Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

43 Beelzebub’s Survey of the Process of the Periodic Reciprocal Destruction of Men, or Beelzebub’s Opinion of War

43.1076

“And so, my boy…

“I strongly advise you that if for any reason you have to exist among them, always pretend that you wish to learn something from them. Act in the same way towards their children and then you will not only be on excellent terms with them all, but the whole family will even look on you as the honored friend of the house.

43.1076-7

“Always remember that any one of them, however insignificant he himself may be in essence, looks down, owing always to his self-conceit ensuing from this particular property, with contempt upon the conduct and actions of others, especially if their conduct and actions sharply contradict his own subjectively established point of view, and in these cases he, as I have already said, usually becomes inwardly sincerely offended and indignant.

43.1077

“I might as well here remark that thanks to this property of your favorites always to grow indignant at the defects of others around them, they make their existence, already wretched and abnormal without this, objectively unbearable.

43.1077

“Thanks to this constant indignation, the ordinary being-existence of these unfortunates flows almost always with unproductive what are called ‘moral sufferings,’ and these futile moral sufferings of theirs continue, as a rule, by momentum to act for a very long time on their psyche, so to say ‘Semzekionally’ or, as they would say there on your planet, ‘depressingly’; that is, they ultimately become, of course without the participation of their consciousness, ‘Instruarian’ or, as they would say, ‘nervous.’

43.1077

“And then they become in the process of their ordinary being-existence completely ‘uncontrolled,’ even in those being-manifestations of theirs, which have nothing in common with the primary causes which have evoked this ‘Instruarness’ or ‘nervousness’ of theirs.

43.1077

“Only thanks to this property of theirs alone, ‘to be indignant at the defects of others,’ their existence has become gradually even archtragic-comic.