June 29, 2025

Tibetan thangka of the
Chemchok Heruka (ཆེ་མཆོག་ཧེ་རུ་ཀ་)

Sunday:
My views on the human condition – June 29, 2025

The human condition, quite apart from the condition of other sentient life in the universe, is a peculiar one, because man finds himself at the center of a contradiction between nature and nurture: nature being the qualitative aspect of his being shaped by time and true hardship, just like any other life; and nurture being the quantitative aspect of his will, his ability to shape the world after his image so that he may improve the material circumstances, as opposed to accepting the material circumstances he finds himself in. As a result, man is a being of unusually maladjusted nature, or really he is a being without natural tendencies inline with his surrounding nature. Indeed for any other sentient life, it would be quite impossible to live and sustain more life without living in complete harmony with nature – to live clearly within the boundaries of the celestial order which is the only nature possible for most life. The balance of nature and nurture makes a good man, it makes him moral and it puts him on the righteous path, as the only being capable of transcending the material and ascending to a plane beyond the worldly and the oppressive – it makes him into a better being, a being closer to the source and the true enlightenment. Indeed, the human condition is surely one of material suffering and pain, but the man capable of ascending above this condition is what makes him noble, and this has been seen as such in all cultures and all religions throughout human history – they all converge around the source in the man above the profane, he who has risen above the rest. As a conscious being man is capable of rising above, he is capable of understanding his own nature, and thus he can improve and make the world a better place – he can achieve order.

    In modern times however, the human condition has been made something to escape form, it is no longer something to rise above and accept as the only true means for man of interacting with the creation, but rather something to run away from or perpetually improve, in the belief that human being are flawed to such an extent that the only human life worthy is that of ever more material acquisition; the human condition is a condition such that is should be treated like a disease that has to be cured and solved, often in the name of liberation from. The final solution to the human condition is that of the complete liberation from life itself, it is the state of complete enlightenment, free from the invariable suffering and pain imposed by the materialism inherent to the world and the human condition, and this may only be achieved by rising above the Earth, by transcending the material and seeking out the light – by becoming one with the all.

Tibetan thangka depicting Tara (तारा)

    Man's knowledge of his imminent demise in the material sense has also made him weaker and more frugal about life than most other creatures under the Sun, and this has not promoted any kind of strength, but instead lead to the acceleration of the degeneracy of skillful means, and the atrophy of quality. The human condition is suffering, but modern man has made it his goal to seek out the answer to man's suffering state in the material, thus putting in motion enormous and beastly armies of human effort in what he regards to be the civilized man, but this is indeed nothing other than the beastly man. If in the pursuit of meaning man renders himself the child of the product of his own suffering, which is the state in modern times, he has left himself in the dark, or rather he has deprived himself of the tools to liberate himself, for he only regard the material domain as the legitimate mode of being, he has rejected the transcendent and embraced the beast – he has transformed into the beast. In the period of the Kali Yuga, all of this is expected, and while there is a certain need, even in the depths of the dark age of today to seek out the light, the man of the liberal so-called enlightenment claims to be governed by his reason, thus rendering him outside the cope of the transcendent. If a man has fully embraced his own demise in the form of contamination, disease, and decay he has also fully embraced his beastly nature in the form of the "natural" man, and the natural man can only adhere to the humanist axiom, which means that for him the human condition is the solvable condition, and no further inquiry in the the nature of the world, beyond the profane, is necessary – he is the man atop of the world, with all knowledge in his hands.

    Do not fear the human condition, do not allow your material circumstances to coerce you into the transformation of yourself into the beast, for few men have any other options in the modern world, resist all temptation and all sin, and always walk towards the light – become the nobleman. The material obsession by modern man was always the real problem – not you.

Reginald Drax – June 29, 2025.