging the whole industry which they really don't care about. They cultivate fear, propagate the idea of serious threats that will come true if they are not listened to and followed, want total submission and use cheap tricks to mobilize their team in a certain direction. It is so easy to make people hate something or someone or fear something or someone. Fortunately, these emotions are (including biologically) short-lived, very intense and tiring. These emotions can help us get through a crisis, but they are certainly losers in the medium to long term. Demagogues are thankfully in the political world, overwhelmingly so. Until a few years ago I had never met one in the business world. But I was "lucky" enough to study the effects of such a competitor at first hand and I think it is time to put my experience into writing. The art of listening "Most people do not listen with the intention of understanding, they listen with the intention of responding." - Stephen Covey Leadership and leadership models Briefly, I would like to identify six leadership models that exist in private organisations. I do not claim that they are the only ones, but in my view the other models can be subscribed to. And they certainly cannot be exercised exclusively for a long period. There is a mix that creates the success of a good manager. Purity and singularity is the preserve of poets and dreamers, not managers. a) The Authorising Officer/Commander. The best example in this case is the President of Romania himself. Great political, military and managerial leaders have used this method in the long term. Most successful leaders use it only under certain conditions and in the very short term. Advantages within the organization: Eliminates confusion and fear of subordinates, giving clear and unambiguous orders. This model is excellent and recommended in emergencies or when the organization is going through a deep crisis. Impact on organisational climate: Strongly negative if this model is used in the medium to long term. Stifles creativity and promotes lack of accountability from subordinates. When it is recommended: in organisational crises, in case of attacks against the group, in startups and in isolation for troubled individuals. Dissonant style. b) Fast-paced creators. They too, like the 'commanders', apply a dissonant management method. Benefits to the organization: Drives the organization to achieve extraordinary results, fulfill seemingly impossible plans and reduce costs. Impact on organisational climate: In most cases negative because it is applied too long term - tiring too much team members - or is poorly implemented. When it is recommended: When there is already a highly motivated and well-prepared team working to achieve excellent results in a short time. Dissonant style. (c) Democrats. At the regional level I have met very few managers who actually apply this method. Most managers claim to be in this category, but refuse to actually implement the necessary levers. The person who comes to mind: Louis Gerstner Jr. IBM. Advantages within the organization: gets great results by actively participating in team projects, gets real feedback and loyalty to the organization. Impact on the organisational climate: Obviously positive. When it is recommended: In achieving a relaxed working environment, organisational consensus and when real feedback from the team is needed. It is also very useful if leaders are unsure about how the organisation is going to evolve or if its goals become uncertain. Other keywords: openness, fairness, almost brutal honesty, but a lot of time is wasted, initial confusion, conflict in the beginning, harmony later, respect between members, creating a state of mutual respect, teamwork, conflict management (d) Affiliated. Benefits within the organisation: Can create a state of harmony within the organisation which will improve its performance. Impact in the organizational climate: Positive for stable companies. When it is recommended: when internal organisational problems are to be healed, in post-stress or post-traumatic situations or when interaction between members is decreasing. Despite the obvious advantages, this model cannot be used alone. It must be coupled with one of the other models or it can destroy the organisation. The Visionary style is recommended. Other keywords: collaboration, organisational harmony, friendship, team-building, building excellent emotional capital, empathy, high morale e) Coaches. When I think of coaches I think of David Ogilvy. Advantages within the organization: They manage to involve team members in the organization's plans and goals. Impact on the organisational climate: Definitely positive. Not effective with blah or unstimulated staff. Poorly executed, tends to become member over-control or advantage certain groups/departments. When it is recommended: To increase the productivity of work teams and the integration of newcomers into the organisation. Major benefits in the medium and long term. Not to be confused with "pace setters" who become managers only to achieve their short-term goals or just coach a group from which they have increased demands in achieving goals. Other keywords: interaction, conversations, explicit interest in people's needs, self-discovery of weaknesses and special skills, motivation through identification, autonomy and independence of members. f) Visionaries. Advantages within the organisation: They succeed in implementing in the consciousness of the members of the organisation the purpose, the target and the wishes of the organisation. Creates unity around a common dream. Impact on the organisational climate: 100% positive. When it is recommended: when the organisation wants to change its objectives, when it has lost its breath and direction, when the organisation has reached an unproductive self-sufficiency. Other keywords: strong emotions are used, innovation, experimentation, calculated