The Drive for Superiority

THE POWER OF SUPERIORITY

Belousov Andrey Viktorovich

Et dicebam ego meliorem esse sapientiam fortitudine: quomodo ergo sapientia pauperis contempta est et verba eius non sunt audita.

And I said: wisdom is better than strength, yet the wisdom of the poor is despised, and his words are not heard.
(Ecclesiastes 9:16)

If a person possesses great physical strength and has a beautiful, well-developed body, but lacks the ability to reason logically, then for many he appears grotesque, unpleasant, and dull. Strength in itself is not yet a sign of superiority. It only gives a person a certain ability to influence the surrounding world. But if a person does not know how to properly use this ability, strength can turn out to be completely useless or even become the cause of his defeat.

A person may be able to lift enormous weight, endure hard physical labor, run fast, and have excellent reflexes, but all these qualities will not help him in a situation where it is necessary to correctly assess circumstances, foresee the consequences of one’s decision, and choose the only reasonable course of action. Physical strength allows one to act directly, whereas reason allows one to determine what action should be taken at all.

If a person has a lot of money but lacks the ability to reason logically, he also most often does not evoke intellectual respect from others. Money gives a person opportunities, but does not automatically give the ability to use them correctly. A wealthy person can acquire the best things, education, medical care, travel, hire specialists, and enjoy a huge number of benefits created by civilization. However, he cannot buy with money the ability to independently distinguish truth from delusion.

Moreover, material well-being sometimes creates in a person an illusion of his own exclusivity. If a person is accustomed to getting what he wants thanks to his material capabilities, it is easy for him to begin to think that his opinion is automatically more correct than the opinions of others. But economic superiority and intellectual superiority are completely different phenomena.

If a person has become a scientist and memorized all the intricacies of the field in which he works, but lacks the ability to reason logically, then he also appears pitiful to many. One can know a huge number of facts and still not understand their interconnections. One can remember formulas, definitions, dates, names, and results of other people’s research, but be completely incapable of independently drawing a new conclusion.

Therefore, the quantity of knowledge does not yet determine the quality of thinking.

The ability to reason logically is the only quality that, in an intellectual sense, gives one homo sapiens superiority over another — that which separates “Julius Caesar” from an uncultivated peasant.

By logical reasoning we mean the ability to form concepts to their full completion, to establish connections between them, to detect contradictions, and to bring thought to its natural conclusion. A person who merely repeats other people’s words may appear educated, but his education remains external. True thinking begins when a person is able to independently verify acquired knowledge and understand why it must be exactly so.

One can know the answer but not understand the reason for the answer.

One can repeat another’s thought but be unable to defend it.

One can even accidentally arrive at a correct conclusion but be unable to explain how one arrived at it.

In all these cases, a person possesses information but does not possess full-fledged thinking.

Many people do not feel the boundaries between reality and fiction, between knowledge that can be verified by experience and knowledge that goes beyond it and is purely a product of the mind. And this is not surprising, because we take this visible, ordered world for granted, building in our consciousness the same ordered schemes that do not correspond to the underlying reality, and we often make mistakes in our judgments.

A person is born into a world that has already been described by someone. Even before he begins to reason independently, he is told what is good and what is bad, what is considered right and what is wrong, what is normal and what is abnormal. He receives language, a system of values, religious or non-religious ideas, political views, historical explanations, and a huge number of ready-made answers.

Gradually, a person begins to perceive these answers as reality itself.

But any description of the world differs from the world itself.

A map is not the territory, and a human concept is not the object it describes. That is why the ability to think requires constant comparison of our ideas with reality.

As soon as we observe nature, much becomes extremely clear. The reason for this is modern culture, which has largely changed and distorted our thinking. Man has created a huge artificial world and has become so accustomed to it that he has stopped noticing how much this world differs from natural conditions of existence.

Let us imagine a modern ordinary person sitting for hours at a computer on interactive websites. He has immersed himself in the world of computer games, completed all levels of the most complex game; he is an expert in everything, has an opinion on everything, which he considers the only correct one.

Such a person may possess a huge amount of virtual experience. He knows the rules of the game, remembers dozens of characters, knows ways to achieve victory, and is able to react quickly to changes in the situation. But all this does not yet mean that he possesses practical real-life experience.

