These words are exhausting to think, let alone for a new thinker to confront. To think these words means to live them, and express them existentially. It takes effortful courage to confront the truth of attachment. It means uprooting the wrong thoughts in oneself, that one most loves.
So it is permissible to accept that we are weak. It is allowed to be unable to live up to the ideality of non-attachment. An individual can think these things, and accept humbly that he or she is not yet able to express them existentially.
This attitude keeps one striving.
So if one understands atheism correctly, it is better to express the ideal of Godlessness. It is not helpful to lower the price, and limit atheism to 'not believing in the existence of a personal God'. To do that is a paltry, if not false, achievement. To do it to absolve one's guilt or assuage wounded pride, or to entice others into atheism, is nonsense. One needs to raise the bar and point to the ideal: the nature of the Infinite, where no finite things are eternal. Then one is in relationship with Truth. With such love of Truth, there can be the humility to stand under one's weaknesses and try to improve.
In contrast, most people seem to give up immediately at the mere vaguest demand of thought. They submit immediately, resigning from the job of thinking. What an abysmal lot we are. So words such as mine, awkward as they are, are greatly needed. This all has to be said.
Just as a surgeon removes a malign cancerous tumour from an otherwise healthy person, and yet has no hate for the tumour, but only concern for the patient, so I write these words. I submit to anyone's attack that says I have no sympathy for the dignity of women. For sure, after the patient is anaesthetised, doesn't the surgeon concentrate on the purely mechanical side of things, ignoring all else? The job has to be done efficiently, by ignoring all irrelevancies. So I have stripped women of even their nakedness to show the foolishness it conceals.
For those who complain that I have let men off the hook, I can only say again, this essay is written to men. It is a criticism of men, not of women, for it is men who have delighted in the unconsciousness of women, and have happily created women as what they are. It is men who are the more conscious. This entire work is a rejection of the love of femininity that men have created. The submissiveness of Woman is a work by one who baulks at consciousness; since women are generally unconscious, therefore, the work is by men. But if a female is disgusted at being let off the hook like this, and wishes to take responsibility for judging truth or falseness, then good luck to her. May she delight in reasoning. What a miracle that would be.
I am not the first to say these words, and I will not be the last. If only one person is moved to think deeper on these matters, and to have the courage and will to understand and to apply them to his own life, then my efforts will have been worthwhile.
I thank the good reader for his or her close attention.
Kelly Jones
