Passion Burns

"Passions, private aims, and the satisfaction of selfish desires, are (...) most effective springs of action. Their power lies in the fact that they respect none of the limitations which justice and morality would impose on them; and that these natural impulses have a more direct influence over man than the artificial and tedious discipline that tends to order and self-restraint, law and morality. When we look at this display of passions, and the consequences of their violence; the Unreason which is associated not only with them, but even (rather we might say especially) with good designs and righteous aims; when we see the evil, the vice, the ruin that has befallen the most flourishing kingdoms which the mind of man ever created, we can scarce avoid being filled with sorrow at this universal taint of corruption..."

― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, "Lectures on the Philosophy of History"

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Dear Kate,

"Read in yourself not this or that particular man; but mankind," so suggested Thomas Hobbes.

How do you read yourself?  If you do, what is revealed in your reading?

Some of the "used" books you brought me, I wonder if you know, were not used at all, their covers nicely wrapped, put on the shelves of the greatest universities of the greatest nation, only to stay untouched until being taken down and consigned to an online bookstore.

We are educated fools with money on our mind, that would be one obvious reading.  We harbor a persistent tendency, rarely, if ever, overcome, to seek our own welfare over that of the others, and are relentlessly prideful in denying such tendency, intoxicated by the desire to ascend over others through every mean and in every occasion, and most creative and imaginative when it comes to concealing our self-making motives even from ourselves, especially when carrying out a "good" deed, a virtuous act, that demands the approval---no, the submission, of others.  We want the good reading of our face beyond dispute and disrepute, and the submission to this most important truth non-negotiable.

The easiest way to achieve this?  Just take a side that speaks (better) for you, stand back, and let the loudest crusaders do the talking for you.  Yell occasionally, add fuel to the fire, from way behind the frontline, safely on social media, milk that presumption of your self-righteousness, ride that convenient political wind to your destined latitude, give no apology, need no justification, stay strong in your eternal certitude about how life should be and the self-deception that you are living it.

Truth and reconciliation, these are what we claim we want.  They might involve acts of terrorism and our collective acquiescence in their legitimacy, things we don't want to read too deeply into.  Such reading might make our face read bad.

Yours, Alex