The Practical Value of Diversity Exceeds Its Symbolic Meaning

In this essay, “diversity” refers to tolerance toward matters of little consequence. Diversity is undoubtedly beneficial: it promotes intellectual progress and technological development. Its fundamental role lies in enabling different ideas to complement one another, thereby fostering innovation. Yet diversity on its own brings no real benefit; rather, it can plunge a community into chaos. The proper place of diversity should be as a margin of flexibility under an inclusive standard. Only through the guidance of standards, combined with the vitality of diversity, can a community move toward a better future.

Since humanity cannot unify its thoughts, diversity necessarily exists. But its true value lies in maintaining the balance of the entire system. Simply put, systemic balance is like ecological balance: each ecological niche interacts with others to ensure smooth functioning. Likewise, the balance of nations and even the world resembles an ecosystem — requiring careful adjustment and avoiding drastic changes. For example, in 1859, twenty-four rabbits introduced from England to Australia multiplied uncontrollably, causing severe ecological invasion and devastating agriculture and land. Applied to nations, the lesson is the same: never, for the sake of temporary impulses, shake the foundations or destroy the entire system.

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, less supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: The Gospel In Brief. For context: https://lemmy.world/post/23133528

This is a direct continuation of Tolstoy's Preface Of His Interpretation Of His Translation Of The Gospels The Gospel In Brief (Part Three Of Four): https://lemmy.world/post/36250847

"What is even stranger to see in this error is the convergence of two camps on the extreme edges of the debate: the church leaders and the free-thinking historians of Christianity. One group, the church leaders, calling Jesus the second personage of the trinity, understand his teaching only through the filter of the supposed revelations of the third personage, whom they find in the Old Testament, in the epistles of the councils and the edicts of the church fathers. As a result, they preach the most peculiar principles, claiming that these principles are Christ's. In just the same way, the other group, not recognizing Christ as a God, does not understand his teaching as he might actually have expressed it, but as Paul and the other interpreters have understood it. Considering Christ to be a man and not a God, these interpreters deprive Christ of the most legitimate human right to answer for one's own words and not for another's false reading of them. In trying to explain the teaching of Jesus, these scholarly interpreters entwine Jesus in ideas he never would have thought to speak. The representatives of this school of interpreters, beginning with the most popular of them, Renan, make no attempt to separate from Christ's teaching—from what Christ himself actually taught—all that has been calcified onto it by his interpreters, and so, they make no more effort to understand this teaching than do the church leaders. They attempt to understand Christ as a phenomenon and to understand the proliferation [rapid increase in numbers] of Jesus's teaching through the events of his life and the conditions of his time.

It goes without saying that these historians should not allow themselves to be making this mistake. The problem that stands before them to solve is the following: eighteen hundred years ago, some sort of poor person showed up and said something. He was cut down and hung up and everyone forgot about him, just as millions of such instances have been forgotten, and for two hundred years the world did not hear a thing about him. But then, it turns out, somebody remembered him and what he had said and so he told it to another person and then to a third. And so on and so on, to the point that billions of people, smart and stupid, learned and illiterate, cling to the thought that this man, and only this man, was God. How can we explain this amazing phenomenon? The church leaders say that this occurred because Jesus actually was God. So everything makes sense. But if he was not God, then how can we explain that this man, specifically, is recognized by all as God?

And the scholars of this school earnestly attempt to uncover all the details of the conditions of this man's life, paying no attention to the fact that no matter how much they seek out these details (and all they do is refer to what was printed in Josephus Flavius and the Gospels, they don't actually seek anything out), even if they were to completely reconstruct Jesus's life to the most minute details and discover when he ate a certain thing or where he slept, the question of why he—specifically he—had such an influence on people would remain, all the same, unanswered. The answer is not to be found in the environment where Jesus was born, who it was that raised him and so on, and it is even less to be found in what was taking place in Rome at the time and whether the people tended toward superstition and so on, but only in what this man preached, what was so special that it forced people to place him apart from all the others and recognize him as a God both then and now. It would seem that if you really want to understand this, then the first thing you would need to do is attempt to understand the teaching of this man and, it goes without saying, understand his actual teaching and not the vulgar interpretations of that teaching that were spread and are still being spread after him. But they do not do this. These scholarly historians of Christianity are so overjoyed with their understanding that Jesus was not a God and they want so badly to prove that his teaching was not divine and that it is therefore unnecessary. They forget that the more they try to prove that he was just a simple man and that his teaching was not divine, the further they will be from answering the question they are trying to solve, because they are wasting all their energy proving him a simple man and his teaching not divine. To see this delusion clearly, it would be worth looking at Renan and his followers: Havet, who naively asserts that Jesus Christ n'avait rien de chritien [had nothing Christian about it], and Souris, who demonstrates with great joy that Jesus was an exceptionally rude and stupid man.

The task is not to prove that Jesus was not a God and that therefore his teachings were not divine, any more than it is to prove he was Catholic. The task must be to understand the essence of his teaching, this teaching that became so high and precious for people that they recognized the messenger of it as a God. I have tried to do this very thing; for myself at least, I have done it. And now I am offering it to my brothers.

If the reader belongs to the enormous majority of the educated, raised in the church faith, who have not strayed from that faith despite its incongruity with good common sense and conscience (for such a man, love and respect for the spirit of the Christian teaching must remain, otherwise, as in the proverb, he "throws the fur coat onto the fire because he is angry at the fleas," considering all of Christianity a dangerous superstition), then I ask such a reader to consider that what pushes him away and what he deems superstition is not the teaching of Christ and that Christ can in no way be blamed for the repulsive beliefs that have been stitched onto his teaching and presented as Christianity. One must study the teaching of Christ alone, insofar as we have access to it—that is, those words and actions which have been attributed to Christ and which have an instructive meaning. Reading my account, such a reader will be convinced that Christianity not only is not a mixture of high and low, not only is it not superstitious, but that, on the contrary, it is the strictest, purest and fullest metaphysical and ethical teaching, above which no other human intellect has ascended to this day and in the radiance of which, though it may not do so consciously, all higher human activity operates: political, scientific, poetic and philosophical. If the reader belongs to that insignificant minority of educated people who cling to church faith, confessing it not for any external purposes but for inner peace, then I ask such a reader, before reading, to decide first in his soul, which is more valuable to him: spiritual peace or truth? If it is peace, then I ask him not to read; if it is truth, then I ask him to remember that the teaching of Christ, laid out here, despite the identical name, is a completely different teaching than the one he confesses, and that therefore the relationship of someone who confesses church faith to this account of Christ's teaching is the same as the relationship of the Muslims to the sermons of Christianity. The question for him is not does this teaching in question agree with his faith or not, but only which teaching agrees more with his mind and heart. Is it the church teaching, which is founded on a reconciliation of all the scriptures, or is it the teaching of Christ on its own. For him, the question can only be framed like this: Does he want to accept a new teaching or remain in his own faith?

If the reader belongs to the group of people who externally claim church faith and value it not because they believe in its truth but because of external considerations, since they consider its ritual and preaching appropriate to their lifestyle, then let such people remember that no matter how many kindred thinkers they may have, no matter how strong they may be, no matter which thrones they may sit on, whichever high names they may call themselves, they are not in the position of the accusers, but of the accused, and not by me, but by Christ. Let such readers remember that they said what they had to say a long time ago and that even if they proved what they want to prove, they would merely be proving what all the hundreds of contradictory church faiths prove for themselves. They should remember that they have no need to prove anything; they should instead justify themselves. Justify themselves in the sacrilege of equating the teaching of Jesus the God with that of Ezdra, that of the councils and that of Theophylact and the sacrilege of allowing themselves to overinterpret the word of God and alter it based on the words of people. Justify themselves in slandering God, which they did by taking all the fanaticism that was in their hearts and dumping it on Jesus the God and passing it off as his teaching. Justify themselves in the fraud of hiding the teaching of God that was sent to bring goodness into the world, and putting in its place their own Holy Ghost faith. With this replacement they have deprived and continue to deprive billions of people of the goodness which Christ brought to the people, and in place of the peace and love he brought, they have brought sects into the world [supposedly 45 thousand today and counting], along with judgments and all manner of evil, twisting it all in the name of Christ.

For those readers there are only two alternatives: humble repentance and renunciation of these lies or persecution of those who can expose them for what they have done and are still doing. If they do not renounce their lies, they have only one choice: to persecute me. And having finished my writing, I now prepare for this with joy and with fear for my weakness." - Leo Tolstoy, The Gospel In Brief, Preface

Leo Tolstoy's The Gospel In Brief: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10382518-the-gospel-in-brief

Is there, in the opinion of the members of the “Philosophy” community, a certain fundamental law of human existence that would serve as the main motivation for human activity — both in everyday life and in practically all spheres of social life?I believe that such a law exists. I am ready to present both the formula of such a law and my arguments, and to discuss this topic if it interests the members of the community. I would be grateful for future comments.

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, non-supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: The Gospel In Brief. For context: https://lemmy.world/post/23133528

This is a direct continuation of Tolstoy's Preface Of His Interpretation Of His Translation Of The Gospels The Gospel In Brief (Part Two Of Four): https://lemmy.world/post/35580818

"Everyone reconciled the differences in their own way, and such reconciling continues today; but in their reconciliation, everyone asserts that their words are the continued revelation of the Holy Ghost. Paul's epistles follow this model, as does the founding of the church councils, which begin with the formula: "It pleases us and the Holy Ghost." Such too are the decrees of the popes, synods, khlysts and all false interpreters who claim that the Holy Ghost speaks through their mouths. They all rely on the same crude platform to confirm the truth of their reconciliation, they all claim that their reconciliation is not the fruit of their own thoughts, but the testimony of the Holy Ghost. When one refuses to enter this fray of faiths, each of which calls itself true, it becomes impossible not to notice that in their common approach, wherein they accept the enormous amount of so-called scripture in the Old and New Testaments to be uniformly sacred, there lies an insurmountable self-constructed obstacle to understanding the teaching of Christ. Moreover, one notices that it is from this delusion that the opportunity and even necessity for endlessly varied and hostile sects arises.

