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.
Category: Sage Advice
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 politics. You display a Trump-Vance sign. He sees it, and thinks to himself, "I thought Ron was a nice guy, but what sort of person would vote for Hitler?" What did you accomplish by putting up the yard sign? Nothing, and you've made things slightly worse.
"But shouldn't you stand up for what you believe in?"
Generally speaking, yes. But there are more effective and prudent ways of proceeding. Vote, encourage your like-minded friends to vote, try to persuade open-minded fence-sitters, make a campaign contribution.
There are also safety considerations, especially if you have a family to protect. Take a gander at this, seeing once again just how vicious, vile, and dangerous our political enemies can be.
Trump supporters in Pennsylvania are reportedly being targeted with threatening letters from radical leftists, warning them that their visible support for the former President could lead to dire consequences.
Residents with Trump signs in their yards, particularly in Philadelphia, have reported receiving disturbing letters through the U.S. Postal Service, complete with fake Trump campaign letterheads, Post Millenial first reported.
The threatening letters, which start off as a seemingly benign “thank you” note for being engaged in the electoral process, quickly devolve into dark, ominous threats.
One Trump voter, Janet from Penn Valley, shared her harrowing experience to Post Millenial.After proudly displaying Trump signs in her yard, she received one of these letters, filled with hateful rhetoric and explicit threats to her family and property.
The unsettling message was far from an isolated incident. Janet, who reported the matter to the Lower Merion Police, revealed that other Trump supporters in her area had received similar letters.
Local law enforcement, however, has been unable to pursue the matter further, as the letters were delivered through the mail without any available video evidence.
Despite this, Trump supporters in the area have confirmed that this intimidation campaign is widespread, with reports of the same threatening letter being delivered both by mail and without postage directly into mailboxes.
The letter, which opens with pleasantries, swiftly transitions into a vitriolic condemnation of Trump supporters, labeling the former President a “felon, rapist, desecrator,” and blaming him for political violence in the country.
Reader Requests Advice re: Learning Basics of Philosophical Argumentation
A New Zealand reader writes,
I was hoping if you are able to provide me with some guidance regarding where to begin learning the basics of philosophical arguments. I’ve been trying to understand how to evaluate political and theological debates for awhile, but despite my interest I often find them go away over my head. I found your Substack a couple of weeks ago and was delighted to find your articles not only quite easy to follow but made plenty of sense. So I thought why not give it a try and ask you for help in getting better critical thinking. It would be wonderful if you are able to help with this.Many thanks,Cameron
I am happy to be of assistance, Cameron. Jay F. Rosenberg's The Practice of Philosophy: A Handbook for Beginners comes to mind.
Your question has been put to me before. Here is a post from 2011 in which I make a few other suggestions. You will also find the comment thread to that post useful.
If anyone wants to help Cameron in his quest, comments are enabled below.
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 for aversion.
Along the same line, and in paraphrase of Augustine,
The vicious man has as many masters as he has vices.
Or as I say, with maximal pith and precision:
Vices vitiate.
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 rest. Tread the path of self-individuation and become the unique individual only you can become — or fail to become out of slackery and inanition.
Look up to your superiors in the hierarchies of achievement and endowment. You are not their equal and you never, or only rarely, will be. If you can move up a rung or two, do so. Emulate where that is possible. But don't confuse emulation with imitation: the former includes but is more than the latter. Look up, but without envy. Their lot and their allotment is not yours. They will be held to a higher standard, and judged the more harshly the more they have buried their talents. Their boons are burdens, their blessings bonds. And so are yours to a lesser measure. Much will be demanded from those to whom much has been given. Your task is yours alone: to work the materials of your allotment with your tools and talents in your time and place the best you can for as long as you can.
If comparison breeds envy, drop comparison. To feel diminished by another's success or well-being either is, or is the near occasion of, a deadly sin. Be your incomparable self. There is and can be only one of you just as there is and can be only one One by which all beings are beings.
If admiration of the other sires denigration of self, drop admiration.
The strenuous life is best by test. We are here to battle the hebetude of the flesh and the sluggishness of the mind.
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 me of an online chess player's moniker: Next Time. Even better: Weaker than F7.
After a hard day of tournament play the chess player came home to his wife. The love light shone in her eyes. "Not tonight, honey, I'm weaker that F7."
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. My advice: Go Gray!
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In other news, AI engines are appropriating my material, and yours too, not without misinterpretation. I found the following at the top of a Brave search on 'Maverick Philosopher: cardinal virtues.' Maybe later I will comment on this act of 'cultural appropriation.' First light is approaching and the mountain bike beckons.
