Three Reflections On the Daily Life of Higher Souls

Self-refuting bromide.– “Everyone does it.” Even if that were true in principle in some circumstance, it would become false the moment an intelligent person heard it, since he would immediately and instinctively commit himself to being a counterexample. For by definition, “what everyone does” is either a trivial material necessity (and therefore beyond the purview of such a moral declaration) or a mindless waste of spiritual energy. Evidence of this last point is the fact that phrases such as “Everyone does it” are invariably uttered with a tone that suggests a combination of urgent rationalization for one’s weakness of will and incredulous indignation toward anyone perceived as an abstainer, as though the speaker were declaring, “How dare you pretend to be above a temptation that I have just revealed myself not to be above!”


Filling one’s time productively.– One should not be too proud of, or too engaged in, one’s hobbies; ideally, one would have none. A hobby is something you do primarily for distraction or amusement, and which you have done enough to have become moderately good at it and moderately enthusiastic about it, but which, insofar as you have designated it as your hobby, you have probably come to identify with too closely, either because you cannot think of anything more essential to do with your time and energy, or because you lack the will or sense of purpose to commit yourself seriously to the truly essential. A hobby, as we normally perceive such, is a means of occupying your time with the comforting illusion of purpose, a convenient and ready-made excuse to explain why you are not more fundamentally engaged in your existence.


Public and Private.— Maturity means being the same person at all times, in all company, as you are when alone with your soul. This does not entail saying the same things in all contexts, for responding appropriately to one’s context is of the essence of noble character. Rather, it entails the self-understanding and honesty with oneself to recognize when circumstances are confronting you with the alternative of playing a role for the sake of social comfort, or behaving according to your nature at the risk of alienating yourself from others (and not only others from whom alienating yourself would be inconsequential) or from an apparent material benefit — apparent, because if you can only gain something by pretending to be someone else, then it is not your benefit at all. If, incidentally, you are of any worth, then any benefit you gain by playing someone else is a false good which will only incentivize further acts of self-corruption, which is to say further drift into living as someone less worthy than yourself, with ever-tightening tethers. If, on the other hand, the benefit thereby gained is a true good, then you ought to strive to become, in reality, the person you were pretending to be.


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