Saturday April 11, 2015

The defining characteristic of “criminal” is necessity. We are more likely to jail a poor man whose tangible theft was something closer to rational behavior due to necessity than a rich man whose mass theft can only be proven through statistical analysis and who lacked any other motive than to coin his ego for all to see. 
*

Outspending the other side of the table settles so many legal disputes that one only needs an attorney if one cannot afford one.

*
 
If the arbitrary bending of our values is immoral, then nothing is more wicked than the path to self-esteem.  It is a house of mirrors.  Social perception does not push our self-esteem so much as perceived social perception pulls it. We bend the already bent as we take it in and leave ourselves with more or less than we deserve.

 
*
 
He is never trespassed by the inevitable who quickly assumes the role of a host.
*
 
The charge against “expediency” can itself be a charge against a morality which has drifted away from human application. Where morality is helpful, “expediency” finds no place in our vocabulary.
*
 
Meaning is a guest, and silence, its host. We welcome it in … or, it takes us where it will, but we cannot impose goals upon it.
*
 
Sincerity is a useful excuse, but never a virtue. As a goal for a thinker, it is in fact regressive, since we seek to define how our cognitive anatomy navigates the mess of incentives, impulses, and necessities, not to mention the compounded interactions of such as person relates to person.  Thought requires distinctions … conflicts; we cannot see pre-existing harmonies at all.  Most people are just too stupid to be insincere.

Popular posts from this blog

A valuable book, A Human Strategy, aphorism 387

387 A valuable book may be torn to pieces without diminishing the human spirit, just so long as the words have already been read and understood.  To feel the loss of the book — at its material destruction, even though one had already digested its contents fully and had aligned oneself toward its overall direction — is evidence that one values the non-human being over human becoming , the static thing over the dynamic process .  In response to the fear of our unknowable future we would rather freeze ourselves into a single stage of growth at the expense of the entire metamorphosis. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism
Read more
A benefactor's Moral Guide: what do you want that will not result in your ultimate dishonor?      ****    Meditation: "How do I get back to where I want to be?"
Read more

A theory of art

Interest is not in what you see. It’s in what you don’t see. It is sensed incompleteness completed reflexively by the spectator. It is a conflict in the otherwise imperceptible feeling that a sensory organ is “inadequate” … a mastery of scratching irritations, an “I” … “the” I. We love art the most when we scratch ourselves with what we view.  Art is valued at the interest that the passion from the incompletes in the work is instantly and successful satisfied by what the lover needs to sense … every time it senses the art.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism
Read more