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each of us lives by our own created and projected values, what remains to unite us?
It may well be, therefore, that the true meaning of life is not to be found in what is objective, but in what is subjective (but still universal).
Unfortunately for the communists, a substantial proportion of the oppressed were incapable, unconscientious, unintelligent, licentious, power mad, violent, resentful, and jealous, while a substantial proportion of the oppressors were educated, able, creative, intelligent, honest, and caring.
After breaking the world into large, undifferentiated pieces, describing the problem(s) that characterize each division, and identifying the appropriate villains, the ism theorist then generates a small number of explanatory principles or forces
This kind of theorizing is particularly attractive to people who are smart but lazy.
Ideological reduction of that form is the hallmark of the most dangerous of pseudo-intellectuals.
Beware, in more technical terms, of blanket univariate (single variable) causes for diverse, complex problems.
Lack of internal union also makes itself known in the increased suffering, magnification of anxiety, absence of motivation, and lack of pleasure that accompany indecision and uncertainty.
To write something long, sophisticated, and coherent means, at least in part, to become more complex, articulate, and deeper in personality.
If you work as hard as you can on one thing, you will change. You will start to also become one thing, instead of the clamoring multitude you once were.
Perception has been replaced for me with functional, pragmatic memory. This has made me more efficient, in some ways, but the cost is an impoverished experience of the richness of the world.
Have
Beautiful poem!!!!
And then people gaze at those artworks, watch the dramas, and listen to the stories, and they start to become informed by them, but they do not know how or why.
Beauty leads you back to what you have lost. Beauty reminds you of what remains forever immune to cynicism. Beauty beckons in a manner that straightens your aim. Beauty reminds you that there is lesser and greater value. Many things make life worth living: love, play, courage, gratitude, work, friendship, truth, grace, hope, virtue, and responsibility. But beauty is among the greatest of these.
The humility required to clamber out of such hell exists in precise proportion to the magnitude of the unrequited errors of the past.
We literally make the world what it is, from the many things we perceive it could be.
This means that if we act ethically, in the deepest and most universal of senses, then the tangible reality that emerges from the potential we face will be good instead of dreadful—or at least as good as we can make it.
everything that emerges from the realm of possibility in the act of creation (arguably, either divine or human) is good insofar as the motive for its creation is good.
Do not foolishly confuse “nice” with “good.”
Cohabitation without the promise of permanent commitment, socially announced, ceremonially established, seriously considered, does not produce more robust marriages.
(foolishly because you are in love with your projection of perfection, rather than the person—which is very confusing to the target of your affection).
What could be? Attempting to answer that question—that is life.
That is what happens to those beauties, so to speak, who remain far too unawakened when they hit sixteen: They do not want to be conscious, because they have not developed the courage and ability to face the negative element of the natural world. Instead of being encouraged, they have been sheltered. And if you shelter young people, you destroy them.
Much of what people believe politically—ideologically, let us say—is based on their inborn temperament.
It is within the frame of that impossible undertaking—that decision to love—that courage manifests itself, enabling each person who adopts the courageous pathway to do the difficult things that are necessary to act for the good in even the worst of times.
