WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT GRATITUDE AND FAITH
"Faith in others is a good thing."
A person will be happier if you love them because you know them and not
because you have faith in them. To know is to be sure. To have faith is to have
a lesser degree of sureness. It is to be less sure. Faith is a necessary evil.
It is not a good thing. Faith in God is the most notorious form of harmful
faith. Faith blinds and leads to more blindness. That process must
be kept at a slow pace.
“We are all ageing and will die. You are not alone and that is the
consolation.”
Translates as: “You should be glad that others will have the same terrible fate
as you”. It is hard to beat that for selfishness. Others enduring suffering
similar to you should disturb you more than you already are, not less. The
saying which is a soft way of advising people to be glad that others suffer too
is something we all agree with and it proves that human nature is not selfless
at all and is selfish in being selfless for being selfless is a pretence.
Altruism infers that you should wish only you had this fate and that every other
person should wish the same thing to themselves. To tell people that they are
not the only ones to have been cruelly dumped by a beloved girlfriend or
boyfriend or not the only ones to be laid up with the flu is to grievously
insult them and yet it is an insult that is often unnoticed.
“Glad it is them and not us” or “Rather you than me”.
People tend to be more fascinated by bad news than good news. They get pleasure
out of bad news than they don't from good news. Why else are the newspapers so
popular despite being about human evil and human problems? Do people hate the
unfortunates? Possibly, although they do not know them. Some men hate all women
though they don’t know all women. Or is it that they are just delighted that the
terrible things have happened to others and not them? I am sure of my existence
but less sure of that of others. Therefore I am more sure that I deserve to
suffer for my sins if I am free than I am that others should suffer. It follows
that I ought to wish that it was me instead of them.
Ignoring that, if I am glad that suffering is their experience and not mine then
I am glad not because I think because they deserve it but because it is their
experience and not mine. That is evil and cruel for it is not their fault that
they cannot experience what I experience. It is like gloating over a racist
attack on a black person not because they deserve it but because they are not of
my race. I do hate them if I let myself feel relieved that it is not me.
"Be grateful for your lot for there are people worse off"
This adage is very basic to the world's "morality".
If people really believe it then why don't they tell bullied students to
continue at a school though they would be safer elsewhere?
Imagine if you told somebody who had cancer that there are people worse off?
If people want to make the adage real for you when they pray for you then they
should keep their prayers.
People who are sick in hospital with pneumonia or some other illness feel grateful and are asked to feel grateful that they are not one of the worse off patients such as cancer patients or so on. They are happy that others are suffering and not them. What kind of love of neighbour as oneself is that?
