Maverick Philosopher

Self-Admonition: Do Your Best!

Do the best you can for as long as you can with your life's allotment of materials, tools, and talents. The best you can do won't be the best, but your best, the personal best, unique to you, unrepeatable, and incommunicable to any other. Your uniqueness distinguishes your best from the bests of all the rest. Tread the path of self-individuation and become the unique individual only you can become -- or fail to become out of  slackery and inanition.

Look up to your superiors in the hierarchies of achievement and endowment. You are not their equal and you never, or only rarely, will be. If you can move up a rung or two, do so. Emulate where that is possible. But don't confuse emulation with imitation: the former includes but is more than the latter. Look up, but without envy. Their lot and their allotment is not yours.  They will be held to a higher standard, and judged the more harshly the more they have buried their talents. Their boons are burdens, their blessings bonds. And so are yours to a lesser measure. Much will be demanded from those to whom much has been given. Your task is yours alone: to work the materials of your allotment with your tools and talents in your time and place the best you can for as long as you can.

If comparison breeds envy, drop comparison.  To feel diminished by another's success or well-being either is, or is the near occasion of, a deadly sin. Be your incomparable self. There is and can be only one of you just as there is and can be only one One by which all beings are beings.

If admiration of the other sires denigration of self, drop admiration. 

The strenuous life is best by test. We are here to battle the hebetude of the flesh and the sluggishness of the mind. 

Play the Current Position

In life as in chess. There's no use fretting how you got into it. If not even God can restore a virgin, then surely you cannot undo the mess you are in. You're in it, now play it.  Fretting is of use only if it helps you avoid the pickle next time.

And that reminds me of an online chess player's moniker: Next Time.  Even better: Weaker than F7.

After a hard day of tournament play the chess player came home to his wife. The love light shone in her eyes. "Not tonight, honey, I'm weaker that F7."

My Advice? Go Gray!

Prudence is one of the cardinal virtues.

Peggy Noonan quoting Bill Maher:

Would anyone ride the New York City subway wearing a MAGA hat, or go to a NASCAR race in a Biden T-shirt? That’s where we are now: Other parts of the country are seen as no-go zones.

The polarization is reaching toxic levels. My advice:  Go Gray!

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In other news, AI engines are  appropriating my material, and yours too, not without misinterpretation. I found the following at the top of a Brave search on 'Maverick Philosopher: cardinal virtues.' Maybe later I will comment on this act of 'cultural appropriation.' First light is approaching and the mountain bike beckons.

What are the core values of a free-thinking individual?

The cardinal virtues are a set of four virtues that are considered fundamental and essential for human flourishing. According to the Maverick Philosopher, these virtues are:

• Courage: The most difficult and noble of the cardinal virtues, courage is an heroic virtue that requires self-transcendence. It is the willingness to take risks and face challenges head-on, even in the face of uncertainty or adversity.
• Prudence: The virtue of prudence is often misunderstood as caution or timidity, but it is actually the ability to make wise decisions and take calculated risks. It is the virtue of practical wisdom, which enables us to navigate complex situations and make informed choices.
• Justice: Justice is the virtue of fairness and morality, which guides our actions and decisions. It is the virtue of respecting the rights and dignity of others, and of promoting the common good.
• Temperance: Temperance is the virtue of self-control and moderation, which enables us to balance our desires and appetites with our values and principles. It is the virtue of living a balanced and harmonious life.

The Maverick Philosopher’s Take

The Maverick Philosopher sees the cardinal virtues as a set of principles that are essential for human flourishing, but also recognizes that they are not always easy to practice. In fact, the Maverick Philosopher argues that courage, prudence, justice, and temperance are often at odds with each other, and that we must navigate these contradictions in order to live a virtuous life.

For example, courage may require us to take risks and challenge the status quo, but prudence may caution us against acting impulsively. Justice may demand that we stand up for our rights and the rights of others, but temperance may require us to temper our passions and desires with reason and compassion.

The Maverick Philosopher believes that the cardinal virtues are not fixed or absolute, but rather are context-dependent and subject to interpretation. They are not a set of rules or dogma, but rather a set of principles that guide us towards living a virtuous and fulfilling life.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Maverick Philosopher sees the cardinal virtues as a set of essential principles that guide us towards living a virtuous and fulfilling life. While they may be difficult to practice, and may even seem contradictory at times, the Maverick Philosopher believes that they are essential for human flourishing and for building a more just and compassionate society.

AI-generated answer. Please verify critical facts. Learn more

Hyperkinetic and Hyperconnected

The typical American's life is frantic, frenetic, hyperkinetic, and hyperconnected. For any really good reason? What's the rush?  Quo vadis? Whither goest thou, thoughtless hustler? 

From time to time we need to slow down and unplug. Try to go deviceless for a few days. Haul off to some desert spot and rest incommunicado, out of range of worldly noise.  Stop jabbering and listen for signals from beyond the human horizon.

