How wonderful life is! Even the sources of suffering can bring pleasure and excitement — one is driven to explore them, to understand, to learn how to predict them so as to avoid them later — or not avoid them, as the case may be.
But how cruel it can be as well: one is driven to treat others with distrust by seeing the signs and patterns of behavior of those untrustworthy in new acquiantances. One learns to treat others as disposable commodities when one knows one will be treated in the same way. One learns coldness out of necessity.
How many human beings treat other human beings only as toys? This is a trait I’ve found mostly in women, who sincerely enjoy and care for their toys — but discard them without thought of consequence when the toy no longer amuses. One of great miseries is to be treated as a toy to be taken up when playtime has come and discarded again afterwards without compassion or sympathy — and often without any profound reasons.
And how many human beings treat others as tools? This is a trait I’ve found mostly in men, especially in radical leftists who tend to treat the common people as tools for creating their vision of a world that would be better for the common people — all without asking the common people their opinion even once on the matter. They are not even as honest as true tyrants: tyrants say, “I will tell you what to want.” The anarchist says, “I know what you really want and you do not.” Better honest oppression than feigned benevolence — than self-absorption given the name of charity.
Amid all of the things one finds in life, though, there resounds the single theme, “life is beautiful.”
Freude, schoener Goetterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum.1
The quality of a man is, I think, perhaps directly proportional to his ability to see life as beautiful, to feel wonder and awe, to stand before the universe and to be happy in that moment. I do not ask for gratitude, praise or even contentment. Momentary happiness is better than lasting contentment. All that is needed is to the capacity to be happy — not to feel pleasure, but to be happy, which is nearly unrelated. Many, out of an inability to be happy, constantly seek out pleasure to forget the absence of moments of happiness.
Pleasure is an animal quality based on the senses and little more if any more at all. True happiness is the sense that the world is right, is as it should be — even if only in this one spot, only for this one moment. By necessity, such happiness is ephemeral, but it provides the pause in life that is the fount of all that is good in man I suspect.
- Friedrich Schiller : Ode To Joy : Lines 1-4↩
hi- you can delete this comment if it gets too ridiculous. i almost wish i could leave a private one? oh well. hopefully you dont mind philosophical debate. or bad spelling.
did you write this? its so …fancy? i like that you wrote “one learns coldness out of necessity”.
i think about the contrast and span of human emotion constantly. the patterns that emerge and how we train our own brains to avoid, repress, or repeat experiences whenever it feels best. im not really sure what the difference is between animal qualities and human qualities becuase they are pretty much the same thing- without one the other might not exist. i guess it is a lot like the concept of “happiness” and “sadness”.. one defines and accentuates the other.
the most interesting of all (to me) is……………….:
the awareness of the control we have over our emotions. our ability to trick our brains into releasing chemicals to make us feel differently than we would otherwise. the sticky part is knowing when WE are tricking our brains, or something ELSE in the world is tricking (or triggering) our brains to release these chemicals, making us feel euphoric (which we have labeled as happiness). profound happiness is something im not too sure about because i feel like happiness itself is not only relative- but a measuring tool/concept we invented out of necessity to sort out our bodies’ reactions to chemicals and our awareness of it. having said that.
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i feel like happiness and goodness in MEN and WOMEN has nothing to do with perceptions of our existence, the universe or world being a certain way, or the concept of what should or shouldn’t be…only our disturbing ability to strengthen parts of our brain as we see fit and repress the rest.
WHO KNOWS REALLY. im just
rambling on and on at this point
-sarah