February 2012 Archives

After complaining that my X thousand pages big Bible that I have at home is too big to carry around and also to read in my limited time that I have for books at home, my friend went, bought and gave me new testament in Slovak. So I accepted the gift and read the 4 gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and as usual kept notes.

First of all I find it really interesting that such an old book is still readable and what is more impressive that a lot (most?) of things apply today like they did 2000 years ago. It's like Harman wrote:

Second the fact that at that time there we no dictaphones and it looks like a lot of the text was written only very late after it happen, still there are a lot of details and exact quotes. For sure back then common people had much better memory, because they had no other way to note things down only in their mind. They had different tools, skills and possibilities, still they core of what makes humans humans persisted.

Here are my raw notes without comments. I'll post the comments later.

What to do?

What not to do?

Where to go?

What good things to do for eternal life?

Why parables?

Why is that we pay much more attention to the ones who fails, loose their way, need help or rescue?

Who belongs to the kingdom of God?

Who doesn't belong to the kingdom of God?

What is astonishing?

What is an impact of words of goodness?

How much to judge?

Should we keep the law?

Should he kept the law?

Why do people who really know someone can not honor him?

Where does the evil come from?

Why should we share? Why should we give?

What to do with temptation?

How to become better?

Who is great?

Who is good?

Who is blessed?

What will happen to the ones who will kill His son?

Depart in peace?

How to recognize good?

Should we hide?

Who is my neighbour?

What happens to a man after he gets rid of his unclean spirits?

Why is there darkness in me?

Who is responsible?

Who can follow?

Where is the kingdom of God?

Dead of Jesus?

Where is Jesus?

What is the future?

What is judgement day?

The rest of my notes:

Here are my notes from book "The Structure of Value" by Robert S. Hartman, man who send his life searching for an answer to the question of - What is good?

