A coin is turned around before it is handed to the beggar, yet a child is unflinchingly tossed into cosmic bruteness.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the contrasting treatment of objects and living beings, questioning the value placed on human life compared to material possessions.
Zapffe's quote highlights a profound philosophical observation about the human condition. It suggests that while a coinβa mere objectβis carefully handled and turned before being given away, a child's life is sometimes subjected to the harsh realities of existence without consideration or compassion. This stark contrast provokes thought about how society often prioritizes material things over the well-being and dignity of individuals.
In practice
In a discussion about societal priorities, one might use this quote to illustrate the value we attach to possessions over human lives.
Man beholds the earth, and it is breathing like a great lung; whenever it exhales, delightful life swarms from all its pores and reaches out toward the sun, but when it inhales, a moan of rupture passes through the multitude, and corpses whip the ground like bouts of hail.
The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by over-evolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.
When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence.
As long as humankind recklessly proceeds in the fateful delusion of being biologically fated for triumph, nothing essential will change.
The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn't seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer.
I am lost if I attempt to take count of chronology. When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near.
Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.
A culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiate d masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.
Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.
Freud was way off base in considering sex the fundamental motivation. The ruling passion in men is minding each other's business.
It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
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