The Most Un-Aryan Mood

But such is not the compassion which actuates Arjuna in the rejection of his work and mission. That is not compassion but an impotence full of a weak self-pity, a recoil from the mental suffering which his act must entail on himself,—“I see not what shall thrust from me the sorrow that dries up the senses,”—and of all things self-pity is among the most ignoble and un-Aryan of moods. Its pity for others is also a form of self-indulgence; it is the physical shrinking of the nerves from the act of slaughter, the egoistic emotional shrinking of the heart from the destruction of the Dhritarashtrians because they are “one’s own people” and without them life will be empty.

This pity is a weakness of the mind and senses,—a weakness which may well be beneficial to men of a lower grade of development, who have to be weak because otherwise they will be hard and cruel; for they have to cure the harsher by the gentler forms of sensational egoism, they have to call in tamas, the debile principle, to help sattwa, the principle of light, in quelling the strength and excess of their rajasic passions. 

But this way is not for the developed Aryan man who has to grow not by weakness, but by an ascension from strength to strength. Arjuna is the divine man, the master-man in the making and as such he has been chosen by the gods. He has a work given to him, he has God beside him in his chariot, he has the heavenly bow Gandiva in his hand, he has the champions of unrighteousness, the opponents of the divine leading of the world in his front.

Not his is the right to determine what he shall do or not do according to his emotions and his passions, or to shrink from a necessary destruction by the claim of his egoistic heart and reason, or to decline his work because it will bring sorrow and emptiness to his life or because its earthly result has no value to him in the absence of the thousands who must perish. All that is a weak falling from his higher nature. He has to see only the work that must be done, kartavyam˙ karma, to hear only the divine command breathed through his warrior nature, to feel only for the world and the destiny of mankind calling to him as its god-sent man to assist its march and clear its path of the dark armies that beset it.

-From “Creed of the Aryan Fighter” by Sri Aurobindo

The two great soul poisons; despair and self-pity, must be avoided at all costs.

When people succumb to this sickness you often hear them say, “there is no hope left for our people” or that there is “nothing left to save” and “nothing to be done”. When the they talk in this manner, always remember that they are not describing the world as it actually is, but rather they are telling you their own attitude towards it. Pessimism is a perspective, not a fact. Their attitude of resignation is born out of their own assessment of themselves in relation to what they believe they are capable of overcoming. In their own mind, they came up short. 

If these people truly believed it was ‘over’ they would stop talking about it so much. However, this relentless whining betrays their true feelings on the matter—they know we can win. What they really want is for someone else to show them a way forward and rack up a few convincing victories. This is the way it has always been among the generality. 

The truth is that there are always worthwhile things which can be accomplished—even by ordinary people—to improve the life of the Volk. Many like to pretend that doing these simple things is impossible or useless. But how do they know? Often, these same people—as convinced as they are—have never actually tried or risked anything themselves. All they know is that something didn’t work in the past, and to them, this means that no new attempts are worth the effort.

The only thing that isn’t worth the effort—that is actually hopeless—is continuing to do things the old way. The despairing people are the ones holding onto rotten ideals and the unrealistic expectations of a past age. From the perspective of the conservative flag wavers or the ‘traditionalist’ Christians or the liberal humanitarians, it is indeed hopeless. Their world is ending. And though we may seem close to them for the moment, and have similar critiques of the present world, we are really passing each other like ships in the night. A momentary glimpse and then nothing. We at Volkish are sailing in a different direction. There is a world elsewhere…