Only the reconciling of an enormous amount of revelations can foster endless variety. Interpreting the teaching of one individual, who is worshipped as a God, cannot give birth to a sect. The teaching of a God who has descended to earth in order to instruct people cannot be interpreted in different ways because this would be counter to the very goal of descending. If God descended to earth in order to reveal truth to people, then the very least he could have done would be to have revealed the truth in such a way that everybody would understand it. If he did not do this, then he was not God. If God's truths are such that even God couldn't make them understandable to people, then of course there's no way that people could have done it. If Jesus isn't God, but was a great man, then his teachings are even less likely to give birth to sects. The teachings of a great man can only be considered great if he clearly and understandably expresses that which others have only expressed unclearly and incomprehensibly.

That which is incomprehensible in the teaching of a great man is simply not great and the teaching of a great man cannot give birth to a sect. The teaching of a great man is only great insofar as it unifies people in a single truth for all. The teaching of Socrates has always been understood uniformly by all. Only the kind of interpretation which claims to be the revelation of the Holy Ghost, to be the only truth, and that all else is a lie, only this kind of interpretation can give birth to hatred and the so-called sects. No matter how much the members of a given denomination speak of how they do not judge other denominations, how they pray communion with them and have no hatred toward them, it is not so. Never, going back to Arius, has any claim, regardless of its supporting dogma, arisen from anything other than condemnation of the falseness of the opposing dogma. To contend that the expression of a given dogma is a divine expression, that it is of the Holy Ghost, is the highest degree of pride and stupidity: the highest pride because it is impossible to say anything more prideful than, "The words that I speak are said through me by God himself," and the highest stupidity because when responding to another man's claim that God speaks through his mouth, it is impossible to say anything more stupid than, "No, it is not through your mouth that God speaks, he speaks through my mouth and he says the complete opposite of what your God is saying." But, all along, this is exactly what every church claims, and it is from this very thing that all the sects have arisen as well as all the evil in the world that has been done and is being done in the name of faith. But apart from the outward evil that is produced by the sects' interpretations, there is another important, internal deficiency that gives all of these sects an unclear, murky and dishonest character.

With all the sects, this deficiency can be detected in the fact that, although they acknowledge the last revelation of the Holy Ghost to be its descent onto the apostles and subsequent passage down to the supposedly chosen ones, these false interpreters never express directly, concretely, and definitively what exactly that revelation from the Holy Ghost is. Yet all the while it is upon this supposed continued revelation that they base their faith and by which they consider this faith to be Christ's.

All the leaders of the churches who claim the revelation of the Holy Ghost recognize, as do the Muslims, three revelations. The Muslims recognize Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. The church leaders recognize Moses, Jesus and the Holy Ghost. But according to the Muslim faith, Mohammed was the last prophet, the one who explained the meaning of Moses's and Jesus's revelations; he is the last revelation, explaining all that came before, and every true believer holds to this revelation. But it is not so with the church belief. It recognizes, like the Muslim faith, three revelations—Moses's, Jesus's and the Holy Ghost's—but it does not call itself by the name of the final revelation. Instead, it asserts that the foundation of its faith is the teaching of Christ. Therefore the teachings they propagate are their own, but they ascribe their authority to Christ.

Some sectarians of the Holy Ghost variety consider the final revelation, the one that explained all that preceded it, to be that of Paul, some consider it to be that of certain councils, some that of others, some that of the popes, some that of the patriarchs, some that of private revelations from the Holy Ghost. All of them ought to have named their faith after the one who received that final revelation. If that final revelation is from the church fathers, or the epistles of the Eastern patriarchs, or papal edicts, or the Syllabus of Errors, or the catechism of Luther or Filaret, then say so. Name your faith after that, because the final revelation which explains all previous revelation will always be the most important revelation. However, they do not do this; instead they promote teachings completely foreign to Christ, and claim that Christ himself preached these things. Therefore, according to their teachings, it turns out that Christ announced that he was saving the human race, fallen since Adam, with his own blood, that God is a trinity, that the Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles and spread via the laying on of hands onto the priesthood, that seven sacraments are needed for salvation, that communion ought to occur in two forms, and so on. It turns out that all of this is the teaching of Christ, whereas in Jesus's actual teaching there isn't the slightest hint of any of this. These false teachers should call their teaching and their faith the teaching and faith of the Holy Ghost, not of Christ. The faith of Christ can only rightfully refer to a faith based on Christ's revelation as it comes down to us in the Gospels, and which recognizes this as the ultimate revelation. This is in accordance with Christ's own words: "Do not recognize any as your teacher, except Christ." This concept seems so simple that it should not even be a point of discussion, but strange as it may be to say so, to this day, nobody has attempted to separate the teaching of Christ from that artificial and completely unjustified reconciliation with the Old Testament or from those arbitrary additions to his teachings that were made and are still being made in the name of the Holy Ghost." - Leo Tolstoy, The Gospel In Brief, Preface

Tolstoy's Preface Of His Interpretation Of His Translation Of The Gospels The Gospel In Brief (Part Four Of Four): https://lemmy.world/post/36926547

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/36425588

An approach (Tom Torr's books):

"What I am now" is inscribed in the neurons and chemistry of the brain, and the state and function of the organs and their behavior. Engaging with this means facing the reality of the body; cognition and the "Self" are considered parts of this body. Cognition cannot drive evolution into conflict and still maintain the equilibrium of "what I am now"; for equilibrium, it is necessary that the movements of cognition be compatible with the findings that the body's possibilities and limitations determine for it. Otherwise, that incompatibility will spread to awareness, approach, perception, the "Self," and consequently, to "what I am now."

Cognition cannot be independent of the body, and for equilibrium, it is forced to submit to its frameworks. If it does not submit, it cannot make the brain's cognitive system accompany it in a way that vitalizes its movement, and the world of cognition, in turn, becomes dual. Only observation, experience, and trial and error—that is, rationality—can guide this duality toward integration.

Perhaps if we consider rationality to be the deference of the "Self" to its own totality and moving in harmony with this totality, then the lack of rationality could be seen as a misuse of the notion of free will, an overstepping of the "Self," and its domination over its own totality; as if instead of the voice of the "Self" being a representative of my totality, it becomes a sound detached from the totality, produced almost solely in the mouth.

In this interpretation, it is not unknown why and how belief plays a cancerous role in creating a gap between "self" and the totality and is castrating. Around this cancerous tissue, which, compared to the functional biases of cerebral cognition, is the equivalent of putting itself to sleep or into hypothermia, the path of observation, experience, and trial and error becomes narrow and rugged. Cognition, and subsequently awareness, evolutionary intelligence, and approach, lose their fluidity, rationality dims, and the brain's perceptual efficiency declines. Of course, the degree of this rationality and its absence is itself part of "what I am now."

"This freedom within these narrow limits seems so insignificant to men that they do not notice it. Some—the determinists—consider this amount of freedom so trifling that they do not recognize it at all. Others—the champions of complete free will—keep their eyes fixed on their hypothetical free will and neglect this which seemed to them such a trivial degree of freedom. This freedom, confined between the limits of complete ignorance of the truth and a recognition of a part of the truth, seems hardly freedom at all, especially since, whether a man is willing or unwilling to recognize the truth revealed to him, he will be inevitably forced to carry it out in life. A horse harnessed with others to a cart is not free to refrain from moving the cart. If he does not move forward the cart will knock him down and go on dragging him with it, whether he will or not. But the horse is free to drag the cart himself or to be dragged with it. And so it is with man. Whether this is a great or small degree of freedom in comparison with the fantastic liberty we should like to have, it is the only freedom that really exists, and in it consists the only happiness attainable by man. And more than that, this freedom is the sole means of accomplishing the divine work of the life of the world." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom Of God Is Within You, Chapter Twelve: "Conclusion—Repent Ye, For The Kingdom Of Heaven Is At Hand"

Tolstoy's Thoughts On Truth And Free Will (Part One Of Two): https://lemmy.world/post/31434980

Tolstoy's Thoughts On Truth And Free Will (Part Two Of Two): https://lemmy.world/post/34197761

The tiny amount of free will we posses lies within the "narrow limits" of being able to accept and live by, or deny any amount of rationality or logic, thus, right and therefore truth that we might find within any amount of knowledge (including the knowledge of the experience) that we all seemingly stumble upon throughout our lives; we're all a "creature with a conscience" (Tolstoy). Truths ranging from things we've long forgotten and haven't even noticed we accepted like needing to drape cloth upon our backs to whatever extent or going about this or that hygiene habit (we are what we've been surrounded with), or truths we're in the midst of either recognizing and therefore, allowing to govern our thoughts and subsequently our behaviors today and tomorrow, or denying and therefore, not doing so ("we are what we repeatedly [think, and therefore] do." - Plato). Like beginning to strive to become this or that within the way mankind has manipulated its environment and organized itself up until now; to get married, or to believe in an influence of the divine to whatever degree (objectively, our knowledge of morality—religion, no matter the source, and the idea of an unimaginable God(s) or creator(s) of some kind are two very different things).

The future, as anyone of any present can plainly see, assuming they're assimilated with the history of humans to some extent and capable of contrasting the humans that lived x amount of years prior to them with their contemporaries, consists of a great combining of all the "right" and therefore truths we only ever continue to stumble upon, gradually purify of falsehood, and allow to become any individuals of any present times circumstances. As we see within politics for example, there are truths and falsehoods to be found on both sides of the political spectrum, and through this excruciatingly slow mellieniums long transitioning of continuously gathering up, purifying, and combing all the logic or rationality, and therefore, rights and subsequently truths we ever come to find at any point of time throughout mankinds history within our knowledge of anything—through this inherent and inevitable process, we'll come to find that our recognition of the truth as a species will go "from a truth more alloyed with errors to a truth more purified from them." - Leo Tolstoy.

Just as an alcoholic is able to choose to continue to indulge in their knowingly bad habit and deny the truth of beginning to strive to rid themselves of it and live up to the images they can't help but conjure in their minds of a "better," "purer" self, so can we all choose to begin to strive to become the subjectively "best" possible version of ourslves based on the standards we set via whatever truths we're presently recognizing or denying, or have unknowingly recognized long ago via the influence of our peers and contemporaries, and of course by looking within to our own conscience.

