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But it is possible that larger, more comprehensive sacrifices might solve an array of large and complex problems, all at the same time.
Adapting to the necessary discipline of medical school will, for example, fatally interfere with the licentious lifestyle of a hardcore undergraduate party animal. Giving that up is a sacrifice. But a physician can—to paraphrase George W.—really put food on his family.
So, sacrifices are necessary, to improve the future, and larger sacr...
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“What would be the largest, most effective—most pleasing—of all possible sacrifices?” and then “How good might the best possible future be, if the most effective sacrifice could be made?”
Not all sacrifices are of equal quality.
Why isn’t God happy? What would have to change to make Him so?
To share does not mean to give away something you value, and get nothing back.
To share means, properly, to initiate the process of trade.
He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged
In Franklin’s opinion, asking someone for something (not too extreme, obviously) was the most useful and immediate invitation to social interaction.
It’s even better than that, however, to become widely known for generous sharing. That’s something that lasts. That’s something that’s reliable.
We can see in this manner how from the simple notion that “leftovers are a good idea” the highest moral principles might emerge.
Implicit, unrecognized value came first (as the actions that preceded thought embodied value, but did not make that value explicit).
We thought it over, and drew a conclusion: The successful among us delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with the future.
The successful sacrifice.
Sometimes things do not go well.
sometimes, when things are not going well, it’s not the world that’s the cause. The cause is instead that which is currently most valued, subjectively and personally.
If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, therefore, it’s time to examine your values.
It’s time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions.
It’s time to ...
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It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, i...
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The animal will not sacrifice the part to preserve the whole.
Something valuable, given up, ensures future prosperity.
Something valuable, sacrificed, plea...
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Thus, the person who wishes to alleviate suffering—who wishes to rectify the flaws in Being; who wants to bring about the best of all possible futures; who wants to create Heaven on Earth—will make the greatest of sacrifices, of self and child, of everything that is loved, to live a life aimed at the Good.
He will forego expediency.
He will pursue the path of ultim...
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When he attempted specifically to consider strategies that would produce acquittal “by fair means or foul”121—or even when merely considering his potential actions at the trial122—he found himself interrupted by his divine sign: his internal spirit, voice or daemon.
He said that one of the factors distinguishing him from other men124 was his absolute willingness to listen to its warnings—to stop speaking and cease acting when it objected.
Socrates’ decision to accept his fate allowed him to put away mortal terror in the face of death itself, prior to and during the trial, after the sentence was handed down,129 and even later, during his execution.
He saw that his life had been so rich and full that he could let it go, gracefully.
He was given the opportunity to put his affairs in order.
Socrates rejected expediency, and the necessity for manipulation that accompanied it.
He chose instead, under the direst of conditions, to maintain his pursuit of the meaningful and the true.
If you cease to utter falsehoods and live according to the dictates of your conscience, you can maintain your nobility, even when facing the ultimate threat; if you abide, truthfully and courageously, by the highest of ideals, you will be provided with more security and strength than will be offered by any short-sighted concentration on your own safety; if you live properly, fully, you can discover meaning so profound that it protects you even from the fear of death.
But sacrifice—and work—serves far more effectively than short-term impulsive pleasure at keeping suffering at bay.
Once we can see the future, we must prepare for it, or live in denial and terror.
It’s this: once you become consciously aware that you, yourself, are vulnerable, you understand the nature of human vulnerability, in general.
Evil enters the world with self-consciousness.
Conscious human malevolence can break the spirit even tragedy could not shake.
But the hard lot of life, magnified by the consequence of continually rejected sacrifices (however poorly conceptualized; however half-heartedly executed)? That will bend and twist people into the truly monstrous forms who then begin, consciously, to work evil; who then begin to generate for themselves and others little besides pain and suffering (and who do it for the sake of that pain and suffering).
In that manner, a truly vicious circle takes hold: begrudging sacrifice, half-heartedly undertaken; rejection of that sacrifice by God or by reality (take your pick); angry resentment, generated by that rejection; descent into bitterness and the desire for revenge; sacrifice undertaken even more begrudgingly, or refused altogether. And it’s Hell itself that serves as the destination place of that downward spiral.
what and how to sacrifice to diminish suffering and evil—the conscious and voluntary and vengeful source of the worst suffering.
Cain turns to Evil to obtain what Good denied him, and he does it voluntarily, self-consciously and with malice aforethought.
It’s the journey to that place each of us goes when things fall apart, friends and family are distant, hopelessness and despair reign, and black nihilism beckons.
“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto,” said the Roman playwright Terence: nothing human is alien to me.
“No tree can grow to Heaven,” adds the ever-terrifying Carl Gustav Jung, psychoanalyst extraordinaire, “unless its roots reach down to Hell.”
It means that Christ is forever He who determines to take personal responsibility for the full depth of human depravity.
But perhaps he might gain in internal vision and understanding something proportional to what he loses in perception of the outside world.
Satan embodies the refusal of sacrifice; he is arrogance, incarnate; spite, deceit, and cruel, conscious malevolence.
