Behold a classic case of a mystic's misuse of logic!
In an attempt to bash greed as a societal evil, Pope Benedict XVI (not surprisingly) misused a simple law of logic, the Law of Identity (i.e. A is A), to do so.
In an attempt to bash greed as a societal evil, Pope Benedict XVI (not surprisingly) misused a simple law of logic, the Law of Identity (i.e. A is A), to do so.
The pope, as reported by the Associated Press, described selfishness as something that "triggers emptiness" in people which then causes them to fill those voids with "false remedies" such as drugs. He further elaborated that harming oneself is the "poisonous root of selfishness."
What the pope fails to realize, however, is that it is not in a man's selfish interest to engage in drug use or other harmful activities. A man who does engage in such activities is not being selfish, but self-destructive.
A truly selfish man acts in a goal-oriented way that is life-serving and whose life is enriched by the values he pursues, be them material (goods and services, etc.) and/or spiritual (friendship, romantic love, etc.) That certainly does not leave one feeling "empty."
Conversely, it is the altruist ethics of self-sacrfice this pontiff pompously pontificates that undoubtedly leaves one with a sense that his life has gone unfulfilled. If the pope truly seeks to rid the world of this "emptiness" he speaks of, he ought to begin by deriding its cause, the moral cancer that is altruism.