• p3 Some students begin by forming an opinion ... and it is not till afterwards that they begin to read the texts. They run a great risk of not understanding them at all, or of understanding them wrongly. What happens is that a kind of tacit contest goes on between the text and the preconceived opinions of the reader; the mind refuses to grasp what is contrary to its idea, and the issue of the evidence of the text but that the text yields, bends, and accommodates itself to the preconceived opinion. --Fustel de Coulanges
• p44 There is a jocular saying that the philosopher knows less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything, while the scientist knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.
• p47 Our social and moral knowledge, thus, is in the alchemistic stage, and our social and moral life bears witness to it.
• p50 Just as the medieval schoolmen preferred to look through their theological glasses rather than through Galileo's telescope, so today's positivists and naturalists prefer to look through the telescopes and microscopes of science rather than through the lenses of inner vision discovered by G.E.Moore.
• p67 The middle Ages were not what the romantic imagination paints, but instead a rugged age much more insensitive than ours todays. Tortures, burnings, hangings were public spectacles, their thrill was like today's bullfights or prizefights. The ladies of high society went to the place of execution the night before and slept in their coaches in order not to miss the entertainment. However ghastly and shocking these tortures were to any normal person, what is far more shocking is the fact that so many people of fashion found pleasure and excitement in them.
• p67 Today's moral reality is still philosophical; it is not fundamentally different from that of antiquity or the Middle Ages. We have the same fundamental values and disvalues, even through we practice them with greater refinement, including torture. The new moral science ought to revolutionize our moral understanding itself and hence our moral practice, in the same way that natural science has revolutionized our understanding of nature and out sensitivity to it. The precise knowledge of the axiological relations ought to make us more sensitive to moral reality. It ought to teach us more profoundly the art of living.
• p69 Thus, the new science will add spirit to technology, value to energy, human sensitivity to the sensitivity of instruments. It will develop man as natural science has developed matter. The world of natural science will be succeeded by the world of moral science. The world of value will follow the course of the world of fact, to ever subtler refinement of moral sensitivity. For value must follow the structure of moral science as fact followed that of natural science. As the structure of each science is refined, so is its subject matter.
• p70 What to an American appears as one thing, appears to an African as an entirely different thing. If an American and a North African were to draw the battleship Missouri - the experiment has been made - the American's drawing would look like a photograph and the African's like a dream, for the latter lacks a frame of reference to make it understandable to his intellect, even though his eyes see it - just as the schoolmen did no see what Galileo showed them. We see what we have a mind to see.
• p80 Science, we have noted, uses concepts of generality with precision while philosophy uses concepts of generality without precision.
• p92 We can see with our own eyes that the core of the material world is found in some formula - which are nothing but small black signs on white paper - of Newton, Einstein, and others, and that from these symbols arose the technological world of today and its nuclear power. The whole development began with Galileo, in whose mind the fundamental transformation of which we have spoken took place, and Aristotelian concepts became symbols. It is thus beyond doubt that the difference between philosophy and science is defined by the difference between abstractions from the commonsense world and constructions of ideal relations applicable to this world. It is equally beyond doubt that the world will not be morally efficient unless the same transition takes place in moral philosophy.
• p96 Ethics in all its forms comes down to the question, what is the principle of the "Good." ... Positive morals cannot be appealed to, for each answers the question materially in a different manner. One sees happiness, another satisfaction, a third justice, a fourth love as the Good. ... Philosophy has early recognized the complete onesidedness of positive morality and consequently searched for the Principle of the Good as something more general, superordinated to these fragmentary insights. It was looked for as the genus to the manifold of the species. The Platonic "Idea of the Good" was the most radical such attempt. But what is the content of such an "Idea of the Good"? It has been looked for in vain. Neither Plato nor any later philosopher has been able to determine it. --Nicolai Hartmann
• p100 It would then be nonsense to speak, for example, of economic value; for the genus would be like speaking of green flying saucers.
• p103 The value predicate "good", thus is a property of concepts rather than of objects. When a person understands that a thing "is good," is is not necessary that he knows anything of the thing in question; but he must know something of the concept of which the thing is an instance. He must know what is an automobile but he does not have to know what is my automobile. The word "good" applies not to the knowledge of the particular automobile but to the knowledge of the concept "automobile."
• p103 A thing is good if it fulfills the intension of its concept.
• p108 Why ought I to be good? Is it better to be good than bad? Is it conceivable that it would be better to be bad than good? Ought the good to be? Ought what is to be good? Is the best better than the good? If the good out to be, what about the best? Is the perfect better than the good? Is the perfect better than the best? Ought what is to be perfect? If the perfect ought to be, ought the good not to be? Is the best good enough? Is the best perfect? Is the perfect worse rather then better than the good? Is there any good at all? Is all good relative? What is the value of value? What is the value of fact? Is value?
• p108 To This level belong the interrelationships between the various value sciences, and the the value aspects of the natural sciences, e.g. the relation between music and astronomy in Pythagoras between astronomy and theology in Plato, between theology and chemistry in alchemy, the confusion ethics and other sciences, the confusion sciences and their subject matter, statements such as "To be good is to do God's will," "To be good is to be preferred," "To be good is to feel satisfied," "To be good is to be a proletarian"; the value nature of Leibniz's or Spinoza's metaphysics, the value value nature of Horney's, Maslow's or Fromm's psychology, the value nature of a value theory, etc.
• p109 I can value a thing only if I know it, that is, if I know its name and its properties. That this is true is confirmed by the fact that when we want to value something precisely we call in an expert. The difference between him and us is that he knows more about the thing than we do. This knowledge and valuation go hand in hand. It follows that the world as a whole, if it is to be judged valuationally, must be understood, and this in turn means that if value is possible the world can be understood. In other words, the world itself is rational insofar as it is valuable.
