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Oh to Know the Kiss of Your Lips for Your Love is Better than Blood
The individual destined for eternal good and enabled by divine grace to move toward that good is also assured of immortality. Long before living things appeared on Earth, the basic stuff of the cosmos was undergoing irreversible changes in the direction of greater complexity of organization. Hence, nonliving nature is profoundly historical. It is not a system of stable elements in a closed equilibrium. On the contrary, it conforms at all stages to a “law of complexification,” comparable in importance to the law of gravity and illustrated by the vast array of organic forms which have appeared in evolutionary history. Each individual man experiences himself from within as a conscious being. Consciousness is thus directly identifiable as spiritual energy. All constituents of the cosmos, from elementary particles to human beings, have a conscious inner face that everywhere duplicated the material external face, as man is a material system in the midst of other material systems. Since this is so, the physical evolution of cosmic stuff will at the same time to be an evolution of consciousness. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
The more highly integrated material system, the more developed its physical interior will be. Thus, in the human brain an intense concentration, or “involution,” of cells has led to the emergence of self-conscious thought, the most advanced stage reached by evolution thus far. However, greater developments are in store from the evolutionary convergence of disparate cultures and forms of consciousness. Within seconds, I would have pierced your mind, had I wanted to penetrate your thoughts my dear child—and truly, I should not have failed to reach you. Telepathic bonds are a union of superhuman, everlasting proportions, and it allows these individuals to deny bounds of chronological time and the physical bounds of the Word, weight, space, and movement. Extra-sensory Perception (ESP) is the acquisition of information without the use of any know sense organs. Two species of ESP are usually labeled “telepathy” and “clairvoyance.” #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
Most humans are now a single, interbreeding species expanding on the finite, spherical surface of the planet and still showing signs of biological immaturity. Furthermore, his capacity for self-conscious thought and the production of cultures has added a new layer to the Earth’s surface called the noosphere, distinct from, yet superimposed on, the biosphere. The noosphere, or thinking layer, forms the unique environment of man, marking him off from all other animals. The evolutionary convergence which makes it possibly will be manifested externally in the unification of all human cultures into a single World culture. Paralleling this, a movement toward physical concentration will occur, so that the noosphere will become involuted in a Hyperpersonal Consciousness at a point which we might call Omega. These terms are ill-chosen, especially “clairvoyance,” which was originally adopted because mediums and subjects of spontaneous ESP commonly claim to “see” remote (distant in space or time) objects. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5
Since such reported experiences often involve modes of sense other than sight, “telestheisa,” would have been a better term because parapsychology extrasensory sensation or perception received at a distance without the normal operation of the recognized sense organs. Their thoughts and exploits are woven into a complex web offering multiple perspectives on our own lives. Here evolution will reach the terminal phase of convergent integration. The concept of Point Omega is obscure, like other aspects of our evolutionism, because it is essentially the expression of a mystical vision. Telepathy is used to designate ESP in which information originates from the mind of another person. The information acquired by telepathy need not be about a person’s state of mind as such; it may be about physical events he is observing or had observed. With the superstitious person, the case is reversed: he knows nothing of the motive of his chance and faulty actions; he believes in the existence of psychic contingencies; he is therefore inclined to attribute meaning to external chance, which manifests itself in actual occurrence, and to see in the accident a means of expression for something hidden outside of him. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
I do believe that an unintentional manifestation of my own mental activity surely contains something concealed which belongs only to my mental life—that is, I believe in outer (real) chance, but not in inner (psychic) accidents. I do not believe that an occurrence in which my mental life takes no part can teach me anything hidden concerning the future shaping of my reality. To psychical researchers “precognition” means ESP in which the information is about and originates from future events. Omega is not identical with God, but rather, is God insofar as he determines the direction and goal of cosmic history. Hence, the evolutionary process is orthogenetic (the hypothesis that all cultures evolve in a linear manner from primitivism to civilization), although neither vitalistic nor wholly devoid of chance events. The integration of all personal consciousness at Omega will be achieved, through love, which forms le Milieu divin, the spirit if Christ at work in nature. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
Nature and Nothing
When we engage in discursive thought and declarative speech, we may attain various forms of success: intelligibility, precision, correctness, and so on. These felicities are best explained by contrast with the corresponding mishaps that threaten our beliefs, assertions, and especially our claims to know something. A person’s thinking may be inadequate because he is ignorant, and what he says may be deficient because it is incoherent, rough, or perhaps most important of all, downright false. A census of hallucinations show that something are not just a collection of coincidences. Have you ever, while believing yourself to be completely away, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause? Death-coincidences cases were the subject. A, recognized his hallucination at the time as an appearance of another person, B; where B died within a period of 12 hours before or after the hallucinatory experience; and where A has no reason to expect B’s death. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
A skeptic’s doubts about the honesty of the witness or the reliability of their memories cannot be laid to rest merely by the complications of more testimony. The truth is that God is indescribably more than our creaturely concepts can represent. Nature which creates and is not created is God in his eternal reality, the primary principle of all things. God is self-existent and unchanging, the uncaused Cause of the World. He alone truly is, and all other beings exists only as dependent upon or participating in him. Nature which is both created and creative consists of archetypes or exemplary causes of creatures existing in the divine mind. These archetypes came into being through the eternal generation of the Word (Logos) or Son, and can this be described as created only in an unusual sense of the term. Because the World is logically prior to them, they are not strictly coeternal with him; however, he has never existed without them. As exemplary causes, they may be said to perform a creative function. Nature which is created but does not create consists of the World of creatures existing outside the divine mind. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
