All my successes, those things I regard as highpoints in my existence to date, have been metaphysical in nature. As cactoblasta points out in his response on the linked article, the truly traumatic events of my existence (being stoned through the streets as a child, emotional and physical abandonment, the decades during which I withdrew further and further from the world) occurred in my childhood and youth. And the successes that I have had, my eventual return to the world, the completion of first a Bachelors and then a Masters degree, my move from teaching to digital cartography, the success of my second marriage (to date) - all these things derive from the transformations that I went through as a consequence of my earlier difficulties. In other words, suffering breeds character - not necessarily good, not necessarily bad.
Because 'character' is what you do with the shape that your life gives you. Character is what speaks when you are confronted by a situation that involves profit for yourself and harm to others. Do you profit? Do you cause harm? And in those situations where there is no good outcome do you choose to do what leads to maximum benefit for yourself or the least harm to others?
I don't consider motivation to be an aspect of character. As Hobbes said, motivation is simply the action of the last passion felt on the whole man. Character is the response, what is done, when confronted by that passion. You cannot tell what a man is by what he feels (Hitler was a vegetarian and liked animals and children); you can only tell what a man is by what he does.
As with my successes in life, such as they are, my ambitions also are metaphysical in nature. I have no inclination for wealth, which is nothing but theft that has gained respect. I have no inclination toward gaining fame, or celebrity, or political power. Such things are in the most literal and worst of ways, vanity. Why? Because no matter how wealthy you are, no matter how famous you are, no matter how powerful you are, in the end you will die and be forgotten.
Of all the billions of human creatures that have been birthed and died throughout the history of humanity on earth, we remember only a tiny handful that have lived throughout the last ten thousand years. For the rest, their lives and sufferings and joys have been erased, as if they had never existed. Perhaps God remembers them - but no one else does.
This is the truth that lies in wait behind every ambition, every passion that drives us, everything for which we sacrifice and struggle and hope. They all fail, because we all die. There is, so far as I can see, only one purpose to existence beyond the satisfaction of basic wants and the consummation of our various passions. And that is as a preparation for death.
The two great trends of my life are toward a certain kind of mental discipline; and the satisfaction of my desires. They complement each other because without this certain discipline it's impossible to know what it is you truly want. Unless, of course, you're one of those souls that knows what it is he or she wants from the very beginning. I, like most, am not like that. I still don't know what it is I want to do when I grow up. But I know what I want to be. On the day of my death (always supposing I don't die in a flaming car-wreck and that I have the time for such contemplation) I want to be that man who can laugh at the comforts of priests and religion; I want to be that man who is at peace with himself - whether he believes he has done more evil than good in the world, or more good than evil, because 'good' and 'evil' are also vanity.
'Good' is an existential judgment as much based in our passions as is our liking for vanilla icecream over chocolate cherry icecream. 'Evil' is no different. Both alike are judgments based upon consequences. And all 'consequences' are nothing but circumstances that depend for their existence on previous causes, which are in themselves as trivial as the circumstances which follow them. 3000 people die as a consequence of the religious zealotry of a handful of fanatics. And? There is not a single one of those 3000 who would not have died anyway. Their deaths are 'horrific tragedies', rather than banal facts of everyday existence (how many die in the futility and stupidity of auto-accidents everyday? More than 3000), because of the circumstances surrounding them: active malice; technological sophistication; and the will to self-sacrifice.
And those circumstances derive from the profound delusion, itself born out of the vanity of intellectual and spiritual pride, that a man can know the mind of God. Every act we make in the world is an act of vanity because each act we make is intended to show us that we have significance and meaning in the world. And we must have such significance because otherwise the most important thing about us is how we die. Whether we die in peace, or in terror. Whether we die reconciled to ourselves or railing in bitterness and anger. Death is the elephant in the room that very few of us ever allow ourselves to see. And death, not birth, is the most significant event in our lives because we have no choice but to respond to our births with life, while the nature of our deaths is something over which we can exercise choice. Every man dies alone, whether or not he is surrounded by loving friends and family in the moment of his death. Every man dies alone - but not every man makes a good death.
And whether or not a man makes a good death is determined by the degree to which he is reconciled to himself and to the things he has done throughout his life, and the degree of that reconciliation is determined by his character. And character is determined, not by intention or desire, but by what he has done and how he has responded to the consequences of the things he has done. You are what you do - not what you want to do.
In the estimation of others you may be a 'good' man because you do 'good' things - even if all the things you do are motivated by self-interest - the fear of losing a good reputation; the desire to bed another man's wife. All these are evil intentions which may yet produce good results. Conversely, you may be thought of as an 'evil' man because you have done 'evil' things on the basis of your 'good' intentions - a man may keep his children in poverty and filth in order to inure them to hardship and build in them self-reliance and a strong sense of family bonds. His intentions are not 'evil' but the consequence of his actions might well be judged to be 'evil' by others.
Good or evil, the acts of a man proceed from his character - the firmly settled disposition to view the world in a certain way, and to act in the world in a certain way as a consequence of that view of things.
I don't claim that my character is good. Nor do I fear being thought of as evil - because both alike are trivial judgments based upon the passions, fears, desires of others - who will die and be forgotten, just as I will. A hundred years from now, and maybe less, it will be as if we had never been here.
No man can live well if he is not free. And a man afraid of death is a slave. Conversely, a man who knows he will die, and can be at peace in his death, is lord of all the world - whether he's as rich as Croesus or poor as a church-mouse. As Janice sang - freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. But when we've lost home, and family, and prosperity, and hope and faith - we still have our lives to lose. When everything else is gone, there is still life, and the knowledge of its ending. Only when you know in your marrow that your life is lost and forgotten even as you live it are you free.
Materially, I am a poor man - though not so poor as some. And at the same time I enjoy vast wealth that increases day by day; since, day by day, I detach myself from those things that others consider to be wealth, which they strive to hold on to in the face of inevitable loss. There is nothing in your bank accounts but money - a dead thing made to live by the perverse Magick of Capitalism. There is nothing in your homes but dust and ashes, dead things that have life and meaning only because you give it to them, things to which you are chained in precisely the same way that you are chained and shackled to your lives, things that you cannot do anything but lose.
The true test of a man's character is how he confronts his death. If he can look it in the face and smile, then his life has been a success - whether no one knows it but he himself. And when my death comes for me, I shall smile.