Artful Prudence

You know that feeling of wakefulness and unease that comes over you when you started clinging – binding yourself to a woman, or to a desirable object, or to an irresistible pleasure that quickly turned into an obsessive fixation that left you feeling impoverished, deprived, senseless, irrational and very miserable. If you ask me, I know that feeling all too well. Really, this is the price we pay for an increase in consciousness, not only do I suffer the burden of sensitivity, but also the burden of knowing what confusion and madness is transpiring inside my head. Even with our capacity for rationality and inclination toward logic, still we endure in our despairing romanticism, as if we have been stripped of our inherent power and were clutching at the edge of a cliff, fighting cruelly and persistently for our salvation. And even when I know that I am growing compulsive, dominating, excessive and wedded to anything pleasurable and gratifying, I am still faced with that bitter and inescapable truth – that I can’t force myself to feel any different than how I am at present feeling. I can treat this as an invitation to accept my sentiments for as long as they last, or I can decide to worsen my shape by deliberately and sometimes unconsciously turning down my feelings and pretend to myself that I am someone else altogether. One might tell you to refrain from growing attached, from wedging yourself to the impermanence of everything pleasurable, forgetting that attachment, in spite of being unconcerned about it, can still hold sway over your inward state. I can merely watch and observe feelings of despair, dejection, regret, guilt and sorrow, but that doesn’t take away from involuntarily sensing their emotional weight. I have wrestled with this idea for a long time, but it doesn’t seem to me that you can circumvent attachment by pretending to be detached or by feigning coldness – let’s be sincere with ourselves, for a moment, isn’t this a kind of self-deception and dishonesty, aren’t we terribly fooling ourselves by pursuing such a path with the hope of lessening our fondness and attachment?

Self-centredness is dangerous, it brings rise to much needless suffering and confusion. It misleads and muddles us into thinking we are entitled to possess, to be desired and pursued, to feel important. Really, this egomania can swiftly turn into a destructive cycle of infatuation, fixation and serious passion, to the point where you are so inebriated by sexual desire that you grow indifferent to everything that is of service to you. At which point, I start to recollect a forgotten and bygone time with a wretched urge to haunt that which casted a spell over me and brought me copious pleasure. Even knowing we are never going to relive a faded memory, the depressing conclusion that accompanied it causes us not only to resent it, but also to transport ourselves back in time and exploit it, once more. For even when a woman gives you the cold shoulder, you almost want to forgive and defend it and piece things together because of the pleasure she furnished you with. This is what it means to be driven by the sexual, the pleasurable, the gratifying. For it is not so much the woman that you long for, but the pleasure and satisfaction that has been tied to her in association to you. There is an evident wretchedness about this driving impulse, and even when we recognise our own misery, we still happily relish it and entertain, with a shudder of hope, a dead past that has nothing to do with us.

Perhaps, I don’t know how to have a pleasurable memory and be done with it, I tend to desire to mistreat it until I pervert it, unless it was corrupt to begin with and corrupted myself in the process. Regardless, an insatiable appetite and poor self-control almost always leads to unhappiness, disappointment and remorse. And unless we learn from the past and recognise that no amount of pleasure will ever be sufficient to satisfy the unappeasable soul, we will remain perpetual slaves of our own poverty, constantly in need and feeling in want of that which ultimately won’t indefintely satisfy us and will, once it is gone, leave us craving it once more. This tells me, then, that the antidote is not found in heedlessly complying with this lustful yearning, but in learning how to regulate it by cultivating a different part of yourself – that part of you that is tied to everything intrinsic and deep-rooted; the man-power that was endowed to you by divinity. But I shall not forward any false hope, or encourage you to ‘man up’ with the fervent prospect of turning you into an insensitised, sadistic animal. There is a more sensible path, I believe, but one that is inevitably paved with hardship and pain.