and/or assumed risks, coherent vision adhered to by the members of the organisation, retention of important members and their loyalty, the brand is assimilated and naturally accepted by the members, the triad that is induced: self-confidence, self-knowledge and empathy. The Commander/Coercive style is applied by managers encountered for several reasons: a) old managers - the developed multilateral man, zero sum policy, used to no competition and to order by default. He finds democratic means a "waste of time", especially since he has built a management team "in his own image". He has managed to promote over time and suffered in subordinate positions. Payback time has come for him. He is obviously the keeper of all the secrets and the absolute truth ("let me tell you how it is...", "I've heard a lot of this...", "these youngsters, they're all bookworms, but they don't know how to tie their shoes...", "boy, if we don't do it my way, we won't do it at all..." quoting a great bank manager). b) new wolves - practical entrepreneurs who are organically attached to the company they create and see it as their product/child. They only formally accept the opinion of others, because they want (sometimes sincerely) to move towards the democratic style. In general, this type of entrepreneur is a guerrilla marketer, because everything for him is a no-prisoners, no mercy battle. He has low managerial morality and does not know the term "professional ethics". Success "entitles" him to claim that he has the ideal path and considers himself the "guru" of his industry. I note unsurprisingly that the "Commander" style is the most recognised and commented upon. The motto of these people is: You will do what I say, because I say so! This style involves a lot of brutality, coercive methods. In no case will they delegate responsibilities, but install puppets they can monitor. The feedback they ask for is: what you did wrong, not what you did OK. It quickly leads to erosions in team spirit and lowers the morale of the organization, causing its members to lose touch with the company's purpose and mission. Despite this evidence, there are extremely many managers who adopt this almost military style (although the analogy is outdated, as modern armies have that esprit de corps). But it's not all black. This type of management is imperative in times of business crisis. Orders given in these moments help the organisation overcome the shock of crisis/attack/loss and come out of paralysis. Another time when this style is useful is when a manager takes over an organization that is on a downward trend. At that point, however, it is not the members of the organization that are attacked, but its culture, in the same brutal style. In both situations, this type of management must be quickly replaced by another, before the inner springs that keep the organisation functioning are eroded to destruction. And before creative team members leave, as they are the first to (almost organically) reject this style. Of the styles presented, I don't think there are some "good" ones and some "bad" ones. There are styles that suit us at some point. If a manager adopts and experiments with one style, sooner or a little later, he will be eliminated from the organization that is in a permanent transformation. Shut the f*** up! "We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we speak." - Zeno of Citium (via Diogenes Laertius). Listening has become a real art. I would identify six (faulty) ways in which we listen (or not): A) Filtering. We listen seemingly attentively, but only hear the parts that interest us. We filter, ignoring everything that does not seem to interest us or does not correspond to our conclusions already drawn. B) Dreaming. We listen while dreaming of something else, until a certain word association or powerful images in the speech of the one we are supposed to be listening to catches our attention and then we "jump" into the discussion. C) Deraiere. Changing the subject or perspective before the partner finishes their speech. Extremely unpleasant and disturbing for the discussion partner. D) Assumptions. Because we haven't really listened or don't like what we've heard, we start reinterpreting or explaining what the partner "meant" to say. We "read" his or her mind and derail into our desired area, sometimes even convincing him or her that this is what he or she meant. WRONG! E) Indifference. I agree with everything you say, as I have no interest whatsoever in the topic and/or discussion. F) GOD. We refuse any comment, criticism or modification of what we have said. Nothing can be added to what we have decreed, and anyway, the discussion we have initiated for the sake of false democracy. Monologue vs Dialogue. G) Pre-announcement. Your partner hasn't even begun to speak properly, but you already know he's not right. Or he is one hundred percent right. H) Sparrows. They don't even get a chance to present an idea, you're already stepping in and fighting it. At some point, he'll resign himself and shut up, and you haven't even heard anything he has to say. Of course, they can be combined in twos and threes. Ideas. Leadership. Leadership. A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the praise - John Maxwell There are three essentials of leadership: humility, clarity and courage - Fuchan Yuan A competent commander gets effective service from weak troops and an incapable commander will demoralize even the best trained troops - John J Preshing You gain strength, courage and confidence with every experience where you stop and look fear in the face. You have to do those things you think you can't do - Eleanor Roosevelt A cowardly commander is the greatest danger to men - Stephen King A plan violently executed now is better than a perfectly executed plan next week - George Patton The supreme quality of leadership is integrity - Dwight Eisenhower 1