3/ You want, if possible—and there is no more fantastic “if possible”—to do away with suffering. What about us? It does seem that we would prefer it to be even higher and worse than it ever was! Well being, the way you understand it—that is no goal.

To us that looks like an end, a condition which immediately makes human beings laughable and contemptible—something which makes their destruction desirable! The discipline of suffering, of great suffering—don’t you realize that up to this point it is only this suffering which has created every

enhancement in man up to now? That tension of a soul in misery which develops its strength, its trembling when confronted with great destruction, its inventiveness and courage in bearing, holding out against, interpreting, and using unhappiness, and whatever has been

conferred upon it by way of profundity, secrecy, masks, spirit, cunning, and greatness—has that not been given to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering? -N

4/ I have an image of objective happiness and objective despair, and I would say that for as long as people are unencumbered as they are now, and are not expected to take on full responsibility and full self-determination,

then for just as long their welfare and happiness in this world will be an illusion. And it will be an illusion that will one day burst. And when it bursts it will have dreadful consequences. -A