talking lends reality

It is talking — or more exactly, thinking about talking — which creates permanency for stupid things.

For many things, resolve upfront: I’ll never talk about this.

a maxim: Learning implies transformation

Learning means transformation.

–
Notes:
Since the mass-men cannot change (it hurts them), they cannot learn anything either.

tread carefully with complaining

Whatever you complain about is now your problem.

You don’t just “bitch a little” about a problem and “move on”. If you bitch, the problem will make space for itself in your worldview. Are these the things you want to think about, even in your dreams? If not, do it right at the origin: pass without comment.

Never complain

Never complain. Complaining sucks life force of the complainer.

If you can solve a problem, solve it. If you cannot, it is no business of yours.

–
Notes:
A New Precaution. — Let us no longer think so much about punishing, blaming, and improving! We shall seldom be able to alter an individual, and if we should succeed in doing so, something else may also succeed, perhaps unawares: we may have been altered by him! Let us rather see to it that our own influence on all that is to come outweighs and overweighs his influence! Let us not struggle in direct conflict! — all blaming, punishing, and desire to improve comes under this category. But let us elevate ourselves all the higher! Let us ever give to our pattern more shining colours! Let us obscure, the other by our light! No! We do not mean to become darker ourselves on his account, like those who punish and are discontented! Let us rather go aside! Let us look away!
(Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 321)

Political cry

If someone comes to you crying about some political problem, ask him if he is willing to accept you as the ruler over him. If not, he should go cry elsewhere.

Our dear friends should find their equals for such activities.

Is the human world ugly?

The human world is ugly only if you use no filter, and then necessarily ugly.

You look around, see a lot of monstrous forms (strange bodies) and tell yourself, “these seem to do just fine too!”, and further, “they must be in their element, and thus it is their world”. However, the judgement that those monsters are “doing fine” arises from your need to keep a distance – condemnation requires a lot more closeness. So, you fool yourself.

The way out is to stop passing judgements. Understand in your heart that the monsters are not doing well, that you would not exchange your place with them for anything, and stop revisiting the issue! Look away, twenty times a day if need be!

Cleanliness of the spirit is as much needed as the cleanliness of the body. And both need to be actively maintained.

–

As a rule, the more mass men you sense in the day, the less lovely is the day. Even sensing their intestines hurt (e.g., noticing some action which a higher man would not commit).

Look away, or you are damned!

On criticism

As with other things, “if it can be avoided, it must be avoided”.

(In most cases, you cannot avoid it because you’ve not yet learnt how useless it is.)

On criticism, II

Some criticism is not welcome. What does the criticism intend to achieve?

Is the critic skewering us upwards – to “unreasonableness”, to craziness, to greater fidelity to our own laws? Or does the critic intend to skewer us to what is ‘downward’ for us – to be more reasonable, to be sensible, to fall in with the mass-men laws?

In the former, all the hurt and pain is welcome and pleasant. The latter, though, is difficult to listen to. It makes no sense to us, as it has nothing to do with us. To be forced to listen to it generates something between boredom, nausea and pain. And woe betide you if you are weak when facing it. Then, you feel like granting the critic’s points and crying out, “but I cannot change!”. So better just refuse to listen.

To such criticism we must answer as Doctor Dolittle did to “Ben, the able seaman”:

“Look here,” said the Doctor, a sudden stern look coming into his eyes, “losing a ship is nothing to me. I’ve lost ships before and it doesn’t bother me in the least. When I set out to go to a place, I get there. Do you understand? I may know nothing whatever about sailing and navigation, but I get there just the same. Now you may be the best seaman in the world, but on this ship you’re just a plain ordinary nuisance—very plain and very ordinary.”

And the above applies for self-criticism of the above class too. No amount of stupid-but-reasonable-looking reproach can possibly change your actions.

—
Notes:

More from Hugh Lofting, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle:

“Do you really think,” I interrupted, “that it is safe for the Doctor to cross the Atlantic without any regular seamen on his ship?” You see it had upset me quite a good deal to find that all the things we had been doing were wrong[.]
“Oh, bless you, my boy,” said she, “you’re always safe with John Dolittle. Remember that. Don’t take any notice of that stupid old salt. Of course it is perfectly true the Doctor does do everything wrong. But with him it doesn’t matter. Mark my words, if you travel with John Dolittle you always get there, as you heard him say. I’ve been with him lots of times and I know. Sometimes the ship is upside down when you get there, and sometimes it’s right way up. But you get there just the same. And then of course there’s another thing about the Doctor,” she added thoughtfully: “he always has extraordinary good luck. He may have his troubles; but with him things seem to have a habit of turning out all right in the end.”