Long live pessimism!

There is a disease which pentrates the culture, not only in the western world, but in most parts of the planet. A disease which blinds people’s judgements, perceptions of the world and rational thinking. This pest is called optimism. Like a virus it infects the mind of people and becomes a system of belief. It is magic thinking, infantile thinking, for many think life and life success would exist in direct relationship to their tinking. Gurus of „positive thinking“ overwhelm the culture and profit from wish thinking and irrationality of their disciples.

There is no correlation between positive thinking, optimism and success in any area of life, business or anywhere else! Books, DVD, seminars are a waste of time and money. Do not fall into that trap, do not think your imaginations and dreams in love will become true. It is for sure that they will not!

Optimistic people must be mistrusted, as well as you have to mistrust people who „listen to their guts“. Happy people are suspect people, illusionists who do not want to accept reality, which is everything else but beautiful, joyful oder fulfilling, but hard and bitter, a brutal struggle for survival. It is an insult to all the people who struggle every day to have something to eat, who cannot afford medication and support. It is immoral to be happy, a crime against humanity. We all should face the reality as it is and should not project our wishes onto the world, humiliating the people who are not well off, by telling them they should smile and take tings easy. What is behind optimism is normally a deception, people smile at each other not because they like each other, but because they want something from the other or even worse they are afraid and think if you are nice to others, they will be nice to you. That is a stupid advice brainless mothers give to their kids – shame on such mothers!

Beware of people who smile a lot or who laught all the time. Laughing makes you look like a fool, you do not look competent and most important of all: you lose your dignity! It is disgrace not only of your own person, but of all human beings, of mankind as a whole. Dignity should be peoples highest moral value, even higher than life itself. It is better to die than to live without honor. But who can be a person of honor, who smiles into your face lake a salesperson? The answer is obvious.

Happy people should be excluded form leadership in any area, business, politics and private affaires. Whoever takes leadership serious knows that it is a burden, a burden you have to hold selflessly for the people you lead, it is nothing to be happy about, nothing to smile. Look at your life, observe every area and you will find that it is far away from being perfect, there are unlimited errors everywhere. There is no person in the world who authentically could say that there where four perfect weeks in his life, not one!

The dark hours of life are the only precious ones. Your true self you only find, when there is no light any more. That you see, that the world is one big place of sin, of inferiority of all beings, especially of human beings. It ist he moment when you begin to see reality as it is, you notice that human nature is imperfect, sinful and as a result you become humble and stop believing that human life and human beings are good. That ist he moment you become the ultimate realist. Your Judgements improve, your mind gets clearer and cognitive processes improve as well.

Long live pessimism, for everything which can go wrong, will definitely go wrong (thank you Murphy’s law). So you better be prepared on bad things coming on expecting that your actions in live will go wrong. The whole universe is doomed to death, as the second law of thermodynamics shows us very clearly. Destruction, not construction will prevail in the end. You better ally with destruction, if you do not want to be on the loser’s side.

There are even whole countries who make being happy a political issue, who build up a pear pressure to be happy. Whoever is unhappy is an social outsider, is concidered weird and abnormal. The only thinking people, who still can your their reason, are the ones who hold on to pessimism, the only way of perceiving the world, which brings you into contact with reality. 100 percent reality, that ist he world in which we all should live. And a society must be strong enought to hold out the bitter truth, that life is no beautiful, that it is not joy and happyness, which is it’s sense. There is only one sense of life an that is shoulder your burden and fulfill your duty!

The big winner of life is death, not life! No matter how long you might struggle, how much you try to live a long live, you will surrender tot he eternal master, who always gets you in the end. Death is superior to live! The day you realize that this words are true and make them your mental bas of life, ist he day you start living in reality!

John Milton (1608-1674)

„The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.“
-Paradise Lost-

One oft he most famous and extraordinary figures of English literture in general and English poetry in particular, is a man born in 1608 in Cheapside in Londen. His name - John Milton. His father was a scrivener und hat a great love for music, which also hiss on John caught at an early age. Milton was educated at St. Paul’s School and by 1625 he wentto Christ’s Collage in Cambridge. He had a very combative ans rebellious nature, attacked the curriculum and his teachers. So he very soon earned the reputition of being a rebell an critique.

In his early years Milton wrote his first poems in Latin, the language in which he succeeded admirably and could rival the best teachers of his time. But very soon he changed his intentions and declared to write his poetry in English. In this early years brillinat peoms were created, as On the morning of Christ’s Nativity, On Shakespeare or On May Morning.

In 1632 Milton left Cambridge and went home to his father’s estate at Horton in Buckinghamshire and planned to retire and devote his whole life to poetry und studying. In his time of solitude some very fine poems like On time or At a Solemn Music were written. The time alone started to change his look onto the world. His studies of theology made him more and more a religious man. For example Milton was very proud of liveing a chastise lifestyle, a virtue which he held very high. The time of solitude was quiet productive. Nevertheless after six years he had enough of his solitary life, and felt a call to action.

