Author: [Germany] Arthur Schopenhauer
Publishing House: Shanghai People's Publishing House
Translator: Wei Qichang
Publication year: 2008- 10
It is ok to hide others' ignorance, but there is no reason to pretend to be superior.
Just like a person carrying his own body, he doesn't feel the burden, and he feels the weight only when he moves someone else's body. Similarly, he will not notice his own shortcomings and bad habits, but only those of others. Therefore, everyone should take others as a mirror and clearly see their own shortcomings, evil deeds and other bad places. But in most cases, people are like a dog growling at the mirror. It thought there was a dog in the mirror, but it didn't know it was itself. People who criticize other people's shortcomings and mistakes are actually improving themselves. Therefore, people who tend to and are used to silently paying attention to and criticizing other people's external behaviors and what others have done or have not done are all promoting and perfecting themselves. Because such people at least have enough sense of justice, or enough pride and vanity to avoid doing things that they often criticize so harshly and harshly. For those who tolerate others, the opposite is true.
The more a person has, the more dissatisfied he is with the secular arrangements, and the more he wants to quit the secular circle. This arrangement is based on the fact that in this world of poverty and deprivation, the means to deal with poverty and demand are the most important and therefore overwhelming.
True friendship has such a premise: strong, purely objective and completely detached sympathy for the pain and misfortune of friends. This also means that we really feel the same way with our friends. However, human nature is incompatible with this practice. Therefore, true friendship, like those giant sea snakes, is either a legend or exists only in other places. I don't know what that is. Of course, many contacts between people are mainly based on various hidden selfish motives, but these contacts also contain a little real friendship. In this way, they have been beautified and respected by people. In such a flawed world, it is not entirely unreasonable to label these connections as friendship. They are far better than those casual acquaintances.
To test whether a person is our true friend, the best time is when we tell him that something unfortunate has happened, except for some situations that need the exact help of friends and make some sacrifices. At this moment, his face either reveals sincere and impurity-free sadness or reveals a calm look; Or, he will show a different expression. At such times, people we usually call friends can't even hide a satisfied smile on their faces. Nothing can make others feel better than telling others that we have just suffered great misfortune, or revealing some personal weaknesses to others without reservation. This is a typical example of human nature. Friends are too far apart, and not seeing each other for a long time will damage the friendship between friends, although we are not so willing to admit it. If we don't meet for a long time, even our closest friends will gradually become abstract concepts with the passage of time; Our attention to them has become more and more rational, and even this relationship is just an inertia. But we can keep a strong and deep interest in those people we meet day and night, even if they are just our favorite animals. Human nature is so subject to the senses.
Friends say they are sincere, but in fact the enemy is sincere. Therefore, we should take the enemy's attacks and accusations as a bitter medicine and learn more about ourselves. Is a friend in need really that rare? On the contrary, once we make friends with someone, he starts to get into trouble and borrow money from us.
For most people, a person's intelligence and thoughts can only arouse people's hatred and disgust for him; Moreover, this kind of hatred and disgust has become more intense because of this reason: people who feel these emotions have no reason to complain about the causes of these emotions, and they even have to hide them from themselves. The actual situation is this: if a person observes and feels some kind of intellectual advantage in the other person, then this person will come to the conclusion that the other person must also observe and feel his own intellectual disadvantage to the same extent. This is his private conclusion, and he is not very clear about it himself.
So Gracian is right: "The only way to please others is to wrap yourself in the skin of the stupidest animal". Showing your cleverness is actually indirectly accusing others of being stupid and incompetent. Moreover, a vulgar person, facing his own opposites, will have resistance in his heart, and it is his jealousy that secretly stirs up this emotion. We can see every day that vanity satisfaction brings more happiness than other happiness, but the only way to get this happiness is to compare ourselves with others. For people, what we are most proud of is spiritual and ideological quality, because it is based on this advantage that talents are superior to animals. Therefore, if you show your undoubted advantages in this respect, especially in front of others, it is an extremely reckless and reckless behavior. In this way, people will be stimulated to seek revenge and will wait for an opportunity to insult the offender. Because by insulting people, you can leave the field of thought and intelligence and enter the field of desire, and in terms of desire, people are all the same. Therefore, in society, status and wealth can be expected to be respected and loved by people, but spiritual advantages can never be expected to be treated like this. Fortunately, at best, the advantages of spiritual thought are ignored by others; If not, the superior spirit will be considered rude, or people will think that the owners of this superior spirit obtained their talent through illegal means, but now they are showing it off! To this end, everyone privately intends to humiliate such people in some way. Everyone is waiting for the right time to do it. Even the most humble behavior, it is difficult to successfully make people forgive their ideological and intellectual advantages.