He will tell you about God, culture, politics, history, and the structure of society. Moreover, he even dares to criticize the government that pays him unemployment benefits and guarantees social security. His confidence in his own knowledge may be practically limitless.

However, confidence is not proof.

A person can be absolutely sure of his own rightness and at the same time be absolutely wrong.

Let us mentally send such a know-it-all to Ancient Greece, to the times of the fearless heroes of Hellas, who surpassed only the immortal gods in physical strength and intellectual abilities. The Spartans, for example, considered verbosity a sign of stupidity. For them, a person had to not only speak but also act.

If such an expert were not killed immediately there, he would at least be made a laughingstock of the people.

It is true that Sparta did not give the world a single outstanding thinker comparable to the greatest philosophers of Athens, but it left an eternal memory of fearless heroes who loved and defended their homeland. This difference shows how ambiguous the very concept of human superiority is.

One society may value strength, discipline, and courage.

Another — reasoning, the art of debate, and the ability to create new ideas.

A third — wealth, entrepreneurship, and practical success.

Therefore, human superiority cannot be assessed by a single criterion. However, in the intellectual sense there exists a quality that allows a person not merely to possess information but to transform it into new knowledge. This quality is the ability to reason.

Unfortunately, this is the price of technology, the development of which leads to the dulling of certain natural human qualities. We do not need to memorize much. Why? Because at any moment we can go to Google and find the answer to almost any question.

We do not need excessive physical strength — it has been replaced by machines.

We do not need excessive agility and physical endurance for most everyday tasks.

We do not need the effort required to obtain a piece of bread in the form it was necessary for people of the past.

Life has become much easier.

But unfortunately, the price of such ease can be very high if a person unceremoniously surrenders himself to progress without giving due attention to his own mental and physical development.

Technology should be an extension of human ability, not its replacement.

If a person uses a calculator, it is wonderful. But if after that he stops understanding elementary mathematical relations, he becomes dependent on the tool.

If a person uses a search engine, it is a tremendous achievement of civilization. But if he stops independently evaluating the information he finds, then the huge amount of available knowledge does not make him smarter.

A computer can give a person an answer.

But it cannot always explain what question should actually be asked.

The formulation of the question is often a more difficult task than finding the answer.

If we do not reclaim our natural qualities from civilization, we are doomed to complete degradation. After all, man is given a physical body by nature in order to interact with this world, and a mind in order to comprehend it.

Everything around us is in constant motion, and one who is passive in life does not harmonize with nature.

Development is impossible without tension.

A muscle develops when it works.

Intellect develops when it encounters difficulty.

Character develops when a person is forced to overcome resistance.

Therefore, an overly easy life, if a person does not create voluntary difficulties for himself, is capable of gradually depriving him of the ability to overcome real obstacles.

In the history of European society’s development, we tend to single out two flawless personalities: Jesus Christ — the messiah sent by God, and Immanuel Kant — the messiah sent by Science.

Two messiahs, two worldviews that shaped the modern spiritual and scientific perspective.

Having presented their teachings, each in his own field, they will always remain first. The appearance of Christ was preceded by an entire historical epoch and the lives of great prophets:

“The earth awaited a Spiritual King, understandable to the suffering, the humble, and the poor.”

In the same way, for many years philosophers created the conditions for the emergence of Kant.

Messiahs are not made — they are born of time.

A great man does not appear because he once decided to become great. Behind him stands historical necessity. Before a new idea appears, a huge number of old ideas, contradictions, unresolved questions, and attempts to find solutions must accumulate.

Every major thinker stands on the top of a huge structure built before him.

A person tends to respect his life experience, hard-earned knowledge, and the emotions he has received while uncovering the secrets of this world. He wants to leave a part of himself in his works and often remains subjective.

This is natural.

Every person looks at the world through the prism of his own life.

His ideas are formed by his upbringing, environment, culture, successes, and failures. Therefore, even a very intelligent person can become a prisoner of his own premises.

Messiahs, however, represent human knowledge as a whole. They are the quintessence, the peak upon which human cognition has been built over many years.

And then the construction is completed.

At the summit a new star shines.

This is the difference between a great thinker and a merely educated person. An educated person knows what has already been created. A thinker is able to see what has not yet been seen.

We would like to divide thinking people into two categories:

1. Philosophers.
2. Thinkers.

Philosophers are people who reinterpret old ideas without contributing anything new to the development of human thought.

