“I would not enjoy a life like theirs. Looking upon them is discomforting. A bad feeling overcomes me at the thought of not having what I have. I know that if they could choose, they would not choose their circumstance. They have only been less fortunate than I have. Now, either they should be given what I have or they should be allowed the resources to help themselves, so that they may have what I have—so that they may live like I do.”

Finally, the voice concludes, “I pity them.” But the voice of reason omits, “Their sight offends me.” Now, in practice our good conscience is not so transparent. Nonetheless, pity is one answer which successfully reconciles the relative-similar. Very plainly, the compassionate want to make the relative-similar all the more similar, or else it must be forced into an object of absolute-difference. Or perhaps we could say with more correctness, pity is only that which surges to baptize imperialism and christen it as altruism.

I have read the words of a psychologist spoken to a weakened culture: "Pity for all—would be hardness and tyranny toward you, my dear neighbor!—” But the subject and condition which has been diagnosed here is much different. And by this I mean to say that the words spoken to a weak individual begin with, “Pity for some—” And now, with little doubt, I have displayed two caricatures on a single stage: one is called the compassionate and the other is the despondent. And with your eyes fix on them I ask again, who could believe the universe fiddles a congruent song that they themselves have been granted permission to hear? Who could be so audacious as to assume that their foresight and united front is the united front of all the universe, and that they are not one of the thousand thousands which stand outside? Who could believe that the fiddles of a thousand thousands fiddle for them? Who could suffer from so much vanity?

We must not be hasty. We cannot condemn one man—and surely not for a mere note-to-self which had not been prepped for publication and may, just as well, never have been intended for publication. Instead of attacking the reasoning of this claim, we should investigate its appeal. Consider those in which this pathos has stomped out all mystery and doubt, and has given those thousand thousands a morality in which all inquiries into their books must cross-reference.

I find little difficulty in diagnosing the psychological state which finds pleasure in this claim; one does not even need to refer to clinical research since evidence has been recorded in the greatest books of the world. To dissect this aesthetic experience we must first know that our consciousness is a composition of relationships which relate our environment to us. Next, we must acknowledge the degree of similarity or the degree of difference that one establishes in a relationship. Imagine when one observes the silhouette of an apple, then immediately following, observes someone eating that apple. The observer will establish one of these two figures as more similar than the other.

While the absolute-different is not an altogether separate discussion from the relative-similar, investigation of that side of the spectrum will provide us with little depth here. Instead, we must concern ourselves with the experience of the familiar, and also the difference which keeps the familiar from being something which is identical.

While every human being is then to be regarded as a particularly determined and characterized phenomenon of will, even to a certain extent as an Idea of its own, but in animals this individual character is entirely lacking, with only species having a characteristic significance—and its trace ever more vanishes with every greater distance from human beings, with plants finally possessing no other particularly individual characteristic than those that allow of a complete explanation in terms of external favorable or unfavorable circumstances of soil and climate and other contingencies—all individuality finally vanishes in the inorganic realm of nature.

And later he continues:

That which makes its appearance in clouds, stream, and crystal is the weakest resonance of the will that comes more completely to the fore in plants, still more completely in animals, most completely in human beings.

If anyone has ever held these words in their thoughts, and considered them true with the most serious mind, then surely they have mistaken locality for hierarchy. However, all of this precedes the unexpected. And, to his credit, Schopenhauer seems to have acknowledged his own error.* So, while it is hardly imaginable that he would have had the courage to destroy a work of over six-hundred pages with one single sentence, Schopenhauer’s precedence must be followed. We must be cautious in mistaking that which is present in location for that which is absolute in the world.

*“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets us fancy that on the horizon heaven and earth meet. This explains many things, and among them the fact that everyone measures us with his own standard—generally about as long as a tailor’s tape, and we have to put up with it: as also that no one will allow us to be taller than himself—a supposition which is once for all taken for granted.”—from Thomas Bailey Saunders’ translation of Schopenhauer’s Parerga und Paralipomena.

