Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aphorisms and Observations

  • The Leftist as Retromingent

    A retromingent is an animal that urinates backwards.  Posturing as 'progressive,' the leftist does what to the past?

  • I Pity the Poor Activist

    I pity the poor activist for whom the real is exhausted by the political.  But I detest these totalitarians as well since they seek to elide the boundary between the private and the public. We need to battle them in the very sphere they think exhausts the real.  But it is and must be a…

  • Regret Become Denial

    There are past actions one disowns to such an extent that one comes to deny having done them.  "I could never have done such a thing!"

  • Socratic Equality

    We are not all equally ignorant, but we are all equal in being ignorant, though unequal in our appreciation of the fact.

  • Righteous Indignation

    Is your righteous indignation perhaps only envy in disguise?

  • Righteous Anger

    That there is more anger than righteousness in our righteous anger is no argument against it.

  • Resilience

    The sufficiently resilient and adaptable can turn most of life's unanticipated slings and arrows to their advantage.

  • A Fallen Being

    A natural but not inevitable concomitant of being a fallen being is being oblivious to the fact.

  • Sickness

    The physically sick are rarely unaware of their state; the morally usually.

  • Worry and Regret and Time

    Worry and regret form a pair in that each involves flight from the present; worry flees the present toward an unknown future, regret toward an unchangeable past.  The door to Reality, however, is hinged on the axis of the Now.  If access is to be had to the nunc stans it is only via the…

  • Mountain Climbers of the Spirit

    George Mallory fell to his death in 1924 while attempting to scale Everest. His body was found in 1999. It remains a mystery whether he summited. Now one can admire Mallory's courage, dedication, and perseverance.  But one must question the value of the goal he set for himself. Arguably, he threw his life away attempting…

  • No Own, No Care

    The renter builds no equity.  In exchange his abode's sans souci.

  • Tactics, Tactics, Tactics

    Tactic, tactic, tactics.  As important in chess as location, location, location in real estate. (Aphorism extracted from The One Chess Book a Person Should Have.)

  • False Modesty

    False modesty sometimes assumes the form of an avowal that one's modesty is not false.

  • Man the Unjust

    Limited as we are, we limit others to less than they are.