Heaven and Hell, Pride and Humility

**Summerlander** · 09-03-2021 01:42 AM

Milton saw Satan as an intellectual figure and a rebellious symbol that encourages humans to embrace their nature and to also eat from the Tree of Knowledge in the context that knowledge confers power. There is nothing wrong with seeking knowledge—in fact, it can be advantageous—but embracing one's nature as though it is flawless comes with its perils. Human beings have a hubristic tendency and hubris is something that religious canons do warn us about. Satan teaches us that we should be jealous about the Logos itself and that, rather than realistically deeming our nature to be insufficient and problematic, we should take pride in it and run the risk of assuming that we have it all sussed out.

The minute we succumb to our innate hubris and arrogantly claim to know things with certainty, is when we have fallen from grace and begin our descent into hell—where we no longer challenge ourselves and, in our limitations and lack of humility, cease to see further progress and potential. The know-it-alls, spellbound by vanity, are doomed to the eternal damnation of foolish and pertinacious ignorance. Youngsters often make the mistake of assuming they have the world sussed out, inflating their egos to the point of extreme cynicism or outright pessimism, failing to see how such traits give them permission to shirk responsibility and avoid challenges.

If they go for a job interview requiring candidates to be formal and spiffy, they would rather insist, with rebellious attitude, on having unkempt hair, a straggly beard and frayed jeans because that is apparently who they are and, according to them, anybody who dislikes their image is the one with the problem. And it doesn't stop here! They refuse to venture out of their comfort zones—especially if it means trying something new in order to learn something useful—like the world owes them. They expect to be good at things straight away without trial and error as they fear looking foolish and audaciously demand recognition and respect for something they haven't even earned. They conveniently forget they lack experience! As I said to my teenage son just today as I encouraged him to apply for jobs, put himself out there and enrich his CV, 'A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor.'

**Sageous** · 09-08-2021 09:49 PM

Though I do not disagree, this reminded me of a certain quote I came across long ago:

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

― Socrates

I guess this sort of problem has been around for a while...

**Summerlander** · 09-09-2021 12:18 AM

Certainly.

It is definitely in the nature of human beings to go through these phases. In Ancient Greece, teenagers still underwent the pruning stage of brain development (just like today's kids) where certain synapses are eliminated in order to make room for new connections in the latter part of adolescence.

And we would also do well to remember that a few prodigious youngsters make the exception, of course. But wisdom certainly comes with experience.

Some traits are more innate than personality, such as urges and behavioural patterns which evolved long ago and don't require consciousness. Archetypes, for instance, lie at the heart of such psychological complexes and can last through millennia—far more fundamental than memes.

One can argue that, the younger you are, the more authentic you'll be before forming a whole personality on the way to adulthood which inevitably requires a persona to be displayed in order to best adapt to the social world as well as a shadow that is repressed instead of being integrated.

Children, in this sense, are pure and uncorrupted by the hardships of living until they face them. If the parents are harsh and traumatise the child, this one will quickly learn to try other modes of behaviour in order to be accepted even if it contradicts who they really are because deep down it feels that their survival is dependent on appeasement of the parents and their initial and more authentic output has already been rejected. And granted that the 'fake self' they psychically devise isn't always the best solution because they are, after all, still very immature by nature.

If you only take consciousness to be all there is about the psyche, then the Lockean 'tabula rasa' is how infants start in this world. But if you take into account the unconscious, you start to realise that something like Jungian innatism is true as the initial conditions of a human being.

**Labyrinthus** · 09-30-2021 11:46 PM

Originally Posted by Sageous

Though I do not disagree, this reminded me of a certain quote I came across long ago:

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

― Socrates

I guess this sort of problem has been around for a while...

We need to be careful about quotes attributed to ancient sources. That quote attributed to Socrates has been shown to be at least heavily editorialized if not simply of dubious veracity.

The closest I could find was this quote attributed to Aristophanes (with an actual source named) as below;

I don't know how it started, but I've found that it was probably
produced by cutting down and modifying a speech by 'Right' in
Aristophanes' Clouds, 960ff. It's amusing to find it attributed to
Socrates, because of course Socrates in that play is the leading
representative of 'Wrong'.

Anyway, here (in the translation by Patric Dickinson) are some parts
of the speech that resemble the 'quotation' above:

. . .
A boy must hold his tongue among his elders.
. . .
Greed was abhorred, it was taboo to snatch
Radish tops, aniseed, or parsley before your elders,
Or to nibble kickshaws and giggle and twine one's feet.
. . .
So, you shall learn to hate the Agora,
And shun the baths and feel ashamed of smut;
. . .
And to get up and give your seat to your elders,
And not to behave towards your parents rudely

I remember back in the 1970's someone sent a very similar quote to Dear Abby, attributed to some 5000 year old Egyptian hieroglyphs -- almost certainly little more than Urban Myth.

A few years ago I was in some online discussion where someone attempted to instruct us with a quote from Buddha. I asked him where he found that quote because I was familiar with a small amount of relatively ancient Buddha quotes and it sounded a little too modern and colloquial. He actually sent back his source, "fakebuddhaquotes.com" (I am not kidding

.

But the point remains, the younger generations are frequently observed to show disrespect for elders and the old ways. I think this stems from societies forming into cities and the means of procuring food and basic necessities become much easier. Delicacies on the dinner table and entertainment at the bath houses seem to go hand in hand with a decline in respect and natural appreciation for the effort required for survival.