Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aphorisms and Observations

  • Journeys and Preparations

    We plan our journeys long and short.  We lay our plans for trips abroad well in advance.  And those who leave their homeland and emigrate to another country take special care.  Why then are we so careless about the journey on which all must embark and none return? "Because it is a journey into sheer…

  • Why Wittgenstein was a Better Man than Russell

    Russell worried about logic.  Wittgenstein worried about logic and his sins.

  • It Passes All the Same

    No matter how many times you remind yourself to seize the day, to enjoy the moment, to do what you are doing, to be here now, to live thoughtfully and deliberately, to appreciate what you have; no matter how assiduous the attempts to freeze the flow, fix the flux, stay the surge to dissolution, and…

  • Idle Talk

    Time was when I felt superior to those who lose themselves for hours in idle talk,  the endless yap, yap, yap, about noth, noth, nothing.  But superior to that superiority is benign indifference to the idlers, an indifference so indifferent that it permits a bit of engagement with them, not condescendingly, but in acknowledgement of our common…

  • The World’s Chiaroscuro

    The world's chiaroscuro is unbearable to some.  They would be brought into the unmixed light or else let to expire into nothingness. 

  • Fragment of a Credo

    I cannot know whether my life makes ultimate sense.  But I can live as if it does, and if I do I will live better than if I live as if it does not. I cannot know whether my life is bounded by bodily birth and death. But I can live as if it is…

  • Homunculus

    The soul anthropomorphized:

  • Enthymeme

    A great mind is not upset by a petty matter.  Therefore, our minds are petty. 

  • Telescope and ‘Cerebroscope’

    If God cannot appear through a telescope, why do you think that mind can appear through a 'cerebroscope'?

  • Socializing as Self-Denial

    You don't really want to go to that Christmas party where you will eat what you don't need to eat, drink what you don't need to drink, and dissipate your inwardness in pointless chit-chat.  But you were invited and your nonattendance may be taken amiss.  So you remind yourself that self-denial is good and that it is…

  • The Vale of Ignorance

    You would have to live behind a veil of ignorance not to perceive that this world is a vale of ignorance.

  • Mavalanche

    What you get if I link to you. 

  • Enigmas

    Aporeticians qua aporeticians do not celebrate Christmas.  They celebrate Enigmas.

  • Sexual Intracourse

    Masturbation is sexual intracourse.

  • The ‘Occupiers’

    They occupy, but they themselves are vacant.