We can all either choose to be dragged along living by the effects of those that have lived before us, shaping our lives around it—a "career," money, marriage, retirement—becoming a product of our contemporaries and choosing the easier path that only leads to destruction (Matt 7:13), building our house (our life) out on the sand with the fool in the process, as most people would be inherently drawn to do (Matt 7:24), or choose to break free of these shackles, and live by being the cause of the effects of what the world is yet to become—an Abraham, Noah, Moses, Jonah, Socrates, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, MLK. This is the tiny amount of free will we as creatures with a conscience posses: to be a slave of effects and be dragged along with it, or to break free to reach the "true life" of striving to be the cause of effects, building our house on the rocks with the wise, taking the more difficult path that leads to "eternal life," that I equate as a kind of martyrdom—your name and what you lived for being resurrected after death via our unique and profound ability to retain and transfer knowledge, living on to inspire mankind even potentially eternally, as objectively, Jesus proved—becoming a "sign" (Luke 11:29) to people, as Jonah was to the people of his time.

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves." - Leo Tolstoy.

"Be the change you want to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi

Whatever does not defy the laws of physics may one day come to pass.

Nothingness is reality

Nothingness is the essence of reality. Nothingness means lack of meaning, and the universe only gained meaning after the emergence of intelligent life. Meaning is the product of thought, the understanding of nothingness by consciousness. Only with the self does meaning exist. Since ancient times, humans have had various thoughts and religions. One school says everything is void, another says there is original sin. Nothingness is not the end, but the origin of all thought. If there were a specific meaning, then the multitude of thoughts would not have emerged. The definition of meaning is utility, or a tool for rationalizing ideas. In my view, true meaning is only one kind — an innate kind, not dependent on external things. It is like a frequency or pattern that emerges without matter or existence. If a god has predetermined everything, that still is not true meaning. That is merely a human projection onto a power — some force beyond human comprehension, vague and ambiguous. God is merely another form of consciousness. Any meaning that cannot exist prior to existence is not true meaning. Is the meaning set by god worth following? No, because it is still a fabricated meaning dependent on existence. It can be changed. It is imposed, only difficult to comprehend due to its power. Therefore, all existence, all existence in parallel universes, has no meaning. Only intelligent beings create fabricated meaning to comfort themselves.

Theoretical Supplement Meaninglessness of Determinism and Inevitability of Choice: Determinism is the inevitable result of natural law and initial conditions, carrying no inherent meaning. Choice, as a phenomenon within deterministic paths, will inevitably occur in some form whether or not humans exist. It is not proof of free will, but a natural expression of causal evolution.

Initial Probability Field: Refers to the primordial probabilistic distribution that existed prior to the emergence of the universe, whose state already encompassed all subsequent contingent events within a single universe, and which, through the unfolding of time, manifests as determined necessity.

Full content on medium. Don't worry, I'm not doing this for money.

A thought experiment:

Language is not a passive instrument for conveying thought, but an active force that shapes the very contours of our intellect. It constructs the boundaries of our perception, suggesting that our cognitive world is fundamentally intertwined with the linguistic frameworks we inherit. This entanglement raises profound questions about the autonomy of thought and the origins of our ideas.Within this context, civilization presents a complex duality. Its established customs and linguistic norms can create a sense of order and facilitate communication, yet they may also impose an orientation that distances individuals from a more fundamental state of being. This raises a critical inquiry: how does one navigate the structures of society without losing touch with a more intrinsic, personal equilibrium?The notion of free will becomes particularly fraught. Is our sense of agency a genuine expression of self-determination, or is it an illusion shaped by the semantic structures of language and the subjective criteria of our culture? This perspective invites a deeper examination of the forces that guide our actions, suggesting they may be more complex and less conscious than we typically assume.This leads to the idea of a 'personal philosophy'—not as a fixed doctrine, but as an evolving 'approach' to existence. It is a way of being that acknowledges the influence of language and civilization while striving for an internal coherence that transcends them. It is a path of navigating external conditioning to find a more authentic alignment.Civilization, in this light, is neither a pure good nor an absolute evil. An individual entirely devoid of its influence is a hypothetical, for it is the very fabric of our development. The unbiased individual, were they to exist, would benefit immensely from the tools and knowledge civilization provides, just as civilization itself is enriched by the unique perspectives of such individuals. The challenge, then, is not to reject civilization, but to engage with it in a way that fosters individual growth without succumbing to its homogenizing tendencies.Recognizing the superficiality of our knowledge and the vastness of our ignorance is not a sign of weakness, but a gateway to more profound understanding. It is in this recognition that we can begin to question the belief systems that inhibit rationality and individuality. Even when rooted in perceived truths, such systems can function as illusions, delineating permissible thoughts and constraining the spirit of free inquiry. The task is to see beyond these self-imposed limitations and embrace the open-ended nature of philosophical exploration.

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, non-supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: The Gospel In Brief. For context: https://lemmy.world/post/23133528

This is a direct continuation of Tolstoy's Preface Of His Interpretation Of His Translation Of The Gospels The Gospel In Brief (Part One Of Four): https://lemmy.world/post/34915081

"On the other hand, I ask the reader of my account of the Gospels to remember that if I do not look at the Gospels as holy books that come to us from heaven via the Holy Ghost, I also do not look at the Gospels as if they were merely major works in the history of religious literature. I understand both the divine and the secular view of the Gospels, but I view them differently. Therefore I ask the reader, while reading my account, not to fall into either the church's view or the historical view of the Gospel customary to educated people in recent times, which I did not hold and which I also find incomplete. I do not look at Christianity as a strictly divine revelation, nor as a historical phenomenon, but I look at Christianity as a teaching that gives meaning to life. I was brought to Christianity neither by theological nor historical investigations, but by the fact that fifty years after my birth, having asked myself and all the wise ones in my circle who I am and what the purpose of my life is, I received the answer that I am an accidental clutter of parts, that there is no purpose in life and that life itself is evil. I was brought to Christianity because having received such an answer, I fell into despair and wanted to kill myself; but remembering that before, in childhood, when I believed, there had been a purpose to my life and that the believers who surrounded me—the majority of whom were uncorrupted by riches—lived a real life.

I began to doubt the veracity of the answer that had been given to me via the wisdom of the people in my circle and I attempted to understand the answer that Christianity gives to the people who live this real life. I began to study Christianity and to study that which directs people's lives within the Christian teaching. I began to study the Christianity that I saw applied in daily life and began to compare that applied belief with its source. The source of the Christian teaching was the Gospels, and in these Gospels I came upon an explanation for that meaning that directed the lives of all the people that I saw living the real life. But studying Christianity, I found next to this source of the pure water of life an illegitimate intermixture of dirt and muck that had obscured its purity for me; mingled with the high Christian teaching I found foreign and ugly teachings from church and Hebrew tradition. I was in the position of a man who has received a stinking sack of filth and after much labor and struggle finds that in this sack full of filth, priceless pearls actually lie hidden, a man who realizes that he is not to blame for his feeling of repulsion from the stinking filth and that not only are the people who gathered and preserved these pearls in the dirt not to be blamed, that they are in fact worthy of respect, but a man who nevertheless does not know what he ought to do with those precious things he has found mixed in with the filth. I found myself in this tormented position until I became convinced that the pearls had not fused with the filth and could be cleaned.

I did not know the light and I thought there was no truth in life. But having become convinced that people could only live by this light, I began to seek its source and I found it in the Gospels, despite the false interpretations of the churches. And having arrived at this source of light, I was blinded by it and was given full answers to my questions concerning the meaning of my life and the lives of others, answers that completely harmonized with all the answers from the other cultures familiar to me, answers that, in my opinion, transcended all others.

I sought the answer to the question of life, not to theological or historical questions. Therefore it was completely irrelevant to me whether or not Jesus Christ was God and where the Holy Ghost comes from and so on, and it was equally unimportant and unnecessary to know when and by whom which Gospel and which parable was written and whether or not it could be ascribed to Jesus. To me, what was important was the light which had illuminated eighteen hundred years of humanity and which had illuminated and still illuminates me. However, what to call that light, what its materials are, and who lit it was entirely irrelevant to me.

I began to look deeply into that light and toss away all that was opposed to it, and the further I went along this path, the more undoubtable the difference between truth and falsehood became for me. At the beginning of my work, I still had doubts and there were attempts at artificial explanations, but the further I went, the firmer and clearer the task became and the more irrefutable the truth. I was in the position of a man gathering together the pieces of a broken statue. At the beginning there may still have been uncertainty as to whether a given piece was part of the leg or the arm, but once the legs had been fully reassembled, it became clear that a certain piece probably was not part of the leg and when, moreover, the piece seemed to fit with some other part of the torso and all the fracture lines seemed to align properly with the other pieces, then there could no longer be any doubt. I experienced this as I made forward progress in my work, and unless I am insane, then the reader should also experience that feeling when reading the larger account of the Gospel, where every thesis is confirmed directly by philological considerations, variants, contexts and concordance with the fundamental idea.

We might end the foreword on that point, if only the Gospels were newly revealed books, if the teaching of Christ hadn't undergone eighteen hundred years of false interpretations. But now, in order to understand the true teaching of Christ, as he might have understood it himself, it is important to realize the main reason for these false interpretations that have spoiled the teaching and the main approaches these false interpretations take. The main reason for these false interpretations that have so disfigured the teaching of Christ, to such a degree that it is hard to even see it beneath the layer of fat, is the fact that since the time of Paul, who did not understand Christ's teachings very well and did not hear it as it would later be expressed in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ's teachings have been connected with the pharisaical tradition and by extension all the teachings of the Old Testament. Paul is usually considered the apostle of the gentiles—the apostle of the Protestants. He was that on the surface, in his relationship to circumcision, for example. But the teaching about tradition, about the connection of the Old Testament with the New, was introduced into Christianity by Paul. This very teaching on tradition, this principle of tradition, was the main reason that the Christian teaching was distorted and misread.

The Christian Talmud begins at the time of Paul, calling itself the church, and thus the teaching of Christ ceases to be unified, divine and self-contained, but becomes just one of the links in a chain of revelations which began at the start of the world and which continues in the church up to this time. These false readings refer to Jesus as God. However, professing him to be a God does not prompt them to attribute the words and teaching of this supposed God any more significance than the words they find in the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Acts of the apotles, the Epistles, Revelation or even the collected decrees and writings of the fathers of the church.

