We should look past useless memories to present realities in the way we look past the floaters in our visual field. To concentrate on the detritus of memory is only to enliven what ought to be left to slumber.
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
A Way to Live
Live as if life's chiaroscuro will resolve itself, not one day, but beyond time, into clear light.
Delicious Obscurity
We who are obscure ought to be grateful for it. It is wonderful to be able to walk down the street and be taken, and left, for an average schlep. A little recognition from a few high-quality individuals is all one needs. Fame can be a curse. The unhinged Mark David Chapman, animated by Holden Caulfield's animus against phoniness, decided that John Lennon was a phony, and so had to be shot.
The value of fame may also be inferred from the moral and intellectual quality of those who confer it.
The mad pursuit of empty celebrity by so many in our society shows their and its spiritual vacuity.
UPDATE: By this metric, however, I count as famous. Well, we live in an age of low standards.
Ignorabimus
We are ignorant about ultimates and we will remain ignorant in this life. Perhaps on the Far Side we will learn what we cannot learn here. But whether there is survival of bodily death, and whether it will improve our epistemic position, are again things about which — we will remain ignorant in this life.
It is admittedly strange to suppose that death is the portal to knowledge. But is it stranger than supposing that a being capable of knowledge simply vanishes with the breakdown of his body?
The incapacity of materialists to appreciate the second strangeness I attribute to their invincible body-identification.
All Roads Lead to Rome
If so, it is equally true that all lead away from it as well.
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.