In our ever-accelerating descent into national dementia we are building a spiritual Faraday cage to 'shield' us from intimations from Elsewhere. We are sinking ever deeper into our empty immanence. 

On Taking Abuse

A re-post from 1 August 2013.  Slightly redacted. 

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Everyone gets abused verbally in this world and one had better learn how to take it.  There are bigots everywhere -- leftists and wokesters the most vile, their tendency  to project psychologically rendering their bigotry  invisible to them -- and sooner or later you will encounter your fair share of abusers and bigots.   A fellow graduate student called your humble correspondent a 'guinea'  in the 1970s. This was in Boston.  But I didn't break his nose and do the ground and pound on him. Was it cowardice or good sense?  Call it self-control.  If Trayvon Martin had control of his emotions on the fateful night of his encounter with George Zimmerman, he would probably be alive today.  The downside, of course, is that then  we wouldn't be having this delightful 'conversation' about race.

My impression is that there is  more anti-Italian prejudice -- not that it is any big deal -- in the East than in the West where I come from. (And without a doubt, Jim Morrison had it right when he opined that the West is the best, in at least two senses.)   I didn't encounter any anti-Italian prejudice until I headed East. I  had a Lithuanian girl friend in Boston whose mother used to warn  her: "Never bring an Italian home." I never did get to meet Darci's mom.  Imagine a Lithuanian feeling superior to an Italian!

But I want to talk about blacks, to add just a bit more to this wonderful 'conversation' about race we are having.

Blacks need to learn from Jews, Italians, the Irish, and others who have faced abuse and discrimination.  Don't whine, don't complain, don't seek a government program. Don't try to cash in on your 'victim' status, when the truth   is that you are a 'victim' of liberal victimology.  Don't waste your energy blaming others for your own failures.

Don't wallow in your real or imagined grievances, especially vicarious grievances.  That's the mark of a loser.  Winners live and act in the present where alone they can influence the future.

If you want me to judge you as an individual, by the content of your character and not by the color of your skin, then behave like an individual: don't try to secure advantages from membership in a group!

Abandon tribal self-identification.  Did you vote for Obama because he is black?  Then you have no business in a voting booth. 

Bear in mind that the world runs on appearances, and that if you appear to be a thug -- from your saggy pants, your 'hoodie,' your sullen and disrespectful attitude -- then people will suspect you of being a thug.

Take a leaf out of Condi Rice's book. She's black, she's female, and she became Secretary of State. And her predecessor in the job was a black  man, Colin Powell. It sure is a racist society we have here in the  USA.  And that Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court -- isn't he a black dude?  And not a mulatto like Obama, but one seriously black man.  

Lose the basketball.  Get the needle out of your arm, the coke out of your nose, and that soul-killing rap noise out of your ears. Listen to the late Beethoven piano sonatas. May I recommend Opus #s 109, 110, and 111? Mozart is also supposed to be good for  improving your mental capacity. We honkies want you to be successful.  If you are successful, we won't have to support you.  And if you are successful you will be happy.  Happy people don't cause trouble.

And we don't give a flying enchilada what color you are. It's not about color anyway.  It's about behavior. Work hard, practice the ancient virtues, and be successful. If you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere. Don't let Brother Jesse or Brother Al tell you otherwise.  Those so-called 'reverends' are little more than race-hustlers who make money from the grievance industry. And when they run out of grievances? Then they create 'micro-aggressions.'  

Liberals are not your friends either.  They want you to stay on the plantation.  They think you are too stupid to take care of yourselves.

If you learn to control your emotions, defer gratification, study hard and practice the old-time virtues, will you be 'acting white'?  Yes, in a sense.  High culture is universal and available to all who want to assimilate it.  What makes our culture superior to yours is not that it is white but that it is superior.  You have already 'appropriated' our technology. (Or did it come from sub-Saharan Africa?)  Why balk at 'appropriating' our virtues? We want you to! For your benefit and ours. 'Cultural appropriation' is a good thing. Here is a fine example of 'cultural appropriation.' 

Don't get mad, be like Rudy Giuliani. Can you imagine him making a big deal about being called a greaseball, dago, goombah, wop, guinea . . .  ? Do you see him protesting Soprano-style depictions of Italian-Americans as mafiosi? 

Kathy Hochul, Leftist Idiot

Head over to Malcolm Pollack's place for some sensible commentary. Meat quote:

Political thinkers from Hobbes to Schmitt have understood that the fundamental principle that legitimizes the power of the State is the reciprocal obligation of obedience and protection. We cede to the State the awesome power of coercion by threat of violence, and in return we expect a guarantee of our public and personal security. This means that when the State abandons its side of that obligation, it is the right, and the duty, of the citizenry to secure their own protection.

That's right. It follows that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms.  The rate of exercise of that right stands in inverse relation to the failure of the State to guarantee our public and personal security.  The more the government fails to do what it is supposed to do, chiefly, protect life, liberty, and property, the more citizens will arm themselves.

