Notes: XXV

It is easier to imagine people of the past to be much more pious than those of the now — the mind rewards the creation of ideals to ensure it has something to aim towards.

One cannot inhabit the notion of respect for the past — respect proper is constituted by a thorough immediate experiential knowledge; this is the reason rather unfortunate figures are exalted, for if one were to live with them for a single day, one may draw another conclusion.

The creation of the modern order in large part had the concomitant effect of the burgeoning of collectives and groups at the expense of the individual, which sounds rather counterintuitive if one perceives the current moment as the zenith of an individual-based order driven by some notion of self-rights, but whilst there has been a focus in emancipating a particular conception of agency, that, in itself, has resulted in the individual being subsumed within the broader group of the individuals, that is, a group made of discrete individuals, rather than individuals separated into closely aligned epistemes.

Reason is universal in the ontological sense, but particular in the epistemic sense — so one must endeavor in one’s purported answers to a problem to not be surprised if divine grace permits a window outside one’s epistemic frame to view the quandary from a plane previously not even logically available to one.

Western mosques are daily churches.

The point of morality is not filling the self with wool, but rather to act as a mesh that pulls the errant back on the road even if he remains in errancy.

The desire for systems diminishes when confidence in the individual reduces.

In the modern world, wherein one’s sensibilities are generally averse to meddling in the affairs of others unless the latter transgress upon the activity of one, prayer becomes an apposite orientation through which one may express concern without infringing upon the dominant norms of the day, and in this is an eternal blessing manifesting in the particularity of today; hence, similarly, one must be attentive to all the ways divine grace permeates its spirit into new forms through existent concepts and orientations that need to be steered towards new impediments. Cracks are visible for those who can see.

Once sufficiently beyond the precipice of normal, one may, at will, see rainbows in the eyes.

It is oft the case that one confuses one’s interest in the well-being of someone with a hidden desire to stabilize one’s own self-identity, and certainly, it is not entirely possible to demarcate the two, at least on the level of the psyche — nevertheless, one must make strides to stay closer to the former orientation than the latter.

If the unquantifiable elements of pain and joy could be mathematically laid out, stacked against each other in frequency across time, one would suspect that the former would far outnumber the latter.

It is better for one to conceptualize one’s life in terms of seasons; for instance, a man who is fifty might tell himself he has, statistically, twenty summers left, each with decreasing vitality; that assists one in affixing their sense of self in time more properly because thinking in years is rather abstract, and what man finds abstract, man finds easier to not think about.

One must not wish for things even if oriented towards a certain thing — desire for an object is rooted in a misunderstanding born in the haze of present cognition.

Fear, sufficiently inhabited, transforms into the substance of no-feeling.

The world is made smaller by an expanding mind, not the mind smaller by an expanding world — this is a blessing.

What one truly longs for is neither private property nor commons, but rather for private property that feels and acts as commons. Private property means a right to privacy and a right to temporary exclusive inhabitation.

Man has no sovereignty over parcels of land, even if he is rooted in them for millennia — all soil is a trust, a friend, but not a possession. The deaths at Roncevaux Pass served a much larger purpose; from utter desolation arose the spirit of a new man to persist centuries forward — and as such, one never fully knows the purpose of decimation, but one must allay his own heart and those of others, that a greater unknowing may yet come to pass.

One must always make a distinction between speaking with certainty and speaking with conviction; the former is a technical mode and as such holds to a rather exacting standard, while the latter is a psychological orientation necessary for proper human function — one must not confuse the bravado of any statements of conviction with certainty unless one has really considered all the known and hidden elements of any particular object of knowledge.

There is a class of people who recognize the moral impropriety of their actions — the nature of their occupation, for instance — and yet persist in them, and as a means to assuage their conscience and preserve their own sense of self, they employ certain vulgar techniques of humor to diminish the severity of their decisions, amongst which is feigning self-awareness of the depravity of said actions, as supposed penance for engaging in them — this sort of behavior is best described as both perfidious and recreant, for its privation of honor and responsibility — and it is to be said, this sort of intellectualization of behavior arises from a disconnect with the Intellect; in fact, a separate class of people who also take part in similar activities, whether it be occupationally or otherwise, but do not seek to offset their guilt through crude self-awareness and at times, do not even consider their actions morally wrong, even if ontologically they may be, is a much more honest class of people, for their misdeeds are those of ignorance and a cavalier attitude — and so while the consequences of the actions of both these classes may be separate, the first is more to blame for engaging in sophistry.

وقد نبه الإمام فخر الدين الرازي إلى أن: «الإنسان إما أن يفر عن جميع الخلق ويعتزل عنهم، وإما أن يخالطهم ويصاحبهم، وعلى كلا التقديرين فالضرر لازم». وكذلك قرر أن «الإنسان إما أن يعيش في الدنيا خاليا عن الزوجة والولد، أو مع حصولهما، وكل واحد من هذين القسمين سبب لحصول الآفات والبليات».