These false interpretations allow no other understanding of the teaching of Jesus Christ than what would be in agreement with all preceding and subsequent revelation. So their goal is not to genuinely explain the sense of Christ's sermons, but only to find the least contradictory meaning for all the most hopelessly conflicting writings: the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospels, the Epistles, the Acts, i.e., in everything that is considered scripture. With such an approach to Christ's teaching, it is obvious that it would become incomprehensible. All of the innumerable disagreements on how to understand the Gospel flow out of this false approach. One might guess—and guess correctly—that these explanations, which are interested primarily in reconciling the irreconcilable, i.e., the Old and New Testaments, would be innumerable. So, in order to profess this reconciliation as truth we must have recourse to external means: miracles and the visitation of the Holy Ghost." - Leo Tolstoy, The Gospel In Brief, Preface

Tolstoy's Preface Of His Interpretation Of His Translation Of The Gospels The Gospel In Brief (Part Three Of Four): https://lemmy.world/post/36250847

Cross-posted from ""Read lit" Me:" by @cm0002@lemmy.world in !greentext@sh.itjust.works

I guess I'm just being a nihilist or I just think this is fun to think about so I'll enjoy seeing what people have to say.

To articulate the best that I can. I don't know if all of existence has an end goal or if it's "kinetic sculpture" that simply meant to change and evolve through every imaginable demention, but if the existence does have a goal what would it do after that achievement?

Would existence constantly create?

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, non-supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: The Gospel In Brief. For context: https://www.reddit.com/r/TolstoysSchoolofLove/s/g6Q9jbAKSo

"This short account of the Gospel is my own synthesis of the four Gospels, organized according to the meaning of the teaching. While making this synthesis, it was mostly unnecessary for me to depart from the order in which the Gospels have already been laid out, so that in my synthesis one should not expect more but actually considerably fewer transpositions [cause (two or more things) to change places with each other] of Gospel verses than are found in the majority of concordances of which I am aware. In the Gospel of John, as it appears in my synthesis, there are no transpositions whatsoever; it is all laid out in the exact order as the original. The division of the Gospel into twelve or six chapters (if we were to count each thematic pair of two chapters as one) came about naturally from the meaning of the teaching. This is the meaning behind these chapters:

1. Man is the son of an infinite source, the son of this father not by the flesh, but by the spirit ["I can't change rocks to food, but I can abstain from eating food"].
2. And therefore man should serve this source in spirit.
3. The life of all people has a divine source. It alone is holy.
4. And therefore man should serve this source in the life of all people. That is the father's will.
5. Only serving the father's will can bring truth, i.e., a life of reason.
6. And therefore the satisfaction of one's own will is not necessary for true life.
7. Temporal, mortal life is the food of the true life—it is the material for a life of reason.
8. And therefore the true life is outside of time, it exists only in the present.
9. Life's deception with time: the life of the past or the future hides the true life of the present from people.
10. And therefore man should strive to destroy the deception of the temporal life of the past and the future.
11. The true life is not just life outside of time—the present—but is also a life outside of the individual. Life is common to all people and expresses itself in love.
12. And therefore, the person who lives in the present, in the common life of all people, unites himself with the father—with the source and foundation of life.

Each two chapters share a connection of effect and cause. Besides these twelve chapters, the following is appended to the account: the introduction from the first chapter of John, in which the writer speaks, on his own authority, about the meaning of the teaching as a whole, as well as the conclusion from the same writer's Epistle (written, likely, before the Gospel), containing some general conclusions on all that came before. The introduction and conclusion do not represent an essential part of this teaching. They are simply general views on the teaching as a whole. Although the introduction and the conclusion both could have been omitted with no loss to the meaning of the teaching (especially since they were both written by John and do not come from Jesus), I held on to them for their simple and reasoned understanding of Jesus's teachings, and because these sections, unlike the church's strange interpretations, confirm one another and confirm the teaching as a whole while presenting the simplest articulation of meaning that could be attached to the teachings.

At the beginning of every chapter, apart from a short summary of its contents, I also present corresponding words from the prayer that Jesus used as a model to teach his students how to pray. When I came to the completion of this work, I found, to my surprise and joy, that the so-called Lord's Prayer is nothing other than Jesus's whole teaching expressed in its most distilled form in the very order that I had already laid out the chapters, and that each expression in the prayer corresponds to the sense and order of the chapters.

1. Our father — Man is the Son of God.
2. Who art in heaven. — God is the eternal, spiritual source of life.
3. Hallowed be thy name. — Let this source of life be holy.
4. Thy kingdom come. — Let his power be manifest in all people.
5. Thy will be done in heaven — And let the eternal source's will come to be, both in and of itself
6. as it is on earth. — as well as in the flesh.
7. Give us our daily bread —Temporal life is the food of true life.
8. this day — The true life is in the present.
9. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. — Let not the mistakes and delusions [the images we create in our heads via our imaginations] of the past hide the true life from us.
10. And lead us not into temptation. — And let them not lead us into deception.
11. But deliver us from evil. — And then there will be no evil.
12. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. — And it will be your power and strength and reason.

In the third section of the more comprehensive account, which is still in manuscript form, the Gospels according to the four Evangelists are thoroughly explicated [analyze and develop (an idea or principle) in detail], without the slightest omission. In this current account, the following verses are omitted: the conception, the birth of John the Baptist, his imprisonment and death, the birth of Jesus, his lineage, the flight with his mother into Egypt, Jesus's miracles in Canaan and Capernaum, the casting out of demons, walking on water, the withering of the fig tree, healing of the sick, the resurrection of the dead, Christ's own resurrection and all references to prophecies fulfilled in Christ's life. These verses are omitted in the current short account because, since they do not contain any teaching but only describe events that occurred before, during or after Jesus's ministry without adding anything, they only complicate and burden the account. These verses, no matter how they are understood, do not contain contradictions to the teaching, nor do they contain support for it. The only value these verses held for Christianity was that they proved the divinity of Jesus to those who did not believe in it. For someone who perceives the flimsiness of a story about miracles, but still does not doubt Jesus's divinity because of the strength of his teaching, these verses fall away by themselves; they are unnecessary.

In the larger account, each departure from the standard translation, each interjected clarification, each omission is explained and justified by a collation [collect and combine (texts, information, or sets of figures) in proper order] of the different versions of the Gospel, contexts, philological and other considerations. In this short account, all of these proofs and refutations of the church's false understandings, as well as the detailed annotations with references, have been left out on the basis that no matter how exact and correct the reasoning of each individual section may be, such reasoning cannot serve to convince anyone that this reading of the teaching is true. The proof that this reading is correct lies not in reasoning out separate passages, but in the unity, clarity, simplicity and fullness of the teaching itself and on its correspondence with the internal feelings of every person who seeks truth.

Concerning all general deviations in my account from the accepted church texts, the reader should not forget that our quite customary concept about how the Gospels, all four, with all of their verses and letters are essentially holy books is, from one perspective, the most vulgar delusion, and from the other perspective, the most vulgar and harmful deception. The reader should understand that at no point did Jesus himself ever write a book as did Plato, Philo or Marcus Aurelius, that he did not even present his teachings to literate and educated people, as Socrates did, but spoke with the illiterate whom he met in the course of daily life, and that only long after his death did it occur to people that what he had said was very important and that it really wouldn't be a bad idea to write down a little of what he had said and done, and so almost one hundred years later they began to write down what they had heard about him. The reader should remember that such writings were very, very numerous, that many were lost, many were very bad, and that the Christians used all of them before little by little picking out the ones that seemed to them best and most sensible, and that in choosing these best Gospels, to refer to the adage "every branch has its knots," the churches inevitably took in a lot of knots with what they had cut out from the entire massive body of literature on Christ. There are many passages in the canonical Gospels that are as bad as those in the rejected apocryphal ones, and many places in the apocryphal ones are good. The reader should remember that Christ's teaching may be holy, but that there is no way for some set number of verses and letters to be holy, and that no book can be holy from its first line to its last simply because people say that it is holy.

Of all educated people, only our Russian reader, thanks to Russia's censorship, can ignore the last one hundred years of labor by historical critics and continue to speak naively about how the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, as we currently have them, were each written completely and independently by the respective Evangelist. The reader should remember that to make this claim in the year 1880, ignoring all that has been developed on this subject by science, is the same as it would have been to say last century that the sun orbits the earth. The reader should remember that the Synoptic Gospels, as they have come down to us, are the fruit of a slow accumulation of elisions [an omission of a passage in a book, speech, or film], ascriptions and the imaginations of thousands of different human minds and hands, and in no way a work of revelation directly from the Holy Ghost to the Evangelists. Remember that the attribution of the Gospels to the apostles is a fable that not only does not stand up to criticism, but has no foundation whatsoever, other than the desire of devout people that it were so.

The Gospels were selected, added to, and interpreted over the centuries; all of the Gospels that have come down to us from the fourth century are written in continuous script, without punctuation. Since the fourth and fifth century they have been subject to the most varied readings, and such variants of the books of the Gospel can be numbered as high as fifty thousand. All of this should remind the reader not to become blinded by the customary view, that the Gospels, as they are now understood, came to us exactly as they are from the Holy Ghost. The reader should remember that not only is there no harm in throwing out the unnecessary parts of the Gospels and illuminating some passages with others, but that, on the contrary, it is reprehensible and godless not to do that, and continue considering some fixed number of verses and letters to be holy. Only people who do not seek for truth and do not love the teachings of Christ can maintain such a view of the Gospels." - Leo Tolstoy, The Gospel In Brief, Preface

Tolstoy's Preface Of His Interpretation Of His Translation Of The Gospels The Gospel In Brief (Part Two Of Four): https://lemmy.world/post/35580818

This reminds me of a favorite Vonnegut aphorism:

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, non-supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: The Gospel In Brief. For context: https://lemmy.world/post/23133528

This is a direct continuation of Tolstoy's Thoughts On Truth And Free Will (Part One): https://lemmy.world/post/31434980

"Every man during his life finds himself in regard to truth in the position of a man walking in the darkness with light thrown before him by the lantern he carries. He does not see what is not yet lighted up by the lantern; he does not see what he has passed which is hidden in the darkness; but at every stage of his journey he sees what is lighted up by the lantern, and he can always choose one side or the other of the road. There are always unseen truths not yet revealed to the man's intellectual vision, and there are other truths outlived, forgotten, and assimilated by him, and there are also certain truths that rise up before the light of his reason and require his recognition. And it is in the recognition or non-recognition of these truths that what we call his freedom is manifested.

