Aphorisms and Observations – Page 38

Leftist Enablers as Useful Idiots

Having lost their heads, they are in danger of losing their heads.

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Addendum 1/9. It is a nice literary question whether the above formulation is superior to

Having lost their minds, they are in danger of losing their heads.

I like both formulations but prefer the first because it exploits an equivocation on 'lose one's head.' Logical heads shun equivocation like the plague, but it has its literary uses and charms.

By the way, the sentence immediately preceding features the figure of speech known as the synecdoche.

Memory, Matter, Mind

Memory loss points to the materiality of mind while memory's exercise points to its immateriality. Mind is mysterious, but memorial mind is even more so, situated as it is at the crossroads of intentionality and time.

Rethinking and Second Thoughts

To rethink one's position is not necessarily to abandon, question, or revise it. One can rethink without having second thoughts.

The Aging Philosopher

Both animal and thinker, he faces two sorts of threats. Among the first, hardening of the arteries. Among the second, hardening of the categories. Which is worse depends on your categories. Either way, categories rule.

The Part-Time Monk

The part-time monk saves his spunk for the marital bunk.

Of Body and Buddha

When functioning optimally the body can seem, not only an adequate vehicle of our subjectivity, but a fitting and final realization of it as well. Soon enough, however, Buddha's Big Three shatters the illusion: sickness, old age, and death.

Everything partite is slated for partition. Shunning inanition, maintaining a wholesome spiritual ambition, work out your salvation with diligence.

A glance at the graphic to the left suggests that the order is: old age, sickness, and death. Prince Siddartha, forsaking the unreality of the royal compound, goes out in quest of the Real and the Uncompounded. But who is the figure standing on the ground? Siddartha the seeker as opposed to Siddartha the prince?

"The trouble is, you think you have time." (Attributed to Buddha)

Proof That No One is Wise

Correct a wise man and he will (sincerely) thank you.

All Sins of the Spirit

All sins are of the spirit even those that are of the flesh.

Dubious Compensation

In compensation for hearing loss nature gives the old man bigger ears.

Reason with Liberals?

One cannot reason with those who are permanently in a state of self-colonoscopy.

Doubting and Believing

Doubting no more confers dubitability upon that which is doubted than believing bestows credibility upon that which is believed.

Keeping an Eye on the Political

Did the Jews of Europe keep a sharp eye on the political from, say, 1923 to 1933 when Hitler acceded to power? Not very well, as the sequel showed. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

The Beaters of the Beaten Path

Their space is narrowly hodological: marked by paths along which merely practical needs are met and merely practical tasks discharged. What lies off these beaten paths is as good as nonexistent to them. As their space, so their lives. The pleasures of meandering the byways are foreign to them.

Reason’s Limits

It is quite unreasonable to suppose that the appeal to sweet reason is the best way forward in all of life's situations. The reasonable appreciate that the hard fist of unreason applied to the visage of evil intransigence is sometimes the most cogent of 'arguments.'

It is unreasonable to be reasonable in all things.

Why Faith?

If we need truth we cannot know, then we need faith.