In contrast, it is really recommended to show inferior spiritual thoughts, because just as warmth makes our body comfortable, it is also pleasant for our spirit to feel our own advantages. Therefore, everyone will naturally approach the object that will bring him this sense of superiority, just as he instinctively walks towards the sun or approaches a stove. Then, such an object, for men, is a person with obviously inferior spiritual and ideological quality; For women, it is people who are not as good-looking as themselves. Of course, it takes a lot of time to clearly show your shortcomings to the people you meet. We can see how friendly and enthusiastic a decent girl is to welcome an ugly girl! For men, physical advantage is not a crucial issue, although it is more comfortable to stand with people shorter than us than with people taller than us. So generally speaking, among men, stupid and ignorant people will be welcomed, while among women, ugly women can be loved. These people will easily get the reputation of being kind-hearted, because everyone needs to find an excuse for their love to deceive themselves and others. Therefore, no matter what kind of excellent spiritual and ideological quality you have, you will isolate yourself. People hate other people's advantages in this respect and avoid them. In order to find an excuse to do so, people put all kinds of shortcomings and sins on this prominent man. Length has the same effect on women. Beautiful women can never find same-sex friends, even ordinary female companions.
We trust others and reveal secrets to others, mostly because we are lazy, selfish and vain. Lazy, because we would rather trust others than check, find and be vigilant ourselves; Selfishness is because talking about our own needs leads us to reveal some secrets to others; Vanity is because we are proud of what we talk about. Nevertheless, we still hope that others will respect the trust we have given them. In contrast, we should not be angry because of the distrust of others, because this distrust contains respect for honesty, that is, it contains a sincere view that honesty is very rare. Because of this, we have to doubt whether honesty exists.
Politeness is an agreement that we keep silent: we all ignore each other and avoid blaming each other for their moral and intellectual defects. In this way, our defects will not be easily exposed, which is good for everyone and good for each other. Politeness is wise, and impolite words and deeds are stupid.
Polite words and deeds are like counterfeit money. It is unwise to be stingy when using counterfeit money, but it is wise to give generously.
Wax is hard and brittle in nature, but it will soften when it is slightly warmed, and people can knead it into any shape they like. Similarly, using politeness and friendliness can make even a stubborn and hostile person obedient and convenient. Therefore, politeness is as important to people as warmth is to wax. Of course, once politeness requires us to show the greatest concern for everyone, and in fact most people don't deserve such attention, it becomes a difficult thing to remain polite. In this way, we have to pretend to be interested in others, but in fact, if we don't pay attention to them, our mood will be much happier. How to combine politeness with pride is a highly skilled thing. If we don't exaggerate our own value and dignity, and thus produce disproportionate arrogance; At the same time, we clearly know everyone's thoughts and judgments about others at ordinary times, so we won't be angry because of other people's insults. Insult is actually contempt for others. We should always remember that common courtesy is just a mask with a smiling face, so we should not make a fuss when others occasionally move or temporarily put away the mask.
Judge what you should and shouldn't do, and you can't follow others' advice, because everyone's position, situation and relationship are different, and people's personality differences will also make people handle things with some different colors.
We should not refute other people's views, but should remember that if we try to make a person give up all kinds of absurdities in his views, even if we have methuselah's life, we will not finish the task. In addition, when talking to others, don't try to correct others, even if what we say is well-intentioned; Because it is easy to offend and offend others, but it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to make up for it. If we happen to hear other people's absurd remarks and start to make us angry, we should imagine it as just a conversation between two fools in a comedy. This fact has long been proved: whoever comes to this world and seriously educates people on the most important issues, who can get away with it, is lucky.
Even if we have every right to praise ourselves, we can't really do so. Because vanity is so unusual, and people's real talents and efforts are so unusual, once we appear in self-praise, even if it is only indirect self-praise, people will bet at the odds of 100 1: we say such things as vanity, and we lack enough common sense to realize how ridiculous what we say.