In statements which cannot readily be reconciled, these creatures participating in God’s reality are created out of nothing (de omnino nihilo). They constitute the divine self-disclosure or theophany—in the manifestation of the hidden, for formless, and the body of the incorporeal is faster than thought or time. God’s World is not of time, but of the fulfillment of time, the kind of fulfillment traditionally symbolized by the perpetual spring of paradise. The nature which neither creates nor is created is God as the end goal of the creative process, God with his creatures perfectly reunited to him, God become all in all. In the end, the whole World of creatures—including fallen man, redeemed through the incarnation of the Word—is to achieve fulfillment in union with God. In that union creatures are not to be simply reabsorbed into God but will be transmuted and spiritualized. The soul will survive in an incorporeal state. The immortality of the soul is rationally demonstrable. The dogma of a bodily resurrection could be rationally justified on the ground that since soul and body constitute a single substance, the soul requires a body for its self- expression and beatitude. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
To account for the obvious fact that the flesh decays at death, although the resurrected body will have the same “form” as its Earthy counterpart, it will have a different “matter.” The soul, being immortal, would face judgement after death, that it would receive rewards and punishments according to the goodness or badness of its Earthly life, and that it would be given an opportunity to choose the condition of its next existence. The Bible states that history is nonrepeatable and that it is destine for a divine fulfillment in which good will triumph over evil. In the Bible the, the Old Testament contains only a few vague references to persona afterlife. However, it often refers to a future time when God will establish his everlasting reign of righteousness and peace (for example, Isaiah 11.1-9). The New Testament affirms that this divine end or goal has been reached by the exalted Christ, who defeated the powers of evil on the cross (see, for example, Acts 2.14—36, Colossians 2.8—15; Ephesians 2.11—22; Hebrews 2.5—18). Those who believe in Christ have eternal life here and now (John 3.36; 5.24). While living in this age, this spatiotemporal order that is still subject to sin and death, they have a foretaste of the age to come, a renewed cosmos that will be wholly subject to the will of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Some maintain that all spiritual creatures—angels, men, women, and devils will be saved in a final restoration (apocatastasis). However, others believe the damned will suffer everlasting torment. My answer to this puzzle is that men have false beliefs, but through their own doing, not God’s. Men are endowed by God with such power of will that they can assent to propositions they do not know to be true—that is, to “ideas” that are not “clear and distinct.” Is God to blame for this disharmony between or limited capacity for knowledge and our unlimited power of assenting? No, will is just a single thing; it is incompatible with its nature that anything should be subtracted from it. Besides, although we are free to, we do not have to believe propositions for which lack conclusive proof. In order to avoid unsuspected error, we must restrain our desire for truth and withhold assent until we know for certain. Do we exercise any control over our convictions and opinions, as the concept of assenting requires? #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Clearly, people may decide to make statements. Some criminals voluntarily confess their misdeeds, and others are forced, against their will, to admit guilt. How about belief? Can we choose to reject a proposition that seems most likely, according to available evidence, and believe another that seems less plausible? Perhaps not. However, we often make decision as we form our opinions, as we collect or neglect data and seek or ignore testimony. Men who undergo brainwashing are deprived of this control over the formation of their beliefs. The same holds, incidentally, for knowledge. It is absurd to say that investigator decided to know but not absurd to say he resolved to find out for certain who shot at the car and who is responsible for leaking confidential documents. Moreover, children are compelled to learn things. In acquiring knowledge and forming opinions, we pursue rather obvious goals; conclusive proof and correct information. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Even so, is it intelligible to suppose that people act deliberately and knowingly when they settle upon false beliefs? One everyday case should dispel the appearance of contradictions: I study the racing form, mull over the evidence, and conclude that Wayfarer is bound to take the handicap. I willingly commit myself to this belief by wagering my paycheck. I realize, however, that even well-grounded expectations like mine can prove erroneous. Consequently, if my horse loses, it is true to say, “I formed my erroneous belief willingly, after deliberation, with the intention of predicting the handicap winner; furthermore, I was aware that I could be mistaken.” It was not my goal to be wrong, but it was within the scope of my intention. Anyone who aims at truth is prepared for falsity, just as a marksman is prepared to miss the bull’s eye. Can we say I erred “knowingly”? #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
The individualistic destiny that awaits each person, in the cosmic and social, after death the description of the goal in which history will be fulfilled is either a this-Worldly or an otherworldly kind. A man who punches another in the back of the head is hardly ever certain that his victim will be injured, but from a legal standpoint he knowingly inflicts hard if he has reason to think injury might result from his blow. There remains another type of errors, fortunately quite infrequent, where such awareness is impossible. This is the unusual situation where you are convinced you know something, banish doubt from your mind, and still turn out to be wrong. Perhaps you acted deliberately and followed your inclinations in pushing your investigation until you believed you could not be wrong. However, this degree of conviction, you cannot have the least awareness that you are mistaken. Your error, then, is not fully voluntary. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Inequalities are Indefensible Differences: Frail Human World might be Torn Entirely Asunder
The issue was the position which his action has put us both into in this sidewalk jungle World and reputation and honor are very important. I cannot be hyped, meaning outsmarted or made of fool of, nor can I afford to be bluffed. The notion of universal equality as an idea is difficult to demand a firm answer from. Many egalitarians have tried to argue that despite the many points of inequality, all men and women are alike in possessing reason, or a soul, or some other essentially human characteristic or nature, by virtue of which they stand equal. The difficulty, however, is to find an important characteristic that all men and women possess in precisely the same degree, so that whatever differences their other inequalities might justify, this fundamental equality make them equal qua (the capacity of being) men and women. And even if one could identify such a characteristic, what would follow him from it? If all men are alike in having souls, in what respect should they therefore be treated alike? After all, God is widely believed to punish wicked souls and to reward virtuous ones. God’s omniscience is entailed by infinity. However, a special problem is created by the view that God now knows future freely chosen human acts. Those who hold this view that God sees all urge, first, that since God is timeless it is, strictly speaking, incorrect to say that he “foreknows” events, and second, that even if we say this (speaking from our finite standpoint), we need not assume that a human act, because it is foreknown, is predetermined—by either God or any other factor outside of the agent’s will. To say that a human act can in principle be predicted is not to say that agent has no control over it or is not really active and responsible for what he does; this, at any rate, is a view of human action widely held by philosophers at the present time. However, other theists consider it contradictory to say that a free choice can be known in any sense until it has been made. They affirm that God is ignorant of future human choices and that his ignorance is a “self-limitation” he deliberately incurred in granting men and women free will.
