It made me think of two other examples, Proverbs 14:1: A wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands.
2nd example is Twitter acting as if it can't censor conservative thought, then it will destroy the company.
I was listening to a Joel Wellbon podcast about abortion yesterday and he was talking with someone who pointed out that there is a segment of women who glory in the destruction (they gave the example of the ones taking abortion pills during a national rally sometime ago.)
The "how do we relate to other people?" concern is intrinsic to the lockdowns, masking, etc. How we see ourselves as well, of course. And, the desire to draw ourselves into danger in order to have better lives. It seems impossible to have a really satisfactory conversation about these fundamental issues on the Internet--and I think that is part of the point.
"Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!"
Great post, thank you for writing it.
It made me think of two other examples, Proverbs 14:1: A wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands.
2nd example is Twitter acting as if it can't censor conservative thought, then it will destroy the company.
I was listening to a Joel Wellbon podcast about abortion yesterday and he was talking with someone who pointed out that there is a segment of women who glory in the destruction (they gave the example of the ones taking abortion pills during a national rally sometime ago.)
The "how do we relate to other people?" concern is intrinsic to the lockdowns, masking, etc. How we see ourselves as well, of course. And, the desire to draw ourselves into danger in order to have better lives. It seems impossible to have a really satisfactory conversation about these fundamental issues on the Internet--and I think that is part of the point.
Peterson often quotes Dostoyevsky:
"Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!"