International Women’s Day

Thought I’d come across a nice piece of literature on the fairer sex with yesterday (March 8 - this day in New York of 1857, women from clothing and textile factories staged a protest against ghastly working conditions and low wages) being celebrated all around the world as the International Women’s Day (especially within their own respective social circles). On the contrary, ended up reading what Arthur Schopenhauer (see picture) had to say about women. Though his bitter relationship with his mother is often cited as the reason behind his much voluble hatred of them, he once said that women are “not even a necessary evil.” And that they “… should never be allowed altogether to manage their own concerns, but should always stand under actual male supervision, be it of father, of husband, of son, or of the state….”

I want to neither vitiate nor vilify his philosophy in any way because this German philosopher of pessimism, also said/wrote the following words of absolute wisdom.

“So long as we are given up to the throng of desires with the constant of hopes and fears, so long as we are the subjects of willing, we can never have lasting happiness and peace.
Happiness, accordingly, always lies in the future or else in the past, and the present may be compared to a small dark cloud which the wind drives over the sunny plain; before and behind it all is bright, only it itself always cast a shadow.”

“The truth which life showed to me clearly… was that this world was not the work of an all-merciful god, but that of the devil who called creatures into being in order to delight in their torment.”
This reminds me of what my father wrote in his philosophical “conventional” notebook – How do you know that god exists? I know so because I feel the presence of the devil.

“Man appreciates happiness only in presence of sorrow."