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A Quote by Kenneth Smith on philosophy, pity, and suffering

"Poor suffering humanity" -- it is inescapably true -- suffers from nothing else so gravely as it does from its own myopic accommodations to suffering, and from its benighted characterological determination to foster even more profound and systematic suffering for itself. Of all suffering, the suffering caused by the tendency of most people to use their potential rationality, spirit, consciousness, etc. as if it were a blunt utilitarian or libidinal instrument (i.e. for purposes of banauseia or douleia), is the stupidest, the most needless, the most wasteful and obscene. But this suffering is only made worse, only confirmed in its self-pitying irrealities and self-unaccountability, by being pitied and forgiven and dismissed as all-too-natural, so "natural" that it is supposed to be beyond all moral or valuational criticism. The only solution or therapy for this perverse and profound self-suffering -- the suffering of one's own misapplied active-subjective powers as if they were conditions beyond one's control -- is truly even more acute suffering, from disillusioning the tribal myths that make the Many into a Many, and the self-darkening "faith" that keeps the theater of the modern Cave in business as a growth-industry. Responding to all the problems of human beings with indiscriminate pity (as Dostoevsky and Nietzsche saw) merely makes one into an enabler, a compliant servant in the opium den of the modern Maya.

Kenneth Smith
 
Contributed by: David Roel. More quotes added by Dave from all sources
More quotes about: philosophy, pity, suffering
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