Ideal of universal equality can often be reduced to the principle that all men ought to be equally considered. This does not mean that there is any respect in which they are all alike; it is rather a principle of procedure: that all men ought to be treated equally, despite all their differences, until a case has been made for saying that some particular difference between them is relevant to the matter at hand. The onus of proof rests on whoever wants to make distinctions. And up to this point this might be sad to be implicit in the notion of rational decision, because it would be irrational, within a given class of cases, to treat some differently from others if no relevant grounds could be found for distinguishing between them. It is not easy to see how anyone who seriously held that white men mattered but black did not could be reasoned out of this position, any more than one could argue for the equality of men and dogs. Of course, many people who practice discrimination profess to believe that black men are in some way inferior to white men, in intelligence, sensibility, responsibility, or some such quality, and on this account ought to be treated differently. However, this is to admit the principle of equal consideration for all men, that all men count, and that an argument has to be made to justify discriminating against some among them. The man who denies that they count at all is not bound to show reasons, any more than we feel the need to show reasons for treating inanimate objects, plants, or primitive organisms, such as amoebae, according to our pleasure. Although we hesitate to inflict unnecessary pain on sentient creatures, such as cats or dogs, we are quite sure that we do not need to show good reasons for putting human interests before theirs. The boundaries of moral consideration are enlarged in practice by awakening sympathy and imagination; moral reasons presuppose an initial moral concern.
It is important to note that the Creeds, Pantocrator and omnipotens imply that God is the ruler of all things, rather than that he can do anything. Omnipotence too is entailed by infinity. God cannot act against either reason or morality. However, it is extremely difficult to explain the existence in a World created by a God who is both infinitely powerful and infinitely good. Various explanations have been given. Thus evil has been traces to the fall of a first man or World Soul. Everything of this World is created through the transformation of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—these elements are the active powers of the World Soul. Again, it is said that God permits (even if he does not inflict) unmerited sufferings as a means of purifying the soul for eternal life. God is not responsible for evil because he is finite both in knowledge and in power. (Christians believe that God displays his omnipotence by overcoming evil through the ministry of Christ.) The purpose of this equality of rights is to ensure equality of freedom and opportunity: the equal right of all men to live the kind of life that seems good to them…equality of opportunity to be oneself, to live as one pleases. This is attractive, but it hardly touches the problem of what is to be done when what pleases one man interferes or competes with what pleases another. Nor does it cope with the diversity of inclinations—can one be said to have, on a given income, an equal opportunity to become a collector of Picassos or of seashells? Or does equality of opportunity require differential provisions, so that the chance of fulfillment matches aspirations? Does it envisage open competition or a handicap? Every individual’s view of where his own interest lie should be given consideration. In the moments when time seems to stand still, we get a glimpse of what is possible. These moments are so rewarding that they are treasured for a lifetime. When they occur, something is experienced that is very impressive. Could it be that, beyond the turbulence of the World and our own mind, there is silence? A realm of peace that is always waiting?
The ideal of universal equality requires that the inequalities of nature be mitigated or rectified. By this view, precisely because men born with superior talents or social advantages can claim no merit on that account, it should be the aim of social policy to compensate for such advantages by differentiating between men to redress the balance. It is of course true that modern welfare states commonly do provide special amenities, such as wheelchairs for the crippled or hearing devices for the deaf, to bring naturally handicapped people up to some minimum. However, an account in terms of meeting needs or deficiencies, for the policy is not much to remedy a handicap that one man suffers in comparison with another (wheelchairs are not mean to enable cripples to compete in races with runners) as to provide conditions necessary to his well-being, understood in the light of some presupposed standard of what a good life requires. This standard will no doubt be governed by the advantages commonly enjoyed by most people in the community, so that in an affluent society a person will be taken to have more needs than in an impoverished one; however, the claim will still be grounded on his own needs and interests, not on the greater advantages enjoyed by those more fortunate. That makes him a very rare and useful species: a practitioner, a researcher, and a journalist. When he encounters new research, he teases out what is practical. Think about how you learned something that you know how to do very well. Did you learn it by doing, by figuring it out yourself, or with help? Today equality means abolishing racial disabilities in the law or seeing that prejudice does not interfere with the administration of the law. It also may mean eliminating the advantages of wealthy litigants over poorer one, by public legal aid schemes, or making certain that no one is prevented by poverty or wealth from getting a fair trial.
