(This entry’s title calls for an acknowledgement of Jules Verne’s book title of exactly the same name. As an adolescent, I used to love everything written by Jules Verne, and now the fact that I have a special fondness for this particular title of his, and for what it means in the context of my own book, gives me great pleasure today, to discover yet another connection with one of the dearest friends of my childhood.) By A Journey To The Center Of The Earth I mean going into the depth of things.
Whether we want it or not, whether we realize it or not, thinking is the essential part of our being. Each of us is, therefore, a philosopher, in a sense. The “sense” being that philosophers come in different shapes and shades. We can be good thinkers, awful thinkers, self-destructive thinkers, but always thinkers, throughout our conscious lives. For this reason, we must become aware of the fact that we think. We must think about thinking, and in the course of this book the subject of thinking has been constantly raised and prominently placed. Now, here is an intriguing question, whether the faculty of thinking can be dangerous to humanity, alongside with its incontestable benefits? For, thinking can turn us into sometimes benefactors, sometimes scourges of humanity? On this point, I can only say that free thinkers are always beneficial to humanity, it is the manipulator, the propaganda spinner, the agitator, the mind controller, in short, someone who wishes to prevent us from being our own thinkers, this jailer of the mind of humanity, who becomes the scourge.
Furthermore, I deem it necessary to highlight the key point here that it is not the thinking of evil thoughts, which harms humanity the most, but the act of submission of the follower’s mind to the mind of the leader, whether that leader is a saint or the devil himself.
Now, what can be wrong with someone following the saint, one may ask? Nothing wrong if the follower is a free thinker, who chooses to follow the saint as a matter of thoughtful principle, while maintaining complete intellectual independence. But not unthinkingly! For, it is easy for the devil to dress up as a saint, and thus to deceive his followers, without whose following he would never have become known as the prince of the world. Thus, it is not even the devil himself, but his dumb unthinking followers, who constitute the greatest evil of all. The evil of surrendered thought thus morally equates the manipulated with the manipulators, and condemns both to infamy.
But all free thinkers, whether they are constructive thinkers or destructive thinkers, as long as they think as individuals, and not as a political action group, who engage us in conversations about important things and thus help us develop our mental capacity, these are all good people, no matter what they actually say. They might say there is a god or that there is no god, they might say that the truth is so deadly that we ought not to seek it, or, contrarily, that the pursuit of truth is the only pursuit worth living and dying for, or they might tell us that any pursuit of happiness is a false pursuit, unless we define ‘happiness’ as something worthy of being pursued… whatever they say, they are our friends, but on this one condition always: that they do not become a substitute god, an absolute authority, ipse dixit, but always encourage us to think for ourselves.
Talking of the devil, as we have in this entry, here comes a quaint philosophical paradox, which serves as a reminder of sorts that in the context of infinite eternity, where time and space carry no weight, our sense of direction inevitably becomes confused as well. Ordinarily, we look up to the heavens for God and imagine Hell, and its master residing in it somewhere down there, deep near the center of the earth. Yet, the blessing of thinking goes directionally down, in-depth, and in this entry’s title I metaphorize the best type of thinking-- which is philosophical thinking-- as a journey to the center of the earth, that is, presumably, to exactly the same place, or nearby, where the devil dwells.
What can I say, except that the devil is a tricky fellow, who used the lure of “knowledge-as-power” to coax the hapless Adam and Eve couple into an act of disobedience against God. Alas, Adam was not a powerful thinker, and he could be rather easily brainwashed by Eve, whereas it required the persuasive powers of the serpent himself to sway the lady… A note to the wise!
Now, concerning the devil being a tricky fellow, what prevents him then from dressing up as a saint, to lead us astray up into the rarefied air on top of the mountain, where we find it so difficult to exercise our thinking powers and easily fall victim to his guiles. This is what regrettably happens in most modern mega-churches, where the pastors, taking the faithful on an expensive whirlwind tour of the heavens, create a make-believe rapture caused by an induced atrophy of the thinking capacity… To tell you the truth, I would rather keep my thinking ability intact, with neither the devil nor the saint standing between me and God, who, I am sure, can be found irrespective of the up-down directionality and rather deep down there than at the dizzy heights, where our good senses are bound to freeze over.