The second half of Miltons life made him an embittered idealist and controversialist. He had travelled to Italy, was well accepted and had many constructive contacts with locals like prelates, although his protestand belief and his catholic opponents. He planned to go to Greece, but political circumstances didn’t let him complete his journey. Back in England he worked as a teacher in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Then he became politically involved an his poetic work came to an end for nearly twenty years. Milton as an idealist thought, that a Golden Age for England would start, if bishops and kings would be removed, that would be true liberty. Milton wrote a bunch of pamphlete in which he attacked the political and religious situation in England very harshly.

In 1642 he married Mary Powell, a young girl of 17, with whome he had four children (and giving up his chastise lifestyle). Mary died in 1652. In 1656 John married again, but his wife died only one year later. During the whole time of the lord-protectorship of Cromwell an later on, he defended the Commonwealth, publishing many curragious outcries agains monarchy. After restoration of monarchy in 1660, he was hiding for a certain time, fearing for his life, but in the end he was pardoned. In that time Milton returned to poetry, working on Paradise Lost, which was published in 1667. This was his masterpiece, the work he had prepared for his whole life. A deeply religious man, paradise, the fall of satan and the fall of Man and banishment from Eden were ideal themes to be worked on. Miltons last two works Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, also treated religious topics. Samson agonistes was written according tot he model oft he old Greek tragedies and may be the most personal of all of John Milton’s poems.

Milton was a hightly moral man, believing in the high value of virtue and the good, the strengh, which comes from belief. But he was also an idealist and he himself stayed far behind his ideal (for example he never reached the calm of mind of which he writes in his poems). There was also a lot of critics on Milton: his humorlessness, his egotism, pride and arrogance. But as a poet Milton stands alone in English literature. No other English poet was more involved in the political affaires of his time, an no other every risked so much. The only English poet which could overshine Milton was William Shakespeare. Milton had a big influence on writers oft he 18th century, especially on Alexander Pope, as well as T. S. Eliot. Great writers do something once and for all, Eliot meant.

The end of foolishness

It is very easy to describe other people as stupid and very often this judgement does not base on a deeper consideration of a special person or his circumstances, but the personal disgust and negative feelings one has toward someone else. But this shall not be the topic of this article and I am going to discuss something more serious here.

Why do people act in a stupid way? What is it, which makes a certain person act in a way, witch cannot be understood by reason or any experience of life? I have been studying human beings for a long time and I confess, that this activity has always been one of my favourites, and I came to the conclusion, that stupidity is not a basic characteristic of the human, but one of his behaviour. Stupid people are not stupid per se, but in their action alone. Eric Berne, the great psychiatrist of the humanistic psychology of the 1950ies and 60ies, has found out, that human beings act according to a script which is created in early childhood, up to the age of six or seven. From that time onwards, people are occupied by executing the script in all aspects of their life, until the die (I consciously exclude the cases of the possibility of “liberation”, which exist in a human life of course).

It has been said, that you see the true intentions of a person, by his or her action. I believe that this is definitely true, especially if you consider the traditional psychology and it’s teachings, but if you look at human beings more as a creation to be, than as a fixed entity who cannot change, you see a lot of activity which cannot be explained by the ordinary way of academic teachings. What do I mean by this bold statement? Well, my provocative statement is the following: No human I born stupid, what we consider as stupidity is nothing else but the role someone plays within a social situation he is born into! In other word: People are stupid, because they are thought to behave in that way. Modern pedagogy knows that fear is producing stupid people. The shyer a person (a child normally) is, the more such a being will be considered as incompetent, and in the future as stupid. The more fearful children are, the poorer their academic achievements will be. The most scared children within a classroom of a school are also the children which succeed miserably in the academic world. Studies around the world have shown, that there is a direct correlation between courage and academic performance, at least in the eyes of the people who have to make the judgement, who have to pass on the school marks.

So, what does it need to change a “stupid” person into “normal” or even “intelligent” person? The key lies withing the mindset of the pupil. If we can change the way a child thinks about himself, we also can change his faith, his future. The first step of a system, which applies more to reality of life, is one which does not evaluated a child according to an “outside” standard, like a school system, which uses a hurdle according to which every person must obey by passing it. Staying in a class, because one could not take the hurdle, means, that someone could not fulfil the demands of the system. But what does that say at all? So abolishing staying in a class where else everybody else gets promoted to the next level, is crucial to a modern school system.

“Stupid” people stop being stupid, if they are allowed to be wise, if they are allowed to be intelligent. That is it, what is needed desperately. If an individual is allowed to be intelligent, he or she will also show intelligent results. Stupidity is no destiny. It is up to us to help others to reach this “higher” regions of being.