For, some senseless men seek to totally desensitise themselves to feeling because they are fearful, they simply dread the feeling of sensitivity, for it turns them into uncontrollable, desperate, emotional beasts and they’d rather diminish their own pleasure and intimacy than wrestle with the pain that comes with sensitivity, ecstasy, attachment, and sexual desire, and then gradually conquering these temporary impulses, with the knowledge that the accumulation of those painful and unfortunate endings that were mingled with that indelible pleasure will ultimately fortify your character and integrity and lead you to the kind of manlike supremacy that you sought when you were fallen to pieces. You don’t want to cage yourself from the torments of rejection, attachment, sex, closeness and repose – such an attitude does not settle the difficulty, it merely hides it and puts it away, only to later come back and disturb you, reminding you that to shun it is not to overcome or master it. Unless we learn to accept that whether by attachment or rejection, discomfort is unavoidable and desirable somwhere along the line, we will never gather the adequate experience to cultivate that fair-minded detachment which will extricate us from the excesses of self-indulgence and passion.

I don’t seek to confine myself, in spite of the pain that I ought to endure if I am to enjoy my most memorable pleasures. Conversely, I seek to master such pleasures by deliberately acquainting myself with them until I deprive them of their power over my internal state. However, such an attitude requires a courageous willingness to plummet into the abyss, because you will topple over at some point. And you ought to be prepared for the fall, not in defeatism, but in bright aspiration and assurance, realizing that there is no such thing as a terrible ‘fall’ without a joyous ‘rise’. The integrated man is he who has not only tolerated the terrible fall, but who, after having been dismantled and blown up, arisen and stood up, illuminated and enriched by the wisdom and consequence of his trials and tribulations. Had he not put himself in jeopardy, he would have remained negligent and unconscious of his weakness, in turn paying no heed to his potential might that lies dormant beneath the surface. It is useful to remember that when a circumstance turns intolerable, the moral is heavier but acceptance is tougher. Thus, a tougher acceptance yields a deeper, more eternal, more rebellious, more complete transfiguration of character. For that reason, a betrayal of the ego is often a prerequisite to its transcendance, for unless you first shatter a fragile ego, you can’t strengthen or remould its shape to make it firmer and more sophisticated. To overcome the frequent hurt of egotism, you must suffer the greater hurt of thoroughly devastating it. We are unduly tied to our self-regard, to the point where such a tie becomes an act of true self-denial and shelter against the necessary suffering of being, that will, indue course, reveal the finer workings of our own essential self.

Both learning and reflection move our spirit, to some extent, outside ourselves, engaged and away from this physical vehicle of ours; a condition which looks like death and establishes a kind of studentship for it. Even in goodness; our eventual aim, regardless of what they say, is always pleasure. Knowing that in every pleasure familiar to Man the basic striving towards it is to our liking; the endeavour relishes the worth of the purpose in view. It virtually amounts to a large quantity of it and is of the same essence. Everybody takes one’s leave as though they just came in. Regardless of how incapacitated a man may be, he still believes he has a few more decades in him, so long as divinity is on his side. These kind of people walk forward, as Lucretius says, with their heads turned back. Because no matter how much a man cautiously hides, death will hunt him out without fail, and make him poke out his shrinking head. So, we must adopt the attitude of strong-mindedness. We must, furthermore, learn to stand our ground and wage war with death.

To start dispossessing death of its serious precedence over us, we shall embrace an approach antithetical to that unexceptional one shared by the common man; let’s bereave it of its eccentricity, be its regular visitor and get familiar with its character. Let us keep it in mind and regularly ponder it. At every passing moment, let us bring it to mind and allow our creativeness, with all its facets, amuse itself. Whenever a horse trips over, a tile topples over or a nail faintly stabs, let us immediately meditate on this thought: ‘Presuming that was death in disguise?’ So, let us stabilize and exercise our power. At the heart of triumph or banquet, let us allow our abstinence to be one which recollects our natural state. Let us at no time be so forcefully sidetracked by sensual gratification or rapture that we fail to remember the many ways in which our happiness is conditional on death or the many ways in which death puts it at risk. That is, after all, what the Egyptians did among their feasts and cheers; they brought a mummified cadaver to act as a notice to the callers.

