Category: Maxims, Mottoes, Epitaphs, etc.

First They Came for My Chicken Sandwich . . .

Here. 

I have honestly never eaten a Chick-Fil-A sandwich.  So tomorrow I am going to try one.  This is in keeping with my maxim, 'No day without political incorrectness.'  Each day you must engage in one or more politically incorrect acts.  Some suggestions:

  • Smoke a cigar
  • Use standard English
  • Practice with a firearm
  • Read the Bible
  • Enunciate uncomfortable truths inconsistent with the liberal Weltanschauung
  • Read Maverick Philosopher
  • Think for yourself
  • Patronize Chick-Fil-A
  • Give your baby baby formula
  • Read the Constitution
  • Cancel your subscription to The New York Times
  • Find more examples of politically incorrect things to do

Good, Better, Best

From the mail bag:

Is the way you interpret Voltaire's saying the way it was originally intended? I'm probably wrong here, but I always took the saying to mean this: a willingness to settle for what is "better" makes it likely that one won't acquire what is "good".
 
Good, better, best.  Positive, comparative, superlative.  "The best/better is the enemy of the good" means that oftentimes, not always, the pursuit of the best/better will prevent one from attaining the good.  The point is that if one is not, oftentimes, willing to settle for what is merely good, one won't get anything of value.  So I suggest that my reader has not understood Monsieur Voltaire's aperçu.
 
Example.  It will come down to Romney versus Obama.  If libertarians and conservatives fail to vote for Romney, on account of his manifold defects, then they run the risk of four more years of the worthless Obama.  Those libertarians and conservatives will have let the better/best become the enemy of the good.  They will have shown a failure to understand the human predicament and the politics pertaining to it.  He who holds out for perfection in  an imperfect world may end up with nothing.
 
You give the example of a spouse: try to hold out for a perfect wife, and you'll never marry at all. An example that would fit my reading would be, if one settles for a wife who's merely better than most of the available options, then one's apt to settle for a wife who isn't good. Sometimes it's better to refuse all the available options.
 
I agree that it is sometimes better to refuse all the available options.  If the choice is between Hitler and Stalin, then one ought to abstain! 
 
Maybe a better example would be, imagine I need to install plumbing in my house. Crappy plumbing is almost always going to be better than no plumbing. But should I (say, out of laziness) really settle for that, on the grounds that 'well, it's better than the nothing I had'?
 
Of course not.  Voltaire's point is not that one should settle for what is inferior when something better is available.  The point is that one should not allow the pursuit of unattainable perfection to prevent the attainment of something good but within reach.  Suppose someone were to say: I won't have any faucets or fixtures in my house unless they are all made of solid gold!  You will agree that such an attitude would be eminently unreasonable.
 
The Voltairean principle as I read it is exceedingly important in both personal life and in politics.
 
Perhaps you know some perfectionists.  These types never accomplish anything because they are stymied by the conceit that anything less than perfection is worthless.  I knew a guy in graduate school who thought that a dissertation had to be a magnum opus.  He never finished and dropped out of sight.
 
In politics there are 'all or nothing' types who demand the whole enchilada or none.  Some years back, when it looked as if it would be Giuliani versus Hillary, some conservative extremists said they would withhold their support from the former on the ground that he is soft on abortion.  But that makes no bloody sense given that under Hillary things would have been worse.
 
The 'all or nothing' mentality is typical of adolescents of all ages.  "We want the world and we want it . .  NOW!"

Nihil philosophicum a nobis alienum putamus

"We consider nothing philosophical to be foreign to us."  This is the motto Hector-Neri Castañeda chose to place on the masthead of the philosophical journal he founded in 1966, Noûs. When Hector died too young a death at age 66  in the fall of '91, the editorship passed to others who removed the Latin phrase. There are people who find classical allusions  pretentious. I understand, but do not share, their sentiment.

Perhaps I should import Hector's motto into my own masthead. For it   certainly expresses my attitude and would be a nice, if inadequate, way of honoring the man.

Hector's motto is modelled on Terentius: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. "I am a human being; I consider nothing human to be  foreign to me." One also sees the thought expressed in this form:  Nihil humanum a me alienum puto. Hector's motto is modeled on this variant.

From the Inside of a Fortune Cookie

"Mental activity keeps you busy at this time."  Only at this time?

"All happiness is in the mind."  This is an example of a half-truth the believing of which is pragmatically very useful.

"If you chase two rabbits, both will escape."  Reminds me of the Lovin' Spoonful tune Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your MInd?

"If you think you're too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito."  Does this have a sexual meaning?

Of Haircuts, Amphibolies, and Maxims

I got my quarterly haircut the other day.  A neighbor remarked, "I see you got a haircut," to which I responded with the old joke, "I got 'em all cut."

In this as in so many other cases the humor derives from ambiguity, in this case amphiboly (syntactic ambiguity.)  The spoken 'I see you got a haircut' can be heard as 'I see you got a hair cut.'

The neighbor laughed at the joke, but I spared him the analysis, not to mention my theory of humor, both of which would have bored him.

Two relevant maxims: 'Tailor your discourse to your audience' and 'Among regular guys be a regular guy.'  And a meta-maxim: 'Step out of your house only with maxims at the ready.'