Idealism, Nobility of Soul, IX – The Narrow Village of Egocentrism

One hears the sound

of cadenced steps

towards the trough

under the cloak of shame.

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira [On 10/20/74]

 

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St. Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) was a Franciscan friar who volunteered to starve to death in place of a father in a Nazi concentration camp

 

In This Chapter

Egocentrism is the obsession of placing oneself at the center of all things.
In a famous formulation, St. Augustine says “Two loves have built two cities: the love of self extending to the scorn of God has made the city of Babylon, that is, the city of the world, the city of immorality, whereas the love of God even to the scorn of self has made the city of God.” [The City of God, chap. VIII, 11°]
Thus, we could say that we are either dwellers of the city of idealism or of the narrow village of egocentrism.
In the latter vegetate those who put themselves at the center of all things. Examples are plentiful.

 

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The Cathedral and the Watermelon
On my first visit to Notre Dame, the guide told me a caravan of tourists had been there.
It was a very hot day, and they all came in, eating chunks of cold watermelon being sold at the entrance. They toured much of the building, eating and throwing the shells on the floor. And since there was a large crowd, when they left the cathedral, it had to be swept to get rid of the watermelon peels.
How to show Notre Dame? How do you show marvels like that? It is no easy task because everyone is clutching his watermelon. And their souls remain “watermeloniac” even when the watermelon is over. [Oct. 20, 1974]

Cain Was No Idealist
True love, true devotion, true friendship, and true idealism exist only when there is a spirit of sacrifice. Absent a willingness to dedicate and sacrifice oneself, any declaration of friendship or affection is just idle talk. Either a person proves his affection, friendship and idealism with works, and works that have a cost, or it is proven that he has no real affection or dedication. [Aug. 21, 1971]
A non-serious love of God is like Cain’s sacrifice: a perfunctory offering of rotten fruits that give off smoke that does not rise to Heaven.
Serious love of God is like the sacrifice of Abel: he burns the offering, and its perfume envelops bystanders, and the smoke ascends to the throne of the Most High. [Folha de S. Paulo, Dec. 14, 1982]
When the Horizon Is Grand, One Must Know How to Stay Small
One author speaks of certain people who want to have a soul only to the extent necessary for their bodies not to rot. I know no better or sharper expression to characterize a certain state of mind.
Modern man thinks: “I’m living my little life proportional to me, which I own and steer as I want. I do not want a much greater horizon in the face of which I become small or which forces me to not pay attention to myself but to something superior that I must admire and to which I must devote myself.” [Oct. 20, 1974]
“Cadenced Steps Toward the Trough Under the Cloak of Shame”
 There are millions and millions of men who, in an indifferent silence emit the only sound you can hear: a cadenced step toward the trough under the cloak of shame.
Everyone is covered in a cloak of shame, walking in a cadenced step toward the trough.
Let’s eat, let’s eat, let’s eat! Having food is all you need! Food and, of course, sex. [July. 12, 1971]
A [1971] poem became popular among Moscow University students and circulated in clandestine newsletters seized by police. Interestingly, Russian things, already penetrated by Oriental influences, have a great poetic connotation.
“As for me, I do not know where to go.
To whom and how should I ask for directions?
My voice is still very weak and timid.
My friends, what we need to do for now
Is to help other blind people cross the street.”
How does their state of mind differ from the West’s pestilential rottenness (no other word for it)? The answer is that they ask where to go.
He who does not ask where to go is like an animal going to the trough; he sniffs food and goes there without thinking, walking to the call of his stomach. This is where the difference is.
In contrast, he who asks where he is going may find Our Lord along the way.
 The author asks, “What is our duty right now? We are blind and must cross a street with all its hazards. Let us help one another, for our voice is still too timid and weak to ask for directions.”
  Can anyone with Christian guts not feel like helping these blind people by going to see them and saying, “Look! Here is the light!”? [July 3, 1971]

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Under communist dictatorship
In 1992, with idealism, the TFP banner in Red Square (Moscow)

“I am the Focus of Everything!”
The basic pleasure of a person given over to the vice of selfishness is not just to continuously enjoy life but to be always ‘feeling’ himself.
 What does ‘feeling oneself’ mean? It consists in making some interior statements:
“I am the cause, the focus, the center of all that is extraordinary about me. All this is in me as my property and no one takes it from me because it is co-equal with my personality.”
It is a kind of rapture with touching, feeling and sucking oneself. Imagine a thirsty man who is given a sponge soaked with water: he sucks it. So is a vain person about his own things: “I am this,” “I am that,” “I am …”
Each person really is something ineffable that the others do not perceive well. This perception exists in everyone and even in the last of men. He has an attraction that God perceives and others do not, but which he also perceives.
He will say, “I am a masterpiece.” And that is true because every man is a masterpiece if he knows how to see things well.
And he will add: “If I am a masterpiece, I want to owe it to no one. And the supreme joy of life must be for me to feel myself and always rejoice with it.”
However, this is a restless joy. Why?
Because the person feels that this has a grain of truth but is, above all, a huge lie.
He feels his own flaws, gaps, shortcomings and above all, envy. He lives in a kind of nostalgia for what he does not have, and this nostalgia produces jealousy.
So, alongside his egocentric pleasure, he feels a continuous and universal frustration.
This continuous anguish and frustration are what caused Solomon to say – in the Book of Wisdom – that all things are but vanity. Vanity in the etymological sense of the word: that which is vain. All things are an impalpable illusion, have no reality; “vanity and affliction of spirit.” Nothing but that. [Jan. 22, 1976]
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