R. W. K. Paterson - Physical Quotes

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There are individuals who are haunted by self-doubt, whose attitude to life is negative and distrustful, or who exist in a state of confusion about what they are and what they can become. … Unlike physical deprivation or obvious social injustice, evils like these strike at the very roots of human life. When men can no longer picture themselves as worthy of existing, it scarcely matters whether they have the means of existing.

R. W. K. Paterson
The history of the plebeians' 'struggles' … is largely a record of mankind's struggle to obtain plebeian things. Better food and housing, better physical health, greater economic security— … none of this forms any part of real human living, but at most merely the means to real living, the inglorious subsoil, not meant to be seen, which we tolerate and accept as an unexciting necessity if worthwhile activities and modes of expression are to grow and blossom. … The patrician mind does not deny such necessities. What distinguishes the plebeian mentality is that it treats necessary things as if they were sufficient and treats means as if they were ends.

R. W. K. Paterson
The less familiar and more complex something is, the less we can rely on our immediate feelings, and the greater the risk of error in our ultimate moral judgements. … But equally the more remote or unusual some physical event, the less we can rely on our unaided senses. … The arguments which supposedly show that values are in some vitiating sense 'subjective' would also show that the physical world itself is essentially subjective.

R. W. K. Paterson
Sceptics often make much of the alleged mysteriousness of values—by which, however, they mean little more than that they are claimed to be essentially different from all classes of physical objects and properties, mental states and properties, historical facts, mathematical theorems, scientific concepts, or whatever. In other words, their objection is simply that values are claimed to be of their nature different everything which is not of its nature a value.

R. W. K. Paterson
Political power, social prowess, monetary reward, mere physical well-being: towards these things he [the patrician] is indifferent, and perhaps contemptuous, for they have no part to play in a life well lived but can too readily become the food of souls starved of real meaning and achievement. No reasonable creature would waste a single hour of his life pursuing such things for their own sakes. When they figure in our attempts to see what shape our lives may take, they merely obstruct the view.

R. W. K. Paterson
Here, then, we are being given a glimpse of one version of reality. According to this version heroism is an illusion. … The qualities of the patrician are fool's gold, and a reasonable human being, a clear-sighted realist, will seek what is attainable—what other realistic people have already attained and are enjoying—physical security and comfort, social esteem, a changing variety of dependable pleasures, and the money or status which will ensure that all of these remain with reach.

R. W. K. Paterson
The consciousness of the patrician remains open to the symbolisms which surround him. He believes that they may be rungs on a ladder of being which he can ascend. … He has the courage to dwell in their midst and thus to form his life by reference to dimensions of significance which transcend his narrow mundane interests as a physical organism.

R. W. K. Paterson