For example, the philosopher Skovoroda (1722–1794) operated with ideas that were relevant in medieval Europe. For Enlightenment Europe, Skovoroda would most likely have acted as a theologian, since he dealt exclusively with Christian ethics in his works. A similar trend in philosophy in Europe was relevant until the Renaissance.

Thinkers are people who have been able to advance the development of human thought; they have brought it to a qualitatively new level.

This list includes the following figures: Aristotle, Epicurus, Spinoza, Kant, Adam Smith, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and others.

Of course, there is not always an absolute boundary between a philosopher and a thinker. The same person may interpret previous ideas and simultaneously create new ones. However, for our classification, something else is important: a thinker must not merely repeat existing knowledge but change the very structure of human understanding.

A true discovery does not necessarily mean the discovery of a new object.

Sometimes it means a completely new view of an already known object.

That is why the history of human thought develops not only through the accumulation of information but also through the transformation of ways of organizing it.

Newton did not create nature.

Darwin did not create evolution.

Einstein did not create space and time.

But they created new ways of understanding what existed independently of them.

In today’s reality, the most socially adapted people are in government; they hold high leadership positions in the state and therefore must possess the qualities most valued by society: self-confidence, the ability to persuade, the desire to lead, and the ability to achieve socially significant goals.

Such people represent society as a whole, not just a particular element of it.

But here a significant contradiction arises.

A person can be useful to society and at the same time not be a great thinker.

Someone may read many books, make great discoveries, and uncover the secrets of the world, but if his achievements are not recognized as useful to society, such a person may be considered intelligent only for himself.

Society is not always able to immediately evaluate a new idea.

History knows many cases when a thinker was misunderstood by his contemporaries. A new idea often seems useless precisely because society has not yet learned how to use it.

Therefore, social recognition is not always an absolute criterion of truth.

But a person still lives within society.

He has to interact with other people, defend his interests, explain his actions, and gain recognition for his proposals. Therefore, the ability to persuade becomes an important part of social life.

The modern education system largely forms a certain view of the culture created by people, of which we are a part and within the context of which we can achieve something.

A person receives the knowledge necessary to be integrated into the existing system.

But one who loves knowledge for its own sake goes deeper into understanding the laws of nature and the place of man in this world.

In social terms, this function is quite significant, and for the individual it provides a sense of intellectual superiority over others, self-confidence, and control over the situation.

The desire to become perceptive, reasonable, and ultimately to remain right in controversial situations partially compensates for our lack of social recognition.

After all, in life it is important to achieve a certain position, gain self-confidence, and feel the correctness of one’s views, beliefs, and judgments.

A person does not like to feel helpless.

He strives to understand what is happening around him precisely because understanding gives a sense of control.

Uncertainty is frightening.

Contradiction is irritating.

Ambiguity causes anxiety.

Therefore, reason strives to systematize the surrounding world.

But here a danger arises: sometimes a person begins to defend not the truth, but his own system of representations. Then logic turns from a tool of truth-seeking into a weapon for defending a preselected position.

True logical thinking must be ready to change its own conclusion if an error is discovered.

This is perhaps one of the most difficult intellectual tasks.

A person finds it much harder to admit another’s rightness than to prove his own.

Therefore, the ability to think must include not only the ability to win an argument but also the ability to detect one’s own mistake.

And thus the ability to persuade can be considered the main force of superiority over others — but persuasion not through deception, but through the rigor of logical proof.

True persuasion differs from manipulation.

A manipulator tries to force another person to accept a position regardless of truth.

A thinker must strive to show why a certain conclusion follows from certain premises.

If a person is able to prove his point of view, he gains intellectual advantage.

If he is also able to detect the weakness of his own position, he gains an even greater advantage — an advantage over himself.

The ability to defend one’s point of view is a vital element in today’s reality — only in this way can one preserve oneself in a world of harsh competition.

Every day a person faces advertising, political promises, social stereotypes, demands from others, and numerous attempts to influence his behavior.

He constantly has to choose.

What to buy?

Whom to trust?

What to fear?

Which information is reliable?

Which promise is real and which is just beautiful words?

The ability to prove one’s rightness and refute the arguments of others is a crucial element of survival.

The best way to withstand external attacks is to reveal their illogicality and absurdity.

But it must be remembered: refuting another’s mistake is not yet proof of one’s own correctness.

