(not AI)
In front of the freshly dug grave of his lifelong friend, Chingachgook, Natty Bumppo said a sentence that is certainly the most important one of all humanity.
This is the original epitaph, the end of it which will be our purpose here:
« …; and it may be said of him that his faults were those of the time and his virtues those of his nature. », which means, his qualities were his own and his wrongs that of his people.
At first, such a phrase seems innocuous but the grave on which it is written may be the only one on earth to support such a text ! Usually, one find as an epitaph a few words of hope to depict the good deeds of the deceased, an eulogy, a prayer, but never ever anything that describes what bad he might have been !
What Fenimore Cooper is saying through the voice of the Deerslayer, in The pioneer, is that a man can be a good man while doing wrongs at the same time during his life. But wait ! isn’t that the very situation everyone of us finds himself embroiled in without being able to overcome it most of the time ? Isn’t that the very feature that hinders humanity’s progress ?
So what ? We are good men ending up doing bad things ? We were great children ending up doing the worst ? The answer lies in one word: society. Society allows you to eat meat without having to kill, you can shit without having to dig a hole far away, society allows to live a borrowed life. You don’t depend on yourself anymore, on family, friends and neighbours, on human beings but on a system, an invisible system because it seems natural, it is unquestioned. And this comes with a price.
Being able to form societies gave our species the strength to become dominant but this ability carried a hidden weakness, an inherent defect that can, and has brought down human societies. In a society where there are butchers and plumbers, there also are bankers and robbers. Then, affluent people designate a sheriff to fight the outlaws in the name of all, followed quickly by the salesmen of pleasure together with the merchants of repentance. All of it forming the web of artificial thoughts, the sum of illusions we call society.
As a fish born in the ocean, we are immersed since birth in our local space time of the matrix with which we’ll have to deal with or to die because it is our water. In our childhood, we learn about every corner of the monster and we end up as adults having taken a stand into it, whatever it is.
We are no more what we were as a child by fitting into the role we forcibly chose in society. Then, we find ourselves thinking, acting and feeling as someone else, our immanent properties having been overcome by the emergence of new ones fitting the group we live in, just like a molecule of water in a river has grabbed properties and moves that cannot be derived from the single original one.
That is how, despite being someone, we act as someone else, this is how we carry two faces of ourselves, this is how we can be good persons who perform wrongs.
This was Michael Jackson’s message in his song « I’m bad », this is the story of Jack*, the hero of the extraordinary book of the same name by Alphonse Daudet !
*free download at Gutenberg.org
nb: probably the most important text I wrote; it is worth a book, and many parts of it are under developed and documented.
It is worth a book !
What I am saying here, every one of us has experienced it whatever the place and the time.
Maybe this text is one of the most essential, fundamental of all time !
(not kidding & without ill conceived pride whatsoever)
nb2: I have begun to write the first ten pages, beginning with freewill vs. determinism, of a book that would include what I just talked about & so much more, and, since I live on a mini-minimum, I’m not sure that I will have the strength to carry that on before I will just not be able to do that, being 67 at the time, so, if some guy would be interested and wealthy enough to support ???
Best, Succoth sameah !
(mformankind@gmail.com)
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