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When a culture is structured so the average dominates the exceptional the result is a stagnant society. I offer the history of the oriental peoples as evidence in support of this thought.
Truth be told there is little sadder than an obsolete child.
Beer bars, the kind where they play country music, are symptomatic of the conservative mindset's depression and despair at the state of the world, while every "nightclub" of the sophisticated set I've ever been in simply screamed the mania of the liberal side of the world trying to stay jacked up enough to ignore what they know about reality. Oh, well. Suppose this explains why I like coffee shops and libraries.
I'm rapidly coming to believe that Atheism is the original and ultimate form of Xenophobia.
What the lovers already know, and the movies and the magazines hope you never learn: good sex is more between your ears than their legs.
There is no prison more escape proof than the limits of your mind.
Consider that if there be truth to the old adage you are what you eat then the conundrum of the male feminist is neatly explained.
Taking the animal out of the cage is easy. Getting the cage out of the animal is not.
There is no fortress harder to assault than a nuerosis defended by a knowledge of psychology.
Consider how it usually takes several losers to assure one winner of his status. The fewer losers required the more likely it is the winner deserves his crown.
A man who allows himself to feel convicted by a jury of fools has most certainly been convicted by a jury of his peers.
Have you ever noticed how those who hold their nose the highest in the air are those trying to hide the zit on top of it?
A writer should always create at least one character in each work larger than himself, more powerful, more moral, stronger of heart and able to love at greater depth, a more noble creature than the writer himself... as goal to aspire to. Otherwise the writer places himself in the role of a rather vain little tin god in a universe created to accommodate his own limitations.
Beware dwelling on what is dead in your world... old loves, old hates, old places... they will crowd out the present by sheer numbers and leave you nothing real.
A great deal to much is made of being old... the only thing being old proves is you never made a fatal mistake.
Never start a relationship when you are at a low ebb in your life. The other may not like you as well when you are up, or they might need someone in their world who is further down than they are... risky business, coming and going.
Find me something dumber than asking for an apology from someone you know you won't believe anyway.
There is nothing more cruel than a parent who sets failure as the price of their love.
Dividends are made of pills:
The ailing take many,
The healthy take few,
The dead take none.
In the normal run of the world a person is never any more alone than he chooses to be blind, for there are always a great many others who have just as much trouble seeing you as you had seeing them. I remind myself of this, walking through a crowd of strangers.
I have about decided that beauty is the most sterile environment there is for the growing of friendships. Among the common, the less than perfect, friendships often thrive as sterling traits of character, of psyche and soul, are set to balance less than desirable physical attributes. But among the beautiful people, they who approach physical perfection, their beauty would seem to create a great labor and burden for them as they struggle with, or surrender to, the inevitable comparison.
I've learned pretty much everything in the human condition will logic back down to one of the three primal instincts we share with pretty much all the creatures we share the planet with... sustenance, survival, or procreation. Sometimes the beams and timbers that carry the load back to one of those foundation points are twisted through not three, nor even four but often five or six dimensions, when such factors as emotion and association are considered in the same scope, but still, the load ultimately falls to one of the three.
I've learned the most utterly useless thing you can own is a pistol... unless of course it is out of reach when you need it.
I've learned that "LOVE" is both the most powerful and enduring thing known to mankind, and without question the most misunderstood thing ever.
I've learned the absolute best sex happens when neither you nor your lover intended it, when it happens utterly without thought or intent, and since there was neither thought nor intent to contaminate the joining with unrelated expectations the bodies are free to respond at the same level as the trust that allowed it to begin without thought.
I've learned that politicians are rarely leaders, not really... politicians are just the ones who ride the peak of an existing thought wave within the ocean of humanity below them... the foam at the crest as it were.
I've learned that one must emotionally divorce their parents before it is possible to return and truly love them as an adult, until that separation has allowed one to truly assume an identity of their own choosing the deeds and events of childhood will be burden and impediment to any further maturation. Teen age rebellion is not an affliction, it is a vital critical part of growing up.
I've learned that no is grown up when they think they are, no one is. It is not until we choose a mate, and with deliberate full intent set about raising and rearing that person we hold most dear to achieve their full potential that we acquire in ourselves the necessary parts and pieces of self knowledge and wisdom for them to do the exact same job for us.
I really don't want to live forever, not in this form or framework... I don't think I'm strong enough to be immortal. The years and the tears are beginning to feel weary and burdened already, watching the endless repetition of the same errors and mistakes, the endless repetition of the same needless suffering and wickedness. I don't know how Jesus does it.
I've learned there is just as much good and light and love in this world, more really, than there is dark and deformed and perverted and evil. Sometimes harder to see, but it is there. The darkness gathers in clumps and chunks, if you only look at the regions where the darkness makes its stand you can be decieved into despair, but no, back up a bit, see the light that is everywhere, quiet and unnasuming and gentle... it is still a world where hope is not a fools errand.
The thing about being a white knight is that you collect damsels in distress.