One can show that one argument is false, but this does not mean that the opposite argument automatically becomes true.

This is where the boundary between true thinking and ordinary dispute lies.

In a dispute, a person often wants to win.

In reasoning, a person must want to understand.

There is a well-known view that man descended from apes, which has cast a shadow over the name of Charles Darwin. For many, this scientist remains misunderstood.

Evolution in nature affected all living things without exception: both humans and animals.

Did man really descend from apes?

Evolution is a process of species divergence, and clearly humans and apes simply share a common ancestor.

In the same way, one could say that we descended from mice, with whom divergence occurred hundreds of millions of years ago.

In nature, it is not the strongest who survives, but the species that can adapt to the environment in order to reproduce.

Mammoths possessed great physical strength, yet they did not survive, while ants still exist today.

This example clearly shows the difference between strength and adaptability.

Strength is one of the tools of survival, but not a universal law.

An organism can be large, fast, or strong and still be poorly adapted to environmental change. A small organism, on the contrary, can be far more resilient.

Therefore, development cannot be understood only as a constant increase in physical power.

Sometimes development means the ability to change.

After a detailed study of Darwin’s work On the Origin of Species in the original (Darwin, C. R. 1861. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: Murray. 3rd edition), we were unable to find in it not only the word “ape” but even the word “primate”.

The only mention of human evolution is given below:

“In the future I see an open field for very important discoveries. Psychology will be based on a foundation firmly laid by Herbert Spencer, on the necessary acquisition of every mental capacity through gradation. Much light will be shed on the origin of man and his history.”

What many understand as development concerns only human intellect, which allowed us to create culture, making us the “kings” of nature.

Unfortunately, intellect did not necessarily develop, and sometimes, on the contrary, weakened our natural instincts, affecting primarily technological progress but not human natural qualities.

We have created tools that allow us to compensate for physical weakness.

We have created systems that allow us to store information outside our own brain.

We have created social institutions that protect humans from many dangers.

But at the same time, we have become dependent on this entire system.

