RE: [ejlist] Re: Tragic death con't

["Thomas Friese" <tfriese@intergate.bc.ca>]

TF:
Can we go to the basics here: what exactly has to be "done" in a life? What
is the primary objective of a life, by which we are here judging whether it
is tragic or not? This is of primary importance, since two of us may judge
the same life as tragic and fulfilled based on two different parameters.

To my mind, it is personal development that is fundamental; the development
of culture, while derived from many individual developments, is secondary.

Personal development is incremental self-knowledge, the goal of the anarch's
primary command, "Know thyself". The very first chapter of Eumeswil is
devoted to this first priority. "To make the vague more precise, to define
the indefinite more and more sharply: that is the task of every development,
every temporal exertion." By this view, we are born for our own gradual
self-revelation through prescribed lessons within Time. We are also born to
make a certain contribution to the external world. But while the world may
judge the success of our lives on the basis of the influence we have exerted
in some form on society, the life's true success is defined by how much
self-knowledge has been extracted from the lessons which we "enrolled" in.

Junger makes a clear statement of the correct order of the priorities in
this counterexample to an anarch: "Here I stumbled on the possibility of an
error in the wrong direction.... A certain Professor Kiekebusch wrote:'To
live as a serving link in the whole is both a duty and a reward. The supreme
goal of every individual's labor and striving is the good of the
collective.'" Eumeswil

The two criteria of success are certainly correlated since it is from my
striving in time that I contribute and, hopefully, that I learn. However,
IMHO, the two are fundamentally distinguished by their relation to fate and
self-determination. My role in the world, whether this is as president,
artist, farmer, soldier or whore is more or less in the hands of the Fates -
like it or not, I will not die before the fulfillment of these objectives
(which are not strictly my concern but the world's). Conversely, what I
learn depends entirely upon me - the individual's enlightenment has nothing
predestined about it, it is self-made, in the sense of Buddha and Jesus, not
the modern "self-made man". If we find it problematic to judge completion of
the external objectives of a life such as Mozart's, we cannot even pretend
to judge the other more important purpose.

Understanding and managing the relation between the two duties - optimizing
personal benefit while satisfying an inescapable worldly destiny - is the
true challenge for the anarch. Junger's personal lessons, well-learned in a
century of intense experience, become his contributions to society. I
believe that in esoteric literature they say that individual progress cannot
occur without simultaneous transference to the community.

A tragic life in the original and true sense would be rich in personal
pedagogical value derived from an awful worldly destiny; a modern
interpretation of 'tragic' lies in precisely the absence of the redeeming
lesson amidst the horrors of the worldly destiny. What can we, as
individuals, learn from this quite unpleasant period of history we have
chosen as our destiny. In my view, we chose our present manifestations in
time - each and every one of us ... but why, why THIS exactly?

For what it's worth ...
Thomas