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Love, Knowledge and Pity
Published by Abhilash Ravishankar on Thursday, January 11, 2007 at 4:24 PMCame across this amazing philosophy in Ratna's (my guide here at Genesis Micrcochip) website.
Bertrand Russel once said:
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions,like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought,and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine,victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me."Love, yes, something that can change the way you look at the world. Can change your passions itself! Something that relieves loneliness whose beauty is short-lived. And is it heaven, well, maybe!
The urge to learn about everything under the sun is what drives most of my actions, knowingly or otherwise. Maybe all my so-called passions - 'Entrepreneurship, Architecture, Art, Psychology, Philosophy", can be put under this single umbrella-ic passion of learning.
I might rave about Objectivism and egoism as a virtue, but everytime I see pain and poverty, it brings me down to the point of crying. As Russel puts it, I long to alleviate this evil. And I know that I alone cannot. And I suffer.
I concur, Russel. It's worth living.
Posted by Abhilash Ravishankar
Labels: Philosophy
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This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.