A person in modern society is capable of surviving in the environment that he himself has created, but he is not necessarily capable of surviving in the natural environment in which his ancestors once lived.
And here a new question arises: is this development, or merely a change in the form of existence?
There is no unambiguous answer to this question.
But one thing is obvious: human intelligence has created a civilization that now shapes human intelligence itself.
We have created culture.
Culture shapes us.
We create technologies.
Technologies change our habits.
Our habits change our thinking.
And our changed thinking creates new technologies.
Thus, a closed circle emerges.
An anecdotal incident that happened to one of our acquaintances during a medical examination for potential conscripts illustrates how a person can refuse even to accept an obvious fact when defending his own interests.
When he entered the ophthalmologist's office, he decided to pretend that he was unable to see clearly.
“Everything is blurred,” he said.
The doctor showed him two fingers from a distance of three meters.
“How many fingers can you see?”
“Either two or three; I can't tell exactly.”
The doctor moved one step closer and repeated the question.
“Either two or three; I can't tell exactly.”
Realizing the trick the young man was playing, the ophthalmologist placed two fingers right against his eyebrow.
“How many fingers can you see?” the doctor demanded for the last time.
“E-either three or one; I can't tell exactly.”
The doctor could not restrain himself and raised his voice at the young man:
“If I hit you right between the eyes, your eyesight will improve instantly! Get out of here before I throw you out!”
He pointed toward the door.
Attempts to pretend to be ill in order to avoid military service were widespread in the 1990s, and by that time the medical staff had already become thoroughly tired of them.
Our acquaintance did eventually avoid military service, but for an entirely different reason…
The example above demonstrates a tendency of human beings to evaluate the surrounding world from the standpoint of personal benefit: both obvious and conscious, as well as hidden and unconscious.
A person rarely looks at a situation in a completely impartial way.
Even when someone claims to be defending a principle, there may be a very specific personal interest behind that principle.
This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Personal interest is a natural part of human behavior.
The problem arises when a person fails to notice his own interest and begins presenting it as a universal truth.
This includes faith, beliefs, and principles.
If a society is unable to protect the principles on which it is based, it ceases to exist.
Society exists because its members recognize certain rules.
The rules may be different.
Laws may change.
Moral standards may change.
Political systems may disappear.
But the need for a certain order remains.
From this it follows that the ability to persuade is an ability to survive.
If a person cannot explain to others why his position makes sense, he risks losing the ability to influence what is happening.
That is precisely why the word becomes one of the most important tools available to human beings.
Physical force acts directly upon the body.
Money acts through material possibilities.
Power acts through the social system.
Persuasion acts directly upon consciousness.
A person who is capable of changing another person's opinion through argument acquires a special form of power.
But this power becomes dangerous when it becomes detached from truth.
The ability to speak persuasively can be used both to defend the truth and to spread lies.
Therefore, it is not enough to be eloquent.
One must be logical.
One must be able to distinguish the persuasiveness of form from the persuasiveness of content.
Beautiful words do not make a lie true.
A confident voice does not turn an error into a correct conclusion.
Most people evaluate persuasion by its emotional impact, whereas logical thinking requires an evaluation of the structure of the argument.
It is precisely here that the real power of superiority emerges.
Not in speaking louder than others.
Not in suppressing an opponent.
Not in possessing more money.
Not in having a stronger body.
But in the ability to see the connection between cause and effect and to explain that connection to another person.
We want our book to serve as a kind of guide to life, a kind of hint for those who are prepared for the powerful dynamics of modern society, which has no stops along its journey.
One must manage to act at the right time.
One must be able to understand in time how to respond to one situation or another, so as not to become deceived by various promises that create false orientations and offer illusory hopes.
Modern people live in a world where information spreads at enormous speed.
An event that occurs on the other side of the planet becomes accessible to millions of people within minutes.
Advertising is capable of addressing a person at precisely the moment when he is most receptive.
A political statement can instantly change public sentiment.
False information can spread faster than it can be verified.
Under such conditions, the ability to think independently is no longer a luxury but a necessity.
A person must be armed with solid knowledge, possess powerful logic, and be sufficiently persuasive.
But knowledge must not simply be accumulated.
It must be constantly tested.
Logic must be used not only to prove that one is right, but also to examine one's own beliefs.
Persuasiveness should be based not on emotional pressure, but on the ability to demonstrate the reasonableness of one's conclusion.
And here once again we encounter the concept of superiority.
Superiority does not necessarily mean power over another person.
In a deeper sense, it is the ability to be freer from one's own misconceptions.
A person who is capable of recognizing his own mistake is, in a certain sense, stronger than a person who defends his own error at any cost.
A person who is capable of changing his opinion when new evidence appears is stronger than someone who never changes his views simply because he is afraid to admit a mistake.
A person who is capable of listening to the arguments of an opponent is stronger than one who hears only himself.
Therefore, intellectual superiority requires inner discipline.
One must know not only how to speak.
One must know how to listen.
Not only how to argue.
One must know how to analyze.
Not only how to win.
One must know how to understand.
And the words of the great Vladimir Solovyov remain relevant today:
“...the only guide in every matter remains practical expediency, and the goal can only be success. No one can guarantee unconditionally the truth of his aspirations or the correctness of his opinions, but everyone without exception expects success and triumph for his aspirations and opinions. Thus, the only true content of life is to seek practical success by all possible means, and since this goal can be achieved by an individual only with the support of others, the principal task is to convince others of what is necessary for oneself. Therefore, the most important and useful art is the art of verbal persuasion...”