Equality very rarely means treating everyone alike; usually it means getting rid of one system of distinction and replacing it with another. Thus, equality of opportunity in education hardly ever means giving everyone exactly the same education; rather, it means eliminating some hitherto determining factor such as ability to pay school or university fees and substituting a test of proficiency. More ambitiously, it might aim at a system with various arrangements, each meant for an appropriate grade of intelligence or type of aptitude. Those who all this equality does so on the ground that the treatment accorded to each is equally appropriated to his needs. Thus, the more anxiously a society endeavors to secure equality of consideration for all its members, the greater will be the differentiation of treatment which, when once the common human needs have been met, it accords to special needs of different groups and individuals among them. The greater the equality of consideration, the greater the differentiation in treatment. If the latter is not called “inequality in treatment” it is because the word “inequality” has acquired, in the sort of context, a pejorative force; “inequalities” have come to mean indefensible differences in treatment. We need to preserve and improve what already exists than to risk the even greater abuses that might follow the destruction of the current order. Revolutionists are intentionally or not, destroying the very fabric of human existence. Given the human condition, it is very important to retain the (far from ideal) way that Christ’s message has been institutionalized; at the same time, I urge a revival of concern for the substance of this message and a revitalization of the church through the correction of as many abuses as possible and the encouragement of scholarly and more efforts to recapture the original Christian spirit. Otherwise, I fear, the frail human World might be torn entirely asunder.
The Winchester Mystery House
Mrs. Winchester loves the beautiful Victorian mansion built, looking for a fresh start after the death of her husband and daughter. Although beautiful, the mansion holds a sinister secret. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Casting Down Arguments and Every High thing Exalting itself Against Knowledge of God
Going to Heaven! I do not know when, pray do not ask me how—indeed, I am too astonished to think of answering you! Going to Have how dim it sounds! And yet it will be done as sure as flocks go to the house at night unto the shepherd’s arm! Perhaps you are going too! Who knows? If you should get there first, save just a little place for me close to the two I lost! The smallest “robe” will fit me, and just a bit of “crown royal;” for you know we do not mind our suits when we are going to the house. I am glad I do not believe it, for it would stop my breath, and I would like to look a little more at such a curious Earth! Have you ever watched the Earth set from the Moon, it is such a glorious sight? Imagine seeing a blue moon, in a black sky. I am glad they did believe it whom I have never found since the mighty Autumn afternoon I left them in the ground. We can all see God in exceptional things, but it requires the growth of spiritual discipline to see God in every detail. Be ready to discover His divine designs anywhere and everywhere. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 6
At least to pray is left, is left. O Christ in the air I know not which thy chamber is—I am knocking everywhere. Thou stirrest Earthquake in the South, and maelstrom in the sea; say, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, hast thou no arm for me? The Christian worker must be so closely identified with his Lord and the reality of His redemption that Christ can continually bring His creating life through him. When we preach the historical facts of the life and death of our Lord as they are conveyed in the New Testament, our words are made sacred. God uses these words, on the basis of His redemption, to create something in those who listen which otherwise could never have been created. I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He can crush me, exalt me, or do anything else He chooses. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 6
Stuff of legend, vulgar names, hunter of the night, locked out of the day forever, living off human life force, hunt the evil ones only, feed on the trash lives if there are such things, always thriving among humankind, from the dawn of time, pass for human, body transformed by the Blood, perfected within its potential by the Blood Paris, Aaliyah, me. You are right, you see, she is dead, but only to human life. I worked the magic. Filled her with the enlivening Blood. Accept. It is done. It is irreversible. I did it. A dying girl defined by pain and fear could not consent. Two centuries ago, I did not consent. A year ago, Paris did not say yes to it. Maybe no one really consents. It was my conviction and my power. Lay the sin on me. And so she thrives. And so she hunts the filthy blood. However, she is Aaliyah again. The night belongs to her, and by day the Sun cannot find her. I am guilty. Lay all the blame on me. I read my sentence steadily, reviewed it with my eyes, to see that I made no mistake in its extremest clause—the date, and the manner of the shame; and then the pious for that “God have mercy” on the soul. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 6
The jury voted him. I made my soul familiar with her extremity, that at the last is should not be a novel agony. However, she and Death, acquainted, meet tranquility as friends, salute and pass without a hint—and there the matter ends. Yet God, as first cause, can suspend or transform secondary causes in order to perform his will. When he does so, his action is called a miracle. A miracle does not violate nature. It is a case of nature behaving in an abnormal way through a special act of the same creative power which is at work in the normal processes that can be subsumed at work in the normal process that can be subsumed under scientific laws. If the essence of finite being is to be dependent on God’s will (and so to possess a potentia obedientialis in relations to the theology of miracles, and natural order’s relationship to the supernatural), miraculous acts are not less natural than nonmiraculous ones. However, while the abnormal character as an act of God can be discerned by faith alone. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 6
In most systems of religion and philosophy, God is endowed with characteristics that distinguish him from others beings. The infinity of the Christian God was implied above in the accounts of his transcendence and creative power, and in most systems, God’s infinity makes him free, in degree, if not in kind, from at least some human limitations. However, he is not strictly infinite unless he is limitless throughout the whole range of his existence. He can be wholly limitless, however, if only he is self-existent and thereby self-sufficient. If God needs the World as the sphere of his self-development, he copies an independent realm of Forms, he is pro tanto (for so much) limited. He is strictly infinite only if his essence is identical with existence. If God is thus infinite, he must possess all properties in a mode that is free from every limitation. He must be one, simple, incorporeal, immutable, impassible, eternal, good, omniscient, and omnipotent. If you believe in God, you believe in at least one ghost and the supernatural. God exists in a threefold form as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is one substance (substantia, ousia) in three persons (personae, hypostaseis). #RyanPhillippe 5 of 6
Incorporeality is an aspect of God or an unfolding of his essence. Thus, God is identified with nature’s basic elements, air and fire. God is a bright and very subtle substance. Impassibility is equivalent to immutability, if it means that God cannot suffer change from either an external or an internal cause. However, it has also been taken to mean that God cannot experience pain. While there is an apparent contradiction between this last meaning and Biblical descriptions of God’s love, it has been maintained by some theologians (but denied by others) that, although Christ experienced pain in his human nature, God cannot experience it in himself, for, being wholly perfect, he is pure joy. Determination and zeal are found in obeying God, not in the inclination to serve Him. It is inconceivable, but true nevertheless, that saints are simply doing work for God that has been instigated by their own human nature and has not been made spiritual through determined discipline. We have a tendency to forget that a person is not committed to Christ for salvation but also committed, responsible, and accountable to Christ’s view of God, the World, and sin. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 6
The Night Was Wide and Furnished Scant: I Got the Keys!
