“And you’re saying that these ideals of yours — courage and compassion and contemplation — aren’t relics of the ancient world. You want us to see them as real possibilities, here and now. You concede that we in the West live in a culture that rewards pragmatism and skepticism. But you think that young people in particular ought to consider arranging their lives around these ideals. This young man might be a thinker; this young woman a warrior; another young person might live for compassion. Is that right?”
.. “If someone came into my office,” he said, “and told me that he wanted to find the enduring truth, or become saintly, or be a heroic warrior, I know exactly what I’d say to him. I’d say, ‘You are suffering from neurosis (at the very least) and you are in need of therapy, the sooner the better.’ For there are no true ideals, only idealizations. Your so-called ideals are merely sources of delusion.”
.. My talk, and my teaching from which the talk arose, were apparently inducements to mental illness, minor or major. Ideals were myths, and they could lead you into serious trouble. This was Freud’s view, I understood, and though psychotherapy has veered from Freud in many regards, it will not be easy for anyone to find a therapist who will tell you that the best way to overcome your psychological difficulties is to embrace an ideal.
.. To put it crudely, the superego wants perfection; the ego wants balance and calm; the id wants everything it can get: power and money and sex and maybe a little more sex afterward.
.. The idealist is the one who will not make deals. He puts all his resources on one spot — courage or compassion or truth — and then goes for it. He may triumph. He may crash and burn. He may, in time, do both.
.. Anthony Storr, in a book called “Psychology and the Mind”, tells of speaking with Freud’s nephew, who told Storr that “my uncle [Freud] hated music.” Storr was stunned, and assuming he misunderstood, asked for clarification.
“No,” the nephew continued, “he hated it. he was uncomfortable with the emotions it aroused.”
Well, there you have it, I thought. Anyone who hates music cannot possibly understand the first thing about human beings.
.. Pragmatism and skepticism are as neurotic and one-sided as various idealisms.
.. Therapists enable Americans to cope within American culture.
.. George Carlin said that “inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.” I heard him say it when I was a young idealist but never knew the full truth of it until I became a cynical adult
Too many incentives demoralizes work.
Too many incentives demoralizes work.
Every job that involves other people is moral work.
Losing Is Winning: Virtue is its own reward
We are not to be rewarded for our virtue later; virtue is its own reward–now–for both me and for others.