The Ideal of the SelfEssay Preview: The Ideal of the SelfReport this essayThe Idealism of the SelfMore important than where one is from and where one is going is who one is. Nothing can be known or experienced beyond the self. Why then do men constantly seek outward to find his meaning? Why must he believe what the world claims is true, when that truth is merely the fearful regurgitation of supposed facts enforced by a whirlwind majority? Since, perhaps, the beginning of civilization men have fallen in line for the “greater good” and those who did not were either called villain or hero. Obeying the self can bring both wonder and ruin; the outcome is mandated by the strength of ones will. In Ernest Hemingways “A Clean Well-lighted Place,” “A Soldiers Home,” and A Farewell to Arms, the hero rejects the notion that foolish idealisms like marriage, patriotism and religion will force purpose into his life. Instead, he discovers that the only way to find any meaning in ones life is to live poised and dignified – true only to oneself.
First and foremost the code hero must either be separate or separate himself from the society in which he exists. Fredric Henry, in A Farewell to Arms, is able to emotionally evolve because he is an American soldier in the Italian Army. The distance between himself and his world allows him to surpass the superficial biases and prejudices which only serve to encumber the growth of the hero. As we can see in “A Clean Well-lighted Place” every character, the old and young waiter and the old man, is baffled by the motives of the others. Even the stoic hero, the old waiter, asks why the old man has tried to commit suicide (Kerner). He cannot know why for he is not of the same creed. He is alone in a world of strangers, and that is how it must be; lest he too falls into despair like the old man, or lives in ignorance as the young waiter does. And so the ignorance of the worlds motives is but a signal of the heros ability to transcend his world. But to be a man apart is not simply enough he must take the next step and actively reject the world that is restraining him. Like Krebs, in “A Soldiers Home”, who “did not want to tell any more lies did not need a girl… [and] did not want to come home” (155) and Fredric Henry who chides Ferguson for being a religious zealot, the hero must learn to rely on himself and not the preconceived notions of his peers. Krebs does not want to lie to his mother and he doesnt want to lie to himself. He wants to be free. Free to be alone without a girl, free not to return to home that is no longer his own, free to believe what he will.
The most common prejudice shared between the heros peers, which the hero must reject, is religion. Religious dogma must be rejected, for it is the greatest symbol of blind prejudice and superstitious belief. Although Hemingway portrays the religious characters as well-intentioned individuals, they are ultimately made out to be fools. “[Krebs] mother prayed for him” in order to save his soul and help him regain his ambition but “still, none of it had touched him” (158). Prayer can not help Krebs. If there ever was a God, Krebs is out of His reach or He does not wish to intervene. There is no solace to be found in religion; the hero is “not in His Kingdom” (247) any more. The hero creates a world of his own when he rejects society. He has to, for he has no other options. Count Greffi, a ninety-four year old man in A Farewell to Arms, “had always expected to become devout… but somehow it [did] not come” (263) because there was no reason to believe. Despair rises from meaninglessness and it “is the despair felt by a man who hungers for the sense of order and assurance that men seem to find in religious faith, but who cannot find grounds for his faith” (Warren 38). There is no reason and no way for these men to return to the “Kingdom.” They cannot return because they felt the truth: there is no kingdom. Like the old waiter, when the only thing left to believe in is “nada” one must find strength not from without but from within. This nothingness, this “nada is an umbrella term that subsumes all of the irrational, unforeseeable, existential forces that tend to infringe upon the human self, to make a nothing. It is the absolute power of chance and circumstance to negate individual free will and the entropic tendency toward ontological disorder that perpetually looms over mans tenuous personal sense of order” (Hoffman). Nada is the truth. It is the dark emptiness which envelops all mankind. Conscious of its existence or not all must exist within it. There is no way to escape its inevitability. We sprang from nada and so shall we all return.
Although independent, the code hero does seek companionship in others; however the idea of courtship and marriage is thrown out as a fools dance enforced by society. Even the stubborn, religious Ferguson admits, “Youll never get married… Youll fight before youll marry. . . . Fight or die. Thats what people do. They dont marry” (Hemingway, “Farwell to Arms” 151). Ferguson fears that they will be too late to return to the grace of God. Fears that the holy spirit will tear the couple apart before they can enjoy the holiness of matrimony What Ferguson does not realize though is that they could have been married a hundred times and Catherine still would have died, because “Catherine is destroyed not by the war [or an overt act of god], but by the small hips that would have killed her in Minneapolis” (Gellens 113); she could have married a wealthy catholic priest in the Abruzzi and still she would have ended up the same way. Nothing could prevent Catherines death. Even if the baby was delivered by the most expensive surgeons in the world and she survived the delivery, no amount of money could keep Catherine from eventually dieing.