All the difficulty and seeming insolubility [impossible to solve] of the question of the freedom of man results from those who tried to solve the question imagining man as stationary in his relation to the truth. Man is certainly not free if we imagine him stationary, and if we forget that the life of a man and of humanity is nothing but a continual movement from darkness into light, from a lower stage of truth to a higher, from a truth more alloyed with errors to a truth more purified from them. Man would not be free if he knew no truth at all, and in the same way he would not be free and would not even have any idea of freedom if the whole truth which was to guide him in life had been revealed once for all to him in all its purity without any admixture of error. But man is not stationary in regard to truth, but every individual man as he passes through life, and humanity as a whole in the same way, is continually learning to know a greater and greater degree of truth, and growing more and more free from error. And therefore men are in a threefold relation to truth. Some truths have been so assimilated by them that they have become the unconscious basis of action, others are only just on the point of being revealed to him, and a third class, though not yet assimilated by him, have been revealed to him with sufficient clearness to force him to decide either to recognize them or to refuse to recognize them. These, then, are the truths which man is free to recognize or to refuse to recognize.

The liberty of man does not consist in the power of acting independently of the progress of life and the influences arising from it, but in the capacity for recognizing and acknowledging the truth revealed to him, and becoming the free and joyful participator in the eternal and infinite work of God, the life of the world; or on the other hand for refusing to recognize the truth, and so being a miserable and reluctant slave dragged whither he has no desire to go. Truth not only points out the way along which human life ought to move, but reveals also the only way along which it can move. And therefore all men must willingly or unwillingly move along the way of truth, some spontaneously accomplishing the task set them in life, others submitting involuntarily to the law of life. Man's freedom lies in the power of this choice.

This freedom within these narrow limits seems so insignificant to men that they do not notice it. Some—the determinists—consider this amount of freedom so trifling that they do not recognize it at all. Others—the champions of complete free will—keep their eyes fixed on their hypothetical free will and neglect this which seemed to them such a trivial degree of freedom. This freedom, confined between the limits of complete ignorance of the truth and a recognition of a part of the truth, seems hardly freedom at all, especially since, whether a man is willing or unwilling to recognize the truth revealed to him, he will be inevitably forced to carry it out in life. A horse harnessed with others to a cart is not free to refrain from moving the cart. If he does not move forward the cart will knock him down and go on dragging him with it, whether he will or not. But the horse is free to drag the cart himself or to be dragged with it. And so it is with man. Whether this is a great or small degree of freedom in comparison with the fantastic liberty we should like to have, it is the only freedom that really exists, and in it consists the only happiness attainable by man. And more than that, this freedom is the sole means of accomplishing the divine work of the life of the world.

According to Christ's doctrine, the man who sees the significance of life in the domain in which it is not free, in the domain of effects, that is, of acts, has not the true life. According to the Christain doctrine, that man is living in the truth who has transported his life to the domain in which it is free—the domain if causes, that is, the knowledge and recognition, the profession and realization in life of revealed truth. Devoting his life to works of the flesh, a man busies himself with actions depending on temporary causes outside himself. He himself does nothing really, he merely seems to be doing something. In reality all the acts which seem to be his are the work of a higher power, and he is not the creator of his own life, but the slave of it. Devoting his life to the recognition and fulfillment of the truth revealed to him, he identifies himself with the source of universal life and accomplishes acts not personal, and dependent on conditions of space and time, but acts unconditioned by previous causes, acts which constitute the causes of everything else, and have an infinite, unlimited significance. "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." (Matt. xi. 12.) It is this violent effort to rise above external conditions to the recognition and realization of truth by which the kingdom of heaven is taken, and it is this effort of violence which must and can be made in our times.

Men need only understand this, they need only cease to trouble themselves about the general external conditions in which they are not free, and devote one-hundredth part of the energy they waste on those material things to that in which they are free, to the recognition and realization of the truth which is before them, and to the liberation of themselves and others from deception and hypocrisy, and, without effort or conflict, there would be an end at once of the false organization of life which makes men miserable, and threatens them with worse calamities in the future. And then the kingdom of God would be realized, or at least that first stage of it for which men are ready now by the degree of development of their conscience. Just as a single shock may be sufficient, when a liquid is saturated with some salt, to precipitate it at once in crystals, a slight effort may be perhaps all that is needed now that the truth already revealed to men may gain a mastery over hundreds, thousands, millions of men, that a public opinion consistent with conscience may be established, and through this change of public opinion the whole order of life may be transformed. And it depends upon us to make this effort.

Let each of us only try to understand and accept the Christian truth which in the most varied forms surrounds us on all sides and forces itself upon us; let us only cease from lying and pretending that we do not see this truth or wish to realize it, at least in what it demands from us above all else; only let us accept and boldly profess the truth to which we are called, and we should find at once that hundreds, thousands, millions of men are in the same position as we, that they see the truth as we do, and dread as we do to stand alone in recognizing it, and like us are only waiting for others to recognize it also. Only let men cease to be hypocrites [acting], and they would at once see that this cruel social organization, which holds them in bondage, and is represented to them as something stable, necessary, and ordained of God, is already tottering and is only propped up by the falsehood of hypocrisy, with which we, and others like us, support it. But if this is so, if it is true that it depends on us to break down the existing organization of life, have we the right to destroy it, without knowing clearly what we shall set up in its place? What will become of human society when the existing order of things is at an end?

"What shall we find the other side of the walls of the world we are abandoning? "Fear will come upon us—a void, a vast emptiness, freedom—how are we to go forward not knowing whither, how face loss, not seeing hope of gain?..... If Columbus had reasoned thus he would never have weighed anchor. It was madness to set off upon the ocean, not knowing the route, on the ocean on which no one had sailed, to sail toward a land whose existence was doubtful. By this madness he discovered a new world. Doubtless if the peoples of the world could simply transfer themselves from one furnished mansion to another and better one—it would make it much easier; but unluckily there is no one to get humanity's new dwelling ready for it. The future is even worse than the ocean—there is nothing there—it will be what men and circumstances make it." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom Of God Is Within You, Chapter Twelve: "Conclusion—Repent Ye, For The Kingdom Of Heaven Is At Hand"

Leo Tolstoy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy

Confession: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17575112-the-death-of-ivan-ilyich-and-confession?

What I Believe: https://www.amazon.com/My-Religion-What-I-believe/dp/B0863TFZRN

The Gospel In Brief: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10382518-the-gospel-in-brief?

The Kingdom Of God Is Within You: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/206768731-the-kingdom-of-god-is-within-you?

"One thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions—the truth that for our life one law is valid—the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it." - Leo Tolstoy, A Letter To A Hindu, December of 1908 (roughly two years before his death) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7176/7176-h/7176-h.htm

Tolstoy's Personal, Social, And Divine Conceptions Of Life: https://lemmy.world/post/23133528 Reddit Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/TolstoysSchoolofLove/s/ozkXGBczhG

Ludwig Wittgenstein: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12075.Tractatus_Logico_Philosophicus

"Tolstoy's religious writings, such as the Gospel in Brief and A Confession, clearly had an enormous influence on Wittgenstein especially at the time he was writing the Tractatus. Strange then that so few commentators have even acknowledged, let alone attempted to account for, Tolstoy's influence on Wittgenstein's philosophy. It is therefore especially worth considering the extent to which the Gospel in Brief specifically influenced the outlook of the Tractatus. Indeed, as his friend and correspondent, Paul Engelmann put it, out of all Tolstoy's writings Wittgenstein had an especially high regard for the Gospel in Brief. Yet it often appears to be simply assumed that the Gospel in Brief had a profound effect on Wittgenstein. Why this might be so is never clearly explained. That the book does not seem to be readily available or very well known in the English-speaking world may partly explain why its influence on Wittgenstein may have been neglected. But in this article we attempt to explain the impact of the Gospel in Brief upon Wittgenstein's philosophy (especially the later passages of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), and his general view of ethics." - http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/2001/04/wittgenstein-tolstoy-and-the-gospel-in.html?m=1

Mahatma Gandhi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

The Story Of My Experiments With Truth: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58905550-mahatma-gandhi-autobiography?

"Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You overwhelmed me. It left an abiding impression on me. Before the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness of this book, all the books given me by Mr. Coates seemed to pale into insignificance." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story Of My Experiments With Truth, Part Two, Chapter Thirteen

"His logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to practise what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention." - Mahatma Gandhi, A Letter To A Hindu https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7176/7176-h/7176-h.htm

Martin Luther King Jr.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.

The Autobiography Of Martin Luther King Jr.: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42547.The_Autobiography_of_Martin_Luther_King_Jr_?

"King read voraciously across a wide range of topics, everything from the “The Diary of Anne Frank” to “Candide.” Of course, he also read about theology and religion and philosophy and politics. But he especially enjoyed literature and the works of Leo Tolstoy." - https://theconversation.com/remembering-martin-luther-king-jr-5-things-ive-learned-curating-the-mlk-collection-at-morehouse-college-174839

"In his own writings, Dr. King pointed to the Russian writer as a primary source of his inspiration. King read Tolstoy and his religious texts, as well as War and Peace, as did Gandhi before him." - https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanraab/2014/01/20/10-people-who-inspired-martin-luther-king-and-he-hoped-would-inspire-us/

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, non-supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: The Gospel In Brief. For context: https://lemmyverse.link/lemmy.world/post/23133528

Reddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/TolstoysSchoolofLove/s/g6Q9jbAKSo

"The Church says that the doctrine of Jesus cannot be literally practiced here on earth, because this earthly life is naturally evil, since it is only a shadow of the true life. The best way of living is to scorn this earthly existence, to be guided by faith (that is, by imagination) in a happy and eternal life to come, and to continue to live a bad life here and to pray to the good God. Philosophy, science, and public opinion all say that the doctrine of Jesus is not applicable to human life as it is now, because the life of man does not depend upon the light of reason, but upon general laws; hence it is useless to try to live absolutely conformable to reason; we must live as we can with the firm conviction that according to the laws of historical and sociological progress, after having lived very imperfectly for a very long time, we shall suddenly find that our lives have become very good.

