Greatness is an attitude

There has to be something more than everyday life to which people feel they are contributing. Something to daydream about, even if we don’t directly participate. Something that makes us feel like we’re playing our part in a civilisation that is going somewhere, without falling back on the old test of strength against strength, or clashing ideologies.

Viktor Frankl’s purpose void- in which he argues?“that in the absence of meaning, people fill the resultant void with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism, hatred, boredom, or neurotic obsessions and compulsions”?is foundational to our restless and unsatisfied West + inspired societies. On might just as easily argue that the current apotheosis of culture and politics to its obsessive giddy heights is simply yet another attempt to fill this void with something meaningful to pass the time.

Kojève proposed a theory of human nature unlike any in the history of political philosophy. He claimed that human beings were not fundamentally motivated by a desire for knowledge, power, happiness, pleasure, or resources. They were driven by a desire for recognition.”

"Kojève was a storyteller, and he brought this confrontation vividly to life. As he told it, history had begun with a fight to the death for pure prestige. It had begun, that is, when two human beings risked everything in a struggle for recognition.

Kojève’s story placed status conflicts at history’s center. He saw human life as defined by our need to have our special worth acknowledged by others, even at the cost of our lives and possessions. As he put it, “Man is human only to the extent that he wants to impose himself on another man, to be recognized by him.” Kojève therefore read political history as the attempt of Masters to dominate inwardly the Slaves they had outwardly defeated. Whether he looked at opposing armies or ideologies, or at art and religion, Kojève always found one group of people trying to impose its self-image on another—trying to make those “below” affirm the rightful rule of those “above.” History is simply the bloody record of contests for status supremacy. It chronicles the Master’s need to derive his self-worth from the Slave, and the gradual awakening of the Slave to the freedom and equality he is denied."

A healthy culture is one that is first and foremost able to sustain itself. The man who builds a temple does so with no hope of seeing it completed because he understands that he occupies a place within a civilisation with both a past and a future. Just as those who came before built for him, he builds for those not yet born. This altruism rests on the assumption that there will be such a continuation, that there will be people who think like him in the future to appreciate and benefit from his work, and in doing so, justify it.

This defeatist thought that greatness is somehow beyond us and that when it is not, it is undesirable or unseemly to reach for it, will doom humanity of its great journey. That is the reason, I am not a great fan of this 'Woke' culture & its twin, 'Cancel' culture.

I do things because I wish to, there is no other purpose beyond "it must be done..". That is the reason courage is important, chucking the comfort of familiar is important. We must give up many things to which we are addicted, considering them to be good. Otherwise, Courage will vanish, which needs continuous test. Greatness of Aatman (losely called soul) will be lost, which can't stand out unless it disdains as petty what the mob regards as most desirable.