From this you can see just how preternaturally stupid (or deliberately self-enstupidated) libs, lefties, and wokesters are. Presumably, they want fewer guns in civilian hands.* Their policies, however,  incentivize gun ownership by Joe and Jane Citizen. 

In a piece defending Viktor Orban against the mindless charge of being a 'fascist dictator,' Rod Dreher writes,

Unlike London, Paris, Washington, New York, Brussels, and elsewhere, street crime is very low in the Hungarian capital — and that’s not because the police are everywhere.

Think about it: just this week, the governor of New York [Kathy Hochul] ordered the state’s National Guard troops to patrol New York City’s subways to crack down on violent crime there. This never, ever happens in Budapest. Ever. A British friend traveling this week in New York said the scene outside his lodgings in Manhattan is appalling, with scores of African men — illegal aliens who came through Mexico — loitering on the street and urinating in public. That doesn’t happen in Budapest either, because Hungary is a country that controls its borders.

Read it all.

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*And so do I. It can't be good to have all sorts of untrained people packing heat.  I defend 2A rights, but I would never try to persuade people to arm themselves. Gun ownership is a grave responsibility. You have to get training, you have to practice, and you have to know the law.  Before you even think about buying a gun, you need to develop situational awareness. As the noted trainer Steve Tarani says, "If you have to go to guns, there has been a failure in situational awareness." That is a very slight exaggeration, but not by much. Another trainer, retired Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog here discusses ten ways to improve your SA.

What is the worst enemy of SA? The smartphone. Don't be a dumbass with a smartphone. Don't walk around with your head up your app!  

What to do if a cop stops you

Sage Substack advice of an automotive nature.

Negative Events: Likelihood versus Gravity of Occurrence

Suppose you pack heat. Someone might ask you, "But what is the likelihood that you, given your cautious and circumspect style of life, will ever be in a situation in which you will need to defend your life, or a family member's life, with deadly force?"

The question is legitimate. The answer is as follows. You must weigh the likelihood of the negative event against the gravity of its occurrence.  Although it may be unlikely that you will need to defend yourself or another with a firearm, the consequences of not being able to do so are dire indeed: death of self or other.

The point is that you must not consider merely the likelihood of negative events, but also their gravity should they occur, when determining courses of action.

For a second example, consider wearing a seat belt. I never drive without seat belt fastened. Given my cautious driving habits, the likelihood of  a serious accident on any given day are very low.  But the consequences of going through the windshield are grave, in two senses of that term.

Taming the Wild Horse of the Mind on the Road to Benares

This morning's meditation session ran from 3:10 ante meridiem to 4:00. Before that I was sketching six blog posts in my journal. My mind was on fire with ideas fueled in part by  some entries from Volume Five of Tom Merton's journal.  As flabby a liberal as he is, both politically and theologically, he is engaged in the seven volumes of his journal in a wholly admirable project of relentless self-examination. I love this argonaut of interiority with all his inner conflicts.

He fled the world but was drawn back to her. The contemplative of contemptus mundi  became a peace activist. He who preached The Silent Life (the tile of one of the best of his books) was an inveterate scribbler of journal entries, articles, poems, letters -- how many volumes of correspondence? Five? --  not to mention too many books some of them good many of them not so good.

His journals are a treasure trove of ideas, references, self-criticism, culture-critical observations, weather reports, whimsical vignettes, extrapolations, autodidactic and amateurish, from his reading of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Jaspers, Camus and plenty of people you've never heard of, Isaac of Stella, Evdokimov, Julien Green . . . I could go on.

Anyway, my mind was racing when I hit the black mat of meditation. Now you can pull in the reins brutally on the wild horse, or let him run. Best to let him run and tire himself out while you observe his antics. After 20 minutes he settled down, leaving 30 minutes for a peaceful dive toward Silence or Mental Quiet, the first stage on the mystical descent. The German Versenkung taken mystically* as opposed to nautically well captures the sinking below the  waves of discursivity into the depths.

Now it can happen that you sink so deep that you fear that you will never come up again. The terror of ego loss grips you. At this point you need a great faith and a great trust, lest you miss the opportunity of a lifetime: to penetrate the veil while enwrapped in the mortal coil. I was offered this opportunity many years ago but the fear of ego death  sent me to the surface again when the whole point is to transcend the ego, to let it go, to give up control.  The ego must die for the soul to live. I am alluding to what may be the deep meaning of Matthew 18:3: "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The little child trusts. Plato: "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

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* (KONZENTRATION) Zustand tiefer Konzentration, Meditation absorption , contemplation

die Verbindung zum Göttlichen durch die sitzende, stille Versenkung: connecting with the divine by means of seated, quiet contemplation.

Crises There Will Always Be

I cite the example of Nicolai Hartmann in a Substack entry from March, 2022.

So buck up and fight on. Philosophy is a great consolation. We lesser lights ought to look up to the luminaries, and their example. Boethius wrote in prison, Nicolai Hartmann in Berlin in 1945 in the midst of the Allied assault.