What are the core values of a free-thinking individual?
AI-generated answer. Please verify critical facts. Learn more
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 range of worldly noise. Stop jabbering and listen for signals from beyond the human horizon.
In our ever-accelerating descent into national dementia we are building a spiritual Faraday cage to 'shield' us from intimations from Elsewhere. We are sinking ever deeper into our empty immanence.
On Taking Abuse
A re-post from 1 August 2013. Slightly redacted.
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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 your fair share of abusers and bigots. A fellow graduate student called your humble correspondent a 'guinea' in the 1970s. This was in Boston. But I didn't break his nose and do the ground and pound on him. Was it cowardice or good sense? Call it self-control. If Trayvon Martin had control of his emotions on the fateful night of his encounter with George Zimmerman, he would probably be alive today. The downside, of course, is that then we wouldn't be having this delightful 'conversation' about race.
My impression is that there is more anti-Italian prejudice — not that it is any big deal — in the East than in the West where I come from. (And without a doubt, Jim Morrison had it right when he opined that the West is the best, in at least two senses.) I didn't encounter any anti-Italian prejudice until I headed East. I had a Lithuanian girl friend in Boston whose mother used to warn her: "Never bring an Italian home." I never did get to meet Darci's mom. Imagine a Lithuanian feeling superior to an Italian!
But I want to talk about blacks, to add just a bit more to this wonderful 'conversation' about race we are having.
Blacks need to learn from Jews, Italians, the Irish, and others who have faced abuse and discrimination. 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. Don't waste your energy blaming others for your own failures.
Don't wallow in your real or imagined grievances, especially vicarious grievances. That's the mark of a loser. Winners live and act in the present where alone they can influence the future.
If you want me to judge you as an individual, by the content of your character and not by the color of your skin, then behave like an individual: don't try to secure advantages from membership in a group!
Abandon tribal self-identification. Did you vote for Obama because he is black? Then you have no business in a voting booth.
Bear in mind that the world runs on appearances, and that if you appear to be a thug — from your saggy pants, your 'hoodie,' your sullen and disrespectful attitude — then people will suspect you of being a thug.
Take a leaf out of Condi Rice's book. She's black, she's female, and she became Secretary of State. And her predecessor in the job was a black man, Colin Powell. It sure is a racist society we have here in the USA. And that Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court — isn't he a black dude? And not a mulatto like Obama, but one seriously black man.
Lose the basketball. Get the needle out of your arm, the coke out of your nose, and that soul-killing rap noise out of your ears. Listen to the late Beethoven piano sonatas. May I recommend Opus #s 109, 110, and 111? Mozart is also supposed to be good for improving your mental capacity. We honkies want you to be successful. If you are successful, we won't have to support you. And if you are successful you will be happy. Happy people don't cause trouble.
And we don't give a flying enchilada what color you are. It's not about color anyway. It's about behavior. Work hard, practice the ancient virtues, and be successful. If you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere. Don't let Brother Jesse or Brother Al tell you otherwise. Those so-called 'reverends' are little more than race-hustlers who make money from the grievance industry. And when they run out of grievances? Then they create 'micro-aggressions.'
Liberals are not your friends either. They want you to stay on the plantation. They think you are too stupid to take care of yourselves.
If you learn to control your emotions, defer gratification, study hard and practice the old-time virtues, will you be 'acting white'? Yes, in a sense. High culture is universal and available to all who want to assimilate it. What makes our culture superior to yours is not that it is white but that it is superior. You have already 'appropriated' our technology. (Or did it come from sub-Saharan Africa?) Why balk at 'appropriating' our virtues? We want you to! For your benefit and ours. 'Cultural appropriation' is a good thing. Here is a fine example of 'cultural appropriation.'
Don't get mad, be like Rudy Giuliani. Can you imagine him making a big deal about being called a greaseball, dago, goombah, wop, guinea . . . ? Do you see him protesting Soprano-style depictions of Italian-Americans as mafiosi?
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 return we expect a guarantee of our public and personal security. This means that when the State abandons its side of that obligation, it is the right, and the duty, of the citizenry to secure their own protection.
That's right. It follows that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms. The rate of exercise of that right stands in inverse relation to the failure of the State to guarantee our public and personal security. The more the government fails to do what it is supposed to do, chiefly, protect life, liberty, and property, the more citizens will arm themselves.