Self-satisfaction is a terrible trap if you want to achieve anything important. In times of stress, psychological pressure compels us to deny or dismiss inconsistent evidence, pushing us to perceive certainty and clarity where there is neither. The proposition A and B are equal may be descriptive or normative, but in either case it is incomplete without a statement of the respects in which the objects or a person compared are deemed to be equal. In instances where this appears not to be so, either the context supplies the complement or the comparison is of pure quantities, as in pure mathematics. Two objects equal in weight, or height, or value may be unequal in other respects; apart from the abstractions of mathematics and logic, no two objects could ever be said to be equal in all respects, only in all relevant respects. Correspondingly, to say that two candidates are equal in merit would usually mean that with respect to their performances in some understood competition or examination, they deserve to be treated alike; it does not rule out treating them differently if they are unequal in other respects.
When we feel that something is off balance, we seen that we can try to uncover the origin of the imbalance in conflicting or unresolved ideas or events. No distinction ought to be made between men who are equal in all respects relevant to the kind of treatment in question, even though in other (irrelevant) respects they may be unequal. On the other hand, in any matter in which they are in relevant respects unequal, they ought to be treated in proportion to their relevant inequalities. These analytical distinctions are of considerable importance in dealing with equality as a moral and social ideal. President Thomas Jefferson’s claim that “all men are created equal” cannot be rebutted by pointing to the obvious fact that some are taller, stronger, or more clever than others. The claim is intelligible only as a prescription, as saying that there is some respect, at least, in which no difference ought to be made in the treatment or consideration given to all men, whatever differences there might be in their qualities and circumstances. We have explored how the urge to resolve ambiguity is deeply rooted, multifaceted, and often dangerous.
As we make decisions, we need to recognize both the consequence of a decision and our current need for closure. In doing so, we can avoid grasping for new solutions in panic or sticking too rigidly to old ones. Some people believe that others are slaves by nature because some souls are not merely capable of higher development than others, but more valuable on that account. The natural equality of all men as rational beings with an equal capacity for virtue: Virtue closes the door to no man; it is open to all…the freeborn, the freedman, the slave and the king…neither family nor fortune determines it choice—it is satisfied with the naked human being. Men are equal only in the sense that by sin all were totally, and therefore equally, unworthy; God in his mercy extended grace to some but not to others. The equality of all men in the sight of God by the doctrine that slavery is consequence of sin. This view of equality came to be associated with the theory of church government—and indirectly of secular government—that derived legitimate authority (i.e., the right of superiors to command inferiors) from the voluntary agreement of natural equals to submit to such of their number as they choose.
We have seen how easily we can misinterpret genuine ambivalence as calculating duplicity. When we are trying to pin down someone’s intentions, we need to realize that ambivalence is a more natural state of mind than we ordinarily assume. These doctrines were given their first completely secular expression—associated with theories of natural right and social contract—by some of the Parliamentarians in the English civil war, particularly the Levelers. Colonel Rainborough’s declarations in the General Council of the Army in 1647, that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he and that no one can have a duty to obey a government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under and that is a classic expression of democratic political egalitarianism. Some people think that men are only equal in strength and cunning. By nature, men are equally free, are subject only to natural law, and enjoy the same natural rights. This turns the problem of political authority and obligation into a search for reasons why free and equal men should accept the limitations of civil society.
Political inequality, of rulers and ruled, must by justified as a conventional device for the better safeguarding of the rights and advantage that all men already possess but cannot securely enjoy, in a state of nature. Difference of character, talent, and intelligence are due to difference in environment and experience. By nature men are equal in that sense that at birth they have a limitless potentiality with potentiality without natural characteristics to differentiate one from another. Consequently, their diverse natures are, in fact, contingent; in principle all men are equally perfectible, given the appropriate social arrangements. In the state of nature men’s needs are simple, none need rely on anyone but himself, so none can exploit another or make him subject. The key problem for social philosophy, to which the sovereignty of the general will could provide a solution, is to reconcile the natural equality and autonomy of men with the social condition and political authority potentiality as morally self-governing persons. More broadly, organizations that are consistently forces to deal with ambiguity under pressure can ensure that people with a low need for closure play a central role in decision making.