We won't give up and we won't give in. We will battle the bastards that are out to destroy our Republic.  But the wise among us know that this world is a vanishing quantity and that to expend all one's energies in the defense of the fleeting finitudes of the here and now is folly. There are things worth living for that transcend the passing scene. So apportion your time accordingly.  

Situational Awareness

Another MavPhil public service message:  Don't walk around with your head up your app!

You're a dumbass with a smartphone if you don't understand that it is perhaps the greatest enemy of situational awareness. 

And if you pack heat, bear this in mind: if you have to go to guns, there's probably been a failure of  situational awareness. (Steve Tarani)  Head on a swivel! (Sebastian Gorka)

Memorize and implement Colonel Jeff Cooper's situational awareness color codes!

Don't be a pollyanna.  (And don't confuse her with polyanna, an Anna with multiple personality disorder.)

Carpe Noctem

To make good use of the night, don't load the mind with dreck before drifting off.

Grievance and a Life Well-Lived

A life well-lived cannot have grievance as its organizing principle.

The Beauty of the Solitary Life

Thomas Merton, The Journals, vol. 6, 24 June 1966, p. 344: "The beauty of the solitary life . . . is that you can throw away all the masks and forget them until you return among people."

For, as one of my aphorisms has it, "The step into the social is by dissimulation."

Before I quit my cell, I put on my face, don my mask, go gray, and try not to appear too intense.

On Her Deathbed

Substack latest.

"I fear that there is nothing on the other side."

Noetic Distance

You kept your distance from him when he was alive, and you did well in so doing. Now that he is dead, when his only proximity is noetic, it is noetic distance that you must maintain.

Vox missa nescit reverti

Good advice from Horace, Ars Poetica, 390: "A word, having been sent forth, does not know how to return." 

De-Dox Your Glove Box!

And what might I mean by that?

I mean remove documents from your glove compartment or other easily accessible areas in your vehicle wherein it would be unwise to carry them given the spike in crime of all sorts caused by such Democrat policies as defunding the police and eliminating cash bail. I count four levels of foolishness in decreasing levels of inadvisability:

1) Carrying your driver's license in the glove box.

2) Carrying the title to the vehicle in the glove box.

3) Carrying the vehicle registration in the glove box.

4) Carrying insurance cards in the glove box.

Since smash and grab is quick and easy and on the rise, the wise do not leave personal information easy of access in their vehicles. (You might want to look into installing a serious console or under-seat lock box.) One scenario goes like this: the thug learns your address and swipes your garage door opener. Now they have easy access to your garage and its contents,  and if you are foolish enough to leave the door to your domicile unlocked, access to your house and its contents including wife and children.

Reader Asks: What Should I Read?

Nathaniel T. writes,

In the new year, I'm committing to some more regular reading habits. 

 

What serious books would you recommend to someone outside academia who has about half an hour uninterrupted in the morning to read, three times a week? How about a list that would last that person a year? 

 

Here are some additional parameters that might aid in your selection:

 

I went to St. John's College in Annapolis, so I've read many of the "greats" in whole or in part, at least once. I have kept up some serious reading since my graduation in 2012, just irregularly. 

I already pray and read the New Testament and spiritual reading daily. 

 

Thanks for your insight and writing!

 

The best advice I could give anyone  with your background who is committed to the life of the mind is to buy and study a copy of A. G. Sertillanges, O. P., The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. He explains how to proceed.  It is a classic. He draws upon Aquinas and upon Alphonse Gratry, of whom C. S. Peirce had a very high opinion. So I also recommend Gratry's Logic if you can find a copy. Reference here.

 

I hesitate to offer a list of books on particular topics given the constraints on your time.  But here are a couple that are  short, very clear, and unusually thought-provoking: Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation (make sure to get the Sea Harp Press edition which contains an introduction by C. S. Lewis); Romano Guardini, Jesus Christus (anything by Guardini is worth reading).

 

If perchance you are interested mystical theology, and have already read the great Spanish mystics, Juan de la Cruz and Teresa de Avila, and have the stamina for a long slog, then I recommend Augustin Poulain, The Graces of Interior Prayer: A Treatise on Mystical Theology. Reference and notes here.

 

For more suggestions see my Bibliophilia category.

 

Combox open if anyone has any recommendations.

 

By the way, has St. John's College, Annapolis gone 'woke'?  

2024 and Trump sub specie aeternitatis

First-rate political analysis by DiploMad 2.0. (HT: Bill Keezer)

But there is little to be hopeful or happy about this New Year. 2023 is likely to be worse than the last three.  You are well-advised to seek your happiness within.  Not that one should withdraw from the fray entirely. Fight on, but not at the expense of your tranquillitas animi.  For the sake of sanity, dial back your intake of media dreck, 'legacy' and 'social.'  This world is a passing scene and a vanishing quantity. And you with it.  Take the current slide into the abyss as a warm invitation to seek out the really real (ὄντως ὄν) before it's too late.

