Briefly...
Though this website resumed activity last year, nothing was done about the state of the site template in a significant manner.{1} As a result, there was a lot of fat in the side margins from years past of projects previously involved in, old webrolls which were no longer active, duplicate prior post postings, and more or less other general and assorted stuff that was expired or otherwise simply not germane anymore. I have now trimmed things down a lot so the side margin is far less encumbering and much easier to read.
Note:
{1} I did make some changes to the template last year but nothing that affected the side margin and addressed the lingering issues there.
Saturday, August 04, 2018
Points to Ponder:
(This is a continuation of the series started HERE. Without further ado...)
But the truth is, the world has always been and always will be on the brink of destruction. And what keeps it from actually imploding is our love for life and our deep-seeded desire not to die. Our love for our own life is inextricably connected to our love of all life and the miracle of this phenomenon we call “the world.” We must give all of ourselves credit every day for keeping things going. It’s an incredible achievement to exist at all.
So we must protect and respect each other, no matter how hard it feels. No matter how wrong someone else may seem to us, they are still human. No matter how bad someone may appear, they are truly no worse than us. Our beliefs and behavior don’t make us fundamentally better than others, no matter how satisfying it is to believe otherwise. We must be tireless in our efforts to see things from the point of view we most disagree with. We must make endless efforts to try and understand the people we least relate to. And we must at all times force ourselves to love the people we dislike the most. Not because it’s nice or because they deserve it, but because our own sanity and survival depends on it. And if we do find ourselves pushed into a corner where we must kill others in order to survive, we must fully accept that we are killing people just as fully human as ourselves, and not some evil abstract creatures. [Andrew W.K. (circa August 6, 2014)]
To be continued...
(This is a continuation of the series started HERE. Without further ado...)
But the truth is, the world has always been and always will be on the brink of destruction. And what keeps it from actually imploding is our love for life and our deep-seeded desire not to die. Our love for our own life is inextricably connected to our love of all life and the miracle of this phenomenon we call “the world.” We must give all of ourselves credit every day for keeping things going. It’s an incredible achievement to exist at all.
So we must protect and respect each other, no matter how hard it feels. No matter how wrong someone else may seem to us, they are still human. No matter how bad someone may appear, they are truly no worse than us. Our beliefs and behavior don’t make us fundamentally better than others, no matter how satisfying it is to believe otherwise. We must be tireless in our efforts to see things from the point of view we most disagree with. We must make endless efforts to try and understand the people we least relate to. And we must at all times force ourselves to love the people we dislike the most. Not because it’s nice or because they deserve it, but because our own sanity and survival depends on it. And if we do find ourselves pushed into a corner where we must kill others in order to survive, we must fully accept that we are killing people just as fully human as ourselves, and not some evil abstract creatures. [Andrew W.K. (circa August 6, 2014)]
To be continued...
Thursday, August 02, 2018
Briefly...
Today concluded the fiftieth anniversary of a trilogy of cartoons that involved Franklin's first appearances in the comic strip Peanuts. That this sort of thing would have ever been controversial shows us how far we have come. A Twitter comment on the third strip saying "this wounds my heart with its care, its love, its gentle sadness, and the fact that it feels just as important today as it did fifty years ago" tells us how far we still have to go...
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Briefly...
Tomorrow starts August and the time of year where not a few Catholic sorts who live in a fantasyland rather than reality will publicly engage in a masturbatory ritual of anachronistically virtue signalling their ignorance about certain long ago war events as a way of trying to appear More Virtuous Than Thou.
Hopefully we see less of it this year for a change...
Tomorrow starts August and the time of year where not a few Catholic sorts who live in a fantasyland rather than reality will publicly engage in a masturbatory ritual of anachronistically virtue signalling their ignorance about certain long ago war events as a way of trying to appear More Virtuous Than Thou.
Hopefully we see less of it this year for a change...
Points to Ponder:
(This is a continuation of the series started HERE. Without further ado...)
At its best, politics is able to organize extremely complex world views into manageable and communicable systems so they can be grappled with and studied abstractly. But even the most noble efforts to organize the world are essentially futile. The best we can usually achieve is a crude and messy map of life from one particular vantage point, featuring a few grids, bullet points, and sketches of its various aspects and landmarks. Anything as infinitely complex as life, reality, and the human experience can never be summed up or organized in a definitive system, especially one based on “left or right,” “A or B,” “us or them.” This is the fatal flaw of binary thinking in general. However, this flaw isn’t just ignored, it’s also embraced, amplified, and deliberately used as a weapon on the very people who think it’s benefiting their way of thinking.