People come to a farm; they find there all that is necessary to sustain life, a house well furnished, barns filled with grain, cellars and storerooms well stocked with provisions, implements of husbandry, horses and cattle, in a word, all that is needed for a life of comfort and ease. Each wishes to profit by this abundance, but each for himself, without thinking of others, or of those who may come after him. Each wants the whole for himself, and begins to seize upon all that he can possibly grasp. Then begins a veritable pillage; they fight for the possessions of the spoils; oxen and sheep are slaughtered; wagons and other implements are broken up into firewood; they fight for the milk and grain; they grasp more then they can consume. No one is able to sit down to the tranquil enjoyment of what he has, lest another take away the spoils already secured, to surrender them in turn to someone stronger. All these people leave the farm, bruised and famished. There upon the Master puts everything to rights, and arranges matters so that one may live there in peace. The farm is again a treasury of abundance. Then comes another group of seekers, and the same struggle and tumult is repeated, till these in their turn go away brushed and angry, cursing the Master for providing so little and so ill. The good Master is not discouraged; he again provides for all that is needed to sustain life, and the same incidents are repeated over and over again.

Finally, amongst those who come to the farm, is one who says to his companions: "Comrades, how foolish we are! See how abundantly everything is supplied, how well everything is arranged! There is enough here for us and for those who come after us; let us act in a reasonable manner. Instead of robbing each other, let us help one another. Let us work, plant, care for the dumb animals, and everyone will be satisfied." Some of the company understand what this wise person says; they cease from fighting and from robbing one another, and begin to work. But others, who have not heard the words of the wise man, or who distrust him, continue their former pillage of the Master's goods. This condition of things last for a long time. Those who have followed the counsels of the wise man say to those about them: "Cease from fighting, cease from wasting the Master's goods; you will be better off by doing so; follow the wise man's advice." Nevertheless, a great many do not hear and will not believe, and matters go on very much as they did before.

All this is natural [ignorance (lack of knowledge) being an inevitability], and will continue as long as people do not believe the wise man's words. But, we are told, a time will come when everyone on the farm will listen to and understand the words of the wise man, and will realize that God spoke through his lips, and that the wise man was himself none other than God in person; and all will have faith in his words. Meanwhile, instead of living according to the advice of the wise man, each struggles for his own, and they slay each other without pity, saying, "The struggle for existence is inevitable; we cannot do otherwise."

What does it all mean? Even the beasts graze in the fields without interfering with each other's needs, and men, after having learned the conditions of the true life, and after being convinced that God himself has shown them how to live the true life, follow still their evil ways, saying that it is impossible to live otherwise. What should we think of the people at the farm if, after having heard the words of the wise man, they had continued to live as before, snatching the bread from each other's mouths, fighting, and trying to grasp everything, to their own loss? We should say that they misunderstood the wise man's words, and imagined things to be different from what they really were. The wise man says to them, "Your life here is bad; amend your ways, and it will become good." And they imagined that the wise man had condemned their life on the farm, and had promised them another and a better life somewhere else. This is the only way in which we can explain the strange conduct of the people on the farm, of whom some believed that the wise man was God, and others that he was a man of wisdom, but all continued to live as before in defiance of the wise man's words." - Leo Tolstoy, What I Believe, Chapter seven

The wise man is the bee that stirred the hive: https://www.reddit.com/r/TolstoysSchoolofLove/s/L43m7To9xE

"We must, say the believers and the sceptics:" https://www.reddit.com/r/TolstoysSchoolofLove/s/yMoR0j9h5m

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, non-supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: The Gospel In Brief. For context: https://www.reddit.com/r/TolstoysSchoolofLove/s/g6Q9jbAKSo

"I had such a need then to believe in order to live, but I unconsciously concealed from myself the contradictions and obscurities of Christian teaching. But this giving of meaning to the rituals had limits. If the main words of the Litany became clearer and clearer to me, if I somehow explained to myself the words, "Remembering our most Holy Lady the Mother of God and all the saints, let us give ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ the Lord," if I explained the frequent repetitions of prayers for the tsar and his family by their being more open to temptation than others and therefore more in need of prayers, if I explained the prayers about trampling our foe and adversary beneath our feet, if I explained them by the fact of evil being that enemy—those other prayers, like the cherubim and the whole sacrament of oblation and "the chosen warriors" and the like, which make up two thirds of all services, either had no explanation or else I felt as I brought explanation to them that I was lying and by that completely destroying my relationship to God, completely losing any possibility of faith.

I felt the same in celebrating the major church feasts. To remember the Sabbath, that is, to devote a day to turning to God, I found understandable. But the chief feast day was a remembrance of the resurrection, the reality of which I could not imagine and understand. And this name of resurrection was also given to the day celebrated every week. And on those days there took place the sacrament of the Eucharist, which was completely incomprehensible to me. The other twelve feast days apart from Christmas commemorated miracles, something I was trying not to think about so as not to deny them—the Ascension, Pentecost, the Epiphany, the feast of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin, etc. In celebrating these feasts, feeling that importance was being given to what was for me the opposite of important, I either invented palliative [relieving symptoms without dealing with the cause of the condition] explanations or I shut my eyes so as not to see what was tempting me.

This happened to me most strongly when taking part in the most usual sacraments, those considered to be the most important, baptism and taking communion. Here I came up against actions that weren't incomprehensible but wholly comprehensible; these actions I found tempting and I was put into a dilemma—either to lie or to reject them.

I will never forget the feeling of torment I underwent when I took communion for the first time in many years. The services, confession, the ritual prayers—all that I could understand and brought about within me the joyous recognition of the meaning of life opening up to me. Taking communion itself I explained to myself as an action commemorating Christ and signifying cleansing from sin and a full understanding of Christ's teaching. If this explanation was artificial I didn't notice its artificiality. I was so full of joy, submitting and humbling myself before the confessor, a simple, timid priest, and exposing all the filth of my soul; I was so full of joy at my thoughts merging with the aspirations of the fathers who wrote the ritual prayers; I was so full of joy to be one with all believers, past and present, that I did not feel the artificiality of my explanation. But when I went up to the "Tsar's Gates" the priest made me repeat what I believe, that what I swallow is true flesh and blood, and I felt cut to the heart; it wasn't just a false note struck, it was a brutal requirement of someone who clearly had never known what faith is.

But now I let myself say it was a brutal requirement; then I didn't even think that, it was just inexpressibly painful for me. I was no longer in the situation I had been in my younger days, thinking that everything in life was clear; I had come to faith because apart from faith I had found nothing, really nothing but annihilation, so I couldn't reject this faith and I submitted. And I found a feeling in my soul that helped me to bear it. This was a feeling of self-abasement [the belittling or humiliation of oneself] and humility. I humbled myself; I swallowed this flesh and blood without any feeling of blasphemy, with the desire to believe, but the blow had been struck. And knowing in advance what was waiting for me, I could no longer go a second time. I continued in the same way to perform the rituals of the church precisely and still believed that in the Christian teaching I followed lay the truth, and something happened to me that now I find clear but then seemed strange.

I was listening to an illiterate peasant pilgrim talking about God, about faith, about life, about salvation, and knowledge of the truth was revealed to me. I became close to the people as I listened to his views on life and faith, and more and more I came to understand the truth. The same happened to me during a reading of Chetyi-Minei and the Prologues (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Menaion_Reader) ; this became my favorite reading. Apart from miracles, which I regarded as fables to express thoughts, this reading revealed to me the meaning of life. There were the lives of Macarius the Great, of Prince Joseph (the story of Buddha), there were the words of John Chrysostom; there were the stories of the traveler in the well, of the monk who found gold, of Peter the publican; there was the story of the martyrs who all declared the same thing, that death does not exclude life; there were stories of the salvation of men who were illiterate and foolish and knew nothing of the teachings of the church.

But I only had to meet educated believers or take up their books to find some doubts in myself rise up in me with dissatisfaction and an angry desire for argument, and I felt that the deeper I entered into their words, the further I went from the truth and walked toward the abyss." - Leo Tolstoy, Confession, Chapter Fourteen

What was his name? What did he say exactly that moved Tolstoy so? All we know is that some average joe, with no great wealth or station, decided to set the fear for himself (selfishness) aside that would've otherwise have stopped him, to teach something he felt as though needed to be taught, and that people weren't gaining the knowledge of whatsoever otherwise. No matter how many of his peers or contemporaries might look at him differently; no matter what consequences might be waiting for him for doing so, it didn't stop him from speaking out about something that he knew was being buried underneath the hypocrisy of his day that surrounded him.

Words of a knowledge he knew would only lead to a better, brighter future for not just those he may have loved and cared for, but for all those with ears and a means to understand them; and for all those living things presently suffering and dying at the hands of a human being, and of course and especially for all the countless that have yet to be born, only destined to suffer the same fate. And for all those he may save therefore, by setting himself aside (selflessness) and acting upon this great incentive; will; truth, that led to inspire men like Tolstoy, that led to inspire you and I, and you and I inspiring the people of today and subsequently of tomorrow, potentially stopping even just one of the present or the future from acting upon their instincts (selfishness; hate), saving therefore even just one, out of the countless of the present or future from being destroyed by either their own hands, or by the hands of another.

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, non-supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: The Gospel In Brief. For context: https://lemmy.world/post/23133528

This is a direct continuation of Tolstoy's Thoughts On Hypocrisy (Part Two): https://lemmy.world/post/30601158

"Every man of the present day with the Christian principles assimilated involuntarily in his conscience, finds himself in precisely the position of a man asleep who dreams that he is obliged to do something which even in his dream he knows he ought not to do. He knows this in the depths of his conscience, and all the same he seems unable to change his position; he cannot stop and cease doing what he ought not to do. And just as in a dream, his position becoming more and more painful, at last reaches such a pitch of intensity that he begins sometimes to doubt the reality of what is passing and makes a moral effort to shake off the nightmare which is oppressing him. This is just the condition of the average man of our Christian society. He feels that all that he does himself and that is done around him is something absurd, hideous, impossible, and opposed to his conscience; he feels that his position is becoming more and more unendurable and reaching a crisis of intensity.

