Category: Human Predicament
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The Lucky Pollyanna
The pollyanna runs a risk of early death. One thinks of October 7th and the Israelis willfully oblivious of the Gazans sworn to their extermination. But the lucky pollyanna who happens to live long and well lives a life enhanced by the bliss of ignorance. A lucky outlier. Related: The Psychology of the Pollyanna and…
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We easily get used to our own faults, foibles, and fatuities . . .
. . . why not then also those of others?
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Social Distance and Good Relations
Social distance aids in the preservation of good relations with people. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, disrespect. In the famiglia, especially. Conventional usages, phony and formulaic as they often are, have their uses. They allow for civil interaction while preserving distance. "Good morning." "After you, sir." We all want respect even while aware of how…
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The Axis of the Human Heart
Rod Dreher quotes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by…
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Like a Moth to the Flame
Top o' the Stack: A Saturday sermon of sorts on romantic folly.
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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…
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The Futility of Debating Atheists
Would you discuss music with the tone deaf or colors with the color blind? Literature with the illiterate? Poetry with the terminally prosaic? Number theory with the innumerate? Conscience with a psychopath? Would you discuss anything with anyone who lacked the experiences pertaining to the relevant subject matter?
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The Childless as Anthropological Danglers
Top o' the Stack. The Austrian philosopher and Vienna Circle member Herbert Feigl wrote about nomological danglers. Mental states as the epiphenomenalist conceives them have causes, but no effects. They are caused by physical states of the body and brain, but dangle nomologically in that there are no laws that relate mental states to physical…
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Why are People so Easy to Swindle?
My answer at Substack.
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Which is Seeming, which Being?
In the vitality of the moment, in the pride of life, in the grip of surging lust, the trinkets that distract us seem so concrete, so compelling, and so real. God and the soul seem by contrast like bloodless abstractions, mere thoughts, the impotent projections of weak minds incapable of facing 'reality' and of being…
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Homo Homini Lupus
Top o' the Stack. Opening paragraph: A 28-year-old Gypsy girl from the Tene Bimbo crime family 'befriends' an 85 year-old single man, marries him, and then poisons him, causing his death, in an attempt to steal his assets. The two were made for each other, the evil cunning of the woman finding its outlet in…
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The Relative Unreality of Social Transactions
An excerpt from a journal entry dated 21 July 1985 followed by a comment. There is often little or no personal reality in human relationships. They are often nothing more than formulaic transactions. When I saw C.T.K. on Friday I told him, sincerely, that he looked good, healthy. He felt obliged to return the compliment…
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The Main Argument against Secular Humanism
Humans.