Category: Sage Advice
-
Rely on Conscience
In matters moral, reason is weak, easily suborned by the passions, given to rationalization, and easily entangled in the threads of its own dialectic. Reason is not to be despised but not quite reliable. In matters moral, it is better to rely on conscience. This advice rests on two presuppositions. One is that conscience is…
-
Keep Your Own Counsel
One alone has 'skin in the game' of one's own life. This helps explain why the advice of others, however well-intentioned, is often useless or worse. Listen to the advice of others, but at last keep one's own counsel. And:
-
Dissertation Advice on the Occasion of Kant’s Birthday
Immanuel Kant was born on this date in 1724. He died in 1804. My dissertation on Kant, which now lies 44 years in the past, is dated 22 April 1978. But if, per impossibile, my present self were Doktorvater to my self of 44 years ago, my doctoral thesis might not have been approved! As one's…
-
Yes, I Repeat Myself
Leftists constantly repeat their brazen lies in the hope that eventually they will be taken for truths. So we of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable need constantly to repeat truths. Not our truths, for there is no such thing as 'our' truth or 'my' truth or 'your' truth.' Truth is not subject…
-
Love of Neighbor
Love of neighbor is made easier by wise choice of neighborhood.
-
Between Time and Eternity
Tom O. asks, How does one reconcile the temporal with the eternal, in a personal/spiritual or experiential manner? The political situation of our time strikes me as dire and incredibly important. Yet such things are transitory and will, ultimately, pass away, and so in another sense are not so important. I am torn between these…
-
Best Friend, Worst Enemy
In your practical life, be your own best friend; in your spiritual and intellectual life, your own worst enemy.
-
Too Many Memories?
Are you bothered by too many memories? Live more actively and thoughtlessly! Enter the diaspora of mundane dis-traction. Lose yourself in the quotidian. Take the drug of busy-ness. Not my way, but it could be yours.
-
Let it Go and Move on
Let the past go and move on. Pack as much life as possible into the few years that remain. Squeeze in as much vital thinking and thoughtful vitality as you can. Move up and away from your vices. Consign your hebetude to history. Break useless contacts. Keep your nose to the grindstone. Mill the grist.…
-
Alain on Keeping to the Present
Substack latest.
-
Hunger and Satiety
You should be hungry before every meal and sated after none.
-
Tough and Forebearing
It is better to be tough on oneself and forebearing toward others than the other way around.
-
Are You Hungry?
Don't let the thought of the pleasures of the table persuade you to eat if you are not hungry. Eat only at meal times, but never because it is meal time. An exception is breakfast for those quitting their domiciles for a sally-forth into a mean world. To leave your house without food in your…
-
The Opinions of Others: Signal and Noise
"Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your inner voice." (Steve Jobs) True as far as it goes. But there is both signal and noise is the opinions of others. Heed the signal, lest your inner voice become a noisy idiolect.
-
Live Long
There is work to be done, and it may be that it can only be done here.