Well, rabbits always make for the light;*
Oct. 10th, 2007 07:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bending_sickle...human beings hardly ever.*
Our last installment of How to be a Guru excerpts. Chapter 4 is particularly interesting.
Chapter 3: Cowardice: a Good Thing
"Admittedly, there is nothing admirable in sheer funk, but circumspection, prudence, caution and vigilence, are all cousins of cowardice, and are thoroughly respectable. The other fellow's prudence is cowardice to us, while our own cowardice is always commendable caution, foresight and vigilence."
"The idea persists that the cowars is afraid and the brave man is not. The man who is not afraid of danger is not a hero but a psychopath. There are adventurers, psychologically damaged people, who like being shot at or putting their lives at risk just for the thrill of it. They are not acting bravely: they are simply enjoying themselves. The brave man is the one whose heart sinks into his boots but who stands his ground. The more petrified he is the braver."
"People also maintain that it is horrible cruelty to kill women and children but quite alright to kill the adult male. As an adult (perhaps slightly more than adult) male, I like to believe that to blow up innocent bystanders or people praying in church or shopping at Harrods, deserves disapproval whatever the age or sex of the victim may be."
"Fear - or call it cowardice - is one of our most useful traits. Whithout fear, without the instinct of self-preservation, no species could survive. No one could remain alive if he were not a coward to some extent. Let us all turn heroes and the human race will perish."
Chapter 4: Freedom: a Bad Thing
"For freedom men will fight; for freedom they are ready to sacrifice their lives. Millions have died for it - and most of them were cheated. Their deaths (with very few exceptions) achieved nothing. Often they contributed to the very opposite of what was hoped for."
"The oppressed of yesterday become the new oppressors - as convinced of their natural, often divine, rights as their former oppressos used to be."
"Humanity at large does not want to achieve freedom. It runs away from it. Freedom means responsibility and people are terrified of responsibility. Freedom - the proper use of freedom - means loneliness (alone-ness as some psychologists call it) and loneliness is the one thing humanity dreads even more than freedom.
People march or fly or drive into battle for their king, their country, their ideas. The die heroes' deaths because they dare not face their fellow men and declare that they do not care a hoot whether Sparta or Athens enjoys the hegemony of the Pelepnnese, that it is all the same to them whether the Habsburgs or the Bourbons rule in Spain, or whether Islam is dominant in Bulgaria or not. It is easier to face SPartans, Habsburgs, Bourbons and janissaries than your elders and your brainwashed contemporaries who firmly believe that you must act in the way they wish you to act. (They themselves, as a rule, would not dream of acting at all.) Most of the victims of past wars did not die for freedom. They died because they were afraid of real freedom. They died because they were afraid to say that some causes were not their causes, that they would not derive any benefits either from the Habsburgs or the Bourbons. They preferred dying rather than accepting the responsibility of speaking their minds. Dying is easy; speaking up is very difficult."
"It is one thing to keep quiet because you have nothing to say and quite another not to be allowed to say what you want."
"Voluntary slavery is more repulsive than enforced slavery."
"Man does not want to be free. Half of humanity is stupid and has nothing to say. Very well, to be stupid is a basic human right. But nearly everyone wishes to be a slave of conformism and the right to be a slave is also one of the fundamental human rights."
"All religions have invented God, or Gods, so that people could abase themselves before Him or Them. God is great, while we human beings are worms in the mud, helpless, unworthy and miserable insects. This is the kind of Love of Freedom installed in us at a tender age. Millions of brave people have sacrificed their lives in order to be permitted to remain slaves in their own way and to crawl in the dirt before divine or human masters - according to their heart's desire."
Chapter 5: The Faith of the Unbeliever
"This is partly true: no society - including the most revolutionary societies - could remain even more or less cohesive if we were all neurotic rebels.
Yet, it is always the critical neurotic who forces society to change and progress."
Chapter 6: The Age of Compromise
"The fiercest rationalists of pre-revolutionary France were convinced that as soon as people saw the light of clear and irrefutable Reason, the battle would be won. Once people see what is reasonable they cannot help following the obvious course, just as a rabbit cannot help running into the shinning light of a reflector. Well, rabbits always make for the light; human beings hardly ever."
