Once an individual's search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering. And what happens if one's groping for a meaning has been in vain? This may well result in a fatal condition. Let us recall, for instance, what sometimes happened in extreme situations such as
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They give you the future, but they ask no questions about your past.
You've inherited a terrible past. Your heritage is a burning diamond in your hand.
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I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.’
Was Aristotle an environmentalist?
During Aristotle’s time, 384–322 BC, the concept of having to protect the environment was still two millennia in the future.
Global population estimates for that are 100 million or so. Imagine all the people living in Japan today (around 125 million) being spread out around every continent on earth. So few of us and still so dependent on nature.
But in the sense that environmentalists are motivated by their love of nature, no one fits that description better than Aristotle. He was a genius beyond any modern calibration. He was a polymath — the rare human who is expert in multiple disciplines.
He studied physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, philosophy, ethics, meteorology and geology. He was taught by Plato, who in turn had been taught by Socrates. (my mnemonic for this sequences of brilliant Greek philisophers is: SPA). He and his friends were inquisitive about every element of nature.
There was no one else who made him feel, that made him want that kind of future, like Kareena.
We are not fighting for ourselves alone. We cannot and must not care how many will fall in the struggle, or whether we ourselves will perhaps be among the first to perish. Precisely because we are committed to the struggle, we need not give a thought to the poor individual; the moment one sinks to the ground, another will pick up the flag we have sworn to follow. Whether I have the strength for this struggle, whether I will hold out, no longer concerns me; to fall under the mocking laughter of the enemy may well be an honorable death, since, after all, their seriousness so often struck us as laughable.
I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could, from a past that no longer defined me, toward a future undetermined. All I knew was that there would be pain and there would be purpose. And that I was ready.
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