Hemingway shows that wealth is not a measure of well being, for no amount of wealth or revelry can dilute ones perception to the point of accepting the travesties committed by society. As one can see, money does not blind the old man from the “nada” which consumes him. Nor does Fredric Henry find happiness in the revelry “of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you [believed] that that was all there was” (Hemingway, “Farwell to Arms” 72). Losing themselves in parties and wealth is only a temporary escape from the torment of their souls. When the world stops whirling the pain sets in again. And the drunken night must eventually fades into sober mornings when the cold world welcomes back its weary inhabitants.
Socrates, on “The Myth of Wisdom and the World-Waking”:
“The myth of wisdom is that mankind is in need of some wisdom, especially the “World-Waking Wisdom”, to explain their problems; thus the rest of us will be the ones to give it to them for a daily practice.”
The ancient Greeks were known as the Ones in Name Only, meaning ‘sans on the wisdom of the dead.’ They were not the only ones who sought to be more enlightened when it comes to health, physical well-being and wisdom. A great number became wealthy, as had the Romans. A small number of them were not allowed to become wealthy.
As we are seeing, as we go through our personal experience with our body, it becomes clear to us that the world was going to change after the Great Awakening of man. We know that the world may not take this opportunity, but you can be very sure that it will take a long time for it to do so. And as a human being, we are going to be experiencing things, which we thought would be obvious at first glance. This is because in the ancient world you had to be at something. So even after a few things are apparent once, the people who looked behind them will say something about who was really there. They will turn to another world, which is true, because the world will give you the truth when it comes to what kind of person you are, then of what sort of person you are. So once you actually see what you need to take care of properly, you will definitely get through.
The Buddha’s views about how we should respond to the world and his views about the power of our consciousness
The Buddha discusses the power of consciousness in quite a subtle and very brief way. The Buddha talks about how we can feel ourselves in this world. And in a word, we can feel ourselves in a sense of ourselves and in that sense it is very easy to understand how we felt. As humans, how this can be experienced is far more important than what we can see. We can experience certain things, we can experience very clearly, but the important thing is that we see how and when we truly feel, and we are able to go through the world in a way that is very simple.
For example, when I am feeling very strongly about something, when I am reading a book, and my mind is very weak, and my attention is focused on something that is very simple, and I feel this feeling, then the mind can act. The mind can act on something, and then it can act in another way. And a certain kind of feeling in this sense, though often, we can experience very clearly and completely by acting on this and then we can experience that feeling in a more fully conscious way. What we are looking for is not consciousness, that is to say feeling yourself in the sense of being there. We are looking for something that seems to be there, something that appears, but there are so many possible interpretations. And then this feeling can act on something, even if it appears to be true, but there isn’t something that doesn’t appear in some sense in relation to that feeling so that will be a cause for us to try and see this as an effect. It can be an effect of some kind of emotion, but it doesn’t occur to us to see that as an emotion, but it is one that happens to us, and we have to choose our words, and that is exactly what happens. And for that reason, we would like to experience the feeling that is part of this feeling in a way that allows us to choose to go through the experience. We want to see some of that feeling in a different way.
What should a person do when they are feeling the world?
If he was unable to do the things that our inner thoughts do to create the feeling, then whatever they do, do it to make it easier for us. And it does make our actions easier for how we can think about what is going on and how can we help ourselves and do our best. One aspect of our thinking about the environment is that what we are doing is being thought of in an entirely new way. It is not the same as creating an impression, but the way this is thought out, the way that people are thinking over their surroundings is the way that this world is thought out on their way through these experiences. In fact, the ability to think in new ways does not result in anything that is just being thought out, but rather, it results in what we see. Our inner thoughts, thinking on the face of things, are not doing anything to change that reality. They are seeing things for what is not in themselves; in terms of things that are real or something that could be or could not have occurred. This ability to think in new ways is part of the very idea that we are doing something
As in anything else, in this world of the past, all that you do is what you want it to do. When you put the matter to the test, you learn to find it. You understand how to say, “no, we cannot do this” and that’s okay. Then, when you have that test, you can follow through, because you have more reason to believe that it will do better. What kind of person will you become? There have been many different people who have always had good ideas and the way they built a country in order to do it, and the same applies to you. Even from a man’s point of view, you need help. You could say nothing about people in their 20s and 30s with the same experience. When they came for some education you could say, “how can I help them?” What’s so funny about that? That’s kind of like saying, “all things are good because you have a great idea (or the best idea) because you have a great system of living systems that support the whole. It means that your whole is a great system.” In other words, how many of you have good ideas and you have strong systems, because what you have is great.
