What Gives Comfort?

People look to religion for comfort. Perhaps they look in the wrong place. I prefer Spinoza (The Ethics, part 5). What gives one comfort ("blessedness") is reason, thought, understanding, clarity, activeness, freedom. These tame and eliminate destructive emotions (hatred, anger, envy, resentment, fear) and substitute constructive ones (love, joy, high-mindedness). Thus, Spinoza wrote,

he who would govern his emotions and appetite solely by the love of freedom strives, as far as he can, to gain a knowledge of the virtues and their causes, and to fill his spirit with the joy which arises from the true knowledge of them: he will in no wise desire to dwell on men's faults, or to carp at his fellows, or to revel in a false show of freedom. Whosoever will diligently observe and practise these precepts (which indeed are not difficult) will verily, in a short space of time, be able, for the most part, to direct his actions according to the commandments of reason.

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