What we should expect is that our understanding of purpose of action and meaning of existence developed relative to each other. We can even imagine a primitive cultural landscape which hosted a subtle war in which these reductions battled for primacy over one another. However, what we can say with the greatest confidence is that once our narrative crystallized into our present understanding of history, we find only one dominate reduction: throughout history, purpose of action was subordinated to meaning of existence. Thus, it was will that became the expression of purpose of action in regard to a substance.

There is only one who stands in opposition to this affirmation of intimacy and locality—but my ears are closed to their dramatics. I will employ some artistic liberties so that I can appropriately proclaim their name, the abolitionist. But who is the abolitionist to we who are slaves?—no one, but an absurd imperialist or a propagandist who proposes that we hate being so. To demand liberation from the impressions of one’s environment is a sign of confusion. This supposes that the will, after having been given independence, can remain alongside environment. This can only find favor in those who have mistaken Reason as the faculty in which one becomes master of one’s environment.

At the moment of irregularity lability manifests within consciousness. If neither absolute familiarity nor Otherness can be established at the moment of observation, then there can be no doubt in the rise of dissonance for the duration of the experience. This dissonance can only resolve within an observer who establishes a relationship with the observation; the observer must become the master and the observation the mastered.**

If one pities Michigan Central Station—its meaning of existence or any who are involved in that meaning—then one has mastered the observed. Concerning the feeling of the uncanny, one cannot discern between an aesthetic judgment and a moral one.

*Written while living in the United States.

**Here I should mention that Sigmund Freud did himself no favors when he attempted to untangle the mystery of the uncanny by means of ego psychology. Of course, he was concerned with building a system, but nonetheless his authority degrades in his effort to filter all explanations through his topography of the mind. And to be honest, I can hardly bring myself from laughter when I read a diagnosis of the uncanny which emphasizes a dialog between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind—as though the dialog between the conscious mind and our environment meant nothing!

At this remark the painter reflected, then felt a slight haughtiness come over him. His patrons had no concept of the real—their ambition ran faster than their senses.

The painter is weary. Intimacy and details may be sacrificed. He likes to imagine scope, while confrontation with it scares him.

However, following this moment, it came to pass that Reason lent support to its belittled counterpart. And a proclamation was made from the mouth of Reason itself: Our emotional faculty has developed as our most expedient tool for recalling individuations of experience—surely we commend it as such on merit of its severity and immediacy.

With each mental faculty humbled to the next, we are capable of an aesthetic understanding. And with this understanding what is expressed colloquially as material and thought are reducible to the same—both are products which vary only in degree of severity present in our environment. We could easily designate the idea weak, while the material is immediate and strong.

Thankfully emotion strikes us hard enough—we find Reason functioning best with relationships in close proximity of either time or space. And we can read into this union of mind further: if we find an impression too strong for our liking, we look for a relief; and if too weak, we look for a substitution. Either resolve can be satisfied by sublimation. If our product is not a release, then it is a reminder which we keep close—and upon its reoccurring touch, taste, sound, or image we find solace again.

Let us recall a famous story of denial—that story of when Simon Peter drew his sword to Judea. There can be no doubt that his allegiance was certain and his reactions predictable—but on the day of Jesus’ arrest there was another answer: “Then Jesus said unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” Henceforth, in the face of opposition, Peter found himself with an immediate and mechanical reaction—denial. Suffering at the hand of the opposition had not been invented for him. Jesus knew that Peter could not accept martyrdom, at least, until an example had been made for him to follow.

If stimulation swells and is met with lack of acknowledgement within consciousness, there can only be one resolution for that stimulation: an inward manifestation onto the consciousness. An inward manifestation can only lead to the greatest sickness of consciousness; equally, it leads to a malformation of physiology—I say, stimulation will have its release! Perhaps it was Simon Peter whose consciousness was the first to succumb to a reaction forced back onto its origin. Perhaps he wept not for denying his Lord—he knew no other reaction!—but for denying the stimulation to defend his allegiance.