* George Mikes, How to be a Guru
Our last installment of How to be a Guru excerpts. Chapter 4 is particularly interesting.
Chapter 3: Cowardice: a Good Thing
"Admittedly, there is nothing admirable in sheer funk, but circumspection, prudence, caution and vigilence, are all cousins of cowardice, and are thoroughly respectable. The other fellow's prudence is cowardice to us, while our own cowardice is always commendable caution, foresight and vigilence."
"The idea persists that the cowars is afraid and the brave man is not. The man who is not afraid of danger is not a hero but a psychopath. There are adventurers, psychologically damaged people, who like being shot at or putting their lives at risk just for the thrill of it. They are not acting bravely: they are simply enjoying themselves. The brave man is the one whose heart sinks into his boots but who stands his ground. The more petrified he is the braver."
"People also maintain that it is horrible cruelty to kill women and children but quite alright to kill the adult male. As an adult (perhaps slightly more than adult) male, I like to believe that to blow up innocent bystanders or people praying in church or shopping at Harrods, deserves disapproval whatever the age or sex of the victim may be."
"Fear - or call it cowardice - is one of our most useful traits. Whithout fear, without the instinct of self-preservation, no species could survive. No one could remain alive if he were not a coward to some extent. Let us all turn heroes and the human race will perish."
Chapter 4: Freedom: a Bad Thing
"For freedom men will fight; for freedom they are ready to sacrifice their lives. Millions have died for it - and most of them were cheated. Their deaths (with very few exceptions) achieved nothing. Often they contributed to the very opposite of what was hoped for."
"The oppressed of yesterday become the new oppressors - as convinced of their natural, often divine, rights as their former oppressos used to be."
"Humanity at large does not want to achieve freedom. It runs away from it. Freedom means responsibility and people are terrified of responsibility. Freedom - the proper use of freedom - means loneliness (alone-ness as some psychologists call it) and loneliness is the one thing humanity dreads even more than freedom.
People march or fly or drive into battle for their king, their country, their ideas. The die heroes' deaths because they dare not face their fellow men and declare that they do not care a hoot whether Sparta or Athens enjoys the hegemony of the Pelepnnese, that it is all the same to them whether the Habsburgs or the Bourbons rule in Spain, or whether Islam is dominant in Bulgaria or not. It is easier to face SPartans, Habsburgs, Bourbons and janissaries than your elders and your brainwashed contemporaries who firmly believe that you must act in the way they wish you to act. (They themselves, as a rule, would not dream of acting at all.) Most of the victims of past wars did not die for freedom. They died because they were afraid of real freedom. They died because they were afraid to say that some causes were not their causes, that they would not derive any benefits either from the Habsburgs or the Bourbons. They preferred dying rather than accepting the responsibility of speaking their minds. Dying is easy; speaking up is very difficult."
"It is one thing to keep quiet because you have nothing to say and quite another not to be allowed to say what you want."
"Voluntary slavery is more repulsive than enforced slavery."
"Man does not want to be free. Half of humanity is stupid and has nothing to say. Very well, to be stupid is a basic human right. But nearly everyone wishes to be a slave of conformism and the right to be a slave is also one of the fundamental human rights."
"All religions have invented God, or Gods, so that people could abase themselves before Him or Them. God is great, while we human beings are worms in the mud, helpless, unworthy and miserable insects. This is the kind of Love of Freedom installed in us at a tender age. Millions of brave people have sacrificed their lives in order to be permitted to remain slaves in their own way and to crawl in the dirt before divine or human masters - according to their heart's desire."
Chapter 5: The Faith of the Unbeliever
"This is partly true: no society - including the most revolutionary societies - could remain even more or less cohesive if we were all neurotic rebels.
Yet, it is always the critical neurotic who forces society to change and progress."
Chapter 6: The Age of Compromise
"The fiercest rationalists of pre-revolutionary France were convinced that as soon as people saw the light of clear and irrefutable Reason, the battle would be won. Once people see what is reasonable they cannot help following the obvious course, just as a rabbit cannot help running into the shinning light of a reflector. Well, rabbits always make for the light; human beings hardly ever."
* George Mikes, How to be a Guru
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Date: 2007-10-11 04:59 am (UTC)I like that and agree! The entire thing is quite interesting and makes a whole heck of a lot of sense.