Martin Butler's Negative Philosophy

Martin Butler's Negative Philosophy

Immutable

To become what one is is a beautiful idea. We can scrape off all those who talk about improvement and even transformation, like scraping off so much dog shit from our shoes.

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Martin Butler
Sep 04, 2025
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Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Whether you like it or not, you are essentially an immutable object. Yes, I know superficials can change, but beneath your phony exterior is what Schopenhauer would call your character. As far as he was concerned, this is immutable. If you have tendencies to lie, you will always lie, and equally, if you tend to be kind to those who suffer, then you will always be kind. Other people use different terms. In the Gurdjieff tradition it is said we have an essence beneath our phony personality, and Nietzsche was adamant that our real personality was as immutable as the body. He’s quite explicit about it:

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