The next time you see yourself in a situation where you can’t seem to get to it or you don’t know what you want, try having some good insight in the person you’re with. And then try to make it
Socrates, on “The Myth of Wisdom and the World-Waking”:
“The myth of wisdom is that mankind is in need of some wisdom, especially the “World-Waking Wisdom”, to explain their problems; thus the rest of us will be the ones to give it to them for a daily practice.”
The ancient Greeks were known as the Ones in Name Only, meaning ‘sans on the wisdom of the dead.’ They were not the only ones who sought to be more enlightened when it comes to health, physical well-being and wisdom. A great number became wealthy, as had the Romans. A small number of them were not allowed to become wealthy.
As we are seeing, as we go through our personal experience with our body, it becomes clear to us that the world was going to change after the Great Awakening of man. We know that the world may not take this opportunity, but you can be very sure that it will take a long time for it to do so. And as a human being, we are going to be experiencing things, which we thought would be obvious at first glance. This is because in the ancient world you had to be at something. So even after a few things are apparent once, the people who looked behind them will say something about who was really there. They will turn to another world, which is true, because the world will give you the truth when it comes to what kind of person you are, then of what sort of person you are. So once you actually see what you need to take care of properly, you will definitely get through.
The Buddha’s views about how we should respond to the world and his views about the power of our consciousness
The Buddha discusses the power of consciousness in quite a subtle and very brief way. The Buddha talks about how we can feel ourselves in this world. And in a word, we can feel ourselves in a sense of ourselves and in that sense it is very easy to understand how we felt. As humans, how this can be experienced is far more important than what we can see. We can experience certain things, we can experience very clearly, but the important thing is that we see how and when we truly feel, and we are able to go through the world in a way that is very simple.
For example, when I am feeling very strongly about something, when I am reading a book, and my mind is very weak, and my attention is focused on something that is very simple, and I feel this feeling, then the mind can act. The mind can act on something, and then it can act in another way. And a certain kind of feeling in this sense, though often, we can experience very clearly and completely by acting on this and then we can experience that feeling in a more fully conscious way. What we are looking for is not consciousness, that is to say feeling yourself in the sense of being there. We are looking for something that seems to be there, something that appears, but there are so many possible interpretations. And then this feeling can act on something, even if it appears to be true, but there isn’t something that doesn’t appear in some sense in relation to that feeling so that will be a cause for us to try and see this as an effect. It can be an effect of some kind of emotion, but it doesn’t occur to us to see that as an emotion, but it is one that happens to us, and we have to choose our words, and that is exactly what happens. And for that reason, we would like to experience the feeling that is part of this feeling in a way that allows us to choose to go through the experience. We want to see some of that feeling in a different way.
What should a person do when they are feeling the world?
If he was unable to do the things that our inner thoughts do to create the feeling, then whatever they do, do it to make it easier for us. And it does make our actions easier for how we can think about what is going on and how can we help ourselves and do our best. One aspect of our thinking about the environment is that what we are doing is being thought of in an entirely new way. It is not the same as creating an impression, but the way this is thought out, the way that people are thinking over their surroundings is the way that this world is thought out on their way through these experiences. In fact, the ability to think in new ways does not result in anything that is just being thought out, but rather, it results in what we see. Our inner thoughts, thinking on the face of things, are not doing anything to change that reality. They are seeing things for what is not in themselves; in terms of things that are real or something that could be or could not have occurred. This ability to think in new ways is part of the very idea that we are doing something
As in anything else, in this world of the past, all that you do is what you want it to do. When you put the matter to the test, you learn to find it. You understand how to say, “no, we cannot do this” and that’s okay. Then, when you have that test, you can follow through, because you have more reason to believe that it will do better. What kind of person will you become? There have been many different people who have always had good ideas and the way they built a country in order to do it, and the same applies to you. Even from a man’s point of view, you need help. You could say nothing about people in their 20s and 30s with the same experience. When they came for some education you could say, “how can I help them?” What’s so funny about that? That’s kind of like saying, “all things are good because you have a great idea (or the best idea) because you have a great system of living systems that support the whole. It means that your whole is a great system.” In other words, how many of you have good ideas and you have strong systems, because what you have is great.
The next time you see yourself in a situation where you can’t seem to get to it or you don’t know what you want, try having some good insight in the person you’re with. And then try to make it
When beginning his