Category: Human Predicament
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On Forming Societies at Faint Provocation
Paul Brunton, Notebooks II, 154, #56: I am not enamoured overmuch of this modern habit, which forms a society at faint provocation. A man's own problem stares him alone in the face, and it is not to be solved by any association of men. Every new society we join is a fresh temptation to waste…
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Dubious Consolation for the Bald
Paul Brunton, who was bald, writes, I take comfort in the continental proverb,"A hundred years hence we shall all be bald." (Notebooks, VIII, 202.) I am not bald and the genetics of my lineage suggest the unlikelihood of my becoming bald. But the occasional dream reveals a subconscious anxiety. In one, I caught a glimpse…
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Ambition and Age
Lack of ambition in the young is rightly seen as a defect. But here is an old man still driven by his old ambitions, none of which were of too lofty a nature. Is he not a fool? For his old ambitions, appropriate as they were in youth, have become absurd in old age. His…
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Ambition and Happiness
Viewed in one way, ambition is a good thing, and its absence in people, especially in the young, we consider to be a defect. Without ambition, there can be no realization of one's potential. Happiness is connected with the latter. We are happy when we are active in pursuit of choice-worthy goals that we in…
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Why Do We Judge People By Their Attire?
In Chapter 42 of his Essays, Montaigne remarks that We praise a horse for its strength and speed, not on account of its harness; a greyhound for its swiftness and not its collar; a hawk for its wing and not for its jesses and bells. Why then do we not value a man for what…
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Proud To Be a Human Being
It’s a hell of a thing to be a consciousness encased in flesh and riding on a rickety skeleton. A precarious predicament, exposed as we are to the rude impacts of a physical universe that cannot even be called indifferent. A mere reed, but a thinking reed, an engineering reed. A reed who risks his…
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Fake Halloween Tombstones and the Brevity of Life
A neighbor's fake halloween tombstone bore the inscription: Ashes to ashesDust to dustLife is shortSo party we must. But why not: Ashes to ashesDust to dustLife is shortSo work out your salvation with diligence!
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The Human Predicament: Not to be Taken Too Seriously
I've been loved, hated, feared, loathed, respected, scorned, unjustly maligned, praised for what I should not have been praised for, lionized, demonized, put on a pedestal, dragged through the mud, understood, misunderstood, ill-understood, well-understood, ignored, fawned upon, admired, envied, tolerated, and found intolerable. And the same most likely goes for you.
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Superman: The Moral of the Story
George Reeves (1914-1959) was the original 'Superman.' You know the character: "Faster than a speeding bullet . . . ." Reeves was murdered (or was it suicide?) in June of 1959. I remember a comment of my Uncle Ray at the time of Reeves' death: "He could stop other people's bullets, but not his own."…
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Adding Insult to Injury
That we are formed and malformed by our environments from birth on is bad enough. It is made worse by those who want to see us as nothing but products of environment. These reductionists of course make an exception in their own cases. It is as if they say to us: "We are able to…
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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…
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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,…
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Do You Seek Power and Position?
Then consider what Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has to say in his Essays (XI. Of Great Place): Men in great place are thrice servants — servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times.…
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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…
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‘He’s Only Reading’
This just over the transom from Londiniensis: Your last post puts me in mind of the hoary old story of the timid student hovering outside his tutor’s door not knowing whether to knock and disturb the great man. At that moment one of the college servants walks past: “Oh, it’s all right dear, you can…