Category: Human Predicament
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Prayer
Because we are spiritual beings, we pray. Because we cannot be lamps unto ourselves, we need to.
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The Art of Life: Among ‘Regular Guys’
Among regular guys it is best to play the regular guy — as tiring and boring as that can be. Need relief? Strictly limit your time among regular guys. But mix with them a little lest you be hated for being 'aloof,' or 'unfriendly.' As long as one is in the world, one must be…
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How did We get to be so Proud?
Recalling our miserably indigent origin in the wombs of our mothers and the subsequent helplessness of infancy, how did we get to be so arrogant and self-important? In a line often (mis)attributed to St. Augustine, but apparently from Bernard of Clairvaux, Inter faeces et urinam nascimur: "We are born between feces and urine." So inauspicious a beginning for so…
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On Lowering Oneself
He who regularly lowers himself to the level of his companions for the sake of their acceptance is likely to underestimate the damage to his height. He will not be able to elevate them, but they can easily bring him down.
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Is There Anything Good About Moral Failure?
Moral failure makes us humble and it casts serious doubt on the proposition that we can appreciably improve ourselves by our own efforts whether individual or collective. Taken to heart, moral failure points us beyond the secular sphere for the help we know we need. Whether there is anything beyond said sphere, and whether help…
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Something Good from these Politically Trying Times?
One positive upshot of these times that try our souls is that more and more of us will come to appreciate the hopelessness of this world and the people in it. Self-satisfied worldlings will find it difficult to retain their worldliness and self-satisfaction as civil order collapses and the tide of irrationality rises. Their naive…
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People Are What They Are
If the universe accepts them, why shouldn't I?
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Trotsky’s Faith in Man
On this date in 1940, the long arm of Joseph Stalin finally reached Trotsky in exile in Mexico City when an agent of Stalin drove an ice axe into Trotsky's skull. He died the next day. The Left eats its own. Read the rest. The tragedy of Trotsky is that of a man of great…
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There Have Always Been Crises
My wife just now handed me a book from her library, one that I had read in the '70s, but had forgotten, The Pursuit of Loneliness by Philip Slater. It was published in 1970 by the Beacon Press (Boston). It bears the subtitle, "American Culture at the Breaking Point." Somehow we didn't break: here we…
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Animal and Spirit
Yesterday morning I reviewed our quarterly statements and calculated our net worth. I then turned to Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death, and re-read underlined passages as a fitting prelude to a 75-minute session on the black mat. It is appropriate for an animal to concern itself with material things; it is also appropriate for a…
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A Need of the Flesh?
According to Vanity Fair, Jeffrey Epstein needed three orgasms per day by three different girls. That need would be ill-described as a need of the flesh. It would be better described as an artificially induced 'need' of a degraded spirit who freely attempted to extinguish his spirit in the diaspora of sensuousness. With apologies to…
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Mistakes
We have all made mistakes. But if we have learned their lessons, they have served a good purpose. Let us not compound our blunders by dwelling on them. Do not forget them, but do not dwell on them. Retention in memory subserves a salutary humility; to dwell on them impedes the project of one's life…
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Patrick Kurp on the urge to sack, defile, vandalize, despoil, tear down and raze
Here at Anecdotal Evidence: “Anno 1527, when Rome was sacked by Burbonius [Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor], the common soldiers made such spoil that fair churches were turned to stables, old monuments and books, made horse-litter, or burned like straw; reliques, costly pictures defaced; altars demolished; rich hangings, carpets, &c. trampled in the dirt.”…
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Paltry
In the measure that we are satisfied by the paltry, in that same measure we are shown to be paltry. But there is both hope and comfort in the thought that no mere animal could take cognizance of its paltry life and be disturbed by it.
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Troubles
There are the troubles that come to us and there are those we bring upon ourselves. But death doesn't care to distinguish them. It will end both equally. "Are you quite sure? Mightn't there be post-mortem troubles consequent upon bad behavior here below? Can you confidently rule out that possibility?"