Ultimately, practising death is practising liberty. For a man who gained an understanding of how to die has discarded from his memory how to be a slave. Between the amusements and the courtyards, many thought that man was sticking out masticating over a piece of suspicion or envy, or the misgivings of his desires – All the while, he was contemplating on one person or other who, on departing from occasions like these, was astonished by a fiery febricity and his climax, with his skull full of slothfulness, fondness and high-spiritedness. Just like us, he was being pursued by that irresistible dormancy that disabels, by that ardour that fuddles with our sight. Actually, it hounds and bullies the best of us; we shouldn’t think so highly of it if we are to protect our senses. Thoughts like these should not wrinkle your forehead. To begin with, it seems inconceivable not to have a hunch by these equivocal notions, but if you continue to cope with and look over them, you will in due course domesticate them. Still, each passing moment, it seems that we are fleeing ourselves, shirking responsibility and avoiding the unusual menaces of life. A man who agonizes over his thoughts and stows them within himself is always prepared; as ready as he could possibly be, so when doom promptly arrives, it carries nothing novel to him – in other words, he forewarned himself to begin with.

As much as possible, we must be intentionally equipped and set, taking good care of any omitted concerns with others – that deliberate training of not only having death on your mind, but also on your lips, is a most useful practice to deliver you from unease. Not to mention; any man who instructed another how to die, also taught him how to lead his life, fearlessly and without excess baggage. It can be found that a resolve to die is harsher to assimilate when you are physically fit than when you are febrile and laid up. In other words, you no longer clasp pleasure with a sturdy hand when you begin to be deprived of the ability to reap its benefits – then you could consider death with a kind of depleted aversion toward it, as you naturally feel yourself to be in its neighbourhood. For as Caesar says, things frequently look larger from a distance and smaller within reach. Thus, it is advisable that you do not grow discouraged by drawing conclusions about things you know little about – the vague, distant and faded should be attended to before being rashly and passionately discerned.

It’s worth considering that if any of us were abruptly catapulted into elderliness, we would find the sudden metamorphosis intolerable and disturbing. However, more or less indiscernibly, mother nature guides us down a gradual hill. Slowly, she inundates us in that pitiable condition and cushions us, so no thrust is felt when that innocuous youth expires inside us. Nonetheless, in truth, that is a more cruel passing than the thorough disappearance of a withering existence as agedness crosses the great divide. It is not so heinous a jump from a miserable situation to oblivion, but it certainly is serious from a pleasant and booming existence to one filled with hardhsip and agony. Why should we, then, be afraid of losing that which once lost can’t be mourned? If we are terrorized by the innumerable facets of death, is it not more adverse to dread them all than to tolerate one sole ending?

In the same way our emergence nurtured all things, so does our passing bear the end of all things. Death is, indeed, the genesis of another living being. In fact, we sobbed like this upon our birth and we paid an equally dear cost when we pierced this existence, likewise peeling off our preceding wrongs in the process. A long life or a short life – it’s beside the point; both are consolidated by death as longness and shortness don’t pertain to non-existence. Death is an aspect of yourself, and since birth implies death, they can’t be disengaged from each other. So, to flee death is to flee yourself – understand that this aliveness that you are so fond of, this animateness, is impartially split between expiration and existence. From the moment you were delivered, your pathway was driven not only by life but death aswell. You were endowed with the offering of life, and death began to eat it hungrily. As Seneca sensibly remarks, “As we are born we die; the end of our life is attached to its beginning.” You are in a state of continual dying so long as you are living; when you are no longer in existence, you are after death. So, after life you’re dead, but during life you’re dying, as Montaigne would say. Not to mention, death nudges those at death’s door more gravely, more crucially and in a more active a way than those undying.

