It's hard to trust a man who derives his beliefs from the masses. It signals that he does not care about truth; he does not think deeply, only on the surface, so as to belong and feel accepted. If he made up his own mind, he'd know; they'd despise him. You don’t need an exceptional intelligence to know that the common person, in his delicate fragility and entranced mind, is not so fond of the man who questions things, who does not live in the busy norms, who is willing to speculate before making up his mind, who is moreover willing to be wrong in his view; that he is modest and open in his thinking, who does not long for things to be one way on his search for truth, and follows to reject whatever is true due to its sharpness and gravity. By being open-minded, I do not mean inheriting whatever the common person believes to be true without immersing yourself in your own thought, making a diligent effort to find out what the truth is; or what it is not. The spirit of inquiry compels you to ask the right questions, but also to set aside your preconceived notions for a moment in order to see things clearly. If you are unable to perform this shift of perspective, you can’t think about things effectively, let alone discover the truth. Often, the seeking out of truth is an experience, an exploit in itself that often calls for suffering and pain; these outcomes terrify the weak, but excite the brave. It is not so much a negative experience if you have come to understand yourself more thoroughly as a consequence.
Yes, I find it difficult to trust a man who does not think about things, since he is always under the impression that the many that surround him have, through their exceptional intellect, already found out the truth, and have done the work for him so as to save him effort. Even if, for whatever the reason, he did not reason as such, his train of thought follows the usual railways of the herd, that will inevitably lead to the same inventions; he does not give himself the chance to find out something new, that may spark his curiosity or light ablaze a brighter flame within him. A man of this sort gives himself away too easily, in turn, he undervalues his own caliber, his own contribution, his potential excellence. He as it were leaves it all on the table and departs; he forgets that he put the chips down and left empty-handed, only to let other people play with his cards. Such ‘people’ may not know how to play his hand as aptly as he, yet by his own ignorance he lays his trust upon them as they lie in his hands. A man must think twice, even thrice, before he makes such a crucial decision, he needs his own two hands to be on top of things.
Furthermore, it is difficult to learn how to think about important ideas when you have been constrained to think about what is by nature misleading or downright false, mechanisms designed to generate confusion in an age of anxiety. A man who is permanently constrained in his thinking is in a state of obvious tension, so much that he does not possess views of his own, he inherits thoughts that have already been falsified and diluted; they were set loose to sow unrest, not to help the man find balance and sincere contentment - yet we are baited into thinking of this deceit as a form of civility, of being a good person.
Thus he can’t think deeply, he can’t even be called shallow since they have stripped him of the ability to discern distance between things; he yearned for a sense of belonging; they answered by isolating him, now he is a mere stranger to himself with a muffled will, a restless head. Except it is hollow and tedious, lacking all creativity it has no life behind it, no animating principle. It is a brain thickened by scrap and waste. A man must have a strong judgement to tell the distance between things, and their subsequent depth. Further, a man must be able to judge himself with a measure of objectivity if he desires to make progress; for once he convinces himself that he is in a satisfactory place, his urge to develop himself is lessened by the present condition.
Many make the erroneous assumption that they’ve attained some greatness of spirit and situation, but rarely is it the case they have fully realised their uppermost limits, let alone discovered their potential in its totality. Ironically so, such people are often the most normal people among them, and it is out of their own lack of singularity that they have come to this poor conclusion. You rarely meet a great man, one who has depth and character, who is satisfied with himself to the point where the urge to refine himself has died out.
But he knows no better, his longing for acceptance and conformity overshadows all else. Since the act of thinking is a difficult and earnest one, he is better off believing whatever he already believes is true, or so he thinks. But one must very carefully go over what poison he chooses to ingest, for that blind faith (or lack thereof) of which the herd are hung on appeals to their weakness, then subtly subdues them, only for them to come to realise that their longing for belonging and acceptance, and the philosophy they settled on, has unfortunately led them to the alienation of self they were desperately running away from. Thus, their existence becomes an irony, a funny reversal into the life they were eluding with all their heart.
Conformity is a death wish. It may give you the impression that is leading you in the direction of something good, worthwhile, only to later reveal itself as a comfortable dead-end. You don’t want to end up in a state where you choose to be ordinary because you are scared, any more than you are scared to be ordinary. There is a serious failing in surrendering your will to something which you don’t understand, that is conclusively destructive for your humanity and aspiration. If, perhaps, you believed in your heart, by some cognitive abuse of the past or/and present, that you don’t amount to anything purposeful, and that you should harbour your remaining days moving in circles in every direction, then you must free yourself from obstructions that other people have left; they are not for you to follow, and not for your advantage but theirs. The past must be cleaned up totally, and the future must be bright with promise, otherwise you will always have plenty of reasons to be resentful, unhappy, miserable. Such ugly feelings always come back, every now and then, to probe and play with you; it is one’s own frame of mind and his ability to filter out his thoughts, the story he tells himself, that separates him from his inferiors.
Many, for instance, do not truly comprehend that one can destroy a negative thought by simply reframing it, or altering one’s own story. But you see, it is as one is still intensely dwelling on past destructions that he can’t enjoy the present paradise; he can’t foster this novel happiness, this strong and forceful hope for the future – he is stuck in the bygone past as if it were there with him here and now; such illusions only enforce misery, they never redirect one to happiness or peace of mind. This lingering anger at the back of his head, it arises spontaneously, haphazardly seizing him from the neck; he can no longer bite his tongue or obey himself. He must give in, he has no hope but surrender. This man can search for happiness here and there, nowhere will it be found; he can deny his anger, play it off joyfully, always does it boomerang back to him with the help of ever stronger winds. Still, he does not get the message. He must look within himself, he must remain still and look closely, he should remain silent when that anger and resentment spring back at him, for once to not be hasty in throwing it away. This spirit of inquiry will be met with resistance and suspicion, it will be difficult and tiresome; it will not fuel his boredom, it will not alleviate his sadness. But he must wrestle with the tension as if it were God, as if he were being given a hand with every squeeze.
Beautifully articulated AP.