...Coming back to our journey into the depth of things, I wish to repeat my praise of the independent thinker as-such. His difference from a philosopher-genius is quantitative, more than qualitative. Both have been on the same trip to the center of the earth, and differ only in how deep each of them has managed to descend.
Whether we want it or not, whether we realize it or not, thinking is the essential part of our being. Each of us is, therefore, a philosopher, in a sense. The “sense” being that philosophers come in different shapes and shades. We can be good thinkers, awful thinkers, self-destructive thinkers, but always thinkers, throughout our conscious lives. For this reason, we must become aware of the fact that we think. We must think about thinking, and in the course of this book the subject of thinking has been constantly raised and prominently placed. Now, here is an intriguing question, whether the faculty of thinking can be dangerous to humanity, alongside with its incontestable benefits? For, thinking can turn us into sometimes benefactors, sometimes scourges of humanity? On this point, I can only say that free thinkers are always beneficial to humanity, it is the manipulator, the propaganda spinner, the agitator, the mind controller, in short, someone who wishes to prevent us from being our own thinkers, this jailer of the mind of humanity, who becomes the scourge.
Furthermore, I deem it necessary to highlight the key point here that it is not the thinking of evil thoughts, which harms humanity the most, but the act of submission of the follower’s mind to the mind of the leader, whether that leader is a saint or the devil himself.
Now, what can be wrong with someone following the saint, one may ask? Nothing wrong if the follower is a free thinker, who chooses to follow the saint as a matter of thoughtful principle, while maintaining complete intellectual independence. But not unthinkingly! For, it is easy for the devil to dress up as a saint, and thus to deceive his followers, without whose following he would never have become known as the prince of the world. Thus, it is not even the devil himself, but his dumb unthinking followers, who constitute the greatest evil of all. The evil of surrendered thought thus morally equates the manipulated with the manipulators, and condemns both to infamy.
But all free thinkers, whether they are constructive thinkers or destructive thinkers, as long as they think as individuals, and not as a political action group, who engage us in conversations about important things and thus help us develop our mental capacity, these are all good people, no matter what they actually say. They might say there is a god or that there is no god, they might say that the truth is so deadly that we ought not to seek it, or, contrarily, that the pursuit of truth is the only pursuit worth living and dying for, or they might tell us that any pursuit of happiness is a false pursuit, unless we define ‘happiness’ as something worthy of being pursued… whatever they say, they are our friends, but on this one condition always: that they do not become a substitute god, an absolute authority, ipse dixit, but always encourage us to think for ourselves.
Talking of the devil, as we have in this entry, here comes a quaint philosophical paradox, which serves as a reminder of sorts that in the context of infinite eternity, where time and space carry no weight, our sense of direction inevitably becomes confused as well. Ordinarily, we look up to the heavens for God and imagine Hell, and its master residing in it somewhere down there, deep near the center of the earth. Yet, the blessing of thinking goes directionally down, in-depth, and in this entry’s title I metaphorize the best type of thinking-- which is philosophical thinking-- as a journey to the center of the earth, that is, presumably, to exactly the same place, or nearby, where the devil dwells.
What can I say, except that the devil is a tricky fellow, who used the lure of “knowledge-as-power” to coax the hapless Adam and Eve couple into an act of disobedience against God. Alas, Adam was not a powerful thinker, and he could be rather easily brainwashed by Eve, whereas it required the persuasive powers of the serpent himself to sway the lady… A note to the wise!
Now, concerning the devil being a tricky fellow, what prevents him then from dressing up as a saint, to lead us astray up into the rarefied air on top of the mountain, where we find it so difficult to exercise our thinking powers and easily fall victim to his guiles. This is what regrettably happens in most modern mega-churches, where the pastors, taking the faithful on an expensive whirlwind tour of the heavens, create a make-believe rapture caused by an induced atrophy of the thinking capacity… To tell you the truth, I would rather keep my thinking ability intact, with neither the devil nor the saint standing between me and God, who, I am sure, can be found irrespective of the up-down directionality and rather deep down there than at the dizzy heights, where our good senses are bound to freeze over.
...Coming back to our journey into the depth of things, I wish to repeat my praise of the independent thinker as-such. His difference from a philosopher-genius is quantitative, more than qualitative. Both have been on the same trip to the center of the earth, and differ only in how deep each of them has managed to descend.
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