All human beings must be treated as ends, not merely as means; all men are equally capable of realizing the good will, the only thing in the World good in itself. Our need for closure is a powerful force. It is so deeply ingrained in everyday living that cultivating an awareness of how it works is not enough. Combating its dangers means designing intuitions and processes that makes us less likely to succumb to our natural tendencies towards resolution when it matters most. The right negotiators will stay calm in the face of fluid, incomplete, and seemingly contradictory information. The right reminders at decision points will lower our need for closure. We can build an awareness of what we do not know about the future into our approach to the World by crafting methods to react quickly to change rather than trying to predict it. Ambiguity does not have to be paralyzing or distasteful. Under the right conditions, as we will see, embracing uncertainty can in fact provide opportunities to innovate. It can inspire creative solutions, and might even help make us better people.
And they all have plenty of money, money enough to walk away from this place and be comfortable wherever they go. That gives them a feeling of security, and in air of independence. However, they want to be right here. It is reported that most people spend their lives regretting the past and fearing the future; therefore, they are unable to experience joy in the present. Many of us have assumed that this is our human fate, our lot, and the best that we can do is accept life for what it is. One of the most effective tools for handling the past is the creation of a different context. What this means is that we can give it a different meaning. We take on a different attitude about the past difficulty or trauma, and we acknowledge the hidden gift in it. Everyday life experiences, no matter how tragic, contains a hidden lesson. When we discover and acknowledge the hidden gift that is there, a healing takes place. Your riches taught me poverty. Myself a millionaire in little wealth.
The Winchester Mystery House
Whether you are an expert, an architect, a student or just a lover of Victorians you will enjoy The Winchester Mystery House. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Grundsatzlich–That was Cool to See the Earth Set from the Moon
My heart was cut so deep I could hardly talk. I felt that stinging hurt again all over my skin. I stormed out onto the balcony, clinging to the railing for a long moment, forcing some calm upon myself, my hands trembling, but it did little good. I tried again to quell my pounding heart. I refused to tremble. I collected myself, eyes roving the ceiling, ready for the next cheap diatribe to be flung in my face. Let us now turn to the question whether, given the rejection of belief in God and immortality, life can nevertheless have meaning or significance. Sometimes when a person asks whether life has any meaning, what he wants to know is whether there is a superhuman intelligence that fashioned human beings along with objects in the World to serve some end—whether their role is perhaps analogous to the part of an instrument (or its player) in a symphony. People who ask whether history has a meaning often use the word in the same sense. When MacBeth exclaimed that life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing—his was point evidently was not that human life is part of a scheme designed by a superhuman idiot, but that it is not part of any design. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
The deeper issues and remarks that we find ourselves inn a dreadful situation in which there is scarcely a clue as to whether our existence had any real significance in the cosmic order of the Universe. You are paying for your sins. You are paying now as we speak. You are terrified you will lose everyone you love and never see then again. And maybe you will not. And maybe of you do, they will show you a defiance that will demoralize you even more truly than you are demoralized now. I closed my eyes, Once again, I used the very strongest of my telepathic power. I would go for walks at 3am, in hopes of seeing him stumble out of a bar just so I could see that he was safe and he was not lying in a hospital because he got hit by a car. I could not contact the police and let them know that I was concerned about him and that he was missing. For a while I thought he was even dead because of a link I read online, which said he had been killed and also because all of the old pictures that kept surfacing. I thought so loudly: I have such a need for you. I come to your ashamed of my failures. I come to you as you’re the brat prince. I do not claim to be anything better or worse. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
Listen to me. Help me. It was like a dream when I saw the sunshine on your face, the sight of your brought so much comfort and feelings of being safe to this dark place. Listen to me. Help me. Help me for the sake of others. I beg you. Hear my prayer. I was in this dark frame of mind, alone with this message, which engaged my soul so completely. When we ask whether a particular person’s life has or had any meaning, we are usually concerned not with cosmic issues, but with the question whether certain purposes are to be found in his life. Is my life still worthwhile? And what might make someone believe my life has ceased to be worth living? We talked about earlier how the dentist and the lawyer thought their lives where worthwhile because they have achieved certain goals. Many people are truly not focused on a relationship, to many people freedom comes with being able to provide or yourself the things that they want and that love will come later. No one wants to constantly be used and held to these beliefs that is they worship a person long enough, this person will save you from the injustice and pain of your life. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5
Something similar seems to be involved when we say that a person’s lift is (still) worthwhile or worth living. We seem to be making two assertions: first, that the person has some goals (other than merely to be dead or to have his pains eased) which do not seem to him to be trivial and, second, that there is some genuine possibility that he will attain these goals. These observations are confirmed by various systematic studies of people who contemplated suicide, of others who unsuccessfully attempted suicide, and of situations in which people did not commit suicide. When the subjects of these studies declared that their lives were no longer worth living they generally meant either that there was nothing left in their lives about which they seriously cared or that there was no real likelihood of attaining any of the goals that mattered to them. It should be noted that in this sense an individual many well be mistaken in his assertion that his life is not worthwhile any longer. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
When thinking about the value of his life, he may, for example, mistake a temporary indisposition for a more permanent loss of interest, or, more likely, he may falsely estimate his changes of achieving the ends he wishes to attain. Unlike happiness, which constitutes the meaning of life in the everyday or need-conditioned sense, the morally good does not depend on the accidents of life. It is not within a person’s power to be happy, but it is essentially (grundsatzlich) in everybody’s power to do what is good. To learn about a person and the other person learning about you is the beginning of a loving relationship Furthermore, while all happiness is subjective and transitory, leaving behind it no more than a melancholy echo, the good has eternal value. On the other hand, we have honor every good deed and the expression of every moral attitude, even if it took place in a distant land and among international people. Love and labor, two beautiful reasons for living. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
Out of My House Wretched Little Ingrate!
