"Stanislaw Lem - His Masters Voice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

and more helpless, for my understanding increased, of how ridiculous were the
things I did.
Somewhat later on, with self-knowledge, I came to the realization that
my condition was a kind of keen unhappiness that was utterly useless to me,
because it could serve no purpose. I said before that my rancor was unbiased:
I bestowed it first upon myself. The shape of my arms, of my legs, the
features of my face, seen in the mirror, galled me in a way in which usually
only the features of others cause us anger or impatience. When I grew a bit
older, I saw that it was impossible to live like this; I determined, through a
progression of decisions, exactly what I ought to be, and from then on strove
-- true, with variable results -- to adhere to that established plan.
An autobiography that begins by listing cowardice, malice, and pride as
the foundations of one's psyche entails, from the deterministic point of view,
a logical error. If one says that everything in us is predetermined, then
predetermined also must have been my resistance to my inner meanness, and the
difference between me and other, better people is then reduced to nothing but
a variation in the localized source of the behavior. What those better people
did voluntarily, at little cost, for they but followed their own natural
inclination, I practiced in opposition to mine -- hence, as it were,
artificially. Yet since it was I who dictated conduct to myself, I was, in the
overall balance -- in this formulation -- nevertheless predestined to be as
good as gold. Like Demosthenes with the pebbles in his stammering mouth, I put
iron deep in my soul, to straighten it.
But it is precisely in this equalizing that determinism reveals its
absurdity. A phonograph record of angelic singing is not an iota better
morally than one that reproduces, when played, a scream of murder. According
to determinism, he who desired and was able to be better was no more or less
fated beforehand than he who desired but was unable, or than he who did not
even attempt to desire. This is a false image, for the sound of battle played
on a record is not an actual battle. Knowing what it cost me, I can say that
my struggle to be good was no semblance. Determinism simply deals with
something altogether different; the forces that operate according to the
calculus of physics have nothing whatever to do with the matter -- just as a
crime is not made innocent by its translation into the language of amplitudes
of atomic probabilities.
About one thing Yowitt is definitely right: I always sought difficulty.
Opportunities for me to give free rein to my natural malice I usually forwent,
as too easy. It may sound strange, or even nonsensical, but I did not suppress
my inclination to evil with my eyes fixed on the Good as a higher value;
rather, I suppressed it for the precise reason that I felt so powerfully its
presence in me. What counted for me was the calculus of resistance, which had
nothing in common with the arithmetic of morality. Therefore I really cannot
say what would have become of me had the principal trait of my nature been the
inclination to do only good. As usual, reasoning that attempts to picture
ourselves in a form other than what is given breaks the rules of logic and
must quickly founder.
Once only did I not eschew evil; that memory is connected with the
protracted and horrible death of my mother. I loved her, yet at the same time
I followed with an unusually keen and avid attention the process of her
destruction in the illness. I was nine then. She, the personification of