Self Respect

Just as we should not become too familiar with others, we should not become too familiar with ourselves. 

Another Reason to Limit Socializing

Avoid unnecessary socializing lest you inadvertently reveal what it would be imprudent to reveal. As we sink into a Sino-style surveillance state, it is probably best for most of you, especially the young, to lay low and go gray. I've made mine so I run less of a risk in speaking my mind. The little civil courage I display I cannot in good conscience demand of others who are not as well-positioned and have much more to lose. 

 

Maxims and Meta-Maxims

1) Live now: resist the tendency to bring the past into the present.

2) Beware of viewing yourself through the belittling eyes of others.

3) Avoid negative and weakening thoughts.

4) Avoid comparisons with others.

5) Keep socializing to the minimum necessary to maintain one's sanity and humanity.

6) Do not associate with those beneath you except as duty and necessity require.

7) Guard the mind, the tongue, the heart.

8) Abide in the here, the now, the self.

9) Aspire.

10 Strive and persevere.

11) Begin the day with a review of these and other maxims.

12) Maxims ought to be part of one's 'everyday carry.' Don't leave home without them.

13) Age quod agis!

14) Indulgence weakens; resistance strengthens.

15) Coin new maxims.

16) Carpe diem et noctem! 

Downplay Both

If you downplay your wins, downplay your losses. The pain of defeat is worse than the pleasure of victory is good. But you have the power  to regard them as equal. In some measure the pain of loss can be lessened. The Stoic therapy is no cure, but it is a palliative. If our predicament is a splitting headache, said therapy is a couple of aspirin. Take it and them for what they are worth.

Beware of Projecting . . .

. . . your values and attitudes into others. We are not all the same 'deep down,' and we don't all want the same things. You say you value peace and social harmony? So do I. But some are bellicose right out of the box. They love war and thrive on conflict, and not just verbally.  

It is dangerous to assume that others are like we are.  (I am thinking right now of a very loving and lovable female neighbor  who makes the dangerous assumption: she has a 'Coexist' sticker affixed to her bumper.)

Liberal 'projectionism' -- to give it a name -- can get your irenic self killed.

As desirable a desideratum as peaceful coexistence is, it is inconsistent with totalitarian systems. This is why communism and Christianity cannot coexist assuming that they remain true to their defining principles.  (Or at least they cannot coexist in one geographical area over the long term.) They are mutually exclusive worldviews. And of course they are not just comprehensive views of the world and the people in it, but practical systems of prescriptions and proscriptions oriented toward the guidance of human action.  The actional side is paramount in both systems. Old Karl said that the philosophers had variously interpreted the world when the point was to change it. (Karl Marx, Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach).  A serious Christian could say that the philosophers had variously theorized and speculated when the unum necessarium was the salvation of one's immortal soul.  "For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?" (Matthew 16-26)  A library of learned disquisitions on the nature of the soul is of no avail if one in the end suffers its loss.

Christianity and Islam are also quite obviously mutually exclusive on both  doctrinal and  practical planes. Note that both in their ideological purity are totalitarian. (Christianity in the West has of course been liberalized to a great extent and is thus no longer ideologically pure.) The two in their pure forms make a total claim on the lives of their adherents. They cannot peacefully coexist in the same geographical area over the long term. The Muslim says to the infidel: either convert to the truth faith, or accept dhimmitude, or be put to the sword. That, for a Christian, is indeed a trilemma: you will be impaled on one of three horns, but you are free to choose which one. 

Can classical liberalism, the touchstone of which is toleration, coexist with any totalitarian ideology, religious or secular? No again. The classical liberal can and will tolerate any ideology as long as it respects the principle of toleration; it cannot, however, tolerate the rejection of this very principle, the principle that defines it. The rub, for the totalitarian, is that if he accepts the principle of toleration, he can no longer remain totalitarian: he will have to adjust his tenets in various ways. Classical liberalism and totalitarian systems are mutually exclusive. 

So where does this leave us? There can be no peaceful coexistence in one and the same geographical area over the long term except under classical liberalism.  For classical liberalism alone is tolerant of deep differences and is alone respectful of our equally deep ignorance of the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters.  Why must we be tolerant? Because we do not know. The classical liberal  is keenly aware of the evil in the human heart and of the necessity of limited government and dispersed power. So he is justified in making war against fanaticism, onesidedness, and totalitarian systems of government whether theocratic or 'leftocratic.'  It would not be a war of extermination but one of limitation. It would also be limited to one's geographical area and not promoted abroad to impose the values of classical liberalism on the benighted tribalists of the Middle East and elsewhere.

Finally, can American conservatism and the ideology of the Democrat Party in its contemporary incarnation peacefully coexist? Obviously not, which is why there is a battle for the soul of America. Either we defeat the totalitarian Left or we face a nasty trilemmatic trident: acquiesce and convert; or accept dhimmitude; or ne cancelled in one livelihood and then eventually in one's life.