From this you can see just how preternaturally stupid (or deliberately self-enstupidated) libs, lefties, and wokesters are. Presumably, they want fewer guns in civilian hands.* Their policies, however, incentivize gun ownership by Joe and Jane Citizen.
In a piece defending Viktor Orban against the mindless charge of being a 'fascist dictator,' Rod Dreher writes,
Unlike London, Paris, Washington, New York, Brussels, and elsewhere, street crime is very low in the Hungarian capital — and that’s not because the police are everywhere.
Think about it: just this week, the governor of New York [Kathy Hochul] ordered the state’s National Guard troops to patrol New York City’s subways to crack down on violent crime there. This never, ever happens in Budapest. Ever. A British friend traveling this week in New York said the scene outside his lodgings in Manhattan is appalling, with scores of African men — illegal aliens who came through Mexico — loitering on the street and urinating in public. That doesn’t happen in Budapest either, because Hungary is a country that controls its borders.
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*And so do I. It can't be good to have all sorts of untrained people packing heat. I defend 2A rights, but I would never try to persuade people to arm themselves. Gun ownership is a grave responsibility. You have to get training, you have to practice, and you have to know the law. Before you even think about buying a gun, you need to develop situational awareness. As the noted trainer Steve Tarani says, "If you have to go to guns, there has been a failure in situational awareness." That is a very slight exaggeration, but not by much. Another trainer, retired Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog here discusses ten ways to improve your SA.
What is the worst enemy of SA? The smartphone. Don't be a dumbass with a smartphone. Don't walk around with your head up your app!
What to do if a cop stops you
Sage Substack advice of an automotive nature.
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. You must weigh the likelihood of the negative event against the gravity of its occurrence. Although it may be unlikely that you will need to defend yourself or another with a firearm, the consequences of not being able to do so are dire indeed: death of self or other.
The point is that you must not consider merely the likelihood of negative events, but also their gravity should they occur, when determining courses of action.
For a second example, consider wearing a seat belt. I never drive without seat belt fastened. Given my cautious driving habits, the likelihood of a serious accident on any given day are very low. But the consequences of going through the windshield are grave, in two senses of that term.
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 engaged in the seven volumes of his journal in a wholly admirable project of relentless self-examination. I love this argonaut of interiority with all his inner conflicts.
He fled the world but was drawn back to her. The contemplative of contemptus mundi became a peace activist. He who preached The Silent Life (the tile of one of the best of his books) was an inveterate scribbler of journal entries, articles, poems, letters — how many volumes of correspondence? Five? – not to mention too many books some of them good many of them not so good.
His journals are a treasure trove of ideas, references, self-criticism, culture-critical observations, weather reports, whimsical vignettes, extrapolations, autodidactic and amateurish, from his reading of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Jaspers, Camus and plenty of people you've never heard of, Isaac of Stella, Evdokimov, Julien Green . . . I could go on.
Anyway, my mind was racing when I hit the black mat of meditation. Now you can pull in the reins brutally on the wild horse, or let him run. Best to let him run and tire himself out while you observe his antics. After 20 minutes he settled down, leaving 30 minutes for a peaceful dive toward Silence or Mental Quiet, the first stage on the mystical descent. The German Versenkung taken mystically* as opposed to nautically well captures the sinking below the waves of discursivity into the depths.
Now it can happen that you sink so deep that you fear that you will never come up again. The terror of ego loss grips you. At this point you need a great faith and a great trust, lest you miss the opportunity of a lifetime: to penetrate the veil while enwrapped in the mortal coil. I was offered this opportunity many years ago but the fear of ego death sent me to the surface again when the whole point is to transcend the ego, to let it go, to give up control. The ego must die for the soul to live. I am alluding to what may be the deep meaning of Matthew 18:3: "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The little child trusts. Plato: "To philosophize is to learn how to die."
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* (KONZENTRATION) Zustand tiefer Konzentration, Meditation absorption , contemplation
die Verbindung zum Göttlichen durch die sitzende, stille Versenkung: connecting with the divine by means of seated, quiet contemplation.
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.
We won't give up and we won't give in. We will battle the bastards that are out to destroy our Republic. But the wise among us know that this world is a vanishing quantity and that to expend all one's energies in the defense of the fleeting finitudes of the here and now is folly. There are things worth living for that transcend the passing scene. So apportion your time accordingly.
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 of situational awareness. (Steve Tarani) Head on a swivel! (Sebastian Gorka)
Memorize and implement Colonel Jeff Cooper's situational awareness color codes!
Don't be a pollyanna. (And don't confuse her with polyanna, an Anna with multiple personality disorder.)