We should express our views through what we have never said, not through what we have said. It is wise to choose the former, but vanity makes it the latter. We often have the opportunity to have both, but we usually choose the latter for instant pleasure at the expense of the permanent benefits brought by the former.
Some people who don't show any insight in other aspects can become experts in studying other people's private affairs. Although these people can't perceive and are not interested in universal truth, they are passionate about individual truth. In view of this, all the masters who teach the wisdom of life are eager to persuade people to remain silent with various arguments.
It is useless to express anger and hatred with words or expressions, which is neither wise nor dangerous, but also ridiculous and cliche. Therefore, we must not show hatred or anger except in action. The more successfully we can avoid expressing anger through words and expressions, the more successfully we can express anger through actions. Cold-blooded animals are the only poisonous animals.
Don't emphasize your words. The purpose of this precise old saying is to let others discover the meaning of our words with their own understanding, because the understanding of ordinary people is slow, and we have finished our words before they understand the meaning of our words. But if we emphasize when we speak, it means that we are appealing to other people's feelings, so that things will get the opposite result. For many people, we can say some very rude words in a polite and friendly tone without direct danger.
Everyone has some innate specific principles, which are deeply hidden in everyone's blood and bone marrow, because these principles are the result of everyone's thoughts, feelings and wishes. People don't realize their principles in abstract thoughts. Only when we look back on our lives will we notice that we have actually been following our own principles, and these principles are manipulating us like an invisible rope. These principles vary from person to person. People take these principles to happiness or misfortune.
After realizing that things are inevitable and inevitable, the mind will feel comforted and quiet. Anyone who deeply and completely understands this truth will first make his own efforts; I am willing to bear the pain I have to bear. We can take those trivial little misfortunes that bother us all the time as deliberate exercises and exercises, so that we will not lose the ability to endure great misfortunes in comfort. We should be like Siegfried with horns, that is to say, we are unmoved by trivial troubles encountered in daily communication, arrogant attitudes and inappropriate behaviors of others, and trivial offenses of others, let alone take these things to heart. We should regard these things as pebbles on the way forward, be insensitive and kick them away with our feet. We really can't seriously recall and ponder these trivial things.
The most dangerous and terrible thing is people's cunning, not people's anger. Indeed, the human mind is a more powerful weapon than a lion's paw. A truly sophisticated person is one who never hesitates or hesitates, nor does he act in a hurry.
As we all know, misfortune and disaster will be alleviated if they are shared by all. People seem to regard boredom as some kind of misfortune and disaster, so they get together for the purpose of being bored with adversity. Just as people's love for life is actually just a fear of death, people's desire for social interaction is not a direct desire in the final analysis. Not based on the love of social groups, but from the fear of loneliness. Because people are not actively seeking the pleasant company of others, but avoiding the desolation and depression brought by loneliness and their monotonous ideology. Because of this, we have to accept bad people and tolerate the frustration and embarrassment that will inevitably arise when dealing with them. However, if the aversion to these inconveniences prevails, thus forming the habit of being alone, and tempering the ability to bear the feelings and impressions of loneliness, then loneliness can no longer produce the above effects. At this time, we can get pleasure from living alone without longing for the company of the crowd; Because the demand for people is not direct after all, what's more, we are used to the pleasant benefits brought by solitude now.
Understanding the essence of things, that is, the true content of our knowledge, lies in our intuitive grasp of the world. But we can only get such an intuitive understanding through ourselves, and any way of indoctrination is powerless. Therefore, our intelligence, like our morality, does not come from the outside, but from the depths of our own essence. No educator can turn a born fool into a man with brains.
In this youth, what bothers us and leads to our unhappiness is our pursuit of happiness. We insist that we can find happiness in life. As a result, our hopes are constantly frustrated, and our dissatisfaction also arises. The vague happiness we dream of is changing all kinds of magical images at will, but we are chasing the prototypes of these images in vain. Therefore, in our youth, no matter what kind of environment and circumstances we are in, we will be dissatisfied with it, because we are just beginning to understand the emptiness and misery of life. Before that, the life we expected was completely different, but we blamed the emptiness and pain of life everywhere on our environment and situation. In youth, if people can get timely education, so as to eradicate the misconception that we can harvest as much as we can in this world, then people can benefit a lot. However, the actual situation is just the opposite. In our early years, we knew life mainly through poems and novels, not through reality. We are in the rising sun's youth, and the images depicted in poems and novels flash before our eyes; We are tortured by longing, eager to see those scenes come true, eager to catch the rainbow. Young people expect their lives to be like an interesting novel. Their disappointment also comes from this.