The attempt to suppress pride out of guilt simply does not work. It is not helpful to label the energy of pride a “sin” and to suppress it in ourselves out of guilt, to hide it, or pretend that we do not experience it. What happens is that energy subtly takes on a new form, known as spiritual pride. We do not feel comfortable in the presence of those who are prideful; therefore, pridefulness blocks communication and the expressive love. Although we love those who are prideful about specific accomplishments, we love them in spite of their pride and not because of it. Feeling guilty about pride as a spiritual sin only locks it in and, as we have said, is not really the answer. The real answer is merely to let out it by examining its true nature. Once we see pride for what it is, it is one of the easier emotions to surrender to. What is the purpose of pride? What is its payoff? Why do I seek it? For what does it compensate? What do I have to realize about my nature in order to let pride go without a feeling of loss? The smaller we feel within, the more we have to compensate for an inner sense of inadequacy, unimportance, and valuelessness by the substitution of the emotion of pride. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The more we surrender our negative emotions, the less we will rely on the crutch of pride. In its place, there will be a quality that the World calls “humility” and that we subjectively experience as peacefulness. True humility is distinct from the paradox of “pride in one’s humility” or “false modesty,” seen frequently in the public arena. False modesty is the pretense of self-diminishment with the longing that others will recognize the accomplishments that one is so proud of, but too proud to brag about openly. True humility cannot be experiences by the person who is said to possess it, because it is not an emotion. Truly humble cannot be humbled. They are immune to humiliation. They have nothing to defend. There is no vulnerability and, therefore, the truly humble do not experience critical attacks by others. Instead, a truly humble person sees the critical verbalization by another person as merely a statement of the other person’s inner problems. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Morality lay not in our relationships with what we know, but in how admirably we deal with what we do not. In the face of what we do not understand, how curious are we? How fearfully strict? How deferential to others? When a person says things like, “You think you are pretty good, don’t you?” what the truly humble person would see is that the other person has a problem with envy, and their question has no basis in reality in the first place. There is nothing to be offended by and no need to react. In contrast, for a prideful person, this question would be viewed as an insult and lead to hurt feelings, verbal comeback, or even a violent end in some cases. However, far away under the blue sky, above the green tree, far away in the open country, in the fields and the woods, the life of spring is unfolding now, mysterious, lovely, rich, and holy beyond the understanding of weak, sinful man. My Heaven is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter from what from the latter two take. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
End-of-history thinking is yet another example of how our minds try to order the untidy World. The tendency to airbrush away ambiguity is so deeply ingrained that it is not so surprising that we streamline history, too, or view the past as important only for the role it played in getting us to where we are now. We tend to think that we are developed, fully realized, complete. What has been exists as little as what has never been and that something of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present. If only the present counts, then past sorrows no less than the past pleasures do not count. People who enjoy the richness of their comprehensive life will not in old age envy the young because instead of possibilities they have the realities of their past. Some people use envy as a cheap consolation and the attempts to cover up deep and inevitable misery that are the stock in trade of a great deal of popular psychology. Many great human beings are bound to feel inferior on certain occasions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
To a man dying of cancer it is small consolation to reflect that there was a time when he was happy and flourishing; and while there are undoubtedly some antiquated people who do not envy the young, it may be suspected that more often the kind of talk advocated by the prophets of beneficial thinking is a mask for envy and a defense against exceedingly painful feelings of regret and helpfulness in the face of aging and death and now unalterable past. “Have you forgotten that this is my flat? That I am the one who has made you welcome here! That you exist because of me! Out of my house, you wretched little ingrate, get out now before I throw you down the steps! You are a power slut, that is what you are, using every edge of your sex or youth can give you, a moral Lilliputian in grown-up shoes, a career adolescent, a professional child! You do not know the meaning of philosophical insight, nor spiritual engagement, or true growth! Out, out of here now, Heir to the Harris Legacy, what a fiasco that must have been, go beat up on your mortal family at Fifth Street, rave at them until you drive them out of their minds and they crack you over the head with their shovel and bury you alive in the backyard.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Reduce and Simplify and Dispel all Remaining Doubts
The distant future is considered to have irrelevance because as we stand queasily at the dawn of a new globalism, advancing technologies also tempt us to envision permanent solutions to unknowns. In medicine and poverty-fighting programs, that tendency can be downright harmful. For instance, renters in Richmond, California USA are being evicted from their rent controlled housing so owners can raise rents to the maximum and gain more revenue, as rent increase and eviction moratorium is blocked by mayor and city council members. In business, likewise, our attempts to predict the future in light of ambiguous odds often backfire. These considerations, however, do not carry us very far. The problem is that thinking this way robs that past, present, and future of their mystery. It treats the “us” of ten years ago as evolving and the “us” of now as finally developed, and it loses sight of how wonderful and frightening both the present and future are in their potential. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 8
Our impulse to deny the unpredictability of the future favors neatening the past into a tidy narrative. They do not show either that life is worth living or that it has meaning. Misconception and misunderstandings of this sort, stemming from aversion to uncertainty and our craving for order, have occupied us throughout time and space. We have seen how troubling mental conflicts, under a high need for closure, can lead us to seize and freeze, to grow servile or increasingly inflexible. Before tackling these problems directly something should be perhaps be said about the carious and totally arbitrary preference of the future. If there were not an endless cycle of the same kind of activities, and if instead it were like a journey toward a destination, life would not be futile. If some of our actions would have at least some reasonable meaning, if the present was followed by eternal bliss, life would be worthwhile. People are becoming more comfortable with interpreting ambivalence as deception. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 8
