The wings of thought need a tongue to bring to earth their lofty load. Honor thy Mother!
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
The Worldling
The worldling has no time for eternity.
The Converse Alinskyite Tactic
When our political enemies use our virtues against us, we should use their vices against them.
Speaking Truth to Power
A phrase beloved by leftists, but never deployed by them when it is apropos, that is, when they are in power.
Socratic Progress
The older I get the more I realize how little I know, even about subjects I have long pondered. That realization is progress of a sort. We might call it Socratic progress, progress in the knowledge of one's ignorance.
The ‘Gordian’ Solution to the World-Knot
If the mind-body problem is the world-knot, as Schopenhauer is supposed to have said, then eliminative materialism is the 'Gordian' solution.
Memo to Zennists
You can't get beyond the discursive intellect until you get to it.
Intellect and Will
An intellectual may become a handwringer. But he whose will is strong may become willful and obstinate. Intellect and will need to check and balance each other.
Self-Satisfaction
A modicum thereof is surely justified, but it is best enjoyed in solitude.
Unseen Warfare
Because unseen, easy to doubt, dismiss, deny. At your own risk.
Vincit qui se vincit
"He conquers who conquers himself." Or as a cognate aphorism of mine has it:
Self-mastery is the highest mastery.
Self-mastery requires the mastery of both desire and aversion, not unto their extirpation as in Pali Buddhism, but sufficiently to render ordinate what is inordinate. The problem is not desire as such, but inordinate desire. Similarly for aversion.
Along the same line, and in paraphrase of Augustine,
The vicious man has as many masters as he has vices.
Or as I say, with maximal pith and precision:
Vices vitiate.
Peace through Strength: A Variation on the Theme
Your willingness to be conciliatory will be taken for weakness unless you are perceived to be dangerous.
Political Desideratum
As much liberty as possible under as little law as is necessary.
Vehicles
I knew a man who knew all about his truck, its engine displacement, gear ratios, you name it. But when I asked him about his blood pressure, he replied that the doctor said it was OK. I thought to myself: Ken needs to get his vehicular priorities straight lest the via dolorosa through this vale of soul-making be more dolorous than it needs to be.
Dark Moods
Like dark thoughts, dark moods are more or less oppressive depending on the hospitality with which we entertain them.