Gonzales vs Morales

Dear Parviz

The thing within you that says you should exercise more and eat less is nothing less but what psychoanalysts refer to as your super-ego. But the problem with the super-ego is not so much that it demands the ultimate sacrifice from us, but rather that the super-ego never gives up. If you would indeed exercise more and eat less then the super-ego would only find something else for you to have to do as to keep putting its pressure on your ego. And so on and so forth. So your ego MUST ignore the super-ego up to a point only to keep the super-ego in place. Keeping the super-ego in place is actually far more important for you than doing exercse and eating less. Because it keeps you SANE, it keeps you within the realms of Mazda. This is why we as Zoroastrians are NOT obliged to follow our conscience (since the conscience is often just a fancy word for the super-ego). We are instead obliged to take a BALANCED view on reality and our possibilities and make WISE judgments. We have our minds to do that. The cult of the conscience is for Christians and Muslims. We rather worship the capacity to think in itself. Which is why charm and sweetness rather than machinic perfection are typical Mazdayasna ideals.

Ushta
Alexander

2008/10/2 Parviz Varjavand

Gonzales vs Morales,

Dear Dino and Alex,

Please correct me if I am wrong on what I want to say. We keep saying that we belong to the Religion of Zoroaster maybe because we want to make moral issues out of the ethical choices we know we have to make.

I know what is good for me, but I don't do it.
I know that I have to exercise more and eat less, but I don't do it.
Then someone tries to put "the Fear of God" in me.
My doctor tells me, "hey idiot, if you do not exercise more and eat less RELIGIOUSLY, we will have to soon cut your feet off first and next you will die in agony and misery. You should be ashamed of your lovely family that out of love for THEM at least, you do not eat less and exercise more". My doctor is trying to turn an ethical issue into a moral one for me so that I will obey it, yet still I go on eating more and exercising less. We humans are suicidal bastards and nothing can turn us around when we go on a binge to damage the environment and ourselves.

There is one thing that works! I have a next-door neighbor who is a Jane. From early childhood he has been thought to RELIGIOUSLY eat less and exercise his Yoga daily. He suffers MORALY if he does not do it, so he does it. He has been denied the luxury of choice in this matter, so he does not have to struggle like me. Could this be the key to why we trade the luxury of having ethical choices and surrender ourselves to Morals that are thought to us from early childhood?

Parviz