The root of all evil, of course, is the refusal to think, as awkward and difficult as thinking often is. Everything has to stop. Whether for a split second or days at a stretch, ordinary life gets put on hold to examine premises, integrate empirical evidence, and think through a difficult problem.
"All things noble are as difficult as they are rare," Spinoza concluded.
Rare to think? Yep. Spinoza cautioned us against four vices that work against thinking. Money is a handicap, beseiged by friends, family, and strangers pleading and plotting to take it from you, constantly preoccupied by security measures to defend wealth, none of which are perfectly safe or secure. Sex is a worse distraction if it's good, I mean seriously good, riches of the physical senses that shock and surprise. Who knew that life could be so wonderful? -- an inch from indulging two more vices that dull the mind, food and drink taken like a happy pig, too fat and drunk to move from a chair, thought anesthetized, asleep at the swtich.
So, the work of the devil, if there is such a thing, is temptation. If you can be bought by gold, by physical exaltation, by strong drink or drugs, by fine food as a constant preoccupation, the work of thinking -- which Spinoza termed moral improvement -- is impaired. It's on my mind today because I had to conceive a man's mental decline by temptation, something like Jesus wandering in the desert, tempted by Satan. Turns out that all charismatic metaphors refer to objective moral life, the urge to turn a blind eye, to run like hell from elusive clarity because it's damned difficult to obtain. Reciting psalms cuts no ice, when the problem is existential and personal, a conundrum of terrible duty that no man wants to face.
The right thing to do is to think, steel oneself to the truth of moral life, price no object.
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