Tolstoy outlines his own despair at the “for what?” question of existence, and resigns himself to religion out of necessity. In a good comment on Orthodoxy very much applicable today, “Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-naturedness and morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.” I think this as true as pertains to believers in things such as anti-racism ideology. Tolstoy writes about his circle of cronies who thought they would outthink and outwrite everyone who had ever attempted to do so without having hardly lived any life at all, “At the time we were all convinced that we must talk and talk and write and publish as quickly as possible, and as much as possible, and that this was all necessary for the good of mankind. And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, published and wrote with the aim of teaching others. Failing to notice that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the most basic question of life – what is good and what is evil – we all spoke at the same time, never listening to one another.” This last part, like Twitter. Tolstoy began to feel the ideology of progress was not good, and how for him morality came to be about what he himself felt, “...judgements on what is good and necessary must not be based on what other people say and do, or on progress, but on the instincts of my own soul.” All early activities, “‘Vanity of vanities,’ says Solomon, ‘all is vanity.’” For me, sheds eyes on thinking that not everyone could experience happiness in an increased understanding; indeed, Nietzche points out in the Religious Disposition that many people do not want to know. “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” (Sorrow for some). In the face of this sorrow and despair, for Tolstoy, “faith provided the meaning of life and the possibility of living.” “In order for mankind to live and to perpetuate life, instilling it with meaning,” “I had come to faith because apart from it I had found nothing, absolutely nothing, other than destruction; it was therefore impossible to give up the faith, and so I submitted.” On why people cannot acknowledge what is, they do not want to say bad things about themself, “The truth has always been the truth, just as 2 × 2 = 4, but I had not admitted it, because in acknowledging that 2 × 2 = 4 I would have had to admit that I was a bad man. And it was more important and necessary for me to feel that I was good than to admit that 2 × 2 = 4.” Tolstoy points out that many “"will never stop to ask why he is there,” many will never say “This is water.” On one faith vs. another, “the assertion that you live in falsehood and I in truth is the most cruel thing that one man can say to another and secondly, because a man who loves his children and his brothers cannot help feeling hostile towards those who want to convert his children and his brothers to a false belief... I was struck by the fact that theology was destroying the thing it should be advancing.” On the inevitabilities of orthodoxy, “...it has always been necessary to use force in carrying out human duties. Just as it has always been applied, so it is now, and always will be. If two religions each consider that they hold the truth and the other a lie, then in order to convert their brothers to the truth they will each preach their own doctrines. And if a false doctrine is taught to the inexperienced sons of the Church which holds the truth, then that Church will have no choice other than to burn the books and banish the person who is leading his sons into temptation.” This is why, in a Democracy, we should not be subscribing to ideology, but should carefully consider with critical thinking. Berlin says Tolstoy puts forth a higher good as wisdom, “they see what can be and what cannot; how men live and to what ends, what they do and suffer, and how and why they act, and should act... it is an awareness of the interplay of the imponderable with the ponderable, of the ‘shape’ of things in a general or of a specific situation... which is precisely cannot be deduced from, or even formulated in terms of the laws of nature demanded by scientific determinism...”
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