Human beings crave order and simplicity. We cling to the hope that some day, if we really refine our world view and beliefs, we can actually find the fully correct way to think — the absolute truth and final side to stand on. People and systems craving power take advantage of this desire and pit us against each other using a “this or that” mentality. The point is to create unrest, disagreement, resentment, and anger — a population constantly at war with itself, each side deeply believing that the other is not just wrong, but also a sincere threat to their very way of life and survival. This creates constant anxiety and distraction — the perfect conditions for oppression. The goal of this sort of politics is to keep people held down and mesmerized by a persistent parade of seemingly life-or-death debates, each one worth all of our emotional energy and primal passion...[Andrew W.K. (circa August 6, 2014)]
To be continued...
(This is a continuation of the series started HERE. Without further ado...)
At its best, politics is able to organize extremely complex world views into manageable and communicable systems so they can be grappled with and studied abstractly. But even the most noble efforts to organize the world are essentially futile. The best we can usually achieve is a crude and messy map of life from one particular vantage point, featuring a few grids, bullet points, and sketches of its various aspects and landmarks. Anything as infinitely complex as life, reality, and the human experience can never be summed up or organized in a definitive system, especially one based on “left or right,” “A or B,” “us or them.” This is the fatal flaw of binary thinking in general. However, this flaw isn’t just ignored, it’s also embraced, amplified, and deliberately used as a weapon on the very people who think it’s benefiting their way of thinking.
Human beings crave order and simplicity. We cling to the hope that some day, if we really refine our world view and beliefs, we can actually find the fully correct way to think — the absolute truth and final side to stand on. People and systems craving power take advantage of this desire and pit us against each other using a “this or that” mentality. The point is to create unrest, disagreement, resentment, and anger — a population constantly at war with itself, each side deeply believing that the other is not just wrong, but also a sincere threat to their very way of life and survival. This creates constant anxiety and distraction — the perfect conditions for oppression. The goal of this sort of politics is to keep people held down and mesmerized by a persistent parade of seemingly life-or-death debates, each one worth all of our emotional energy and primal passion...[Andrew W.K. (circa August 6, 2014)]
To be continued...
RBe
@RBPundit
Protip: Anyone arguing in support of "Medicare for All" is telling you, in no uncertain terms, that they have no idea how the real world works.
9:42 AM · Jul 30, 2018
Some take issue with the claim that no one who thinks there is universal health care anywhere knows how the real world works so to clarify...
Where America is not subsidizing the defense of other nations, the answer is no.
There are some nations which who are skimping on their nations defense budgets as well as their NATO obligations who do but even in those glorified welfare cases, their systems are either in financial dire straits or are going bankrupt.
Hopefully this clarification helps...
@RBPundit
Protip: Anyone arguing in support of "Medicare for All" is telling you, in no uncertain terms, that they have no idea how the real world works.
9:42 AM · Jul 30, 2018
Some take issue with the claim that no one who thinks there is universal health care anywhere knows how the real world works so to clarify...
Where America is not subsidizing the defense of other nations, the answer is no.
There are some nations which who are skimping on their nations defense budgets as well as their NATO obligations who do but even in those glorified welfare cases, their systems are either in financial dire straits or are going bankrupt.
Hopefully this clarification helps...
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Points to Ponder:
(This is a continuation of the series started HERE. Without further ado...)
When we lump people into groups, quickly label them, and assume we know everything about them and their life based on a perceived world view, how they look, where they come from, etc., we are not behaving as full human beings. When we truly believe that some people are monsters, that they fundamentally are less human than we are, and that they deserve to have less than we do, we ourselves become the monsters. When we allow our emotions to be hypnotized by the excitement of petty bickering about seemingly important topics, we drift further and further away from the fragile and crucial human bond holding everything together. When we anticipate with ferocious glee the next chance we have to prove someone “wrong” and ourselves “right,” all the while disregarding the vast complexity of almost every subject — not to mention the universe as a whole — we are reducing the beauty and magic of life to a “side” or a “type,” or worst of all, an “answer.” This is the power of politics at it’s most sinister... [Andrew W.K. (circa August 6, 2014)]
To be continued...
(This is a continuation of the series started HERE. Without further ado...)
When we lump people into groups, quickly label them, and assume we know everything about them and their life based on a perceived world view, how they look, where they come from, etc., we are not behaving as full human beings. When we truly believe that some people are monsters, that they fundamentally are less human than we are, and that they deserve to have less than we do, we ourselves become the monsters. When we allow our emotions to be hypnotized by the excitement of petty bickering about seemingly important topics, we drift further and further away from the fragile and crucial human bond holding everything together. When we anticipate with ferocious glee the next chance we have to prove someone “wrong” and ourselves “right,” all the while disregarding the vast complexity of almost every subject — not to mention the universe as a whole — we are reducing the beauty and magic of life to a “side” or a “type,” or worst of all, an “answer.” This is the power of politics at it’s most sinister... [Andrew W.K. (circa August 6, 2014)]
To be continued...
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