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In which I, uh, accidentally trample over Kant's grave.

Joyful morality and playful ethics, these have we few. A light approach, a pleasant manner are too whimsical for us, we who know Truth and spurn fantasy. Happiness is to be found in dour reasoning, delight in the forthright application of justice, and damned is he who bars our path.

Why dance when you can glower?

What better way to progress in life than to trample all over one's own desires? Sacrifice, duty, and all else which builds character. This is for your own good. It may even be called selfish, or at least self-interested, to nullify one's own wants.

The noble pursuit of the self, from this millions of times over is a good, capitalist, Christian society built. Each individual sets out to be Adam Smith, and all benefit. Thus we find ultimate altruism in our undesirable, unwanted acts of greed.

So it is with discipline in one who loves it not. So too with study, work, and other rewarding pursuits many might have little part of given their ideal worlds. Quite a journey, life, where we spend our first twenty-some years readying to put the rest of our productive lives into doing things we'd rather not until such time as we can't anymore. If you can't stand being alone, you may be lucky enoug to spend some of your time in indentured servitude to a house, lover, and offspring. And as we retire, we may find we are too old or too poor to enjoy the full, ripe fruits of our labour.

This bliss is something those who haven't acheived it already can all look forward to with longing, hope, and much baited breath. My great enthusim for this life-to-come-if-all-goes-well is what has propelled me with such speed and excitement through my first seven years of undergraduate colleges.
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Comments

  1. Ross8/07/2011 9:24 PM

    Your philosophy stuff got a less personal over the ~6 intervening years since this post.

    Can you even see comments on old posts or am I just shooting this text off into the Internet void?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ross8/07/2011 9:25 PM

    *a lot less personal

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown8/08/2011 7:12 PM

    I guess that's so, though a lot of my views remain roughly similar.

    I have the blog set to alert me of all comments so I don't miss stuff like this.

    ReplyDelete

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