“Invariably, it is the man who believes himself to be physically lacking in heroic attributes who speaks mockingly of the hero; and when he does so, how dishonest it is that his phraseology, partaking ostensibly of a logic so universal and general, should not (or at least should be assumed by the general public not to) give any clue to his physical characteristics. I have yet to hear hero worship mocked by a man endowed with what might justly be called heroic physical attributes. Facile cynicism, invariably, is related to feeble muscles or obesity, while the cult of the hero and a mighty nihilism are always related to a mighty body and well-tempered muscles. For the cult of the hero is, ultimately, the basic principle of the body, and in the long run is intimately involved with the contrast between the robustness of the body and the destruction that is death.
The body carries quite sufficient persuasion to destroy the comic aura that surrounds an excessive self- awareness; for though a fine body may be tragic, there is in it no trace of the comic.”
Sun and Steel, Yukio Mishima, page 38
Those who pursue mastery & discipline are a threat to those who pursue indulgence & pleasure.
The pursuer of mastery is a reminder to the pursuer of pleasure that they are what they are: pursuers of pleasure. Pleasure requires no effort or discipline, which demonstrates an absence of virtue.
Virtue is defined as moral goodness according to principles which include but are not limited to courage, patience, kindness, justice, and wisdom.
Let’s examine the pursuit of pleasure via eating across these 5 virtues:
- Courage: There is nothing brave or courageous about eating what makes your mouth feel good and your health feel bad.
- Patience: Eating for pleasure does not have patience. It is eating fast food because the time to cook a healthy meal is undesirable to the pursuer of pleasure. Pleasure eating is the opposite of patience; it is investing in your downfall, not your future. Gambling, not investing.
- Kindness: There is nothing kind about feeding yourself or others pleasurable food that does not FULFILL nutritional needs or enhance your ability to perform. Eating for indulgence is introducing sludge into the engine that powers pursuits in Body, Mind, and Spirit(BMS).
- Justice: There is no justice in the over-indulgence of calories. There is injustice in a world where people die more from obesity than from starvation.
- Wisdom: You are what you eat. You could almost call healthy food “wise food” because healthy food makes you function greater, including making you live longer, which allows you to acquire more wisdom to be used and later passed down.
Eating for pleasure is not self-love. It is not kind to eat for pleasure, unless the pleasure of eating comes from the reward of discipline for eating in a way that improves your ability to walk the path to mastery.
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Hero on Hero Worship
“I have yet to hear hero worship mocked by a man endowed with what might justly be called heroic physical attributes.”
Those who pursue mastery understand the difficulty and fulfillment of mastery and would never mock it. Those on the path respect one another because they are kindred spirits in pursuits of greater virtue and universal attainment, Even if they are competitors.
Those who mock heroic physical attributes do so from a place of shame. They rejected the pursuit of virtue and locked themselves in a hellish cage. Misery loves company and the miserable pursue pleasure and converts to the cult of self-destruction.
The pursuit of pleasure can only lead to hell. Hell is a lack of fulfillment. Pleasure cannot be fulfilled.
The path of mastery leads to heaven.
The Hero Cult and the Pleasure Death Cult
The individual who neglects mastery in body, mind, and spirit is incarcerated in a purgatoric reception area where lost souls wait for death.
These lost souls seek to disparage the hero, an ideal that threatens the lost because it reminds them of their inadequacy borne from turning their backs on The Way.
The pursuit of pleasure is not fulfilling because pleasure cannot be fulfilled. You cannot become a master consumer like how you can become a master carpenter.
The pursuers of indulgence & pleasure know they are living a lie. They attract other liars to their death cult to try and make the lie feel like the truth. No matter how far they walk into the shadows, they do not find the light.
Sample pleasure. Do not pursue it.
Pleasure Pursuers fear the temporary pain of virtue cleansing their rotting spirits and would rather rot than admit they were wrong in their pursuit of pleasure. They hate those who are great because it reminds them of what they are not; they know they can change at any time, but they refuse and their refusal makes them angrier.
The pursuit of pleasure is a death cult.
A life of pleasure does not fulfill, unlike a life spent on the path pursuing mastery in Body, Mind, and Spirit(BMS).
The pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of virtue both may be cults, but only the pursuit of pleasure demands the death of fulfillment which is predicated on the death of virtue.
Excess self-awareness
“The body carries quite sufficient persuasion to destroy the comic aura that surrounds an excessive self- awareness; for though a fine body may be tragic, there is in it no trace of the comic.”
When Mishima speaks of excessive self-awareness, he is speaking of ANXIETY. Anxiety is excessive self-awareness—an overactive, unproductive, unfocused mind.
Uncontrolled thought chatter feels like a swarm of thoughts without connection. Ideas are useless if they cannot assimilate with current knowledge.
You destroy excess self-awareness by making a diligent effort to grow via the progression of mastery across body, mind, and spirit; a wanderer on the path does not fear the future because his paths takes him there.
Final Wisdom
The weak mock the hero. The heroic respect the hero.
A hero is a paragonal model of excellence in pursuit of virtue that provides inspiration to heroic seekers and demotivation to those who have turned their backs to The Way.