Observations and aphorisms

The future is a huge, formless chunk of marble. Your voice is your chisel. Your will is your hammer. Ah, what to do? What to do?

Let’s face it. The way we act sometimes, the world is expendable. 

If one can say, “I am an idea man, intellectual, liberal, aggressive humanist, task-oriented but not without sensitivity to human relations, and an unfashionable perpetual minority of one in an age of anti-intellectualism, conservatism, passive theism, social-emotional business ethics and personal profit ghettos,” then such a person has no identity crisis, but has come through the wringer of self-definition with the help of many significant others and with the result of some equanimity of spirit and the ability to generate the alpha waves of alertness for — hmmmm.

Promiscuity. From a man’s point of view: Is one woman different enough from another in the mechanics or mystique to justify the choice of one female and then another and another, and another, ad feminum? 

Tragedies take place where protagonists do not see the inevitable consequences of the situation they create for themselves. What intervening force might save them? Could that force come from within the protagonist? And it is cultural conflicts at the center of most tragedies.

If you don’t get it, you haven’t got it. 

He is buried alive in his bias. Guess who! 

A simple model of pure democracy exists on the government-constructed streets at every government-marked, intersection stoplight.

Pres. Bush is a model of human behavior that succeeds in the short-term, but will be a model of behavior that will probably not succeed as an advantageous life form in the long term. What he did was, in a very short time,  alter the environment in which he succeeded to a disadvantageous one for him. Sort of like what human beings are doing with the global environment over a very long time. To see a larger advantage in personal behavior is a source of morality, which is learned as a perception of intelligence.

I believe that nearly everyone could put to good use a person who is a good quizzer who respects you and shows an interest in you, asking deep, probing questions that would help you find out where you are and where you want to go, defining who you are and what you are trying to do. Few, I have observed, are good at it. Poor models of questioning can be seen in television reporters interviewing people. There is always the half-assked question. Time does not permit!  More poor models are in the classrooms, teaching! 

I do not believe in evolution because I do not have evolution on faith.

What is the grand scheme of things? You must want to live. You must know how to stay alive. You must know, at the base, steady working conquers all. You must feel that the most basic genius is monstrous energy. 

Do you see better eye to eye than I to I?

 

 

 

Operational Definition

God is the invention of people in trouble, having been in trouble, or about to be in trouble.

Jealousy is envious anger.

Dignity is having choices.

(Before I go further, let me explain. The bedrock of my character is sedimentary, the silt of concepts developed over the years of study, thinking, and teaching, and now coming out in what has been called “the universal phenomenon of reminiscence in later life” [from the summary of the research reported in the abstract I have placed in the articles section of this blog].

(So, continue with the concepts.)

Attention is selective response.

Concentratiuon is prolonged attention.

Reasoning is symbolic balancing of alternatives.

Science is a method of reasoning, empirically or experimentally.

Romance is art. Marriage is science.

Motivation is energized behavior.

Genius is nothing but monstrous energy. (To wit: The German empiricists.)

Thought fills the delay between stimulus and response.

Thought is that internal monologue that inhibits response.

Theory is a statement that attempts to account for all known facts in a field of inquiry.

[The theory of evolution is not a speculation.]

Perception is a response involving memory and sensation.

Character is what you do at home, alone, and in the dark.

Character is forged in the metallurgy of choice.

Eloquence is the marriage of heart and brain.

Presidential candidate #1: passion minus poise. #2: poise minus passion. Eloquence equals poise plus passion.

Culture is shared codes, a matrix of demographics and communication codes.

Political correctness is cultural astuteness. (PC is the attempt to show in public policy a sensitivity for culture.)

Art is the final tuft and essence of science.

Life is irritable matter.

Time is elastic.

Teaching is a process of diagnosis, awareness, experiences, critical feedback, testing.

Justice is due process.

Intelligent use requires prudence, circumspection, sensitivity, bibliotherapy.

Habit is response without awareness, the silent valet.

Learning is changing habits, substituting new for old.

Learning is painful; if an experience hurts, there is an opportunity to learn.

Conscience is the sense of an ideal self.

Law is an expression of social conscience.

Honesty is a method, not a trait, and can be avoided where a trait cannot.

Courage is enduring discomfort with fortitude.

Courage is a marker of maturity.

Maturity imagines the discomfort of others.

[Hemingway: "Courage is grace under pressure."]

Ego disengagement means generosity, trust, self-criticism, rejection of self-interest.

Morality is that which has survival value.

Morality is acting as I would legislate for the whole world.

Capitalism, by its acquisitive nature, is a conservative philosophy.

Democracy is a liberal philosophy.

Democracy is discussion, and debate if discussion breaks down.

Alternatives to democracy are anarchy or dictatorship.

All organizations are hierarchical.

Hierarchical organizations cannot be democratic.

Democracy captured by an arisocratic “establishment” becomes a “system” that pays lip service to democracy.

Adaptability precludes adaptation, and vice versa.

Alternative forms of suicide are divorce, drugs, abandonment, infidelity, lying, cheating, alcohol, gluttony, and so on.

Listening is accurate paraphrase of what is being said.

Active listening is repeating what was said to the satisfaction of the speaker.

Demagoguery is saying what the people want to hear.

Arbitrariness is the wish and power of one ego over all the rest (and to be fought in all pursuits).

Death is mainly ego-obliteration. What others may retain of the departed ego is not the ego obliterated.

Frankness is the art of getting the truth across unmistakebly, without brutality.

One’s maturity and mental health is the extent to which intelligence rules passion, habit, and, yes, reason. Look out for the infantile personality

Probing questions, beyond the first two or three, take you down the path of the other person’s point of view to walk a mile in the other’s shoes. (The test for all journalists.)

Hindsight knows everything. Foresight knows nothing. Judgment is prudent. Prejudgment is reckless.

A journalist is a conduit.

The largest errors of our time: making immediate decisions without regard for long-term consequences.

The seven stages of life: inheritance; presence; competence; ascendance; eminence; impermanence; imminence. (But only in a democracy.)

Earth’s orbit is the Goldilocks orbit.

Silence is consent.