I am not completely sure of the below, but it is a complete set of thoughts.
Hypocrisy
There are two things I know.
Knowing something is not the same as possessing a fact. I possess many facts. You would have those facts, too, if you’d read the books I’ve read. They’re immaterial. Anyone can pick them up. The Song dynasty of China lasted from 960 AD to 1279 AD. Alexios Komnenos was the Byzantine Emperor who asked for help from the Western Christians and this among other things caused them to kickstart the first Crusade in 1095 AD. Etc.
But there are two things I know, and those are: firstly, that there are good and evil things in the world, and that the world is real and we are free; and secondly that, save the first thing, I know nothing.
I wonder why it is that nothing is as it appears to be.
A particular class of person, obsequious, outwardly obliging. “Oh, did something happen? Oh, that violated a moral standard. First, explain to me every little thing. Then deal with me poorly articulating it several times to increasingly high-ranked authorities. Actually, after all that talk, I think it’s better if we do this, this thing you didn’t ask for or about, that makes it easier on someone else…” (Shifting the onus).
You never come away from these people feeling better about anything, no matter how polite they are. In fact, it’s because of how polite they are – that false politeness shifts the moral burden onto you. And of course, they’re all gossiping hypocrites.
Some would have words weigh more than actions. This is probably because they’ve never seen virtue and don’t know what it is, and they want to be virtuous, and talking is easier than giving something up.
The nature of the world is inverted; virtue appears vice. And versa.
Hypocrisy manifests in all. In some it is a good kind, in others bad. Good hypocrisy is when someone does a good thing in the knowledge they are a sinner. In doing the good thing, they believe they are lying, hiding their true self, and attempting to compensate for their inner evil – not realising this is the act that counteracts that very evil.
Negative hypocrisy is when a person pretends at virtue and is lazy, evil, full of hatred, etc.
The secret to success is of course to fail every day. This is a motivational truism hijacked by leagues of professional scammers. Despite two thousand years of Christendom it is less well known that:
The path to glory is humility;
The path to strength is to acknowledge your weaknesses;
The path to good leadership is to follow and serve others;
The path to attaining dignity is to become ridiculous;
The path to wisdom is to know nothing; and
The path to consistency is to acknowledge you are a hypocrite.
To learn how to live, you must learn how to die.
To live as best you can, you must die every day.
(Now we have an answer for Zorba’s old man and young boy).
Of course, I can’t just tell you this. The only way to teach is to remain silent…I have to try to demonstrate the above through pure action. I don’t even expect you, reader, to understand this explanation, to be quite honest.
Still less would I expect a careless observer to understand it!
This is a necessary paradox of my behaviour. For one must live hidden.
All these people going about in the world chasing only their goals for their own benefit are like people who walk everywhere backwards. They’re facing the wrong way and running blind, as fast as they can on their heels. If they just turned around, did everything they do while focused on what’s really important, they’d be so much more effective.
And they might actually achieve substantive virtue too.
Heroism
Everything that exists justifies its existence against oblivion. A hero justifies himself more than others.
A hero is not a morally good figure, but a figure holding many souls within the one self.
A hero is created by solitude, by the desire to expand that self into the vacuum.
A hero exists in a larger quantity than others.
His actions are either better or worse than the mean of humanity – he is never in the middle of the curve. In fact, I will revise this statement – his actions are both better and worse. The same action, at the same time.
A hero is someone with too many people inside him.
I say ‘him’ for conciseness. Obviously the point is universally human.
The below is an excerpt from some text by Otto Weininger. This is all I have read of him and I think it is quite true.
“Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it.
The man of genius takes his place as someone who understands other beings incomparably more than the average man does. Goethe is said to have said of himself that there was no vice or crime of which he could not trace the tendency in himself, and that at some period of his life he could not have understood fully. The genius, therefore, is a more complicated, more richly endowed, more varied man; and a man is the closer to being a genius the more men he has in his personality, and the more really and strongly he has these others within him.
And so the ideal genius, who has all men within him, has also all their preferences and all their dislikes. There is in him not only the universality of men, but of all nature. He is the man to whom all things tell their secrets, to whom most happens, and whom least escapes. He understands most things, and those most deeply, because he has the greatest number of things to contrast and compare them with. The genius is he who is conscious of most, and of that most acutely.”
He says this of genius. I adopt a more moral, a less intellectually-focused view. That is why I think this description actually applies to heroes, not to geniuses. There is overlap, obviously. But I think Schopenhauer’s definition of genius is better at describing genius specifically (rather than capturing it but really defining something else) – a genius is someone who hits a target nobody else can see.
I think heroes are hypocrites of the highest, most self-destructive order. Ordinary people are ordinary hypocrites, but heroes have hypocrisies, contradictions within themselves, with the power to destroy them or (and) to propel them to greatness.
For completeness’ sake, a similar statement to Weininger’s above, by Robert Heinlein:
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialisation is for insects.”
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