Half-Way Cultural Appropriation

You appropriate our science and technology, why not then appropriate the values, virtues, attitudes, and behaviors that led to the science and technology? Here are some of them: hard work, self-control, self-knowledge, deferral of gratification, focus, protracted study, objectivity, rational thinking, coherent speech, respect for legitimate authorities, respect for elders, and punctuality.

 

Why the half-way cultural appropriation? Go all the way, and you will benefit yourself enormously.

 

There is nothing 'white' about the above values and virtues, attitudes and behaviors. After all, Asians implement them as well as Caucasians, if not better. The values and virtues, attitudes and behaviors, are normatively universal and good for everyone. No race or ethnicity owns them. They are common goods. 

Rely on Conscience

In matters moral, reason is weak, easily suborned by the passions, given to rationalization, and easily entangled in the threads of its own dialectic. Reason is not  to be despised but not quite reliable. In matters moral, it is better to rely on conscience.

This advice rests on two presuppositions. One is that conscience is a source of moral knowledge, which itself presupposes that there is moral knowledge. The other is that one's conscience has been well formed. Both presuppositions need examination. But don't make the reliance on conscience contingent on the completion of their examination.

Keep Your Own Counsel

One alone has 'skin in the game' of one's own life. This helps explain why the advice of others, however well-intentioned, is often useless or worse. Listen to the advice of others, but at last keep one's own counsel. And:

Dissertation Advice on the Occasion of Kant's Birthday

Immanuel Kant was born on this date in 1724. He died in 1804. My dissertation on Kant, which now lies 44 years in the past, is dated 22 April 1978.  But if, per impossibile, my present self were Doktorvater to my self of 44 years ago, my doctoral thesis might not have been approved! As one's standards rise higher and higher with age and experience one becomes more and more reluctant to submit anything to evaluation let alone publication. One may scribble as before, and even more than before, but with less conviction that one's outpourings deserve being embalmed in printer's ink. (Herein lies a reason to blog.)

So I say to my young friends: finish the bloody thing now while you are young and cocky and energetic.  Finish it before your standards become too exacting. Give yourself a year, say, do your absolute best and crank it out. Think of it as a union card. It might not get you a job but then it just might. Don't think of it as a magnum opus or you will never finish. Get it done by age 30 and before accepting a full-time appointment. And all of this before getting married. That, in my opinion, is the optimal order. Dissertation before 30, marriage after 30. 

Now raise your glass with me in a toast to Manny on this, his 298th birthday. Sapere aude!

 Related: Right and Wrong Order

Yes, I Repeat Myself

Leftists constantly repeat their brazen lies in the hope that eventually they will be taken for truths. So we of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable need constantly to repeat truths. Not our truths, for there is no such thing as 'our' truth or 'my' truth or 'your' truth.' Truth is not subject to ownership. If you have it, you have it without possessing it.

 

So speak the truth and speak it often. Don't be afraid of repeating yourself. Living well is impossible without repetition. All learning, all teaching, all physical culture, all musicianship require repetition. No mastery of anything, no improvement in anything, is possible without repetition. Can you play that riff the same way every time? If not, keep practicing. 

 

By practicing blows, whether verbal or physical, you learn how to land effective ones.

Love of Neighbor

Love of neighbor is made easier by wise choice of neighborhood.

Between Time and Eternity

Tom O. asks,

How does one reconcile the temporal with the eternal, in a personal/spiritual or experiential manner? The political situation of our time strikes me as dire and incredibly important. Yet such things are transitory and will, ultimately, pass away, and so in another sense are not so important. I am torn between these two extremes on a daily basis. The latter is a source of hope and peace, the former a source of anxiety and unrest. Focusing more on one at the expense of the other seems to only intensify the problem, since doing that seems to downplay the importance of one of the extremes, when what I am after is a reconciliation of the two that does not dismiss or downplay either. But perhaps that goal itself is unattainable.

We are made for eternity, but we find ourselves in time. Both spheres are real and neither can be dismissed or pronounced unreal.  You and I agree on that.  You want a reconciliation of the two "that does not dismiss or downplay either" while suspecting that such a reconciliation is "unattainable."

Here I think lies the germ of an answer. One of the spheres needs to be "downplayed." For if there are these two spheres, they cannot be equally important. 

Why can't they be equally important?

Within time, we rightly value the relatively permanent over the relatively impermanent. We reckon him a fool who sacrifices a lifetime of satisfactions for a moment's pleasure.  John Belushi, for example, threw away his life and career for a ride on the 'Speedball Express.' Elliot Spitzer trashed his career and marriage to a beautiful  woman because he could not resist the siren songs of the high-class hookers. And then there is David Carradine who died of auto-erotic asphyxiation in Bangkok. Examples are easily multiplied beyond necessity. 