If you never discovered how to make use of life, that is, if life is to no avail and vain, does it even matter if you no longer have it? – it is not like you still need it for anything beneficial or worthwhile. The fitness of living is found not in its length, but in what you make of its continuance. Remember this inevitability: everything is moving with you, nothing is not, in some form or other, being worn out. At your moment of death, whenever that may be, countless other men and beasts and other living things are dying. And nature, seeing what advantages death clings to, purposely mingled a taste of torment into it to interrupt you from cuddling it with an uncontrolled eagerness or imprudence. Furthermore, to vest you in that necessary self-restraint that neither runs away from life nor runs away from death. Thus, nature moderated both between the painful and the pleasurable.

In general, what startles us more than death are the petrifying scowls and arrangements that it typically encompasses. Indeed, it is like an unfamiliar state; where children, mothers, spouses and husbands are all shedding tears and grieving – stupefied and distraught with sorrow; the appearance of pallid and teary-eyed servants; a most dull coffin absent of all light; blazing candles; a bedside mobbed by blind physicians and preachers; briefly, a most enlarged and intensified setting that stirs up one’s dismay and terror. Rather than commemorating death in good cheers and honouring it, western people go out of our way to make it as pitiable and miserable as possible, engaging in heavy grief and deplorable, even uncontrollable lamentation. In the west, death has been swept under the carpet, we don’t want to bear it in mind or even contemplate the reality of existence; that is, that death is always beside us, and that it’s not going anywhere we please. Dispense with the idea that any mortal being can withhold death or potentially circumvent it – this is nothing more than wishful reasoning, it doesn’t change the unchangeable state of nature.

Clarity and Calculation

You can be certain that men in great quantities can be overpowering. However, when their bravery is dismantled by a hero, anxiety makes them dizzy. And the larger the quantities, the more violent the trepidation. It can loom to such an intensity that no commander can pacify it with incentive or drive. No superior can kindle that initial belief by withdrawal. The more he attempts to reinstate their animation, the more uneasy the warriors in turn feel. Nonetheless, even within the bounds of a heated and ambitious domain, there are favourable moments to mitigate suffering by logical and methodical synergy. If you wish to turn down a man’s arms, employ the powers of articulation, not the rumbles of hot-blooded judgements. A commander shall always be more single-minded, firm and resolute in misfortune than the warriors he shepherds.

A commander’s conviction is significant. If he is sure of himself and of his warriors’ dominance, he is more disposed to remain vigilant and ensure that he flustered and disconcerted the enemy. If a leader wants to secure victory, he must outmanouevre his antagonist. Further, the sharp commander should conspire and organize to expose the adversary when he’s disordered. Usually when he’s traversing laborious territory while the commander is secreted, in repose and patiently waiting for the golden chance, the unforeseen attack. Even better would be to catch the adversary slumbering while your warriors are wide awake and ready for war. There’s but one thing more spine-chilling than a psyched up horde of warriors with weapons in hand, and that’s when they are bullishly darting toward you.

Foresight and Unity

An astute commander can entice the enemy, only to disconcert his attentiveness. He is ready to be hunted, only to turn and annihilate his competitors. Time and again, there has to be inexorable spoliation before the novel and plentiful can emerge and materialize. As much as possible, a shrewd commander must recognise his enemy’s game plan and ensure to furnish him with the fitting fallacious details to keep him stumped and misguided. And if the commander presses them to disperse, he holds the upper hand. Forethought is an exalted and commanding quality because it lessens the likelihood of unforeseen events and makes the future more predictable and advantageous. In his Cyropedia, Xenophon says “When it’s night, you must think about what your troops will do when it’s day. When it’s day, you must think of how best to use the night.”

Forward planning develops integrity, harmony and unity – and since unity is the father of triumph, any kind of disintegration within your unit of people will almost always cause disaster. Consequently, a creative imagination is most useful. If you can conceive what catastrophes may transpire in the near future, you must directly stand your guard. And if the harm you envisage can’t be staved off, you should still shield your people against its most harmful consequences. When you’re the weaker nemesis, be most vigilant; when your nemesis is most defenceless, strike mercilessly. You should never chase a big cat without a distinct edge. Bear in mind: it is helpful to recollect that your foes are fewer once they’ve been trounced, and you’re more dominant for having overcome them.

