Are you not talking about yourself in the I form? Do you identify with the protagonists?
I first had to look up Voltaire's work. You could simply tell me where you stand in your personal development. I can't tell if you want to learn anything or if you think you're completely mature?
For me, there is no singular perspective from which I build my life. I am still learning to take every day so that I can calmly face the flow of events in my own sphere of influence. I am learning to accept my emotions by wanting to feel them when they come and by not negating or trying to suppress any of them. This is a difficult work for me. It never stops. And I am already close to 50.
Because anger, fear, powerlessness, suffering, guilt, and worry keep reappearing in the constant flow of life. It is extremely difficult not to blame these emotions on others as causative. Then I would just as easily have to make my laughter, love, joy and serenity depend solely on others. But neither do I manage everything alone and have control, nor am I completely alone and isolated. I live in constant change with my fellow men and my environment. It influences me, I influence it. It would make no sense to say anything else.
I am not convinced about Martin's character. We have a lot of Martins in the world and he seems to stop at the pessimistic lament.
In principle, we can hardly meet if we have to talk about literature alone.
A long time ago, I was a rabid proponent of individuality, freedom, equality, and brotherhood. The common man, in the folly of my youth, was held as the model for human development. I held freedom as the most cherished principle and celebrated every revolution against the "establishment." I was a humanist fanatic, certain of the inevitable "progress" and "evolution" of humanity toward egalitarian utopia.
Nihil novo sub sole. One day, a small landlocked African backwater burned with tribal hatred which intensity rivalled that of 10,000 supernovae, resulting in the most efficient killing frenzy in the entirety of human history. The "civilized" world actively ignored the event; the perpetual victim group flaired in offense at some, who labelled the event as "genocide;" the average man could not be bothered to even learn the name of this backwater nation. And who were the killers in this backwater cesspool but the average man?
Freedom, brotherhood, equality are meaningless drivel compared with gas, water, electricity. The average man will peck at sand, if told it is grain. Human society is built upon fiction, and it is far better to maintain that fiction, rather than have men devolve into beasts. The Christian perspective regarding the prime cause of evil in this world arising from man's rebellion is true. There has been no greater evil inflicted upon humanity than from "reformers," who imagine themselves claygods, dictating to Heaven their whims.
Man requires excellence towards which he must constantly strive. Otherwise, he descends towards beasts. I learned, painfully, that life without obligation and responsibility is slavery to my addictions and desires. Freedom is but license to every imaginable vice for those who have not mastered themselves. I learned to reject the vicious humanist indoctrination regarding equality of men and their potential; a man's identity is defined by his limitations and refined by his diligence at his station. Brotherhood of man is not established by destroying social classes, but enforcing the duties of men in service to their lords and the obligations of the lords in loyalty towards their subjects. In the abscence of this mutually binding social reality, humanity subsists upon impersonal mercantile contracts.
The limits of my influence are primarily my thoughts, speech, and actions. Secondarily, my influence extends to my daughter, but she models her life in relation to the control I enforce upon myself. My duties are towards God and obligations towards my daughter. Foremost in my mind is the following statement: Such pride undeserved, great conqueror, when your entire being is borrowed. Credit where it is due and dues where payment is demanded. After all, what in this world can we claim ours, when we enter with nothing and will leave with nothing?
True. People ignore in their everyday life what they do not dare to look at. But are you not mistaken if you believe that people do not see everything that is going on in the world? Everyone suffers when you suffer.
Do you not rather want to pacify your mind and your heart in the face of what you were through? It seems to me that you continue what you have experienced. It looks to me as if you want humanity to die. I cannot do much with it when you speak of a duty to God. What do you mean by that? If you are not committed to yourself to live the principles of humanity, God does not matter.
The commandments are universal, everyone understands them. Don't kill, don't hurt others, don't steal, don't lie, etc. These principles would not be needed if we lived in a world where they are respected. If all people would live according to them, we would have paradise on earth. You know and I know and everyone else knows that this is not reality. You have felt the full heat of hatred. It seems to me as if you now want to strike back with all the cold that you are capable of. Only your tormentors are no longer tangible and everyone else is not interested?
Your repetition of the existing shameful deeds help neither you nor those who read here what inability characterizes the human being. On the contrary, you contribute to the pain not being forgotten and pain becoming identification. The pain is real and I feel deep compassion for what you have suffered. But don't underestimate the destructive power and hopelessness that the recipients of your comments have to deal with.
I am neither enlightened nor always strong. I meet a lot of people who use the Internet to turn their pain into gloomy predictions. Your grief hits me particularly hard.
What can you do yourself if you don't want to own anything? Nobody is holding you back from pacifying your soul except yourself, are they not?
I fully agree with the fact that I come with nothing and I go with nothing. But I am not sure, if we do mean the same.
How ever. I wish you love and peace and feel that we are both humans.
Why does a man need to pacify his mind and heart? The Orient has the Tai Chi symbol of Yin and Yang, which many assume is an exhortation towards balance, or harmony. Many in the West have also adopted this balance to life perspective, expending energy into quelling the storms of their life. True Tai Chi form functions when, and only when, the tension of Yin and Yang are intensified to produce intended effect. The Yin, or the heaviness, is pushed towards the earth, while the Yang, or the lightness, is floated towards the heavens. Life occurs in controlled tension between Yin and Yang, water and fire. When life attains balance and passivity, it usually indicates death.
Man is capable of great good, kindness, and wisdom. The long list of saints from Benedict to Pius X indicate the ability of men to rise beyond their beastly natures. Yet, man is also a creature with tendency towards infinite evil. The longer list of worldly tyrants to petty criminals accuse humanity of their beastly nature. Both these realities are principles of humanity. Can a man truly claim to understand his fellow man, while ignoring one-half of man's nature? Even the great atheist Nietzsche wrote that man is a rope stretched between the animal and the uebermensch.
If these commandments are, as you postulate, universal, then by what compulsion would our creator seek to encode it in stone? It would be as farcical as giving instructions on sleeping, eating, and mating. Instructions and commandments are provided because such concepts are foreign to those, to whom such instructions are given.
The compulsion of God, to love thy neighbor as yourself, is precisely difficult because despite the beastly nature of humanity, we must extend curtesy and friendship to our fellow man and to ourselves. We must envision our own sainthood, despite our beastly nature. But all this only within the sphere of influence my station allows; human history is filled with hubris of men, reaching beyond their station, to deliver heaven upon their unsuspecting neighbors and creating hell.
Peace of Christ be with you and your family.