It is not possible that we modern men, with the Christian sense of human dignity and equality permeating us soul and body, with our need for peaceful association and unity between nations, should really go on living in such a way that every joy, every gratification we have is bought by the sufferings, by the lives of our brother men, and moreover, that we should be every instant within a hair's-breadth of falling on one another, nation against nation, like wild beasts, mercilessly destroying men's lives and labor, only because some benighted [in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance, typically owing to a lack of opportunity] diplomatist or ruler says or writes some stupidity to another equally benighted diplomatist or ruler. It is impossible. Yet every man of our day sees that this is so and awaits the calamity. And the situation becomes more and more insupportable.

And as the man who is dreaming does not believe that what appears to him can be truly the reality and tries to wake up to the actual real world again, so the average man of modern days cannot in the bottom of his heart believe that the awful position in which he is placed and which is growing worse and worse can be the reality, and tries to wake up to a true, real life, as it exists in his conscience. And just as the dreamer need only make a moral effort and ask himself, “Isn't it a dream?" and the situation which seemed to him so hopeless will instantly disappear, and he will wake up to peaceful and happy reality, so the man of the modern world need only make a moral effort to doubt the reality presented to him by his own hypocrisy and the general hypocrisy around him, and to ask himself, "Isn't it all a delusion?" and he will at once, like the dreamer awakened, feel himself transported from an imaginary and dreadful world to the true, calm, and happy reality. And to do this a man need accomplish no great feats or exploits. He need only make a moral effort. But can a man make this effort?

According to the existing theory so essential to support hypocrisy, man is not free and cannot change his life. "Man cannot change his life, because he is not free. He is not free, because all his actions are conditioned by previously existing causes. And whatever the man may do there are always some causes or other through which he does these or those acts, and therefore man cannot be free and change his life," say the champions of the metaphysics of hypocrisy. And they would be perfectly right if man were a creature without conscience and incapable of moving toward the truth; that is to say, if after recognizing a new truth, man always remained at the same stage of moral development. But man is a creature with a conscience and capable of attaining a higher and higher degree of truth. And therefore even if man is not free as regards performing these or those acts because there exists a previous cause for every act, the very causes of his acts, consisting as they do for the man of conscience of the recognition of this or that truth, are within his own control.

So that though man may not be free as regards the performance of his actions, he is free as regards the foundation on which they are preformed. Just as the mechanician who is not free to modify the movement of his locomotive when it is in motion, is free to regulate the machine beforehand so as to determine what the movement is to be. Whatever the conscious man does, he acts just as he does, and not otherwise, only because he recognizes that to act as he is acting is in accord with the truth, or because he has recognized it at some previous time, and is now only through inertia, through habit, acting in accordance with his previous recognition of truth. In any case, the cause of his action is not to be found in any given previous fact, but in the consciousness of a given relation to truth, and the consequent recognition of this or that fact as a sufficient basis for action. Whether a man eats or does not eat, works or rests, runs risks or avoids them, if he has a conscience he acts thus only because he considers it right and rational, because he considers that to act thus is in harmony with truth, or else because he has made this reflection in the past.

The recognition or non-recognition of a certain truth depends not on external causes, but on certain other causes within the man himself. So that at times under external conditions apparently very favorable for the recognition of truth, one man will not recognize it, and another, on the contrary, under the most unfavorable conditions will, without apparent cause, recognize it. As it is said in the Gospel, "No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." That is to say, the recognition of truth, which is the cause of all the manifestations of human life, does not depend on external phenomena, but on certain inner spiritual characteristics of the man which escape our observation. And therefore man, though not free in his acts, always feels himself free in what is the motive of his acts—the recognition or non-recognition of truth. And he feels himself independent not only of facts external to his own personality, but even of his own actions.

Thus a man who under the influence of passion has committed an act contrary to the truth he recognizes, remains none the less free to recognize it or not to recognize it; that is, he can by refusing to recognize the truth regard his action as necessary and justifiable, or he may recognize the truth and regard his act as wrong and censure himself for it. Thus a gambler or a drunkard who does not resist temptation and yields to his passion is still free to recognize gambling and drunkenness as wrong or to regard them as a harmless pastime. In the first case even if he does not at once get over his passion, he gets the more free from it the more sincerely he recognizes the truth about it; in the second case he will be strengthened in his vice and will deprive himself of every possibility of shaking it off.

In the same way a man who has made his escape alone from a house on fire, not having had the courage to save his friend, remains free, recognizing the truth that a man ought to save the life of another even at the risk of his own, to regard his action as bad and to censure himself for it, or, not recognizing this truth, to regard his action as natural and necessary and to justify it to himself. In the first case, if he recognizes the truth in spite of his departure from it, he prepares for himself in the future a whole series of acts of self-sacrifice necessarily flowing from this recognition of the truth; in the second case, a whole series of egoistic acts.

Not that a man is always free to recognize or to refuse to recognize every truth. There are truths which he has recognized long before or which have been handed down to him by education and tradition and accepted by him on faith, and to follow these truths has become a habit, a second nature with him; and there are truths, only vaguely, as it were distantly, apprehended by him. The man is not free to refuse to recognize the first, nor to recognize the second class of truths. But there are truths of a third kind, which have not yet become an unconscious motive of action, but yet have been revealed so clearly to him that he cannot pass them by, and is inevitably obliged to do one thing or the other, to recognize or not to recognize them. And it is in regard to these truths that the man's freedom manifests itself." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom Of God Is Within You, Chapter Twelve: "Conclusion—Repent Ye, For The Kingdom Of Heaven Is At Hand"

What are your thoughts on Tolstoy's Thoughts On Truth And Free Will? (Part Two): https://lemmy.world/post/34197761

"We now reach the stage in this story when I began seriously to think of taking the brahmacharya vow (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmacharya). I had been wedded to a monogamous [involving marriage to one person at a time] ideal ever since my marriage, faithfulness to my wife being part of the love of truth. But it was in South Africa that I came to realize the importance of observing brahmacharya even with respect to my wife. I cannot definitely say what circumstance or what book it was, that set my thoughts in that direction, but I have a recollection that the predominant factor was the influence of Raychandbhai (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrimad_Rajchandra) of whom I have already written. I can still recall a conversation that I had with him. On one occasion I spoke to him in high praise of Mrs Gladstone's devotion to her husband. I had read somewhere that Mrs Gladstone insisted on preparing tea for Mr Gladstone even in the House of Commons, and that this had become a rule in the life of this illustrious couple, whose actions were governed by regularity. I spoke of this to the poet, and incidentally eulogized [praise highly in speech or writing] conjugal [relating to marriage or the relationship of a married couple] love. 'Which of the two do you prize more,' asked Raychandbhai, 'the love of Mrs Gladstone for her husband as his wife, or her devoted service irrespective [regardless] of her relation to Mr Gladstone? Supposing she had been his sister, or his devoted servant, and ministered to him with the same attention, what would you have said? Do we not have instances of such devoted sisters or servants? Supposing you had found the same loving devotion in a male servant, would you have been pleased in the same way as in Mrs Gladstone's case? Just examine the viewpoint suggested by me.'

Raychandbhai was himself married. I have an impression that at the moment his words sounded harsh, but they gripped me irresistibly. The devotion of a servant was, I felt, a thousand times more praiseworthy than that of a wife to her husband. There was nothing surprising in the wife's devotion to her husband, as there was an indissoluble [unable to be destroyed; lasting] bond between them. The devotion was perfectly natural. But it required a special effort to cultivate equal devotion between master and servant. The poet's point of view began gradually to grow upon me. What then, I asked myself, should be my relation with my wife? Did my faithfulness consist in making my wife the instrument of my lust? So long as I was the slave of lust, my faithfulness was worth nothing. To be fair to my wife, I must say that she was never the temptress. It was therefore the easiest thing for me to take the vow of brahmacharya, if only I willed it. It was my weak will or lustful attachment that was the obstacle.

Even after my conscience had been roused in the matter, I failed twice. I failed because the motive that actuated the effort was none the highest. My main object was to escape having more children. Whilst in England I had read something about contraceptives. I have already referred to Dr Allinson's birth control propaganda in the chapter on Vegetarianism. If it had some temporary effect on me, Mr Hill's opposition to those methods and his advocacy of internal efforts as opposed to outward means, in a word, of self-control, had a far greater effect, which in due time came to be abiding [lasting a long time; enduring]. Seeing, therefore, that I did not desire more children I began to strive after self-control. There was endless difficulty in the task. We began to sleep in separate beds. I decided to retire to bed only after the day's work had left me completely exhausted. All these efforts did not seem to bear much fruit, but when I look back upon the past, I feel that the final resolution was the cumulative effect of those unsuccessful strivings. The final resolution could only be made as late as 1906. Satyagraha (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha) had not then been started. I had not the least notion of its coming. I was practising in Johannesburg at the time of the Zulu 'Rebellion' in Natal, which came soon after the Boer War. I felt that I must offer my services to the Natal Government on that occasion. The offer was accepted, as we shall see in another chapter. But the work set me furiously thinking in the direction of self-control, and according to my wont (one's customary behavior in a particular situation) I discussed my thoughts with my co-workers. It became my conviction that procreation and the consequent care of children were inconsistent with public service. I had to break up my household at Johannesburg to be able to serve during the ‘Rebellion'. Within one month of offering my services, I had to give up the house I had so carefully furnished. I took my wife and children to Phoenix and led the Indian ambulance corps attached to the Natal forces. During the difficult marches that had then to be performed, the idea flashed upon me that, if I wanted to devote myself to the service of the community in this manner, I must relinquish the desire for children and wealth and live the life of vanaprastha (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanaprastha) —of one retired from household cares.

