I hate it when people say stuff that rings true and hits close to home.
“A word about my personal philosophy. It is anchored in optimism. It must be, for optimism brings with it hope, a future with purpose, and therefore, a will to fight for a better world. Without this optimism, there is no reason to carry on. If we think of the struggle as a climb up a mountain, then we must visualize a mountain with no top. We see a top, but when we finally reach it, the overcast rises and we find ourselves merely on a bluff. The mountain continues on up. Now we see the ‘real’ top ahead of us, and strive for it, only to find we’ve reached another bluff, and the top still above us. And so it goes on, interminably.
Knowing that the mountain has no top, that it is a perpetual quest from plateau to plateau, the question arises, “Why the struggle, the conflict, the heartbreak, the danger, the sacrifice. Why the constant climb?” Our answer is the same as that which a real mountain climber gives when he is asked why he does what he does. “Because it is there.”
Because life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles away in the valleys in a dreamless day-to-day existence who only purpose is the preservation of an illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the unknown. Paradoxically, they give up the dream of what may lie ahead on the heights of tomorrow for a perpetual nightmare – and endless succession of days fearing the loss of a tenuous security. “
-Saul D. Alinsky. Rules for Radicals p. 20 – 21
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
4 comments
January 25, 2017 at 6:56 am
Steve Ruis
It may wring true but it, in the end, is just bull stuff. It is all well and good to have a personal philosophy, if one understands that it is entirely fictional, but too often these things become “real” to us. Again, anytime one mentions “having a purpose in life” I am dubious they have anything to say at all.
Mr. Alinsky basically says, I’s rather go through life taking some risks rather than playing it “safe” all of the time. That is interesting if mundane. He said nothing else. He provided no justification for his preference. So, this statement is a great deal of salad dressing on very little salad.
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January 25, 2017 at 9:12 am
robert browning
And maybe he basically says, trying to expand knowledge/ improve ones condition is worth some striving.
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January 25, 2017 at 10:15 am
The Arbourist
@Steve Ruis
*g* – It goes a bit deeper than that, but I didn’t want to type the entire chapter out. :)
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January 25, 2017 at 3:54 pm
Bernie Orbust
‘It is all well and good to have a personal philosophy, if one understands that it is entirely fictional, but too often these things become “real” to us. Again, anytime one mentions “having a purpose in life” I am dubious they have anything to say at all.’
I am dubious *you* have anything to say at all. *Your* personal philosophy is that personal philosophies are fictional. Therefore, you are saying your own personal philosophy is fictional – unless there’s an objective philosophy that humans are in possession of: i.e., one that’s logically and rigorously proven. (There is not.)
No doubt, many people believe they are in possession of the truth. But that never amounts to anything more than cultural bigotry and willful ignorance.
My own personal philosophy is that the truth always transcends. We – sentient beings across the universe proper – will always be looking into the mirror, darkly. We can be aware of truths. Explore the world of ideal forms (i.e., mathematical relationships.) Even potentially boil down the entirety of existence into a story – which, in a nutshell, must, in some ways, be incomplete.
Personal development is not a struggle. That’s just some bullshit tedious disciplinarian birdbrains cooked up as an animal husbandry technique to enslave people in their primitive dominance hierarchies. What these barbarians consider civilization is really a 10,000 year war. A global rat race of all manner of cultural organism at war with one another. It’s a fucking zoo!
I can tell you what is not ‘real.’ One’s feelings/instincts/motivators/gland secretions. These are just the means by which our biological coding manipulates us. (Code designed for nomadic times, by the way. Nature clearly didn’t design us to function in environments without natural constraints. But She did give us brains enough to figure it out!)
How does one escape/transcend ‘the cave’ of genetic slavery? By developing a personal philosophy. It’s the way it’s meant to be played!
(Communal philosophies are cults that take on a life of their own: they are typically the problem.)
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