Insightful Observations

Are you afraid of yourself?

Have ye courage, O my brethren?…He hath heart who knoweth fear but vanquisheth it; who seeth the abyss, but with pride. He who seeth the abyss but with eagle’s eyes, — he who with eagle’s talons graspeth the abyss: he hath courage.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Dholl's The Mask

“Certainly human life, like all inferior merchandise, is embellished from the outside with a false lustre: suffering always hides itself away; on the other hand, everyone displays whatever pomp or splendour he can afford, and the less content he is in himself, the more he desires to appear fortunate in the opinion of others: to such lengths does folly go, and to gain the good opinion of others is a priority in everyone’s endeavour, although the utter futility of this is expressed in the fact that in almost all languages vanity, vanitas, originally means “emptiness” and “nothingness”.”

-Arthur Schopenhauer

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Smile! It's a happy dream

A wise man called Plato once observed that ordinary men live in a dream while philosophers are striving to wake up.

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Da Vinci's Last Supper

Welcome back my readers, please let me pick up where we ended last time and investigate morals and values of men in another set of epochs.

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Rubens' Chained Prometheus

As professor Jung correctly remarked, to grasp the absurdity and unnaturalness of many of man’s moral codes as well as to see their historical and cultural relativity is insight worthy only of the highest of our geniuses, such as was Nietzsche.

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Game on!

“They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.”

Ronald David Laing

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Dark Thoughts

Man is the only species capable of self-destructive behavior. This can be derived from historical as well as contemporary observations of so to speak “everyday living” of various individuals and societies.

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IF you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;

If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,

if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

by Rudyard Kippling

The Peaceful Warrior

In this article, I would like to recommend a very influential and engaging book that I’ve read recently. Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives by Dan Millman is an autobiographic story about coming to terms with one’s life and finding the inner guidance that provides self-assurance and meaning.

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Emergence of a leader out of herd

What is leadership?

In the movie Gladiator, the main character Maximus looses all that he holds dear, his family, his emperor, his status and still creates purpose and doesn’t let go of the essential goal that gives meaning to his life. In spite of the apparent loss of everything he still wills to live just for the one last challenge, one last effort to be made before letting go of the thin, yet very strong thread that holds him in this absurd reality, before departing into a different, and possibly more meaningful, dimension of being. He channels all of his energies into a laser-like focus, he sharpens himself both mentally and physically just to surmount the one last challenge, he becomes totally fearless, letting go of everything that is unnecessary except the things relevant to justifying his existence in this reality. Self-determination and the will to overcome any obstacle that comes in the pathway leading towards his true aim are everything that becomes important to him. This is self-leadership.

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