Way down deep... a perspective on human nature

[schaef]

In honor of Milosevic's death, and with the ongoing civil war in Iraq, not to mention the American stick that smacked the hornet's nest, the LRA's ongoing struggle to impose the Ten Commandments as law, Iran's quest for regional power, and all the other stupid [censored] going on in the world... I give you this passage for discussion:

"Idolaters by instinct, we convert the objects of our dreams and our interests into the Unconditional. History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable. Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create fake gods, he then feverishly adopts them: his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike. His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse. There is no form of intolerance, of proselytism or ideological intransigence which fails to reveal the bestial substratum of enthusiasm. Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation... The devil pales beside the man who owns a truth, his truth. We are unfair to a Nero, a Tiberius: it was not they who invented the concept heretic: they were only degenerate dreamers who happened to be entertained by massacres. The real criminals are men who establish an orthodoxy on the religious or political level, men who distinguish between the faithful and the schismatic."

Thoughts?

[cambraceres]

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" We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation... The devil pales beside the man who owns a truth, his truth. We are unfair to a Nero, a Tiberius."


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This certainly is eloquent, but it is not likely to be understood properly because of just how verbose it is.

I agree that men do take their ideas and make them Gods, and force acceptance on what unwilling minority lacks the strength to resist. A man armed with his truth and the sanction of his authority is a dangerous thing, the problem is that his truth can be anything. A crusade against religion can still take on all the rude features of an excessive and vulgar procession of irrational actions and invalid justifications. Guarding against the thing described in this essay or excerpt from one is perhaps where our best energies should be allocated.

Cambraceres

[schaef]

E.M. Cioran for anyone intereted. How about just the last sentence there:

"The real criminals are men who establish an orthodoxy on the religious or political level, men who distinguish between the faithful and the schismatic."

He argues that man will always have the compulsion to kill himself en masse because he lacks the ability for indifference. So would we be better off if we didn't have the existential need to identify with concepts larger than ourselves (religion, nation, etc.) in order to bring purpose to our lives?

[cambraceres]

Man may be better off in a sense if he did not attempt to play on a stage with the grand themes, but this would be to take away an essential of humanity. There would be no mass suicides, no true concerted wars, and many other societal anomalies would be averted as well. However, absent too would be all the wonders of our world. We would, in this fictional state, be less than human. Purely on philosophic acumen, this argument can be refuted, in my mind at least.

[purnell]

[ QUOTE ]
He argues that man will always have the compulsion to kill himself en masse because he lacks the ability for indifference. So would we be better off if we didn't have the existential need to identify with concepts larger than ourselves (religion, nation, etc.) in order to bring purpose to our lives?

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I think this need is part of what it means to be human. That is, without it, the human species would not have developed civilization, and would thus be far less successful (in terms of sheer size). This need has become a potential problem now that our civilization has afforded us the means of mass destruction, along with the ability to render large swaths of the environment uninhabitable for many generations.

Indeed, now is the time for tolerance, both religious and political, if we are to continue to enjoy the benefits of civilization. We can only hope that we are now witnessing the desperate last stand of religious fundamentalism and political intolerance. It is a fond hope, but perhaps a faint one as well.

[MidGe]

[ QUOTE ]
We can only hope that we are now witnessing the desperate last stand of religious fundamentalism and political intolerance. It is a fond hope, but perhaps a faint one as well.

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