tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post597133777207022290..comments2020-01-16T14:24:54.513+03:00Comments on Youthful Follies: Katabasis Againvacuus viatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07511253135488142808noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-26880547603021209732014-03-18T19:58:13.183+02:002014-03-18T19:58:13.183+02:00Some afterthoughts. As one climbs the corporate la...Some afterthoughts. As one climbs the corporate ladder in religion, politics, or academia, it is actually harder in some ways to deal with success than failure. Failure invites introspection, course correction, humility, virtuous poverty (that distinguishes empty desires from real needs). Success invites the opposite of all these things, tempting us to let others define us, to presume that our current course is good, to become arrogant when something or someone challenges this complacency, to wax fat and kick those we deem beneath us (surely their poverty is a fault in virtue rather than the opposite). In the pursuit of virtue, what one really wants is the character of Grigori Perelman. One wants the single-minded dedication to good work that creates real beauty, and the moral fortitude to refuse all of the prizes that the world tries to bestow when against all odds that beauty comes within sight of its lecherous eyes.<br /><br />I aspire to be a classicist who does the best work he can and then refuses to take honors and accolades for it (whether I deserve them or not: I must come to the place where, like Perelman, I simply do not care at all either way). I see this now. I embrace it. I will make it part of my character as a humanist, that I refuse to take honor or prestige for myself in exchange for whatever fruits my humanism might produce. I don't spurn all those who do take such rewards--that would be a poor way to spend my life--but my own work will occur in deliberate isolation from the academic cursus honorum (which I renounce as immoral and unvirtuous for me, though it may be a source of good to someone else). Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com