It is because of ego that one man speaks. It is because of ego that another refuses to listen. It is because of ego that a third seeks to overcome his ego. And let's not overlook the ego of the one who makes these observations.
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
The Past as Burden
The past is a burden one is free to put down — if others will let us. In this regard as in others, the less fame the better. Others like to keep us in the past, safely categorized, pinned to our deeds. To their ossifying gaze, we are what we were, a fixed essence rather than a project. If I rightly recall, Hegel summed up the Aristotelian to ti en einai and the scholastic quod quid erat esse in the phrase, Wesen ist was gewesen ist: essence is what was. But Dasein, said Heidegger, is essentially futural. And that despite all Geworfenheit, thrownness. Sound is the existentialist insight that man is a project.
Each day is new, but we make it old with our thoughts and habits. We drag the past along with us like a penal chain. But every day is a beginning. Some say: "of the rest of your life." But that formulation is too retrospective: it evaluates the present and the future by the standard of the past, as time that remains. Better to say: "Each day begins a new life." Of course, it cannot be all that new, but no matter. Let the continuities take care of themselves, seek the novelty in the moment.
There are possibilities yet unexplored in this present which is not merely a boundary between past and future, but a source of the new.
Serious Conversation
It is best avoided with ordinary folk. Serious conversation about matters beyond the mundane demands effort and people resent being made to work. Besides, ordinary folk do not 'believe in conversation' the way some philosophers do. They don't believe that truth can be attained by dialectical means. They might not believe in truth at all, or in its value. Or they may have the notion that 'truth is relative.' Thoughtlessly, many dismiss all thought with 'It's all relative.' So if you try to engage them on a serious topic, they may interpret your overture as an initial move in an ego game whereby you are trying to dominate them, even if that is the farthest thing from your mind. Not believing in truth, they believe in power, and interpret everything as a power ploy and a power play. And this goes double if, like me, you are intense of mien. For your seriousness will appear either threatening or comical to those for whom nothing matters except life's surfaces.
A good maxim, then: Among regular guys be a regular guy.
The Body’s Graffiti
Tattoos are the graffiti of the human body. And just as the graffiti 'artist' defaces property public and private, the tattoo 'artist' defaces the human body, torturing the skin with needles and injecting it with ugly dyes. When I see yet another tattooed, pierced, tackle-box head, I wonder what this phenomenon means. Some thoughts of Theodore Dalrymple are worth pondering:
First, it [tattooing] was aesthetically worse than worthless. Tattoos were always kitsch, implying not only the absence of taste but the presence of dishonest emotion.
Second, the vogue represented a desperate (and rather sad) attempt on a mass scale to achieve individuality and character by means of mere adornment, which implied both intellectual vacuity and unhealthy self-absorption.
And third, it represented mass downward cultural and social aspiration, since everyone understood that tattooing had a traditional association with low social class and, above all, with aggression and criminality. It was, in effect, a visible symbol of the greatest, though totally ersatz, virtue of our time: an inclusive unwillingness to make judgments of morality or value.
If Everyone Were Like Me . . .
. . . there would be no used bookstores: I keep all my books. So it is a good thing for me that not everyone is like me.
Never Buy a Book You Haven’t Read
It's a good maxim. But I hear an objection coming. "If you've already read a book, why do you need to buy it?" Because the only books worth owning are the ones worth reading more than once.
Deformation by Experience
Thought aspires to objectivity and universality, but it must struggle against the brute onesidedness of experience. We are so impressed by our particular experiences that argument against them will usually prove unavailing. Our experiences form us and deform us.
I once knew a white woman who disliked blacks. I inquired why. She explained that she had grown up in a neighborhood with a lot of blacks, and that the black kids routinely harrassed her and her friends on their way to school. My arguments in mitigation of her generalized prejudice were of course unavailing in the teeth of her experiences.
Just as you can't argue against a man's sensibility, you can't argue against his exeriences. He knows what he's seen, what he's felt, what he's suffered. Argumentative abstraction is just so much gossamer by comparison.
This is a general rule admitting of exceptions. The vividness of the experiences is no match for the faint murmurings of sweet reason. We are formed by our experiences but also deformed by them.
We are made of crooked timber, and the warping of experience adds the final rude touch.
Marriage and ‘Settling’
In the end you settle for so-and-so, or else remain single. It is worth remembering that she is also settling for you.
Success and Luck
A proper humility demands a frank admission of the role of luck in every success.
Liberals and Tolerance
A liberal will tolerate anything – except a conservative.
The Confused Have Their Uses
Just as I learn how not to live by observing how some do live, I learn how not to think by observing how some do think. Their confusion is fodder for my clarity.
On Grades
Life is hierarchical. It is therefore unjust not to give grades. A school in which all are equal is no preparation for a life in which all are not.
Silence and Wholeness
Perusing an old file of juvenilia for blog-fodder, I decided that the contents are mostly too juvenile for reproduction here. But then I came across an aphorism penned in December, 1971 when I was living in the shadow of the medieval Festung or fastness in Salzburg, Austria:
Silence is a grating clangor to the unwhole man.
The Use of the Body
There is such a thing as excessive concern with the body's health and excessive fear of its destruction. The body is to be used — and used up. It is your vehicle here below; it is not you. It is an experience mill, so grind away. If thinking raises blood pressure, am I going to give up thinking? If reading weakens eyesight, will I give up reading? Physical health is a means, not an ultimate end. A healthy body aids the working out of my intellectual and spiritual salvation. But the point is to work out my intellectual and spiritual salvation.
Analogy. One takes good care of one's writing implements. But the point is to write something. The pencil achieves its end — in both senses of the term — by being used and used up. Similarly with the body and its organs.
So use the body, and use it up. You can't take it with you. But don't misuse it. Use it or lose it, but don't abuse it!
A Boomer and His Experiences
Do you help your neighbor to help your neighbor, or to add the experience of helping your neighbor to your collection of experiences?
From an advertisement: "Ever since we invented the first personal shredder, Fellowes has been dedicated to improving every aspect of the shredding experience." The shredding experience? Now we boomers have done all manner of wild and crazy things in quest of experience, but does anyone shred for the experience of it?
A culture of narcissism in which the focus is on the self and his experiences as opposed to the world and its objects.