Practical types look down on speculation, but we are not just animals with stomachs. We have eyes and not just in the head. Mundane grubbing and hassling for property and pelf are necessary but if not kept within limits will dim spiritual sight. We are not here to pile up loot and land.
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
Why Live a Long Time?
Soul-making in this vale takes a long time.
Soul Food
People are generally aware of the importance of good nutrition, physical exercise and all things health-related. They understand that what they put into their bodies affects their physical health. Underappreciated is a truth just as if not more important: that what one puts into one's mind affects one's mental and spiritual health. The soul has its foods and its poisons just as the body does. This simple truth, known for centuries, goes unheeded while liberals fall all over each other climbing aboard the various environmental and health bandwagons.
Second-hand smoke the danger of which is negligible much exercises our leftist pals while the soul-destroying toxicity of the mass 'entertainment' media concerns them not at all.
Why are those so concerned with physical toxins so tolerant of cultural toxins? This is another example of what I call misplaced moral enthusiasm. You worry about global warming and side stream smoke when you give no thought to the soul, its foods, and its poisons?
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Dave Bagwill comments:
I'm sure you're acquainted with Lewis' take:"C. S. Lewis sets the scene in Mere Christianity: The theater lights dim, the band begins to play softly and sensuously as a man enters from stage left carrying a silver tray which is covered by a white cloth. He walks to the middle of the stage and begins dancing lewdly before setting the tray with the white cloth on a table. He whirls his hands over his head and then moves slowly and deliberately as he slides the cover off the silver tray. In the middle of the tray is a pork chop.“Would not you think that something has gone wrong in that culture about food?” He asked.
Of course, his seventy-year-old vision has come true in America today. From the Food Channel to “Chopped,” we are strangely twisted and out of control with our love for food."
Good Relations and Deep Relations
Given the limitations of our postlapsarian predicament, good relations with others must needs be limited relations. Familiarity breeds contempt. Propinquity militates against politeness. Conservatives understand that a certain formality in our relations with others, both within and without the family, helps maintain respect. Formality helps keep in check the incivility bred of familiarity. Reserve has a preservative effect. Saying less more often accrues to our benefit than saying more. How often have you brought trouble upon your head by simply keeping your mouth shut?
So much for good relations. Deep relations are another story. In them we court danger. We go deep, we probe, we 'let it all hang out' after midnight of the work-a-day round. You should run the risk from time to time. Risk rejection and worse. Otherwise, when it comes time to die, you won't be able to say that you really squeezed the fruit of the lemon tree.
A Groundless Stereotype about Stereotypes
Not all stereotypes are negative; some are positive. And not all stereotypes lack a fundamentum in re; some are based in reality. I just made two distinctions.
It is a stereotype both negative and without a foundation in reality that all stereotypes lack a foundation in reality.
Braggadocio, Self-Deprecation, Contempt
Brag and your peers will hate you. A little self-deprecation may win their hearts. Too much will earn their contempt. We learn these things by living.
Chutzpah
The leftist mayor of one of our most crime-ridden cities demanded police protection en route to a demonstration at which she joined in the vilification of the police.
Know Thyself!
He who knows himself know someone who inevitably in many a particular is not worth knowing. And he who knows this knows something worth knowing and someone who in at least one particular is worth knowing.
Inadequacy and Self Knowledge
I bemoan my faults and limitations, both intellectual and moral, but my bemoaning them shows that I am aware of them, which in turn shows that I possess self-knowledge, which is nothing to bemoan!
Safety First?
A nation for which safety and security are leading values is one headed for the ashcan of history. Did the great mariners of sea and space live by Safety First?
The Upside of Moral Failure
It teaches humility.
The Noble and the Base
If a noble man becomes aware of my moral defects, he is saddened, disappointed, disillusioned perhaps. But the base man reacts differently: he is gleeful, pleased, reassured. "So he isn't better than me after all! Good!"
The noble seek those who are above them so that they can become like them. The base deny that anyone could be above them.
A Life Spent Making Repairs
Psychologically damaged early on by parents, relatives, teachers, circumstances, and blows of fate, one spends the rest of one's life making repairs.
Both Weak and Strong
Reason is weak in the discernment of reasons, strong in the crafting of rationalizations. But the strength of rationalizing reason derives not from reason but from passion and her subornation of reason.
Of Friendship and Expiry
Some friendships have expiration dates, typically in very fine print illegible to the eager eyes of the newly enamored.