Infinitely more foolish is one who sacrifices an eternity of bliss for a lifetime of legitimate mundane satisfactions.  One who believes that both spheres are real, and thinks the matter through, ought to understand that the temporal is inferior to the eternal in point of importance.  That there are these two spheres is a matter of reasoned faith, not of knowledge.  (It is 'metaphysical bluster' to claim to have certain knowledge in this area. One cannot prove God, the soul, or man's eternal destiny. Or so say I; plenty of dogmatists will disagree.)

I therefore make the following suggestion in alleviation of my reader's existential problem. Devote the majority of your time and energy to the quest for the Absolute, but without ignoring the temporal. The quietist must needs be a bit of an activist in a world in which his spiritual life and quest is endangered by the evildoers in the realm of time and change.  

For spiritual health a daily partial withdrawal from society is advisable.  It needn't be physical: one can be in the world but not of it. 

A partial withdrawal can take the form of a holding free of the early morning hours from any contamination by media dreck.  Thus no reading of newspapers, no checking of e-mail, no electronics of any sort.  Electricity is fine: you don't have to sit in the dark or burn candles.  No talking or other socializing. Instead: prayer, meditation, spiritual and philosophical reading and writing, in silence, and alone.

So for a few pre-dawn hours each day you are a part-time monk.

Best Friend, Worst Enemy

In your practical life, be your own best friend; in your spiritual and intellectual life, your own worst enemy.

Too Many Memories?

Are you bothered by too many memories? Live more actively and thoughtlessly! Enter the diaspora of mundane dis-traction. Lose yourself in the quotidian. Take the drug of busy-ness.

Not my way, but it could be yours.

Let it Go and Move on

Let the past go and move on. Pack as much life as possible into the few years that remain. Squeeze in as much vital thinking and thoughtful vitality as you can. Move up and away from your vices. Consign your hebetude to history. Break useless contacts. Keep your nose to the grindstone. Mill the grist. Press the grapes of experience  for the wine of wisdom. A philosopher's harvest years come late. The clock is running. The format is sudden death. The time control is unknown. The Reaper waits, he is patient, his scythe aglisten in the dying rays of the setting sun. There is work to be done, and it can only be done here. Get on with it, noble soul!

Alain on Keeping to the Present

Substack latest.

Hunger and Satiety

You should be hungry before every meal and sated after none.

Tough and Forebearing

It is better to be tough on oneself and forebearing toward others than the other way around.

Are You Hungry?

Don't let the thought of the pleasures of the table persuade you to eat if you are not hungry. Eat only at meal times, but never because it is meal time. An exception is breakfast for those quitting their domiciles for a sally-forth into a mean world.  To leave your house without food in your gut is like driving into the desert without gas in your tank. You don't know what awaits you. 

The Opinions of Others: Signal and Noise

"Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your inner voice." (Steve Jobs) 

True as far as it goes. But there is both signal and noise is the opinions of others. Heed the signal, lest your inner voice become a noisy idiolect.

Live Long

There is work to be done, and it may be that it can only be done here.

Food: Medicine, Drug, or Fuel?

In an excess of the ascetic, the author of The Confessions in Book Ten, Chapter 31 recommends taking food as medicine. At the opposite extreme we find those for whom it is a soporific, a sedative, an escape from reality, a drug. The wise tread the middle path: food is fuel.  

Eat in quantity and quality precisely that alone which optimally fuels fratre asino so that he may bear up well in this vale where his services are indispensable.   Properly fortified, he will carry your load over many a pons asinorum.

Kerouac No Role Model

Lest I lead  astray any young and impressionable readers, I am duty-bound to point out that my annual October focus on Kerouac is by no means to be taken as an endorsement of him as someone to be imitated.  Far from it! He failed utterly to live up to the Christian precepts that he learned as a child and the Buddhist precepts he assiduously studied in the mid-1950s.  Not that he was a hypocrite; he was just a deeply flawed human being. 

I just now recall a critique of Kerouac by Douglas Groothuis from some years ago.  (Old Memory Babe ain't got nothing on me.)  Ah yes, here it is.   I am in basic agreement with it.

Fake it and Make it

 When we started out, did we know what we were doing? We do now.

A bit of posturing and pretense may be needed to launch a life. Posture and pretense become performance. The untested ideal becomes the verified real. At the start of a life scant is the evidence that you can do what you dream: you must believe beyond the evidence if you are to have a shot.

And so I beg to differ with W. K. Clifford:

For a couple of rather more technical treatments, see here.

Care of Soul and Body

To care properly for the first, live each day as if it will be your last. To care properly for the second, live each day as if your supply of days is infinite. (Adapted from Evagrius Ponticus.)

............................

The mortalist body-abuser is one puzzling hombre.

Christopher Hitchens loved to drink and he loved to smoke and he knew that the synergistic effects of drinking like a fish and smoking like a chimney could lead, as it did in the case of Humphrey Bogart, to an untimely shuffling off of the mortal coil.  (Hamlet's soliloquy, Act 3, Scene 1) You would think that someone who was utterly convinced that he was nothing more than an animated body, a clever land mammal, would want to take care of  his body. Hitchens was not suicidal. He loved to write and he had writing projects planned out. He died of cancer of the esophagus at age 62 in 2011. Those of us who champion  free speech miss him greatly and what he would have had to say about the current state of the world.  

