Notes on the Margins: Comments on Selected QuotationsThis page is to contain remarks about all kinds of popular (and not so popular) quotations - anything I was tempted to write on the margins of a book, or a Web page.
"It's always fatal to adapt oneself to one's surroundings. The thing to do is alter
your surroundings to suit you."
This is a re-formulation of the classical communist principle (K.Marx, V.Lenin), and the basis of marxist psychology (L.Vygotsky). The first criterion of consciousness is the ability of change through changing one's own environment, rebuilding nature. A conscious being = rebellion against the natural necessity.
"Existence is always the same, a perennial flux devoid of
intrinsic significance."
Existence and life are devoid of intrinsic significance - it is people who give it to them. Those who don't try to make their lives full of sense just refuse to be humans at all.
"A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like
a boxer who never goes into the ring."
Anybody may take part in discussions; philosophers are those who are never involved in them. Wisdom is beyond the desire to win.
"On n'est jamais trahi que par les siennes"
"The blindest of all the blind are those who are unable to
examine their own pre-suppositions, and blithely imagine
therefore that they do not possess any."
The best way to overcome one's pre-suppositions is to become aware of them, and to consciously prefer some ideas to the rest. Blind faith gives up to conviction which makes the world grow.
"Those who forget the past, neglect the present and fear for the
future have a life that is very brief and troubled."
"Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata!"
What makes people try to forget the past and fear for the future? Isn't it their present way of life?
"To love another is to see oneself as another to the other."
To love somebody is to share the world with another and thus eliminate "anotherness" itself.
"Here was something to live for, to win for, to fight for --- ay, and die for.
It is not love that is above all, but rather what one cannot avoid doing for love.
"True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be
oneself. False guilt is the guilt felt at not being what other people
feel one ought to be or assume that one is."
If I am obliged to do or be something, including obligation to myself, I am no longer myself, but rather an individualisation of obligation, and hence mere abstraction of personality. Guilt indicates the deficiency of that abstraction, rather than my failure to do or be something. If I am a consciously active person, I am never obliged to do anything, and I am already, and not going to be. I have no need to compare myself with any standards or social norms, and I cannot be guilty for anything, since it is the Universe that expresses itself through me.
"Human beings seem to have an almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves,
and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth. By such mystification,
we achieve and sustain our adjustment, adaptation, socialization [...] The texture
of the fabric of these socially shared hallucinations is what we call reality, and
our collusive madness is what we call sanity"
What is truly human in humans is the eternal desire to re-design the Universe in a human way. It does not matter what people think about themselves as long as their actions result in an actual rearrangement of the world. People may be unaware of the objective content of their activity, and they may be deluded by misconceptions - but the very their delusions are something which could never exist in the world without them, and hence a germ of a change. And this universal development is not a hallucination, or collective madness - this is a natural historic process governed by objective laws and conscious effort.
"Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from
nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life
forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable
under existing market conditions. Human relations are essentially those
of alienated automatons, each basing his security on staying close the herd,
and not being different in thought, feeling or action. While everybody tries
to be as close as possible to the rest, everybody remains utterly alone,
pervaded by a deep sense of insecurity, anxiety and guilt which always
results when human separateness cannot be overcome. Our civilisation
offers many palliatives which help people to be consciously unaware of
this aloneness: first of all the strict routine of bureaucratised,
mechanical work, which helps people to remain unaware of their most
fundamental human desires, of the longing for transcendence and unity.
Inasmuch as the routine alone does not succeed in this, man overcomes
his unconscious despair by the routine of amusement, the passive
consumption of sounds and sights offered by the amusement industry;
furthermore by the satisfaction of buying ever new things, and soon
exchanging them for others. Modern man is actually close to the picture
Huxley describes in his Brave New World: well fed, well clad, satisfied
sexually, yet without self, without any except the most superficial contact
with his fellow men, guided by the slogan "Everybody is happy nowadays".
The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle,
a big breast; we are the suckers, the eternally expectant ones, the
hopeful ones - and the eternally disappointed ones."
Modern philosopher is often alienated from the world, inventing thoughts without any concern about how they would correspond to the actual state of things. As a rule, this philosopher knows nothing beyond the bourgeois way of life he/she is immersed in; the notions of such a philosopher are derived from his/her life, they are the notions of a bourgeois and have nothing to do with all the rest of the world, thus abstracting from the major (and much more significant) part of it. Modern philosopher says "man", meaning "bourgeois", and pictures a well fed, well clad and satisfied in any way creature, yet without self. Thus modern philosopher comes to claiming all the people just the consumer automata. Well, this could be an adequate portrait of one class - and the natural desire of those who cannot consume at all would be to blow up the society permitting one person to become a dull automaton because of over-consumption, while many others become even more dull automata due to overwork. Make all the things equally accessible to anybody - and there will be no reason for anxiety, fear and necessity to stick to the herd.
"Modern man feels uneasy and more and more bewildered. He works
and strives, but he is dimly aware of a sense of futility with regard
to his activities. While his power over matter grows, he feels powerless
in his individual life and in his society. While creating new and better
means for mastering nature, he has become enmeshed in a network of those
means and has lost the vision of the end which alone gives them
significance - man himself. While becoming the master of nature,
he has become the slave of the machine which his own hands built. With
all his knowledge about matter, he is ignorant with regard to the most
important and fundamental questions of human existence: what man is,
how he ought to live, and how the tremendous energies within can be
released and used productively."
One cannot be master of nature without mastering oneself. If people become bewildered about the significance of their work, this is an indication of their not possessing reason enough to comprehend their own intelligence. Acting the human way means consciousness and purposiveness - if somebody acts knowing nothing about one's goals, this cannot be called truly human behaviour. If one gets suppressed by the society, such a society cannot be considered as human enough.
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