The 'Rebellion' did not occupy me for more than six weeks, but this brief period proved to be a very important epoch in my life. The Importance of vows grew upon me more clearly than ever before. I realized that a vow, far from closing the door to real freedom, opened it. Up to this time I had not met with success because the will had been lacking, because I had no faith in myself, no faith in the grace of God, and therefore, my mind had been tossed on the boisterous (noisy, energetic, and cheerful; rowdy) sea of doubt. I realized that in refusing to take a vow man was drawn into temptation, and that to be bound by a vow was like a passage from libertinism (characterized by a disregard of morality, especially in sexual matters) to a real monogamous marriage, 'I believe in effort, I do not want to bind myself with vows,' is the mentality of weakness and betrays a subtle desire for the thing to be avoided. Or where can be the difficulty in making a final decision? I vow to flee from the serpent which I know will bite me, I do not simply make an effort to flee from him. I know that mere effort may mean certain death. Mere effort means ignorance of the certain fact that the serpent is bound to kill me. The fact, therefore, that I could rest content with an effort only, means that I have not yet clearly realized the necessity of definite action. 'But supposing my views are changed in the future, how can I bind myself by a vow?' Such a doubt often deters us. But that doubt also betrays a lack of clear perception that a particular thing must be renounced. That is why Nishkulanand (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nishkulanand_Swami) has sung: Renunciation without aversion [a strong dislike or disinclination] is not lasting. Where therefore the desire is gone, a vow of renunciation is the natural and inevitable fruit." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story Of My Experiments With Truth, Part Three, Chapter Seven: Brahmacharya - I

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, non-supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: The Gospel In Brief. For context: https://lemmy.world/post/23133528

This is a direct continuation of Tolstoy's Thoughts On Hypocrisy (Part One): https://lemmy.world/post/29870567

These posts serve as additional context if you're interested:

1. The Intoxication Of Power: https://lemmy.world/post/28177344

2. Truth And Auto Suggestion: https://lemmy.world/post/29118589

"All the material improvements that religious and scientific men can dream of may be accomplished; all men may accept Christianity, and all the reforms desired by the Bellamys may be brought about with every possible addition and improvement, but if the hypocrisy which rules nowadays still exists, if men do not profess the truth they know, but continue to feign [pretend to be affected by (a feeling, state, or injury)] belief in what they do not believe and veneration for what they do not respect, their condition will remain the same, or even grow worse and worse. The more men are freed from privation [a state in which things that are essential for human well-being such as food and warmth are scarce or lacking]; the more telegraphs, telephones, books, papers, and journals there are; the more means there will be of diffusing inconsistent lies and hypocrisies, and the more disunited and consequently miserable will men become, which indeed is what we see actually taking place. All these material reforms may be realized, but the position of humanity will not be improved. But only let each man, according to his powers, at once realize in his life the truth he knows, or at least cease to support the falsehoods he is supporting in the place of the truth, and at once, in this year 1893, we should see such reforms as we do not dare to hope for within a century—emancipation of men and the reign of truth upon earth.

Not without good reason was Christ's only harsh and threatening reproof [an expression of blame or disapproval] directed against hypocrites and hypocrisy. It is not theft nor robbery nor fornication, but falsehood, the special falsehood of hypocrisy, which corrupts men, brutalizes them and makes them vindictive, destroys all distinction between right and wrong in their conscience, deprives them of what is the true meaning of all real human life, and debars them from all progress toward perfection.

Those who do evil through ignorance of the truth provoke sympathy with their victims and repugnance for their actions, they do harm only to those they attack; but those who know the truth and do evil masked by hypocrisy, injure themselves and their victims, and thousands of other men as well who are led astray by the falsehood with which the wrongdoing is disguised. Thieves, robbers, murderers, and cheats, who commit crimes recognized by themselves and everyone else as evil, serve as an example of what ought not to be done, and deter others from similar crimes. But those who commit the same thefts, robberies, murders, and other crimes, disguising them under all kinds of religious or scientific or humanitarian justifications, as all landowners, merchants, manufacturers, and government officials do, provoke others to imitation, and so do harm not only to those who are directly the victims of their crimes, but to thousands and millions of men whom they corrupt by obliterating their sense of the distinction between right and wrong.

A single fortune gained by trading in goods necessary to the people or in goods pernicious in their effects, or by financial speculations, or by acquiring land at a low price the value of which is increased by the needs of the population, or by an industry ruinous to the health and life of those employed in it, or by military or civil service of the state, or by any employment which trades on men's evil instincts—a single fortune acquired in any of these ways, not only with the sanction, but even with the approbation of the leading men in society and masked with an ostentation [pretentious and vulgar display, especially of wealth and luxury, intended to impress or attract notice] of philanthropy [the desire to promote the welfare of others, expressed especially by the generous donation of money to good causes], corrupts men incomparably more than millions of thefts and robberies committed against the recognized forms of law and punishable as crimes.

A single execution carried out by prosperous educated men uninfluenced by passion, with the approbation and assistance of Christian ministers, and represented as something necessary and even just, is infinitely more corrupting and brutalizing to men than thousands of murders committed by uneducated working people under the influence of passion. An execution such as was proposed by Joukovsky, which would produce even a sentiment of religious emotion in the spectators, would be one of the most perverting actions imaginable. (See vol. iv. of the works of Joukovsky.) Every war, even the most humanely conducted, with all its ordinary consequences, the destruction of harvests, robberies, the license and debauchery, and the murder with the justifications of its necessity and justice, the exaltation and glorification of military exploits, the worship of the flag, the patriotic sentiments, the feigned solicitude for the wounded, and so on, does more in one year to pervert men's minds than thousands of robberies, murders, and arsons perpetrated during hundreds of years by individual men under the influence of passion. The luxurious expenditure of a single respectable and so-called honorable family, even within the conventional limits, consuming as it does the produce of as many days of labor as would suffice to provide for thousands living in privation near, does more to pervert men's minds than thousands of the violent orgies of coarse tradespeople, officers, and workmen of drunken and debauched habits, who smash up glasses and crockery for amusement. One solemn religious procession, one service, one sermon from the altarsteps or the pulpit, in which the preacher does not believe, produces incomparably more evil than thousands of swindling tricks, adulteration of food, and so on.

We talk of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. But the hypocrisy of our society far surpasses the comparatively innocent hypocrisy of the Pharisees. They had at least an external religious law, the fulfillment of which hindered them from seeing their obligations to their neighbors. Moreover, these obligations were not nearly so clearly defined in their day. Nowadays we have no such religious law to exonerate us from our duties to our neighbors (I am not speaking now of the coarse and ignorant persons who still fancy their sins can be absolved by confession to a priest or by the absolution of the Pope). On the contrary, the law of the Gospel which we all profess in one form or another directly defines these duties. Besides, the duties which had then been only vaguely and mystically expressed by a few prophets have now been so clearly formulated, have become such truisms, that they are repeated even by schoolboys and journalists. And so it would seem that men of today cannot pretend that they do not know these duties.

A man of the modern world who profits by the order of things based on violence, and at the same time protests that he loves his neighbor and does not observe what he is doing in his daily life to his neighbor, is like a brigand who has spent his life in robbing men, and who, caught at last, knife in hand, in the very act of striking his shrieking victim, should declare that he had no idea that what he was doing was disagreeable to the man he had robbed and was prepared to murder. Just as this robber and murderer could not deny what was evident to everyone, so it would seem that a man living upon the privations of the oppressed classes cannot persuade himself and others that he desires the welfare of those he plunders, and that he does not know how the advantages he enjoys are obtained.

It is impossible to convince ourselves that we do not know that there are a hundred thousand men in prison in Russia alone to guarantee the security of our property and tranquillity, and that we do not know of the law tribunals in which we take part, and which, at our initiative, condemn those who have attacked our property or our security to prison, exile, or forced labor, whereby men no worse than those who condemn them are ruined and corrupted; or that we do not know that we only possess all that we do possess because it has been acquired and is defended for us by murder and violence.

We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who marches up and down beneath our windows to guarantee our security while we eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the theater, or that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers who will make their appearance with guns and cartridges directly our property is attacked. We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the ball, the Christmas fête the promenade, the races or the hunt, thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not the policeman and the soldier there prepared to run up at our first call for help.

And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fètes and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like working underground, in the water, or in stifling heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so obvious. Yet it is denied. Still, there are, among the rich, especially among the young, and among women, persons whom I am glad to meet more and more frequently, who, when they are shown in what way and at what cost their pleasures are purchased, do not try to conceal the truth, but hiding their heads in their hands, cry: "Ah! don't speak of that. If it is so, life is impossible." But though there are such sincere people who even though they cannot renounce their fault, at least see it, the vast majority of the men of the modern world have so entered into the parts they play in their hypocrisy that they boldly deny what is staring everyone in the face.

"All that is unjust," they say; "no one forces the people to work for the landowners and manufacturers. That is an affair of free contract. Great properties and fortunes are necessary, because they provide and organize work for the working classes. And labor in the factories and workshops is not at all the terrible thing you make it out to be. Even if there are some abuses in factories, the government and the public are taking steps to obviate them and to make the labor of the factory workers much easier, and even agreeable. The working classes are accustomed to physical labor, and are, so far, fit for nothing else. The poverty of the people is not the result of private property in land, nor of capitalistic oppression, but of other causes: it is the result of the ignorance, brutality, and intemperance [lack of moderation or restraint] of the people. And we men in authority who are striving against this impoverishment of the people by wise legislation, we capitalists who are combating it by the extension of useful inventions, we clergymen by religious instruction, and we liberals by the formation of trades unions, and the diffusion of education, are in this way increasing the prosperity of the people without changing our own positions. We do not want all to be as poor as the poor; we want all to be as rich as the rich. As for the assertion that men are ill treated and murdered to force them to work for the profit of the rich, that is a sophism [a fallacious argument, especially one used deliberately to decive]. The army is only called out against the mob, when the people, in ignorance of their own interests, make disturbances and destroy the tranquillity necessary for the public welfare. In the same way, too, it is necessary to keep in restraint the malefactors for whom the prisons and gallows are established. We ourselves wish to suppress these forms of punishment and are working in that direction."

Hypocrisy in our day is supported on two sides: by false religion and by false science. And it has reached such proportions that if we were not living in its midst, we could not believe that men could attain such a pitch of self-deception. Men of the present day have come into such an extraordinary condition, their hearts are so hardened, that seeing they see not, hearing they do not hear, and understand not. Men have long been living in antagonism to their conscience. If it were not for hypocrisy they could not go on living such a life. This social organization in opposition to their conscience only continues to exist because it is disguised by hypocrisy. And the greater the divergence between actual life and men's conscience, the greater the extension of hypocrisy. But even hypocrisy has its limits. And it seems to me that we have reached those limits in the present day." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom Of God Is Within You, Chapter Twelve: "Conclusion—Repent Ye, For The Kingdom Of Heaven Is At Hand"