All happiness is illusory, but pain is real. So what we are trying to pursue now is only a state without pain and trouble, not pleasure, at least for rational people.
There are some outstanding and advantaged people among all sentient beings. Since they are such people, they actually do not belong to all sentient beings, but exist alone. Therefore, according to their own advantages, they just feel these two diametrically opposite feelings about life more or less: when they are young, they feel abandoned by everyone; When I am old, I feel that I have escaped from everyone.
Mature age and rich experience can't compete with superior mental intelligence in many aspects, but the former is irreplaceable by the latter. Age and experience can make people with average qualifications get some kind of balance compensation when facing people with excellent mental IQ, provided that the latter is still young.
Sometimes, we believe that we are missing a distant place, but in fact, we are just missing the time we spent there when we were young and lively. Time puts on the mask of space and deceives us. As long as you have been to that place, you will know that you have been cheated.
What we thought we knew when we were young, we didn't really know until we were old. The most important thing is that we do know more things when we are old, and the knowledge at this time has become truly coherent and unified after repeated thinking in many aspects. But in youth, our understanding is always fragmented and incomplete. Only when a person lives in old age can he get a complete and coherent representation of life, because after old age, he can see the whole life and the natural process of life. In particular, he will not look at life from the perspective of joining the WTO like others. His perspective is dead. In this way, he can fully realize the nothingness of life.
In old age, we can't complain because we lack a lot of fun. Because every pleasure is just the relief of demand. It's nothing to complain about the disappearance of pleasure because of the disappearance of demand.
As long as people are still influenced by sexual desire or manipulated by this devil, endless and changeable melancholy caused by sexual desire and emotional impulse will always make people in a slight mental disorder. Therefore, only when lust disappears can people become rational. Almost all misfortunes and disasters that befall or threaten people are directly or indirectly brought by this devil.
Young people are full of longing for the unknown and uncertain things. Desire and yearning robbed him of his peace, but happiness is impossible without peace. In contrast, in old age, everything calms down, one of the reasons is that the blood of the old man has cooled a lot, and feelings are no longer so easy to be stimulated; Another reason is that life experience makes them realize the value of things and the connotation of all pleasure. In this way, they gradually got rid of illusions, illusions and prejudices, which covered up and distorted their free and pure understanding of things before the arrival of old age. Now, people can understand the objective appearance of things more correctly and clearly; They more or less saw the insignificance and nothingness of everything in the world. It is this that makes almost all the old people, even those who are quite mediocre, have a certain degree of wisdom. This is the difference between them and young people. At this time, people have a direct, true and firm belief in the nothingness of all things and the emptiness and boredom behind the prosperity and joy of this world, and the illusory portrait has been eliminated. They no longer mistakenly believe that in this world, besides the happiness they enjoy after being freed from physical and mental pain, there is another more special happiness, that is, being in a palace or a small room. According to the value standards of the world, those great or small, noble or humble are not much different for these old people. This makes the elderly feel particularly at ease. With this mentality, they smiled and looked down at the illusory world from a height. They have no hope. They know that although people spare no effort to decorate and beautify life, life still shows its barren face through those cheap and dazzling lights. No matter how people color life and dress up, life is essentially just a kind of existence: the way to measure its true value can only be based on the degree of its lack of pain, not whether it lacks pleasure, and not through the luxurious scenes in life.
Obviously, old age does make us feel lonely. But boredom is not necessarily accompanied by this loneliness. Boredom is only inevitably accompanied by those who have no other fun except sensory enjoyment and social fun. These people have not developed and enriched their spiritual potential. Indeed, when people live to an old age, their spirits begin to weaken, but if a person originally had a rich spiritual world, then he will always have more than enough spirit to resist boredom. As mentioned above, people have a more accurate view of things through experience, understanding, practice and reflection. Their judgment is more acute, and the connection between things becomes clearer; People have a more comprehensive overview of things. We constantly reorganize the accumulated knowledge and seize the opportunity to enrich our knowledge. This inner cultivation and cultivation in all aspects continues to occupy our spirit and give us satisfaction and reward. As a result of these activities, the mental decline of the elderly mentioned above has been compensated to some extent.