Arbeit macht frei

Noticed this when reading about women regretting motherhood. They regret that they, apparently despite their “best efforts,” got pushed into the “traditional” role. Lamenting that they, unlike their husbands, were unable to continue to work. Further, they regret no longer to have “fun,” loss of sex drive, getting uglier, no longer being able to travel etc.

Now is this shallow? It surely is. For work itself is something most people do only grudgingly, even doctors, engineers and so on. And why wouldn’t they, given that Genesis 3:17-19 is true? Quite obviously, this is nonsense.

Getting uglier, loss of sex drive, no longer being able to travel? Come on, now! What is this world, an amusement park? How shallow and vulgar can you be? I have been ugly for as long as I can remember. Sex itself is shallow and base, especially if done for “recreation.” Travel? Only imbeciles travel the world. People averse to learning, because you cannot learn, of course, when you are busy walking or moving around the globe.

In other words, Schopenhauer is correct when he writes (I am paraphrasing here) that the dumbest people are usually believed to also be the happiest – a happiness we, of course, don’t envy them for.

In one of the rare biographical sketches, I read that Nicolás Gómez Dávila once said it was a godsend for him that his father—who apparently was born in 1865—died at a ripe old age when his sons were old enough to take over his father’s business, because this allowed him to continue to read, think and write.

Gómez Dávila:

Even more boring than work is its eulogy.

Lee us not expect the rebirth of civilization as long as man has not again learnt to feel humiliated when he devotes himself to economic tasks.

Sex does not solve even sexual problems.

It is impossible to travel around and to be intelligent at the same time.
Intelligence is a matter of being able to sit still.

When the modern consciousness suspends its economic routines, it only oscillates between political anguish and sexual obsession.

Museums are the tourist’s punishment.

That liberation of humanity whose praises the 19th century sang ended up being nothing more than international tourism.

Modern man’s life oscillates between two poles: business and sex.

The problem is not sexual repression, nor sexual liberation, but sex.

To liberate man is to subject him to greed and sex.

Sexual promiscuity is the tip society pays in order to appease its slaves.