Global Fusion Voices (read & keep) Jan. 2012  VOL.1  No.1

Childhood: The Happiest Time in Life

If we have the childlike vision, we will always be full of inner peace and joy. Wordsworth in his famous Ode on Intimations of  Immortality very rightly points out that the child is the best philosopher. The reason is that the child is devoid of any ill-will, hatred or feelings of vindictiveness. If we develop in us the qualities of innocence, honesty and nonviolence, much of the violence that we have recently witnessed in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, might not be repeated.  The truth is that a child is a synonym of God and Love. G.W. Russell very aptly reveals that a child is a symbol of innocence and purity:
We are pools whose depths are told;

You are like a mystic fountain,
Issuing ever pure and cold
From the hollows of the mountain.
We are men by anguish taught
To distinguish false from true;
Higher wisdom we have not;
But a joy within guides you.

There is no doubt that the child has higher wisdom. The poet is quite right that a child is like ‘a mystic fountain’.  We are unable to distinguish between fair and foul, but the child is always guided by joy within. The child is “an eye among the blind”. This means that childhood is a person’s best  period of life. Only by childlike honesty, love and simplicity, we become able to defeat the arch-enemy Satan.  Kahlil Gibran wisely observes:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself…
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

After childhood is over, we get enslaved to evil. We might remember  Plato’s very wise and philosophic remark that  before birth, our souls were in heaven. That is why we are nearest to God during childhood.

The Deepest Ever Written Book

Nietzsche’s magnum opus Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None has been described as “the deepest ever written”. This book by the esoteric German philosopher opposes the Christian and Jewish morals, values and traditions. It is quite ironical that Nietzsche mimics the Bible style while revealing his concept of ‘overman’ or superman through the prophet Zarathustra. For example, we may see the following quotes which state clearly and convincingly Nietzsche’s method to revolutionize the world of knowledge:One must have a chaos inside oneself to give birth to a dancing star.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.

“Nothing is true, all is permitted”: so said I to myself. Into the coldest water did I plunge with head and heart. Ah, how oft did I stand there naked on that account, like a red crab!

Ah, where have gone all my goodness and all my shame and all my belief in the good! Ah, where is the lying innocence which I once possessed, the innocence of the good and of their noble lies!

Too oft, verily, did I follow close to the heels of truth: then did it kick me on the face. Sometimes I meant to lie, and behold! then only did I hit— the truth.

Brian Leiter raises the question whether Nietzsche was a mysogynistic Nazi-supporter, or an artistic visionary who sought to set us free from our moralistic chains. “Like Hume, he thought that none of our beliefs are rationally justified. So, why believe in morality—or causation for that matter—if neither has rational foundation?”
Gianni Vattimo in his latest book Dialogue with Nietzsche (2006) regards Nietzsche as a constructive philosopher whose work is “charged with meaning for the future” .

              - Santosh Kumar