Category: Human Predicament
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It’s Enough
Standing on a hill behind my house, looking down on it, the thought occurred to me: It's enough. One modest house suffices. And then the thought that the ability to be satisfied with what one has is a necessary condition of happiness. Satisfied with what one has, not with what one is. Perhaps it is…
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Time Trouble
It is troubling that our lives will end. But for some of us it is even more troubling that they are constantly ending. It is not as if we are fully real now and later will not be; it is rather that our temporal mode of existence is not fully real. At each moment our…
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A Big Ego
One associates loud, domineering, and aggressive behavior with a 'big ego.' But a long memory for wrongs done one, a fine sensitivity to slights and slurs real and imagined are also signs of a 'big ego.'
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Suggestibility
People lack an inner compass; or rather the compass they possess is easily deflected by the surrounding 'socio-magnetic' fields.
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Perils of Helping
Help a man, and he may be grateful to you. Or he may resent it that he needs your help, or envy you your ability to provide it, or act as if he has it coming, or become dependent on you, in which case your 'help' is harm. Absolutely, one must do no harm. (Primum…
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Is Mankind Making Moral Progress?
Steven Pinker is wrong says John Gray. I'm with Gray. This July will be the 50th anniversary of Barry Maguire's Eve of Destruction. It has been a long and lucky half-century eve, and by chance, if not by divine providence, the morning of destruction has not yet dawned with the light of man-made suns. Now…
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The Competency of Desire
Human desires regularly show themselves to be highly competent when it comes to the seduction of reason and the subornation of conscience. A man murders his wife and the mother of his child in order to collect on a life insurance policy. Why? So that he can run off with a floozie who shook her…
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Are We Here to Amass Wealth?
Whatever we are here for, if anything, we are not here to pile up loot. Unfortunately, our predicament is such that we cannot even agree about this!
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Limitation
Little by little, one comes to understand — a little.
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Ashes to Ashes; Dust to Dust
"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem…
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The Aging Philosopher
Both animal and thinker, he faces two sorts of threats. Among the first, hardening of the arteries. Among the second, hardening of the categories. Which is worse depends on your categories. Either way, categories rule.
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After Socializing
After socializing I often feel vaguely annoyed with myself. Why? Because I allowed myself to be drawn into pointless conversation that makes a mockery of true conversation. The New Testament has harsh words for idle words: But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in…
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Of Body and Buddha
When functioning optimally the body can seem, not only an adequate vehicle of our subjectivity, but a fitting and final realization of it as well. Soon enough, however, Buddha's Big Three shatters the illusion: sickness, old age, and death. Everything partite is slated for partition. Shunning inanition, maintaining a wholesome spiritual ambition, work out your…
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Proof That No One is Wise
Correct a wise man and he will (sincerely) thank you.
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The Beaters of the Beaten Path
Their space is narrowly hodological: marked by paths along which merely practical needs are met and merely practical tasks discharged. What lies off these beaten paths is as good as nonexistent to them. As their space, so their lives. The pleasures of meandering the byways are foreign to them.