Each time I see a young people’s eyes light up at the mention of the word “ethics” — and, oh, how they do light up! — I remember this Nietzsche passage:

So, how many people know how to observe? And of these few, how many to observe themselves? ‘Everyone is farthest from himself — every person who is expert at scrutinizing the inner life of others knows this to his own chagrin; and the saying, ‘Know thyself’, addressed to human beings by a god, is near to malicious. That self-observation is in such a bad state, however, is most clearly confirmed by the way in which nearly everyone speaks of the nature of a moral act — that quick, willing, convinced, talkative manner, with its look, its smile, its obliging eagerness! People seem to be wanting to say to you, “But my dear fellow, that is precisely my subject! You are directing your question to the person who is competent to answer it: there is, as it happens, nothing I am wiser about.”

This is also true of aesthetics and of religious/spiritual/philosophical insight.

Cultivating moral judgment, aesthetic taste or profundity of insight is certainly personally rewarding, but it is a stupid and noxious mistake to expect recognition or acknowledgement for it. Because in each and every one of these subjective fields our appreciation for anyone else’s accomplishments is entirely constrained by what we have accomplished ourselves.

Unless we work at perceiving it, we each are always the apogee of everything that really matters.

Wouldn’t it be a comical paradox if it turned out that the closest a human can come to apotheosis is finally overcoming natural misapotheosis?