“On another occasion in connection with the same question G said: “A good deal is incomprehensible to you because you do not take into account the meaning of some of the most simple words, for instance, you have never thought what to be serious means.
“To have a serious attitude toward something.” Someone said.
“That is exactly what everybody thinks, actually it is the reverse.” said G. “To have a serious attitude towards things does not at all mean being serious because the principal question is, towards what things? Very many people have a serious attitude towards trivial things. Can they be called serious? Of course not.
“The mistake is that the concept ‘serious’ is taken conditionally. One thing is serious for one man and another thing for another man. In reality seriousness is one of the concepts which can never and under no circumstance be taken conditionally. Only one thing is serious for all people at all times. A man may be more aware of it but the seriousness of things will not alter on this account.”
“If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people turning round in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can be only one thing that is serious for him – to escape the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself; how to escape: nothing else is serious.
When I say that an obyvatel is more serious than a ‘tramp’ or a ‘lunatic’ I mean by this that, accustomed to deal with real values, an obyvatel values the possibilities of the ‘ways’ and the possibilities of ‘liberation’ or ‘salvation’ better and quicker than a man who is accustomed all his life to a circle of imaginary values, imaginary interests, and imaginary possibilities.
People who are not serious for the obyvatel are people who live by fantasies, chiefly by the fantasy that they are able to do something. The obyvatel knows that they only deceive people, promise them God knows what, and that actually they are simply arranging affairs for themselves – or they are ‘lunatics’, which is still worse, in other words they believe everything that people say.”
“To what category do politicians belong who speak contemptuously about ‘obyvatel’, ‘obyvatels opinions’, ‘obyvatels interests’?” someone asked. “They are the worst kind of obyvatels,” said G., that is, obyvatels without any positive redeeming features, or they are charlatans, lunatics, or knaves.”
“But may there not be honest and decent people among politicians.” someone asked.
“Certainly there may be,” said G. “but in this case they are not practical people, they are dreamers and they will be used by other people as screens to cover their own obscure affairs.”
“The obyvatel perhaps may not know it in a philosophical way, that is to say, he is not able to formulate it, but he knows things that ‘so themselves’ simply through his own practical shrewdness, therefore, in his heart, he laughs at people who think, or who want to assure him, that they signify anything, that anything depends on their decisions, that they can change or, in general do anything. This for him is not being serious. And an understanding of what is not serious can help him to value that which is serious." Gurdjieff, ISOM
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