But what we also need instead is a system, where discipline has a very high value, so that learning, knowing something, fulfilling one’s purpose becomes something he or she gets promoted for, is very important. We need a system, which is promoting the “old” values of discipline, correctness, concentration on a issue alone, and achieving academic levels on the other side, very strongly. By the way, we must be sure about one thing: human beings are unique and everybody is able to show much more to the world, as anybody could ever imagine. Having this idea in mind, we could concentrate on the performance of any individual in a very different way. We would believe into the abilities of everybody and would consider every child as a champion, as a winner. By doing so, we would get not only much better result, but also make society much more productive and joyful. What we want from our children is not so much, what we want, but much more them to fulfil their own potential, to be the maximum they a person can be. Isn’t this a wonderful perspective? Much more, it could be a recipe for peace and harmony amount all humans, if nobody would have to compete to someone else, but be considered worthy because of what he or she really is, as the individual is created by god, the creator! It may be a dream of the future, but if we all dream it, there is a good chance that it is becoming the reality of tomorrow. Our children should be worth it!

Peter the great (1672-1725)

Peter I. known as Tsar Peter the Great, is one of the most illustrious and powerful figures which owned the Russian throne. He was the younger son of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich and his second marriage wife. In 1682 he was proclaimed Tsar after the death of his half-brother Fedor III., together with his other half-brother Ivan, who was a very incompetent and weak character. The patriarch of Moscow and the Boyars (Russian nobility) strongly promoted Peter on the throne, as Peter’s half-sister Sophia and the palace guard wished to see Ivan on the throne alone. Making both of the half-brothers Tsar was the compromise which resulted out of this vivid conflict.

As many rulers of Russia before Peter and after him, a Coup d’état brought single power into the hand a one monarch alone. In the year 1689 on rumours of a plot, Peter could overthrow Sophia, the de facto ruler of Russia, and depose Ivan. The government was in his hand alone from that time onwards. Peter was studying European modern development from politics, army and technical advantages of most of European states. Soon his plan was to westernize and modernize his country. After hundreds of years of inner conflicts and wars against peoples of inner Asia, which threatened the empire from the east and from the south, Russia turned westwards. Peter saw, after travelling many parts of Europe incognito, how much his own country had fallen behind. Especially building a Russian navy, imitating western models (England and The Low Lands where Peter learnt to be an engineer of ship-building), became one of his most ambitious pursuits.

Inner conflict broke out again in 1697-1698 when the Streltsi (the palace guard) revolted against the Tsar. The result of this revolt was the modernization of the Russian army by recruiting one person of every 20th household and a massive restructurization. After successfully overpowering the revolt, Peter strongly supported building up an Russian iron and textile industry, as well as expanding industrialization into areas far away from Moscow (for example the region of Ural). Exports of Russia rose strongly and when Peter died in 1725, exports were twice the volume of its imports.

Foreign Politics lead to war for the dominion in the Black See with the big rival in the south - the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). Peter could expand his empire to the south, the city of Azov was conquered and a fleet was build up to secure Russian interests in the Black Sea. In 1700 war broke out with the kingdom of Sweden ruled by King Charles XII. The Russian defeated Charles in 1708, when he invaded Russia. In 1709 the Swedish were defeated at Poltava. In 1711 Sweden successfully stroke back, but Peter could prevent an alliance between Turkey and Sweden, when Azov war lost to the Turks again. Peter also started expeditions to expand his empire to the Caspian area to the costs of the empire of Persia.

The big symbol of the westernization of Russia was building the new Capital of St. Petersburg at the river Neva in 1703. It became Russia’s gate to the west and was always the most modern and western City of Russia up to our times. Between 1709 and 1719 Tsar Peter massively renewed the legal system and the administration of Russia. The country was overflowed by reform and resistance was very strong. One example became a tax on wearing beards. Beards, what most Russian men had worn at that time, were seen as old fashion and antiquated.

Peter was a very powerful and very often compromiseless man who demanded that the whole country had to follow him without debate. A savage criminal code, which was very similar to the military code, became feared in the whole empire. Anecdotes spread around Europe. Peter himself was a man of physically imposing stature. Very strong and tall, he was a domineering person and by character, his natural authority became visible to everybody. For example, when punishment for a revolt had to be performed, some few hundreds of the rebels had to be decapitated. After many executions the executioners were exhausted and couldn’t do their job any more. Peter was laughing at them took, the axe and decapitated a hundred men on his own. When he thought to have finished he asked: “Did everybody get was he deserved?” But one man to be executed was still lying on a block of wood and replied: “No my Tsar, you have forgotten me!” Peter was amused granted life to him and let the man free.

The reform and the administration and parting of the government into different departments of state, made Peter be known as the founder of modern Russia. But a lot of his reforms were ruined by incompetent and weak successors. Only one of his successors in the 18th century did reach partially his level of reform and gave another push of modernization to the Empire of Russia. It was Tsaress Catherine II. the great (1729-1796).