If so, it is equally true that all lead away from it as well.
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
Useless Rehearsals
Rehearsals are for a future performance. Why then are you 'rehearsing' that altercation with so-and-so from twenty years ago? Do you plan to bring it back to the stage?
The Sea Battle Tomorrow
The soldier's operations in the field are often encumbered by the presence of civilians and considerations of 'collateral damage.' The seaman's is a purer form of combat. Ships far out at sea. All hands combatants. No civilians to get in the way. Less worry over environmental degradation. The 'purity' of naval over land warfare. Bellicosity in the realm of Neptune must breed a brand of brotherhood among the adversaries not encountered on terra firma.
There is More to Life than Politics
There is more to life than politics, but to keep it that way, some engagement in it is necessary.
Extremists
And then there are the conservatives (liberals) for whom a refusal to demonize liberals (conservatives) makes you one.
Here is the first stanza of "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939):
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
They Come Too Late
As privacy dies our mailboxes fill — with privacy policies.
S. A. D.
It can depress one's mood to realize how one's mood is depressed by the gloom and brevity of December days. Mortal man, who would soar so high, like Icarus toward the sun, is brought down to ground by the thought that his sunny mood is affected by — the sun.
The Pleasures of Chess
The pleasures of chess are admittedly paltry, but well-defined, innocuous, cost-free, reliably anodyne, and indefinitely repeatable.
On Socializing
He who avoids socializing avoids pointless conversations, some of which are worse than pointless. For example, chatting with a stranger can turn ugly very quickly if it happens that you differ politically. Still, socializing is not all bad. Like whisky, a little is good now and again. But more is not better.
Ego, Sin, and Logic
Ego is at the root of sin, but also at the root of obsessive preoccupation with one's sinfulness. If the goal is to weaken the ego, then too much fretting over one's sins in the manner of a Wittgenstein is contraindicated.
There is such a thing as excessive moral scrupulosity.
Though Wittgenstein's ego drove him to scruple inordinately, he was a better man than Russell. Russell worried about logic. Wittgenstein worried about logic and his sins.
Restatement No Response
He who merely restates his position in the teeth of criticism has not responded to it.
No Fool Like an Old Fool
It is a foolish old man who fails to make use of his waning libido to achieve the spiritual and moral progress that he couldn't make when it was in full flood.
One Problem with Suicide
Suicide is a permanent solution to what is often a merely temporary problem.
Sufficiently Deficient
This world is sufficiently deficient in reality, intelligibility, beauty, and goodness to keep one from the error of taking it as ultimate. But it also exhibits enough of these features to keep one from the opposite errors of nihilism and illusionism and to point us beyond it to its Source.
In the Dark
We are all in the dark, but the philosophers among us know it. The enlightenment they provide is mainly of a negative nature: they cast a bright light on our ignorance. And sometimes they do so willy-nilly, by contradicting each other.