With what to face the suffering? This is the literary answer

Man is an animal that lies to itself

I think the 1970s is a valuable spiritual treasure for us, as do some of my peers. The youth of the seventies were very different from the youth of today, more enthusiastic, simpler, more disciplined, less demanding of life and more unlucky. To be one of these people is an extraordinary privilege, and these feelings are the same as others. I categorically disagree with those who consider this experience to be a sublime feeling, and consider it pathological. Like Orwell, let's think about what one plus one equals two. The 1970s was a very painful time for most Chinese people. Many young people make great self-sacrifice, and the sacrifice is worthless. With those things in mind, let's talk about the sublime. Taking the 1970s as an example, I think there are two types of nobility. One is the nobility of the time, when leaders called on us to bear hardships in the countryside, saying it was an honor. There is another sublime, the sublime of the present, which we ourselves feel sublime after all the suffering and self-sacrifice we have endured. I think this latter sublime is easier to articulate. Freud had the following explanation for masochism: if people live in a kind of pain that they cannot change, they will fall in love with the pain as a pleasure in order to make themselves feel better. To generalize this a little, one might think: Man is an animal that deceives itself. We have suffered a lot of useless hardships and wasted many years, so some people want to say that this experience is noble. The thought made him feel better, so it had some good effect. Unfortunately, it also has some bad effects: some people believe that one must achieve greatness by taking useless pains and wasting one's years. This kind of thinking is not only harmful, it is sick.

Don't want to be bound by the obligation to do only what's smart

You see, gentlemen, reason is a good thing, it is beyond dispute, but reason is only reason after all, and satisfies only the faculty of reason; and will is the expression of the whole life, that is, the whole life of man, which includes reason as well as all the tumult of the heart. And, although our life often looks terrible in this representation, it is still life, not just taking square roots. I, for one, naturally want to live to satisfy all my faculties, not just my rational faculties, which are one-twentieth of all my faculties. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it already knows (some things it may never know. It's not very comforting, but why not come clean about it?) But human nature is all in motion, all in motion, conscious as well as unconscious; it is still active, even if it lies. Gentlemen, I suspect you are looking at me with regret. You have repeatedly told me that a learned, educated man, in short, a future man, does not deliberately seek anything that is not good for him, and that is mathematics. I couldn't agree more. It's math. However, I must repeat one hundred times to you, only in one case, only one case, people will deliberately and consciously desire to do the harm to oneself, even stupid, or even stupid things, that is: in order to have the right to desire to do it or even stupid things to himself, rather than by only doing clever this obligation. It is foolish, you know, it is self-indulgent, and indeed, gentlemen, it is perhaps the best thing for all our brothers on earth, and in some cases especially so. And this includes even the case that it is a more advantageous interest than any other interest, even if it does us obvious harm and is at odds with the most reasonable conclusion of our rational interest. For it preserves for us, at any rate, the chief and most precious thing, which is our personality and our individuality.

I'm trying to forget

Both my parents are dead, but I'm happy to say they didn't die in Belsen. One day a Nazi came into my father's operating room with a note that said, "Germans, be careful. Avoid all Jews. Anyone associated with Jews is defiled." My father put on his officer's uniform and his MEDALS -- including the Iron Cross first class -- and stood proudly next to the Nazi. The Nazi became more and more self-conscious and gradually more and more people gathered. At first they stood in silence, but as their numbers increased they began to whisper and eventually burst into wild guffaws.

But their enmity was directed at the Nazi, who eventually packed up and left. He did not return and was not replaced. A few days later, my father turned on the gas while my mother was sleeping; So they all died. After their deaths I avoided meeting new Germans and did not open a single German book, not even Holderlin. I'm trying to forget.

Of course I did cross paths with a few Germans, some good people who went to prison for opposing Hitler. I make sure I know their history before I shake their hand. You have to be careful before you accept a German. How can you be sure that the German you're about to talk to doesn't have the blood of your friends or relatives on their hands? But I have no doubt about these men. Though they had fought hard, they were often filled with remorse, and I sympathized with them. But even when I was with them I pretended it was difficult for me to speak German.

It was a protective mask THAT I almost (though not entirely) unconsciously put on when I had to talk to a German. Of course I still speak the language, albeit with a slightly American accent, but I don't like it. My wounds had not healed, and to think of Germany was to rub salt in them.

One day I met a man from Wurttemberg and I asked him about Stuttgart.

"Three-quarters of them are destroyed." He said.

"What about Carl Alexander High school?"

"In ruins." He said.

"What about Hohenfelsberg?

"Ruins."

I started laughing and laughing.

"Why are you laughing?" "He asked, puzzled.

"Leave me alone." I said.

"But there's nothing funny about it," he said. "I don't see why!"

"Never mind me," I added, "there's really nothing funny about it." What can I say? How can I explain to him why I laugh, when I don't understand myself?

The feeling of suffering is the feeling of reality

Our life is just impossible. It's ridiculous. Everything we desire is contradicted by its relative conditions and consequences, every conclusion we draw actually contains a contrary opinion, and all our feelings are intermingled with its opposite. For we are contradictory creatures, both creatures and God, yet far different from God.

Only contradiction proves that we are not omnipotent. Contradiction is our suffering, and the feeling of suffering is the feeling of reality. Because suffering is not what we create. It's real. Therefore, it should be treasured. Everything else is imaginary.