56) It is reasonable and correct to mistrust episodic happiness, resulting from clusters of factors and interpretations of the things around you that are contrived and forced and deliberate and intentional. Strive not for this type of happiness. Everyone else zigs and you will zag. That is a source of happiness itself.
57) It is right to reject unhappiness brought on by clusters of factors that are based on language and history and ignorant men.
58) If you are reading this, you must not be dead. If you are not dead, how do you know that you are not invincible?
59) If a man is invincible, is there anything he can not do? You are headed for certain death at the end of this trip, you are invincible until that day or year or epoch. Ignorant men might call your path sabotage but I will call it invincibility.
60) Thanks to language and ignorant people, there are things that man might not do even though he can do them.
Friday, June 4, 2010
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The recent guest columnist on Maximin's blog, Fred Nietzsche, I think has this right. Happiness is the forgetful bliss of the animal. To have no sense of history is to be happy. Learn to stop remembering.
ReplyDeleteOne can never murder a creative man.
ReplyDeleteThe active and adventurous man is always without conscience, neither happy nor unhappy, and this explains his great health.
ReplyDeleteBold adventures and risk have always satisfied me and I can say I experienced happiness when remembering and writing about them later.
There is joy too in the training for great and risky adventure. That is the sort of training I am engaged in now. Training without a purpose is empty. The reason to ride is not for a race, but to travel to a place. (The race is only a place-holder for the adventure you have decided not to go on--it is a simulated adventure. A middle-class adventure.) The reason to train with weights and kettlebells is not to become large for women, but to gather strength to stop those who might interfere with you. The reason for the languages and cultural understanding is not to pad a resume for a better job, but to enable a crossing over into new territories and countries--to live as others live.