Facticity, Attraction

The consequence of existential nihilism -- of living one's life without the continual affirmation of some transcendent meaning that sticks past the ten o'clock news -- is inexorably one of trivial attention toward insignificance, a magnification of the otherwise worthless, transforming it into the essential: one's transitory and superficial life calling that seeps up in one's mind for as long as the stupidity takes, and then off it flies to nothingness until again it finds a task at hand, a soul to consume. This is perhaps nowhere better seen than in the cleaning passion of the housewife, but only when the desire to clean is not predicated by a higher telos, for it often is: the house of the wife is a sort of exterior evidence of her superiority, so she thinks, and her commitment to cleaning it (and tormenting others to fulfill her wishes) has this end in mind; but when there is a ceaseless prattle about the necessity of keeping everything spotless, things in order, for no apparent (or inapparent) reason, then here you have revealed despair in its nakedness. A man's worth is measured not by his facticity, but by his commitment to a relative firmness of transcendental meaning, on two points: 1) how deep and pragmatic this meaning is, in the sense of how much it will aid him in his life as it relates to happiness, and 2) how committed he is to it -- but fundamentally it is a question of assertion of one's will, one's own self, in the face of what otherwise is determinism. The man who has a commitment to his fellow man, or to his country, or to his lover, are all stiff ideals, but so long as this commitment is itself lax, the man is no better than the nihilist who cleans his apartment with a flick of the will that resembles that of a martyr.

And who do we see most often praised in society, most often admired and desired, than those who live their lives according to the rule-book of externality? And what is this externality a sub-group of other than facticity? Granted, a good deal of facticity has to do with our voluntarily action upon it -- my muscles will be larger if I work to grow them, my hair will be shorter if I work to cut it, etc. -- but aside from those rare actions that require effort, ultimately to praise or revere a person on the basis of his facticity is a very pathetic and crude thing to do; but our society is saturated to the very marrow with it, and there is no greater example than that nauseating non-sequitur that involves the implicit belief that all attractive individuals are therefore in possession of some greater character than those who lack this attractiveness. The argument goes as follows:

All attractive people are good people
X. is attractive
:. X. is a good person

The attractiveness in question here is not necessarily physical in the sexual sense; the look that an anonymous girl gives a guy may register to his mind the smell of idiosyncrasy, and have nothing sexual or physically attractive to it, but in being what it is symbolizes a sort of uniqueness that he wishes to be a part of, perhaps for elitist (therefore power) reasons. Upon noticing her look, he will say to himself, "aha! she surely must be something interesting," and thus will hold unconsciously in his mind the conviction that she is better than a good deal of other people for no other reason than because of a particular time crystalized in history absorbed his attention.

The only effect of living in such a mindset is a blindness to the objectivity of the wholeness of one's personality; and often this becomes something worse: at times when someone is found to be valuable according to the arbitrary rules mentioned above, the progression will not finalize in a sense of blindness toward the whole person, but even a standard based on his negative characteristics, that way these negativities can willy-nilly become the basis on which justice breeds. There is no better way of eradicating that agitating conviction of badness than by using this badness as a foundation for a standard for goodness, thus making badness -- good. If X. has a negative stance toward a problem acknowledged by a person who admires him on the basis of the law of attraction, Y., in seeking to annihilate this negativity, and thereby keep her deity in the boundless confines of perfection, will simply look at those who consider his problem to be negative and say, "but they should do as X. does; why not?" for he is, after all, too good to err so conspicuously. But to be sure, there is no escape from the omnipotence of conscience, and the person who engages such an attitude will only further harm himself, and the stain of this psychological pain will only further, alas, the fanaticism-spirit that keeps the world divided into those-who-are-attractive and those-who-aren't.

Such a person will only grow helplessly sensitive, for all pain taken in a spirit that repels it garners a sensitivity to the life that fosters it; this sensitivity will only create a greater wall between the real world and those under the auspices of the in-group of attractiveness; and this will only mean -- a greater inclination toward dichotomizing the world as mentioned previously. The cycle is very nasty.

And so you see, you have this power to discern the difference between two very subtle paths. Do not wager on the basis of fact, but on the true basis of character -- that exists by nature of spirit, of the nobility of work, the courage to be oneself, the audacity to stand against this world and present whatever authenticity one knows to the fold. Join the crowd of the truly great men throughout history. Do not look on the outward appearance, but on the intentions, the motivations, the inclinations of those around you. If these inclinations hold in their midst something of badness, consider the person who is resisting these inclinations. For it is the person that transcends inclinations, facticity, and such; and unless the person is considered, you will only harm yourself and the world you unjustly neglect.