38. My conception of freedom.— The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are…
We are constantly making judgments, what we like and what we dislike. These moments are hardly thought about. Years have passed, we’ve journeyed far down our road of evaluative exploration. As a reflex we simply respond to a visual impression, a scent, a taste, or to an idea either in sophisticated, nuanced, oblique approval…
7. Moral code for psychologists —- Never observe for the sake of observing!That gives a false perspective, a squint and something forced and exaggerated. A born psychologist guards instinctively against seeing in order to see;the same is true of the born painter. He never works “from nature”;he leaves it to his instinct, to his…
The Balrog reached the bridge. Gandalf stood in the middle of the span, leaning on the staff in his left hand, but in his other hand Glamdring gleamed, cold and white. His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings. It raised the whip, and the…
We discussed Buddhist principles last night. That is, we worked at re-training our minds to process a way of thinking. We’re habituated to think that life is basically problem solving, according to widely accepted principles of cause and effect logic. Major principle, minor principle then the conclusion follows: problem solved. If “the problem” presented…
Not another obscure, obtuse post…. Everyone knows that it’s not a good idea to keep causing pain to your readers. I’ve been warned by others who care about my happiness. But I knew already the difficulty of the self imposed task to comment upon philosophical concepts regarded as radical, beyond the pale of common…
I slept soundly enough last night. The news late Friday was of the passing of Supreme Court Judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Ginsburg’s death is a momentous event, a breaking away of the keystone if you will, of a liberal (humane) democratic society as we have known it, as imperfect as it has been. …
Waking this morning there is drizzle outside. Weather extremes are devastating, and I am thankful, the proportion of sunlit days and to those with rain seems normal here so far. Too much heat and vegetation becomes fuel. Too much water, and flooding is the consequence. Technology, or to say it more plainly, the application…
To stay cheerful in the midst of a gloomy task, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds if high spirits has no part in it. Excess strength alone is the proof of strength. A revaluation of all values: this question mark, so black,…
57 In every healthy society, three mutually conditioning physiological types separate out and gravitate in different directions, each one having its own hygiene, its own area of work, its own feelings of perfection and field of mastery. Nature, …, separates out predominantly spiritual people from people characterized by muscular and temperamental strength from a…