• p111 Anything which under one concept is good because it fulfills the concept may under another concept be bad because it does not fulfill that concept. Thus, as Spinoza observed, a good ruin is a bad house, and a good house is a bad ruin. It is art of the optimist always to find that concept in terms of which the thing appears good, and that of the pessimist always to find that concept in terms of which that thing appears bad. The thing is always the same...
• p111 Goodness or Badness of the World. A thing is good if it has all the properties of its concept. The proper concept of the world must contain all the natural properties there are, have been, or will be. The world is that which has all these properties and this always fulfills its concept. Therefore it is good. If a concept of the world is posited that does not contain all the properties there are, then it is not the concept of the world, and wrong thinking results, in the light of which the world is bad because it does not fulfill the concept posited. The goodness of the world is, of course, not ethical but axiological goodness. Although the world as such is good, the things in it may, indeed must be, both good and bad; for as we have seen anything that is good under one concept may be bad under another. Badness thus is the transposition of concepts or the incompatibility of things which in themselves are good. The world, thus, axiologically good as it is, contains the maximum variety of good and bad things.
• p113 The fulfillment by a thing of a singular concept, understood in this sense, constitutes intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is the valuation of poets and artists, lovers and mystics, magicians and advertisers, chefs de cuisine and politicians, creative theologians and scientists. It is emphatic - and empathic - valuation.
• p115 As can be demonstrated, the value of a person is infinitely higher than that of a group. It is infinitely more valuable, in the strictly-defined sense of infinity, to be a morally good person than to be a good member of society, say a good conductor, baker or professor.
• p121 When an idea which has grown familiar as an unanalyzed whole is first resolved accurately into its component parts - which is what we do when we define it - there is almost always a feeling of unfamiliarity produced by the analysis, which tends to cause a protest against the definition. --Bertrand Russell
• p125 To say, for example, that a murderer cannot be good is to commit this fallacy. A murderer cannot be morally good, but he can be good as a murderer, that is, he can murder well.
• p132 By intrinsic properties of a thing we shall understand 1] all the properties which make up the description of the thing, and 2] all the properties which characterize this and no other thing, and 3] all the properties without which the thing would not be what it is.
• p145 Since the good is not a descriptive property but a logical one it cannot be grasped by the senses. It is in this respect an "irreal" quality, as the phenomenologists hold. Trying to catch it by naturalistic methods is like capturing an electron by observation. The unreality or nondecriptiveness of good is like an uncertainty relation of moral science. The only way to penetrate to goodness is by the eye of the mind, a Gedankenexperiment in the sense of Planck, an intuition in the sense of Moore. One has to capture its formal structure.
• p166 In terms of choice or preference this means that we ought to choose or prefer what is good; that we ought not to choose what is bad; that we ought to choose what is better; and that we ought not to choose what is worse. It also means that 1] it is good for us rather than what is bad for us, 2] it is good for us to choose what is better for us rather than what is worse for us, 3] it is better for us to choose what is good for us rather than what is bad for us, and 4] it is better for us to choose what is better for us rather than what is worse for us. In terms of existence it means that, since an existing thing has more properties than a nonexisting thing, existence is better than nonexistence, it is better to exist than not to exist, things ought to exist rather than not exist.
• p193 Fact is one of the possibilities of varying the given in imagination. --Edmund Husserl
• p194 Geometric circles, triangles, electrons, numbers, and the like - systemic things - cannot as such be either good or bad. They can only be, or not be, such things. The values connected with systemic concepts, therefore, can only be synthetic being or not being, complete fulfillment or complete nonfulfillment, perfection or nonperfection. Systemic value is the value of Perfection. As Aristotle rightly says, a number cannot be "mutilated"; for the loss of a unit makes it another number. But a cup can be mutilated; for the loss of a handle still leaves it a cup.
• p195 If systemic value is the value of Perfection and extrinsic value that of Goodness, singular or intrinsic value is the value of Uniqueness.
• p210 According to the axiom, a thing is good if it has all its intensional properties, fair if it has more intensional properties than it lacks, bad if it lacks more than it has, and no good if it lacks most of the intensional properties. We were able in this way to define the fundamental value terms.
• p252 The minimum abstraction has the maximum structure and the maximum abstraction has the minimum structure.
• p268 The terms "positive" and "negative" were defined by means of the term "ought." The positive value of a thing is that which it ought not to be. As we have seen, a thing ought always to be good and ought not to be bad; it ought always to fulfill and ought never not to fulfill the intension of its concept: it ought, in other words, always be as valuable as possible.
• p268 This implies, as we have seen, that no thing as such is bad; all that is, is good the way it is. But the combination of things can be bad; and bad is indeed nothing but the incompatibility of things, or things in transposition, which means the lack of a positive concept covering the things in question; of a concept, that is, which fulfills or contains the expositions of both. ... A good Buick and a good Ford transpose each other when they collide; and the wreck may be called a transposition in the literal sense of the word. The result is both a bad Buick and a bad Ford, or rather, a Buick disvalued in terms of a Ford and vice versa. The wreck, however, is a good wreck, fulfilling the definition of "wreck," which in turn means a combination of two bad cars.
• p269 A good man, a good rope, and a good Christmas tree are transposed when the man is hanged by the rope on the Christmas tree. As a transposition, this is axiologically bad; but it is an axiologically good bad, that is, a good transposition, namely, a good hanging. On the other hand, if a man pulls the Christmas tree behind him on a rope we have a composition of values, of the same elements, and the complex value "man-pulling-Christmas-tree" or "Christmas-tree-puller," the concept of which contains all three connotations in question. The actual person fulfilling this concept is "a good Christmas-tree-puller."
• p276 Thus, a person who values a system not for its inherent systemic merit S but out of his own personal needs disvalues its systemic values in terms of his own person. He is really an antisystemic person, and anti-intellectual posing as an intellectual. He uses the system to build up his own ego, that is, he uses it as rationalization, and then values intrinsically, again out of personal need, this rationalization of building up of his own pseudo-self. Here belong fanatics of all kinds. Fetishists behave analogously toward things.

