72. The enemy!
Becoming successful is easy. You only have to be able to count to three: 1) Create an enemy; 2) Make yourself ‘needed’ to fight this enemy; 3) Simply go for it.
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It’s too bad that in all this, the word ‘simply’ is crucial. It means that people with a relevant level of intelligence have a big disadvantage. They don’t just ‘simply’ go for it with disregard to anything else. They think.
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Take medicine. Diseases are ‘the enemy’. Medicine is ‘needed’ to fight this enemy. 1, 2…3. Just like that. Does it matter whether diseases do not exist as natural-kind-phenomena, but only as conventions? Does it matter whether most of these conventions nowadays do not fit at all the concept of ‘enemy’ in any case because they are… the people themselves?
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Take world politics. The other side is ‘the enemy’. But who is the enemy? Well, the enemy is the other side of course. Rather circular. Be it communists or capitalists, terrorists, jewists, simply-not-my-religionists, simply-not-my-colorists, non-democratists, anti-democratists, pseudo-democratists, nuclear weaponists, alienists, I-do-not-know-anymore-but-will-find-something-ists, or etc. And lo! Some success-seeker is ‘needed’ to fight this enemy! 1, 2…3. Boring, isn’t it?
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Take cigarettes. Take juvenile delinquency. Take ‘the boss’. Take parents in some you-know-when stage of most children’s development… Take anything. The simplest ladder towards success is always very simple indeed. But seldom or never does it lead to human dignity, happiness, inner strength, growth of potential or anything positive. It leads to ego-power, but at the expense of human beings, including the ones with the heightened ego-power. In other words, it’s just not good.
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Or should I say: it’s bad?
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I think so, in many cases (except where it has a function as transitory stage). I really do. And I don’t mean it in a relative way (as ‘this’ being worse than ‘that’). I mean it in an absolute way: it is what badness is about. It’s the definition itself of badness. Someone/thing somewhere gave us humans the freedom of choice. That’s OK. Despite everything, I think we should always remain grateful for that. But it’s a choice with a sting. In order to be able to choose, an ‘ego’ is needed. Of course, this ego can choose to always choose for itself. And so, in many cases it does. And it chooses power. Ego-power. 1, 2…3.
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Fighting the ego is no solution. In fact, it would come down to the same thing. The ego is not ‘the enemy’, except that of an ego. In a number of cases, both are even the same ego. Then what is the solution?
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I think the solution is a flower.
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I used this image before. The ego is the top of the flower bud. If the flower opens, the top of the bud doesn’t disappear, but ‘transcends’ into a beautiful whole. However, if the bud is too sticky, the flower never opens and rots in the bud.
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That’s quite a choice, isn’t it?
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