1. I can be somewhat reactive, basing sweeping philosophies of life on my most recent unsatisfactory interaction with another. Those dialectical structures seldom persist in the freshness they assume as I first "discover" them. It is an enthusiasm that washes over me like water in the morning, until I get out of the shower, dry off and get dressed for the day.
2. Ideas are like clay: they are easily molded into new creations, but they don't hold up until they've dried a day or two in the Sun.
3. And then they become dense and brittle and break.
4. Many times it is best to say less, so why do I write?
5. Never agree to something when there is a time limit.
6. If it were not for death, there would be no limits. It is best for the psyche if one is cognizant of limits, in some instictual, unarticulated way, but still does not raise them up as idols.
7. Of course, one man's instinctive tolerance for looseness may drive another one mad, depending on each man's goals and expectations.
8. Goals and expectations would not be such dangerous things, full of potential for disappointment and despair, if they weren't so often built on the backs of a will to control others.
9. But how does one achieve anything great at all, without some measure of control: magnetism or aggression?
10. Maybe it is best to choose, as the masses often do, that there is something inherently evil indeed about a will to greatness. And just be simple.
11. What is the sake of learning, except an active manifestation of a hungry will?
12. Without learning -- without the fuel and the engine of that great energy in the direction of an outer expression of power -- what is left? Greater vulnerability to exploitation?
13. Is it the goal of democracy that each person's great power should counterbalance the others'?
14. Can there be a democracy when power is measured in wealth, and wealth is distributed according to a system that does not seek counterbalancing?
15. In one organization of which I am the president, I practice collective leadership, as I call it, in which any member is free to participate in policymaking, all can be members of the "board" if and when they fancy, and the only officer ends up being yours truly: is this a dictatorship? Does it help that I have few ideas, and my temperment and training make me better equipped to masterfully carry out the intentions of others?
16. Does that make me dangerous?
17. No, but the suggestion betrays a bit of sinister ego. Collective leadership could also be called a "tangled leadership hierarchy," in which each person's unique talents are available to the whole. That is a bit of quantum mind theory for ya.
18. It is best for me to see life as unserious in many ways, but you can't forget it is deadly serious in the end.
19. As if death is the most awful, serous and reverent of events in the world since the beginning of man! How can one attach such importance to something one knows absolutely shit about?
20. The organization in which I exercise collective leadership is the alumni group of an organization through which, in their time, each member was abused in order to create a certain conformity of character. So, in the real world, can the "tangled leadership hierarchy" lead to positive results where its members are not all men of an ilk, with a common past; or would such a scenario of diversity instead result in a briar-patch of infighting and struggle?
21. What does one do who is trained to carry out the wishes of others? Seems an unstable way to carry on, exciting thought it may sometimes be.
22. In this economy, each citizen, by and large, depends on others for sustenance. That is not stable, and it subjects each man and woman to the whims of those all too often don't give a damn about them.
23. Whether through learning, through money or through physical strength, there becomes a great delusion in the minds of many that other people are not their equals.
24. Can all those overweight, prattling members of the general public who I see and smell sweating at the park really be my equals? Would it not profit them if I applied my greater knowledge to make their lots in life better? To encourage them to bathe?
25. Would I want them to do better? Could I stand to wait for them as they catch up? Would their perfume make my eyes water?
26. Who is to say it is not me who should catch up?
27. It is neither: we have our different frequencies.
28. These sayings are numbered to their peril. The mystic in me wants them to make a circle. That is so ugly.
29. I approach the Nazi in the mirror. Behind his shoulder is a saint with a gun.
30. Ideas are god's little game of torture, or a manner of epochal erosion. I go to bed now, to think.
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The Blog Moves On
8 years ago
1 comment:
Well, my dear brother, methinks you think too much. You torture yourself with a tsunami of ideas that flood your brain in the midnight hour.
Your unsatisfactory interactions with others are as worthy of serious reflection as are goals and expectations, death and despair, greatness and exploitation, democracy and leadership, and the interdependence of humanity.
Now if you just didn't have to practice law for a living, you'd have plenty of time to delve deeply in them all until you found answers you could live with.
Maybe you could start with just one. Why do you write anyway?
--from Life in the Last Lane
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