Liberty, Stateliness and Prosperity

Morale should always go hand in hand with a marked modesty and a lack of pride. The true commander is the saviour, the messiah, the Good Samaritan. For what perfectly amounts to brotherly love and contentedness of mankind? Three elements; liberty, stateliness and prosperity. If you hand down this trifecta to your men, their fondness toward you will persevere. If you miscarry your own people by neglecting their preservation, you cannot sustain your rule nor carry on employing command. You must be a pillar of strength, both in pleasure and in pain – you shall revel in their success, but also share their misfortune and if possible, relieve it. Further, the leader’s hardship is continually brightened by his resplendence and renown.

Accordingly, an exalted leader encourages his men to share in his fame, because that form of humanity nourishes their vigour and strength and ratifies their merit and gravity. Invariably, more prosperity calls for more magnanimity, but many, disoriented in the murkiness of their own self-conceit, regard it as an advantageous chance for unrestrained rapacity. Would it not be shameful to pay no heed to those warriors who are away from home taking up arms for us, chasing opposers and obliterating antagonism? If moments of rapture are picked out for fierce gratification, we’ll mishandle a golden chance to buttress our fetters of brotherhood. Besides, in war a man can do his comrades copious good by passing himself off as an enemy because a dose of bitterness does not always have an undisclosed and sinful motive underlying it.

Lust, Restraint and Chance

Young warriors are not counselled on the riddles of intimacy for a reason, for if their fervour catches fire, they turn into slaves of their sexual passions. We must release ourselves from transitory joys and remember that doing so will yield ever greater honour and advantage tomorrow. It is for this purpose that young men were instructed to restrain their desires and preserve moderation over quenching impetuous cravings. So, more affluence will come to us sooner if we restrain from capitulating to avarice when it is most seductive and vain. For all you know, a man may loathe brutality and deception. But if he’s never provided with an occasion to show this beyond any doubt, he will be consigned to oblivion upon his passing. Talk is inexpensive and shoddy, many can profess and put on a sky-scraping act of morality. One must not prattle of his virtue, he must reveal it in his conduct while shielding his humility. Every now and then, we’re all furnished with a favourable chance. It is our necessity then to put our policy into practice and demonstrate our capacities, carefully tending to experience and wakefulness.

The Economy of Language

After all, the economy of language is the embodiment and spirit of command. More speaking will not salvage a plan of action from catastrophe, as intemperate chatter from the commander’s mouth conveys unruly foolhardiness and rashness. Speak succinctly, firmly and eloquently, and frame your wants in everyday reasoning to evade protestations. That is the hallmark of advantageous and masterful language. If you’re trying to lead and motivate, appeal to their pressing self-interest. If, on the other hand, your lessers ask questions, they should pay heed to their discretion and stay away from disparaging their equals – as much as possible, they should pose questions that are personable and agreeable and if they are telling jokes, they ought to know where to draw the line to avoid commotion. Remember: it is the ears not the eyes that direct our exploits and any untidiness that generates needless pandemonium could show to be ravaging in the close future.

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche attributes nobility to a kind of unwillingness or shall I say, a lack of enthusiasm toward the cheapening of our duties, by adapting them to those of the rabble. That is to say, the noble man refuses relinquishment of responsibility. This loftiness has imbued a resistance against disgrace and humiliation and a hidden disdain toward the indisposition of the mob. It suggests a cultured detachment and lack of concern toward the dormancy and blind conformity of the weak. As many an ordinary man, who carefully attempts to fashion his shape according to the greater, who are out of shape, hardly worthy of emulation. Remember why, as he picks out a sense of estrangement from the degenerate crowd. It is good to be upstanding, but bad when you don’t know that for yourself. Must you ask, whether that estrangement pushes away rectitude or restores harmony with a transcendant streak of goodness. A strength that rises above the crowd, that fuses his being with intention and chance, tying him to his topmost power. For any man to carry out duty, he must aspire to strenghten himseld and make himself sturdy. Only when he can bear a heavy charge can he continue the course and unfold upwards, as it were – there is then no enduring hesitancy, no itch to abdicate responsibility, no besetting propensity to accept defeat.