Vladimir Solovyov, Works, Moscow, 1988, Vol. 2, p. 591.
However, even here one important qualification must be made.
If success becomes the only criterion of human activity, there is a danger of losing the distinction between truth and benefit.
A person can achieve success by using lies.
He can persuade others that something is true simply because it benefits him.
He can obtain power without possessing wisdom.
He can win an argument through demagoguery.
Therefore, practical success is not yet conclusive proof of truth.
True superiority must combine several qualities: the ability to think, the ability to act, the ability to adapt, the ability to persuade, and finally, the ability to distinguish one's own benefit from the truth.
In this sense, the power of superiority is not simply the power of one person over another.
It is the power of reason over the chaos of one's own ideas.
It is the ability of a person not to remain a passive object of circumstances, but to become an active participant in what is happening.
A person cannot stop the movement of society.
He cannot stop the development of technology.
He cannot force the world to remain forever as it was yesterday.
But he can develop his own mind sufficiently not to become lost in this movement.
One can use a machine without becoming a machine.
One can use the Internet without becoming its slave.
One can receive knowledge from others without abandoning independent thought.
One can strive for success without turning success into the only value.
One can persuade others without deceiving them.
One can defend one's own interests without losing the ability to see the interests of others.
This is precisely why the highest form of superiority lies not in suppressing another person, but in the ability to preserve one's independence.
A physically strong person can force a weaker person to submit.
A wealthy person can buy what is inaccessible to the poor.
An influential person can force others to carry out his orders.
But a person who is capable of understanding why events occur and who can convincingly explain this understanding to others acquires a special form of power.
This power is not always visible.
It is not necessarily accompanied by wealth.
It is not necessarily connected with high social status.
Sometimes its possessor may be completely inconspicuous.
Yet this is precisely the kind of power that can outlive the physical body, wealth, and political authority.
Physical strength disappears together with the person.
Wealth can be lost.
A position can be taken away.
A state can disappear.
But an idea, if it has genuinely changed human thinking, can continue to exist for centuries.
That is why the history of humanity is not only the history of wars, states, and wealth.
It is also the history of ideas.
Some people built empires.
Others destroyed them.
Some created weapons.
Others created philosophical systems.
Some possessed enormous territories.
Others possessed nothing but their own minds.
And sometimes the idea proved stronger than an army.
Therefore, the words of Ecclesiastes that wisdom is better than strength acquire special significance.
But immediately another question arises: why can the wisdom of a poor man be despised, while the words of a powerful and wealthy man are heard?
Because society is not always capable of recognizing true value immediately.
Human beings tend to evaluate the source of information before evaluating the information itself.
If a rich person speaks, people believe him.
If a famous person speaks, people listen.
If a person with a high title speaks, his words are taken more seriously.
If an unknown person speaks, he may not even be heard.
This is one of the principal weaknesses of human society.
We often evaluate not the argument, but the person who makes it.
True logical thinking requires the opposite approach.
One must first examine the argument and then decide how convincing the person presenting it actually is.
Truth does not become truth simply because it was spoken by a great person.
And a lie does not become a lie simply because it was spoken by an unknown person.
Therefore, intellectual freedom begins where a person becomes capable of separating the content of an idea from the status of its author.
Thus another form of superiority emerges: the ability to evaluate ideas independently.
This is one of the principal goals of our work.
We do not seek to teach people to argue for the sake of arguing.
We want to demonstrate the necessity of developing the ability to think.
One must learn to recognize contradictions.
One must learn to ask questions.
One must learn to distinguish fact from assumption.
One must learn to distinguish one's own confidence from proof.
One must learn to understand that sometimes the strongest intellectual act is to say, “I don't know.”
Because a person who knows the limits of his own knowledge has already taken the first step toward expanding it.
The person who believes he knows everything closes off the possibility of further development.
Therefore, superiority is not a final state.
It is a constant movement.
A person does not become permanently wise.
He can only become wiser.
He does not become permanently strong.
He can become stronger.
He does not reach the ultimate truth in a single movement.
He can continually approach it.
And if nature is in constant motion, then a person who wishes to remain a part of nature must also move — physically, intellectually, and spiritually.
Passivity means stopping.
And stopping in a world that continues to move effectively means moving backward.
Therefore, the power of superiority lies above all in the ability not to stop.
Not to stop learning.
Not to stop developing.
Not to stop examining one's own beliefs.
Not to stop in the face of difficulties.
And, most importantly, not to stop at what has already been achieved.
A person can defeat another person and remain unchanged.
But a person who has defeated his own ignorance has already changed.
It is precisely this kind of superiority that is the most stable.
Because it cannot be taken away by simple physical force.
It cannot be completely bought with money.
It cannot be destroyed by a position or a title.
It exists within the person himself.
And therefore the greatest power of a human being does not lie in how hard he can strike, how much money he can accumulate, or how high a position he can attain.
The greatest power lies in the ability to see, understand, reason, and persuade.
And when the ability to act in accordance with one's understanding is added to this, a person gains the possibility not merely of adapting to the surrounding world, but of becoming a factor in changing it himself.
Thus true superiority emerges.
Not the superiority of strength over weakness.
Not the superiority of wealth over poverty.
Not the superiority of status over obscurity.
But the superiority of understanding over misunderstanding, knowledge over ignorance, logic over contradiction, and independent thought over the blind repetition of other people's words.
This is the superiority that a person is capable of winning from himself.
And that is precisely why it is the most difficult and, at the same time, the most valuable form of superiority.