Man's Search for Meaning is a book written by Viktor E. Frank who was a psychiatrist at the University Clinic in Vienna at the time when he was brought to concentration camp, which he survived. As such he has a a lot to say about suffering, about overcoming suffering and also what comes after. He seemed to have found an answer to the question of "How is it possible to say yes to life in spite of everything?". Viktor E. Frank is founder of "The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy" - logotherapy. In his own words:

Despite the evil that he survived he kept optimistic and found his meaning in life without need for revenge. He returned back to Vienna after WWII.

And the Meaning of life?

Here are my notes:

• p5 On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles - whatever one mau choose to call them - we know: the best of us did not return.
• p7 We are indebted to the Second World War for enriching our knowledge of the "psychopathology of the masses" (if I may quote a variation of the well-known phrase and title of a book by LeBon), for the war gave us the war of nerves and it gave us the concentration camp.
• p22 Disgust, horror and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really feel any more. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such commonplace sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him any more.
• p37 The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
• p38 My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing - which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
• p44 To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.
• p48 No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
• p66 Fundamentaly, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom - which cannot be taken away - that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
• p67 If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
• p69 This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes" What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here - I am here - I am life, eternal life.'"
• p71 A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. In a different connection, we have already spoken of the tendency there was to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But in robbing the present of its reality there lay a certain danger. It becomes easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities which really did exist. Regarding our "provisional existence" as unreal was in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life; every thing in a way became pointless. Such people forgot that often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself. Instead of taking the camp's difficulties as a test of the inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequences. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless.
• p72 Instead of taking the camp's difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless.
• p74 What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
• p76 Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how"
• p77 We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answers must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
• p91 A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering has no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and still more intensely.
• p98 Let me explain why I have employed the term "logotherapy" as the name for my theory. Logos is a Greek word which denotes "meaning". Logotherapy, or, as it has been called by some authors, "The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy," focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man's search for such a meaning. According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power on which Adlerian psychology, using the term "striving for superiority," is focused.
• p104 Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, of the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill. It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning from its state of latency. I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man need in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology "homeostasis," i.e., a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. What man needs is not homeostasis but what I call "noödynamics," i.e., the existential dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is represented by a meaning that is to be fulfilled and the other pole by the man who has to fulfill it. And one should not think that this holds true only for normal conditions; in neurotic individuals, it is even more valid. If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So if therapists wish to foster their patients' mental health, they should not be afraid to create a sound amount of tension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one's life.
• p106 The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century. This is understandable; it may be due to a two fold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a truly human being. At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is imbedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like Paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tell him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).
• p108 The Meaning of Life? To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: "Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?" There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it. As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
• p111 Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.
• p113 In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
• p122 Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect of by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.
• p138 To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to "be happy". But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to "be happy". Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation. This need for a reason is similar in another specifically human phenomenon - laughter. If you want anyone to laugh you have to provide him with a reason, e.g., you have to tell him a joke. In no way is it possible to evoke real laughter by urging him, or having him urge himself, to laugh. Doing so would be the same as urging people posed in front of a camera to say "cheese,", only to find that in the finished photographs their faces are frozen in artificial smiles.
• p139 In the first, as I was told by American soldiers, a behavior pattern crystallized to which they referred as "give-up-itis." In the concentration camps, this behavior was paralleled by those who one morning, at five, refused to get up and go to work and instead stayed in the hut, on the straw wet with urine and feces. Nothing - neither warnings nor threads - could induce them to change their minds. And then something typical occurred: they took out a cigarette from deep down in a pocket where they had hidden it and started smoking. At that moment we knew that for the next forty-eight hours or so we would watch them dying. Meaning orientation had subsided, and consequently the seeking of immediate pleasure had taken over.
• p150 Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.
• p150 In fact, the opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of our lives. But also the potentialities alone are so affected. For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irrevocably lost, but rather, on contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity. From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past - the potentialities they have actualized - and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past. ... But today's society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy an, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual's value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler's program, that is to say, "mercy" killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer.
• p153 Sigmund Freud once asserted, "Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly yo hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge." Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the "individual differences" did not "blur" but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints. ... You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.