“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

The weighty man – he does not look to share his duty, especially not with those who hinge on him. As his role entails and as he knows, single-handedness is called for and reclusiveness is many a time inescapable. Those who rest on him should not be handicapped by his incapacity to bear it. It is his responsibility to shoulder it without help, as his capacity and function demonstrates that he can, if he’s truly man, pacify any excess suffering while fathering peace among his loved ones – he contends with chaos for their security, that too is a manifestation of great fondness and masculine vehemence. That man is conscious, knowing of his necessities, of what his family entails to harbour unassailability, protection, love and guidance. An awareness that is neither too egotistic nor merciless – oriented toward his community, his chief concern is hinged on inheritance, blood and brotherhood. When man knows the impression of his excellence, his attention and positioning transcends. A sweeping and intelligent approach. The righteous man acknowledges the magnitude of his responsibility and by its desire feels disposed to exalt the already prosperous fruits of his labour, with the hope that it reproduces itself outside its usual confines. With a perceptible degree of triumph, one conscious man can prompt in other men a great yearning to respect and do good unto themselves – to master one’s lack of understanding in pursuit of illuminating man’s spirit, finding law and order in a world muddled in chaos.

An Age of Untidiness

This time in which we live is pervaded by an untidiness, an age of great hesitation and ignorance, where people are inconclusive; of themselves, of others, of their desires, of their affairs. They have a foggy vision and it’s hard for them to see anything. So, we need a great clarity and a civilized intelligence if we are to take aim and do things rightly. Excellence is short and undervalued and quality is muddled in dirty water; many are reckless and many are drifting through life unconsciously, without any real forethought or concern for themselves and others. Further, there ought to be a willingness, a determination, an ambition to make living an art, to reject the lures of mediocrity and pursue a long and unavoidably lonely road paved with a progression of collapses and frustrations – inevitably, the price we pay for being excellent is repeated defeat, isolation, deprivation, restlessness and unease – does it stop there? I don’t believe that most people thoroughly comprehend to what extent one must venture to achieve a towering grade of self-mastery, but that probably explains why the greater part never see what lies beyond the edge, as they rarely consider embarking on such a pursuit, and even if they do, how many follow through? and of those who may follow through, how many endure it till the end? That kind of pertinacity is hard to come by.

The Discipline of Suffering

I believe it takes a good measure of both madness and absurdity to stick the course, to preserve a degree of sanity and to sustain the cultivation of an expansive creative power and ability, one that bullishly reaches up high and ties itself to the boundless heavens. The question you may ask yourself is whether such a road is worth the hardship and privation, to which I will respond with this: is the alternative more or less worthwhile and significant? Great suffering is an indispensability for excellence. And if man were not built to endure great suffering, is he really man? we are tough, with a capacity to suffer because it’s not bad for us and secondly, because it’s a necessary precursor to wisdom, understanding and will to power. Was it not the brilliant Nietzsche who said, “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

“The discipline of suffering, of great suffering—know ye not that it is only this discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto? The tension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune, and whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has been bestowed upon the soul—has it not been bestowed through suffering?” – Friedrich Nietzsche

As Nietzsche intimates in his intensity, is it not suffering that elevates the soul, that polishes our steel and straightens our spine? If it weren’t for our hardship, life wouldn’t be worth a king’s ransom, as it is precisely the afflictions and sorrows that give life depth, profundity, significance and stability. And it is thus the man who recognises this characteristic of life who is capable of laughing it off, as it were, and not take it personally, readily meeting it without a statement of dissatisfaction. This is not to say that he ought not to take life seriously, there are misfortunes that are precarious by nature – by their gravity, they shake up our soul and drive us down the bottom-most trenches of hell, where one can’t conceive of anything more miserable than the insufferable nightmare that scorches the spirit so generously and viciously, even when man has already been vanquished by torment.