After a while the thing you start to notice about damsels in distress is that for every one who was truly a victim of some evil intent there were nine who were co-conspirators in their own misfortunes. Another thing about being a white knight is you are always supposed to tell the truth as you see it. Which, when you factor in the other nine damsels in distress explains one other odd fact about white knights: they never, ever, take their armor off.
I'm a philosopher, it's my job to confuse the bull, starve the rose bush, and convince you what's in the sack is something of enduring value.
When dealing with people perhaps the most ethical stratagy can be defined in this manner: Give them a glass of what they want with a shot of what they need.
I've heard the photography set using the word "emoting" concerning their models. It sounds so funny, they invoke the word with such pomp and circumstance it makes being human sound like some bodily function declared socially mandatory: but my dear, in civilized society we always burp after breakfast and fart before dessert...
In the United States the conservatives are equated with capitalism, but not everywhere: in Russia the conservative set is equated with communism. Diametrically apposed theory of commerce, but identical in objective… to preserve the known shortcomings of the past as preferable to facing the unknowns of the future. Both rigidly conservative, enemies by expectation and allies by motive.
Have you ever noticed how politial movements and bowel movements share this fact in common: the large and well formed variety smell just as bad as the other kind.
To understand that "ANGEL" is a career choice and not another species is to understand a great deal.
A most unhappy fact recently discovered: those who are dependent on society for a definition of self can neither repair nor replace, renounce or destroy the chains of their slavery. They cannot be free. It would be suicide of the only self they know.
If I meet someone and among the first things they reveal about themselves is their religion? If they make it a point to lead off by saying they're a Christian? My first thought is always to wonder what secret sin has such command of their life they feel compelled to everyone they meet fair warning in advance.
As a consequence of the law of averages it is a given that the higher your level of art the smaller a viable audience you have, the bell curve of human intelligence and sensitivity sets the numbers. And what's worse is the fewer who can understand your art the more viciously and vociferously the critics representing the average will attack at any and every opportunity.
The handle on your spoon should always be at least as long as the chord tangent from the bottom of your bowl to the rim, rough numbers some three quarters of the diameter... otherwise? You get to fish your spoon out of the bottom of your soup, which just doesn't do the soup or your fingers any good at all.
One of the cruelest things you can do is do someone's homework for them. You've just robbed them of something they're going to need from now on. You see someone doing a child's homework for them? Report them to child welfare, because that is child abuse, pure and simple.
One of the thoughts the world really, really needs to wrap its' head around is some way to put an end to the lie that sexy ends when children begin... I'd say a good fourth of our society's problems have that lie deeply imbedded in their foundation.
One of the most powerful weapons anyone can own is an understanding of what motivates his enemy, and what price his enemy pays from the other elements of his life to maintain that motivation. It is possible to overdrive them to the point they self destruct.
So many think they want to fit in, be part of the whole... many never do feel that, and for them that's a sadness. But what is sadder is those who do fit in, and then years later realize what they fit themselves to is a set of chains that make true freedom of self impossible. The lonely can find friends, companionship among the other outcasts. The chained must find a hacksaw.
Be careful of the word freedom. It is a noble word, a noble thought, and yet still a dangerous thought in ways very few ever realize. The word freedom should never be allowed to stand alone, it should always be keeping company with the question "freedom from what?" To many will say freedom and mean freedom from responsibility and become parasitic thinking they are free when in reality they are enslaved to whatever or whoever serves as their host. Others will say freedom, and mean freedom from the emotional burden of caring, with the end result being they become callous and a lean bit to the cruel side, they are free of the very thing needed to avoid hurting others without intent. It happens all the time, look around at the people in your world, it won't take you half an hour to see examples. Freedom is a noble thought, but it needs understanding to keep it from setting a life free to starve in abject loneliness, if not some worse fate.
You save water by showering with a friend, but you save energy by turning down the cold, not turning up the hot.
The order things happen can make quite a difference. For example, if you think first of the things you can't do instead of thinking first of the things you can do? You'll end up poisoning your own life with despair.
Since the appetites of humanity are reasonably consistent the best way to estimate the degree of hypocrisy in a strange town is to observe the ratio of churches to pubs to meat-market singles bars. If it ain't going on in one place it is most likely going on in the other.
At the end of the day poetry is still just the most elegant of speach impediments... it's the thought that counts, as always.
Social momentum: what happens when the liberals can't believe there can be a solution for a problem the conservatives can't believe exists.
I'm afraid that in the end ART is simply the illusion of purpose painted over that which is simply... pretty.
The first casualty of war is always innocence.
It's easier to convince a liberal you have to be able to pay for it than it is to convince a conservative you have to be willing to imagine it.
It is said we should learn to laugh at ourselves, lest we come to take ourselves to seriously. Possibly true, but if so then one should never laugh more than once or twice at the same event... more than that becomes self abuse.
A small, but potent, tidbit of a thought: those who think they know? They are the ones who never learn anything more.
It is a fact that one cannot forgive what one cannot admit to themselves, and it is widely held as true that what one can't forgive one must take with them when they leave mortality for the eternal.
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