. . . is one that has been X-ed out.
(Crossposted at Twitter.)
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
Distaff Tribalism
You may complain, with justification, that women are more tribal than men, but the point needs to be balanced by the observation that they are also more familial, social, communal, helpful, group-oriented, and nurturing. Where would we be without them?
You Know You Love Her . . .
. . . when you find charming in her what would be annoying in others.
Political Parsimony
Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity.
William of Ockham: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
William of Alhambra: Inimici non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Enemies are worse than friends are good. The enmity of the enemy is more to be feared than the friendship of the friend is to be desired. But show me a man with no enemies, and I'll show you a man with no character. We of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable are distinguished by our enemies, in two senses of 'distinguish': we are set apart from them and we are set above them. A man is judged by the nature of his enemies — and by the nature of his friends.
Susan Sontag on the Art of the Aphorism
Top o' the Stack
Grievance and a Life Well-Lived
A life well-lived cannot have grievance as its organizing principle.
Consolation
There is some consolation in the thought that Rome did not fall in a day. The older you are, the greater the consolation.
A Philosopher’s Last Words
What I haven't been able to learn by living, I now hope to learn by dying.
An Extreme Form of Preaching to the Choir
Talking to oneself in the wee hours, rehearsing a rant, as the caffeine kicks in.
Kitsch
Kitsch is art's comfort food: familiar, reliable in its satisfactions, readily available, not particularly nourishing, but also not challenging to its consumers, remunerative for its producers.
Dialogue and Monologue
A dialogue is not a confrontation between two monologues. (Inspired by Frithjof Schuon)
Against Specialization
"Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)
If so, there is no 'insect' like the hyper-specialized analytic philosopher. (See here for quotation and context.)
The true philosopher is "a spectator of all time and existence," (Plato) and of everything sublunary and superlunary.
Panoptics and synoptics are the optics of the true philosopher. Spinoza the lens-grinder would agree.
Juvenilia
I pulled out my scribblings from the summer of '66. Puerile stuff from a half-century ago. Painful in places. But earnest and sincere with a good line here and there. The old man honors the adolescent he was.
I wrote for posterity, though I didn't realize it at the time. And I still do. The posterity of self.
One Man’s Pedantry . . .
. . . is another man's precision.
Continence
There is continence sexual and gustatory. Custody of the eyes and of the heart are forms of continence. Continence should also extend to rebuttals, replies, ripostes, rejoinders, responses, and reactions. Deny yourself the desire for vindication, and getting in the last word. Better retraction than self-serving reaction. The self denied is the ego; the self that denies is the soul.