Category: Sage Advice
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Anti-Bukowski
Aim high, do try. You won't reach what youthful fatuity fancied, but you will get farther than you would have got without the high shot.
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Bumper Stickers and Yard Signs
As November 5th approaches, I am seeing a lot of them, especially yard signs. I myself prefer to 'go gray' inasmuch as such signage will reliably trigger emotions, but never persuade anyone to change his position. Suppose you have good relations with your neighbor across the street. You share some interests, but have never talked…
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Vincit qui se vincit
"He conquers who conquers himself." Or as a cognate aphorism of mine has it: Self-mastery is the highest mastery. Self-mastery requires the mastery of both desire and aversion, not unto their extirpation as in Pali Buddhism, but sufficiently to render ordinate what is inordinate. The problem is not desire as such, but inordinate desire. Similarly…
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Self-Admonition: Do Your Best!
Do the best you can for as long as you can with your life's allotment of materials, tools, and talents. The best you can do won't be the best, but your best, the personal best, unique to you, unrepeatable, and incommunicable to any other. Your uniqueness distinguishes your best from the bests of all the…
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Play the Current Position
In life as in chess. There's no use fretting how you got into it. If not even God can restore a virgin, then surely you cannot undo the mess you are in. You're in it, now play it. Fretting is of use only if it helps you avoid the pickle next time. And that reminds…
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My Advice? Go Gray!
Prudence is one of the cardinal virtues. Peggy Noonan quoting Bill Maher: Would anyone ride the New York City subway wearing a MAGA hat, or go to a NASCAR race in a Biden T-shirt? That’s where we are now: Other parts of the country are seen as no-go zones. The polarization is reaching toxic levels.…
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Hyperkinetic and Hyperconnected
The typical American's life is frantic, frenetic, hyperkinetic, and hyperconnected. For any really good reason? What's the rush? Quo vadis? Whither goest thou, thoughtless hustler? From time to time we need to slow down and unplug. Try to go deviceless for a few days. Haul off to some desert spot and rest incommunicado, out of…
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On Taking Abuse
A re-post from 1 August 2013. Slightly redacted. …………….. Everyone gets abused verbally in this world and one had better learn how to take it. There are bigots everywhere — leftists and wokesters the most vile, their tendency to project psychologically rendering their bigotry invisible to them — and sooner or later you will encounter…
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Kathy Hochul, Leftist Idiot
Head over to Malcolm Pollack's place for some sensible commentary. Meat quote: Political thinkers from Hobbes to Schmitt have understood that the fundamental principle that legitimizes the power of the State is the reciprocal obligation of obedience and protection. We cede to the State the awesome power of coercion by threat of violence, and in…
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What to do if a cop stops you
Sage Substack advice of an automotive nature.
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Negative Events: Likelihood versus Gravity of Occurrence
Suppose you pack heat. Someone might ask you, "But what is the likelihood that you, given your cautious and circumspect style of life, will ever be in a situation in which you will need to defend your life, or a family member's life, with deadly force?" The question is legitimate. The answer is as follows.…
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Taming the Wild Horse of the Mind on the Road to Benares
This morning's meditation session ran from 3:10 ante meridiem to 4:00. Before that I was sketching six blog posts in my journal. My mind was on fire with ideas fueled in part by some entries from Volume Five of Tom Merton's journal. As flabby a liberal as he is, both politically and theologically, he is…
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Crises There Will Always Be
I cite the example of Nicolai Hartmann in a Substack entry from March, 2022. So buck up and fight on. Philosophy is a great consolation. We lesser lights ought to look up to the luminaries, and their example. Boethius wrote in prison, Nicolai Hartmann in Berlin in 1945 in the midst of the Allied assault.…
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Situational Awareness
Another MavPhil public service message: Don't walk around with your head up your app! You're a dumbass with a smartphone if you don't understand that it is perhaps the greatest enemy of situational awareness. And if you pack heat, bear this in mind: if you have to go to guns, there's probably been a failure…