People think they have plenty of time. But it's later than you think. The Reaper Man is sharpening his scythe as we scribblers sharpen our pencils.

Stoic Advice

KNOW IN ADVANCE that people will respond to you in the most diverse ways, favorably, with hostility, indifferently, in every way. Do not be surprised or much affected. Take as much of it as you can with equanimity. Observe their antics  with detachment.  Observe as well your emotional responses. 

Treat feelings and emotions as they arise  as interesting objects of study.  Holding them at mental arm's length, objectifying them, we lessen their grip on us.

Self-Admonitions

Arm yourself with your maxims as you quit your cell. They are as important as your EDC. The vexatious and worse are out and about. Avoid the near occasion of idle talk. Most of what anyone has to say is bushwa. Smile and greet, but pass on. Restrain the social need -- if it is a need. Keep the past at mental arm's length.  Live in the present, relaxed, but situationally aware. Guard the mind. Protect the inner citadel from pointless and harmful invasions.

Ingredients of Happiness

What makes for happiness?

Acceptance is a good part of it: acceptance of self, of one's ineluctable  limitations, of others and their limitations, of one's lot in life, of one's place in the natural hierarchy of prowess and intellect and spiritual capacity, acceptance of the inevitable in the world at large. 

Gratitude is another ingredient in happiness: one cultivates gratitude for and appreciation of what one has here and now without comparisons to an idealized past, a feared future, or to the lots of others.  No regret, resentment, worry, or comparison.  Comparison breeds envy, one of the seven deadly sins. Be your incomparable self. If you are not yet incomparable, take up self-individuation as a life project. Realize yourself. Your life is more a task than a given, a task of transmuting givens into accomplishments.  It is the task of becoming actually the unique person you are potentially. But no hankering for what is out of reach. No false ideals. No consorting with the utopian.  No Lennon-esque imagining of the impossible. No dreaming impossible dreams. 

You were born somewhere in the natural hierarchy of physical endowment, moral and affective and aesthetic sensitivity, mental power, spiritual capacity, and strength of will. But your place in the hierarchy allows for development. Know your place but press against its upper limits.

But of course happiness is not just a matter of attitude and exertion but also rests on contingency and luck.  We need, but cannot command, the world's cooperation. Happenstance holds happiness hostage.  You were dealt a bad hand? Suck it up and play it the best you can for as long as you can.

Conservatives emphasize attitude and exertion, leftists happenstance. Both have a point.  "The harder I work, the luckier I become" is a conservative exaggeration, but a life-enhancing one.  It is however the foolish conservative who thinks he is self-made and not the beneficiary of a myriad of forces and factors far beyond his control.  There is truth in Phil Ochs' lament, "There but for fortune go you or I," but not such truth as to trump the conservative's exaggeration.  Weathering "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," (Hamlet, Act III, Scene I) he will slog on, per aspera ad astra.

 

Purgation of Memory and Purgatory of Memory

The manuals of mysticism enjoin the purgation of memory. But not all such purgation is good. Vexing memories of folly and excess, of time-wastage and wrong-doing, are an earthly purgatory which the purgation of memory, if it could be achieved, would eliminate.

Prosecute the purgation of memory but not to the detriment of memory's purgatory.

Memory: Content and Affect

The trick is to retain the content so that one can rehearse it if one wishes, but without re-enacting the affect, unless one wishes.  Let me explain.

Suppose one recalls a long-past insult to oneself, and feels anger in the present as a result. The anger is followed by regret at not having responded in kind. (L'esprit de l'escalier.) And then perhaps there is disgust at oneself for having remained passive, for not having stood up to the aggressor and asserted oneself. This may be followed by annoyance with oneself for allowing these memorial affects  to arise one more time despite one's assiduous and protracted inner work. Finally, pessimism supervenes concerning the efficacy of attempts at self-improvement and mind control.  

Well, welcome to the human predicament.  Buck up, never give up. We are not here to slack off and have a good time. This world is preparatory and propadeutic if not penal. That is the right way to think of it. Live and strive. Leben und streben! Streben bis zum Sterben!  There is no guarantee that the "long, twilight struggle" will open out into  light.   For there are two twilights, one that leads to dawn, the other to dusk. But we live better if we believe in the advent of the first.

Judge your success not by how far you have to go, but how far you've come.

Inquire and aspire.  What Plato has Socrates say about inquiry (intellectual self-improvement) in response to Meno's Paradox is adaptable to aspiration (moral self-improvement).

And therefore we ought not to listen to this sophistical argument about the impossibility of inquiry: for it will make us idle; and is sweet only to the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and inquisitive. (Plato, Meno, 81a-81e)