Why is erasing desire seen as so important? If the subjugation of the self is the point of the self what's the point in having a self? It's like someone handing you a leaflet which says throw this leaflet away.
Interpretation
The quote questions the value of erasing desire and the purpose of self-identity.
Tibor Fischer's quote explores the paradox of self-subjugation and desire, suggesting that if the aim is to diminish the self, it raises the fundamental question of what purpose the self serves. It critiques the notion that self-denial is necessary for personal growth or enlightenment, using a metaphor about being given a leaflet instructing you to discard it, highlighting the absurdity of negating one's own identity.
In practice
In a discussion about personal growth, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of embracing rather than erasing desires.
God save the Queen and a fascist regime … a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire
I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words. I scatter them... in time, and space. A message to lead myself here.
Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: It presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one's belonging to a place which is definable and familiar, as against a place that is strange, remote.
Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?
Indeed, the hereditary gift of prophecy will go to the grave with me.
Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.
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