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I feel like such a coward now because I haven't yet sacrificed. "Sacrificed for what? How do I know it won't be in vain? Enough of this romantic nonsense, I need to be practical." But you don't know if it will be in vain, it's a risk. Life is risking it. Most people sacrifice their lives for their families, let there still be honor in this. As it happens, having children is hardly practical. But others sacrifice their lives for a start-up business, for art, for philosophy. I've learned enough about philosophy to know that I'd have to sacrifice my life in order to do it properly. But there are other things I may want to sacrifice my life for.
Every minute of life is a sacrifice, and every minute that is left without a purpose is a minute wasted, but don't wait for a purpose, let purpose catch up with you. Action is like that, it may originate in the hand, but it's full power is infinite and eternal. Everything in the past anticipates what you are going to do, the whole history of mankind, the birth of the cosmos; and everything following your action is an attempt to bring meaning to what you did. You'll never know what you have been doing your whole life. Redemption, for instance, doesn't change what you did in the past, but clarifies what you did in the past so that we learn that it isn't as bad or as frightening as we once had thought. Even Adolf Hitler's monstrosities can still be redeemed, he changed the course of history such that someday, someone inquisitive and honest enough might be able to say, justifiably, that he did evil for the sake of the good.
Yes, so maybe in some ways I am an optimist, is this optimism, a potential philosophy of optimism? Who knows. Perhaps the previous paragraph is an expression of a particularly radical and perhaps, for some, frightening form of optimism, but then I've never been one of those judgmental souls. I have no evil eye, nor vision at all, the eye of the hand doesn't see.
You want to wake up the machine, you want to see it fly itself apart, then by all means, sacrifice your life. Don't wait for it to be certain to be fruitful, don't engage in a risk analysis, your sacrifice will probably be in vain. The only thing that can possibly and truly change things, change the machine, is sheer coincidence. Don't know; don't see; act.
But then I'm way ahead of myself here. I've given you the conclusion, but not the proof. I still have to write the premises and the rest of the argument that demonstrates what has just been said here. Good thing this blog is only on its second entry, there's a lot more that I need to say to fill in the gaps between beginning and end, and still more that I need to make up in order to rationalize--I mean justify!--this conclusion. What conclusion? First, that we are a machine; and second, that a sacrifice of life is what is necessary for winning back the will. And no one go off and kill themselves now, that is not what I mean!
But this blog, now, is a sacrifice for the sake of what?
Every minute of life is a sacrifice, and every minute that is left without a purpose is a minute wasted, but don't wait for a purpose, let purpose catch up with you. Action is like that, it may originate in the hand, but it's full power is infinite and eternal. Everything in the past anticipates what you are going to do, the whole history of mankind, the birth of the cosmos; and everything following your action is an attempt to bring meaning to what you did. You'll never know what you have been doing your whole life. Redemption, for instance, doesn't change what you did in the past, but clarifies what you did in the past so that we learn that it isn't as bad or as frightening as we once had thought. Even Adolf Hitler's monstrosities can still be redeemed, he changed the course of history such that someday, someone inquisitive and honest enough might be able to say, justifiably, that he did evil for the sake of the good.
Yes, so maybe in some ways I am an optimist, is this optimism, a potential philosophy of optimism? Who knows. Perhaps the previous paragraph is an expression of a particularly radical and perhaps, for some, frightening form of optimism, but then I've never been one of those judgmental souls. I have no evil eye, nor vision at all, the eye of the hand doesn't see.
You want to wake up the machine, you want to see it fly itself apart, then by all means, sacrifice your life. Don't wait for it to be certain to be fruitful, don't engage in a risk analysis, your sacrifice will probably be in vain. The only thing that can possibly and truly change things, change the machine, is sheer coincidence. Don't know; don't see; act.
But then I'm way ahead of myself here. I've given you the conclusion, but not the proof. I still have to write the premises and the rest of the argument that demonstrates what has just been said here. Good thing this blog is only on its second entry, there's a lot more that I need to say to fill in the gaps between beginning and end, and still more that I need to make up in order to rationalize--I mean justify!--this conclusion. What conclusion? First, that we are a machine; and second, that a sacrifice of life is what is necessary for winning back the will. And no one go off and kill themselves now, that is not what I mean!
But this blog, now, is a sacrifice for the sake of what?
