Saturday, April 6, 2024
On the strong dislike of power........
In a now-obscure 1960s BBC interview, Malcolm Muggeridge, the English satirist, journalist, and convert to anti-Communism (and later Christianity) declared: “I hate government. I hate power. I think that man’s existence, insofar as he achieves anything, is to resist power, to minimize power, to devise systems of society in which power is the least exerted.”
-from this review of Everyday Freedom
magical reinventors.....................
Living things tend to change unrecognizably as they grow. Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? Flora or fauna, we are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves.
reality based..................
Franklin's humanity was based on no illusions about life—on no sappy opinions about the natural goodness of human beings, on no false hopes for the future. Rather, it was based on seeing the world as it really is, and not as we want it to be. Moreover, his deep skepticism was, in his view, the only means by which he or any other human being could be free of pride, envy, anger, and indignation, which distort the soul, separate us from others, and give rise to folly and human wickedness.
-Jerry Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought
The slippery slope.................
Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals and belief which seems so favorable to statesmanship and art; it ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause of the past. . . . Institutions which were at first in the hands of the clergy, like law and punishment, education and morals, marriage and divorce, tend to escape from ecclesiastical control, and become secular, perhaps profane. The intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and - after some hesitation - the moral code allied with it; literature and philosophy become anticlerical. The movement of liberation rises to an exuberant worship of reason, and falls to a paralyzing disillusionment with every dogma and every idea.
-Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: The Renaissance
Friday, April 5, 2024
We may be suffering..................
.......................... from a lack of inculcation:
In his sixties, Adams would say that vigilance in civic life had been inculcated in him at an early age. "Let the people keep a watchful eye over the conduct of their rulers," he explained, "for we are told that great men are not all times wise. It would be indeed a wonder if in any age or country they were always honest."
-Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
Would have liked the opportunity......
...........to have had a few beers with Samuel Adams:
"By fretting at unfortunate events we double the evil."
"The censure of fools and knaves is applause."
Untroubled by perfectionism, he counseled friends not to overthink the details.
He excelled at friendship, which at its best he termed "thinking aloud together."
Though he bore the same name as his exemplary father, he invested little in bloodlines. When traced far enough back, one bumped up against the inevitable horse thief.
He thought the best of people until he could no longer. He shrugged off their opinions.
As affable in his manner as inflexible in his principals, he was at ease with everyone he met.
When he waxed rhapsodic it was about liberty and the rights of man.
Never in his life would he make a wise financial decision. Poverty was not so disagreeable a companion, he held, as the affluent seemed to believe.
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Concerned.......................
I’m not as concerned about artificial intelligence as I am about common stupidity.
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
coldest...............................
State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people'.
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra; A Book for All and None
quotation forensics.....................
Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught, . . .
-Winston Churchill, speaking in the House of Commons in 1952
Monday, April 1, 2024
imagine............................
Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don't have to ignore the multitude of problems we create; you just have to imagine how much our ability to solve problems improves.
pillars.....................
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.
-George Washington, from his 1796 Farewell Address letter
blogging..............................
 |
| Auguste Rodin The Walking Man c 1877 bronze |
Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
On limitations...............
I do not mean by this that there has been, or can be, any progress in an attempt of the people to exist without a strong and vigorous government. That is the only foundation and the only support of all civilization. But progress has been made by the people relieving themselves of the unwarranted and unnecessary impositions of government. There exists, and must always exist, the righteous authority of the state. That is the sole source of the liberty of the individual, but it does not mean an inquisitive and officious intermeddling by attempted government action in all the affairs of the people. There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns.
-Calvin Coolidge, from this 1922 speech
Bet......................
Our fingers are built more for feeling than fighting.
Nerve endings prioritized over talons or claws.
Nerve endings prioritized over talons or claws.
Our relatively modest strength.
Our long, vulnerable road to adulthood.
Our long, vulnerable road to adulthood.
Our species' success is the story of betting
on understanding over brutality.
on understanding over brutality.
It's the wise, patient bet.
-Jarod K. Anderson, Soft
Sunday, March 31, 2024
What cigars and bourbon are for.........
Getting things right requires triangulating with other people. Psychologists therefore would do well to ask whether "metacognition" (thinking about your own thinking) is at bottom a social phenomenon. It typically happens in conversation—not idle chitchat, but the kind that aims to get to the bottom of things. I call this an "art" because it requires both tact and doggedness. And I call it a moral accomplishment because to be good at this kind of conversation you have to love truth more than you love your own current state of understanding. That is, of course, an unusual priority to have, which may help to account for the rarity of real mastery in any pursuit.
-Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
On perception.............
Perceiving is a way of acting. Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us. It is something we do.
Goodness.......................
Human goodness is widely distributed, and I have no respect for religious people who cannot see this. . . . Religion, as I explain it there, is a principled opposition to the will to power. Faith is about the forms of gracious coexistence that abjure the use of power.
-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning
discharged........................
Man enjoyed no greater blessing, he argued, than civil government. It protected him both from his neighbor's self-interest and his own "propensity to superiority." To resist a ruler was treason. Adams rejoiced in the security their sovereign extended to his subjects. It was "the duty of every subject, for conscience's sake, to submit to his authority, while he acted according to the law." Should he imperil the natural right and liberties of his subjects, however, "he overthrows the very design of government, and the people are discharged from all obedience."
-Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
Life its ownself.....................
To know the most important things was, for Franklin, to answer two questions (to borrow an expression from John William Ward). Who am I? And how did I get to be me? . . . in his mind the most important truths could be understood only by investigating our most immediate and concrete experiences of life—life as real people live it and not as we might see it through the dark glass of intellectual sophistication.
-Jerry Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought
Prayers...................
Prayers to the Holy Spirit are all fundamentally a plea for the Spirit's coming. . . . The Holy Spirit is the unrestricted presence of God in which our life wakes up, becomes wholly and entirely living, and is endowed with the energies of life.
-Jürgen Moltman, The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life
A Man for Our Times......................
Socrates was always suspicious of the obvious, and he can nearly always show that the obvious is untrue, and the truth is very rarely obvious.
-Paul Johnson, Socrates: A Man for Our Times
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