The person who does good is not necessarily a good person. To self-efface is to become a martyr. Martyrs make victims look bad by tolerating voluntarily what neither should have to. That being said, goodness without action is largely meaningless, and to dismiss all goodness is dogmatic and feeble. All of these attitudes are destructive towards Eros, the love that knows no formal rules. Yet this Eros too has a governor, and that is Agape. Without the one the other cannot exist.
Martyrs consort with narcissists because they are both pledged to the rival of Eros and Agape: Thanatos, or the Will to Death.
The martyrs enable the narcissists. The narcissists give the martyrs some one to sacrifice for, flattering them all the while.
Meanwhile: the martyr wears his sanity thin by self-righteous self-sacrifice that the narcissist commends when it is harmless to the narcissist and yet condemns in the narcissist's adversaries.
The martyr wears down all so on the moral man by the martyr's own presumptuousness. The martyr is never around at home when his friends and family truly need him, because he is all ways so busy abroad. His projects, both romantic and philanthropic, are fleeting and whimsical. By the time that he would have to be around to see their consequences, he is off to the next one, moving on and letting go. He is the ultimate vagrant and vagabond: a perpetual adolescent without any thing throwing off his own moral compass. He is as unsympathetic as his adversaries, many of whom pretend on the surface to be his friends. He cannot afford to look beyond this surface circus because he would have to confront his own contradictions. His barbaric one-sidedness lends him momentum. He kills himself and all around him by his very presence. Worst of all he allows to die what a more holy man would preserve with a passion. He is never present because the pursuit of the ideal horizon is all that he can use to define himself. He is too selfless to ever really look into a mirror.
A genuine altruist tolerates contradictions because his focus is upon holiness and unity. This includes the paradox that to profess altruism is all so to claim entitlement for one's own needs, for to uphold justice and yet refuse to stand up for one's own self is hypocritical. It is martyrdom and it is feeble.
To be altruistic is to see altruism in others, until else is proven. So it follows that one expects others to desire one's own prosperity. Yet this expectation must pass the tests of justice. Actions can corroborate these tests. But good deeds alone are not enough. One must possess a certain quality of human-heartedness that is neither willfully degenerate nor impersonal in its expression.
A martyr is all ways one-upping every one else unconsciously. There is an unseen condescension to what he does. He does not expect them to be altruistic and to desire his happiness. So he feels no reservation choosing misery for himself. This is his condescension to the people that he serves.
A good man is neither martyr nor narcissist. He struggles inwardly more so than he produces outward change. The result of his struggle is clarity and wisdom. It is accountability and vision. It is love, both selfless and erotic at once. He is a testament to integration and fulfillment in the life of the Soul. Hence his presence is not cold exclusively but often calm and nurturing. And his ethics are informed by an intelligence at once both Higher and Deeper.
This is the most difficult and most rewarding of the three paths. Both martyr and narcissist are aimed at self-destruction and death. The true altruist attains again the intrinsic value of LIFE.
Dm.A.A.
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