Category: Sage Advice
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Colonel Jeff Cooper’s Situational Awareness Color Codes
Here is a good article on the topic addressed to law enforcement officers, but useful for the ordinary citizen. Under ORANGE below read 'if possible' for 'if necessary.' Condition White is fine while in your house, assuming your house is well-secured. The minute you step out your door you should move to Condition Yellow,…
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Body as Vehicle
Your body is your vehicle on the highways and byways of the mundus sensibilis. Does it not make sense to keep it ever roadworthy? Is it not morally incumbent upon you to do so? Either maintain it or get it off the road.
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Hara Hachi Bu
Japanese. Eat until you are 80% full. Then stop. Excellent advice, Confucian in origin according to Wikipedia.
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Word of the Day: Dehiscence
Noun 1. Biology: the release of materials by the splitting open of an organ or tissue. 2. Botany: the natural bursting open of capsules, fruits, anthers, etc., for the discharge of their contents. 3. Surgery: the bursting open of a surgically closed wound. Most people have pitifully limited vocabularies. It is due to laziness in most cases. Don't pass over words…
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Socializing as Self-Denial
You don't really want to go to that Christmas party where you will eat what you don't need to eat, drink what you don't need to drink, and dissipate your inwardness in pointless chit-chat. But you were invited and your non-attendance may be taken amiss. So you remind yourself that self-denial is good and that it is…
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Self-Reliance
Self-reliance is a principle of worldly wisdom only. Rely on Other-reliance for the ultimate wisdom.
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The Message of Visible Tattoos
All visible tattoos deliver the same message: I am not interested in being hired for any position that involves interacting with the public. Tattoos on the neck and face deliver the message in capital letters. Time was when tattoos were found mainly only among the demimonde of grifters, members of outlaw motorcycle gangs, rough trade,…
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The Altar of Activism
Don't sacrifice your happiness on the altar of activism. Although happiness involves activity as Aristotle observed, it also involves rest, appreciation, enjoyment, gratitude, contentment, and contemplation. These, especially the last five, are deeply conservative. And they lie beyond the political. We conservatives should be politically active only to the extent that it is necessary to beat…
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Gratitude: A Thanksgiving Homily
We need spiritual exercises just as we need physical, mental, and moral exercises. A good spiritual exercise, and easy to boot, is daily recollection of just how good one has it, just how rich and full one's life is, just how much is going right despite annoyances and setbacks which for the most part are…
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Catholicism as True Enough
Catholicism is true enough to provide moral guidance and spiritual sustenance for many, many people. So if you are a lapsed Catholic, you could do far worse than to return to the arms of Holy Mother the Church. And this despite the deep post-Vatican II corruption. Better such a reversion than to persist in one's worldly…
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To the ‘Victims’ of Liberal Victimology
Blacks need to learn from Jews, Italians, the Irish, and others who have faced abuse. Don't whine, don't complain, don't seek a government program. Don't try to cash in on your 'victim' status, when the truth is that you are a 'victim' of liberal victimology. Get the needle out of your arm, and that soul-killing…
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Philosophers as Bad Drivers?
Just over the transom: C.J. F. Williams told me a [Richard] Swinburne story. Swinburne offered to give him a lift to some philosophy conference, but warned him ‘I only drive at 30 miles an hour’. Christopher thought he meant that he strictly abided by the urban 30 mph speed limit, and accepted the lift. It…
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Unnecessary Conversations
These include those with oneself. Limit the unproductive inner rants and rehearsals. There is no inner listening if one is talking to oneself.
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Sunday Morning Sermon: Awareness of Death as Cure for Existential Drift
Our tendency is to drift through life. If life is a sea, too many of us are rudderless vessels, at the mercy of the prevailing winds of social suggestion. Death in its impending brings us up short: it forces us to confront the whole of one's life and the question of its meaning. Death is…
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Desideratum
It may not be possible except for some of us some of the time: to be in the world, but not of it. Engaged, yet detached. To battle our enemies without becoming embittered or like them. To retain the equanimity of the monk in the midst of the world. To float like a lotus blossom…