The brain does much of its necessary resolving and categorizing unconsciously, in the same way that we recognize an ordinary tomato at a grocery store of eliminate the conflict between moving lips ad sounds without realizing it. Our working models of the World are like the air we breathe. We usually do not notice them. However, even when we do not consciously pick up on anomalies, we remain exceptionally sensitive to them. What would make life no longer futile is some feature of the destination, not merely the fact that it is a destination; and what would make life worthwhile is not merely the eternity of the next life but the bliss which it would confer—eternal misery and torture would hardly do. About the bliss in the next life, if there is such a next life, there is no inclination to ask “What for?” or “So what?” However, if bliss in the next life is not in need of any further justification, why should any bliss that there might be in the present life need justification? Our perceptually powerful expectations o not merely guide how we simplify ambiguity. When violated, this also determine where we look for meaning. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 8
Yet something more—another persistent and powerful theme beyond our tendencies toward closure—is embedded in the stories and examples we have examined. When we work at puzzles, we are engaging with the shortfalls of out instinctual answers. A person driving to the beach on a crowded Sunday, may, upon finally getting there, reflect on whether the trip was really worthwhile. Or, after undertaking a series of medical treatments, somebody may ask whether it was worth the time and the money involved. Such questions make sense because the discomfort of a car ride and the time and money spent on medical treatments are not usually judged to be valuable for their own sake. Again, a woman who has given up a career as a physician in order to raise a family may ask herself whether it was worthwhile, and in this case the question would make sense not because she regards the raising of a family as no more than a means, but because she is weighing it against another good. Many successful men and women have found ways to unshackle themselves from the mind’s compulsive desire to eliminate ambiguity. #RyanPhillipe 4 of 8
Even within psychological science, we have seen that progression is not necessarily neat and linear. However, if somebody is very happy, for any number of reasons—because he is in love, because he won the Nobel prize, because his child recovers from a serious illness—and if this happiness does not prevent him from doing or experiencing anything else he regards as valuable, it would not occur to him to ask “Is it worthwhile?” Relinquishing anger bring us many benefits. We are free to experience emotional comfort ad ease, gratitude for the daily opportunities to grow and heal, mutual caring with another without subtle “strings attached,” improvement in healthy, and more life energy. These breakthroughs allow us to move up to a more effective ad effortless state of inner freedom. When we have kaleidoscopic mind, one which contains mirrors and colors, whose reflections produce changing patterns that are visible through an eyehole when the tube is rotated, it helps us to break free from the vise grip of our suppositions and be more creative. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 8
It is worth recalling here that we live not in the distant future, but in the present and also, in a sense, in the relatively near future. To bring the subject down to Earth, let us consider some everyday consequences: A man with a toothache does to a dentist, and the dentists helps him so that toothache disappears. A man is falsely accused of a crime and is faced with the possibility of a severe sentence as well as with the loss of his reputation; with the help of a devoted attorney his innocence is established, and he is acquitted. It is true that a hundred years later all of the participants in these events will be dead and none of them will then be able to enjoy their accomplishments nor any of the efforts involved. However, this most emphatically does not imply that the dentist’s efforts were not worthwhile or that the attorney’s work was not worth doing. To bring in the consideration of what will or will not happen in the remote future is, in such and many other though certainly not in all human situations, totally irrelevant. #RyanPhilippe 6 of 8
Culture determines how we reduce ambiguity and make sense of nonsense. Not only is the finality of death irrelevant here; equally irrelevant are the facts, if they are facts, that life is an endless cycle of the same kind of activities and that the history of the Universe is not a drama with a happy ending. All striving is pointless if it is without final consequence and that it scarcely matters how we live if we all end in the dust of death. My life has been dedicated to cultivating an empathy born of resisting that very reductionism. Striving is not pointless if it achieves what it is intended to achieve even if it is without final consequence, and it matters a great deal how we live if we have certain standards and goals, although we all may not yet be able to avoid the dust of death. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 8
However, in the future avoiding the dust of death may be possible through science and technology, but the more I read and learn, I am not sure if one would want to avoid passing on to the next realm. If eternal bliss is promise for those who have done well, leaving this World behind may be a blessing. My parents tell me the hardest part of dying is on the people you leave behind, but live a good life and we will all be reunited, and just because someone is rich or famous does not make them better, you are a child of God and that in itself is special, and focus on being a good person. Love unconditionally, learn to let go, and heal. They resisted simple, edifying stories that suggested a neatly categorized World. (www.thedeedl.com) #RyanPhillippe 8 of 8
A Moment in the Life of Dr. Phliz after the Drake Concert
Post Sunset and the first taste of Autumn was in the warm air. I had been hanging back on the outlying bordering areas of the thick sinister little Drake concert after party, scanning one mind after another, letting the hubbub cash against me, smelling the perfume of the cigarette smoke, hot blood and male cologne, and grooving now and then on the pure avarice and cynicism of the group. Speakers all around poured out a low thumping rap song that came on like a collective heartbeat. As Russian women were being imported through the young arrogant pimp—slick brown hair, fashionably emaciated, Armani jacket, shiny enthusiastic face, who worked his guest, buyers all, in methamphetamine fits and starts, bragging about the “White flesh, the blonde hair, the freshness, the class” he had coming in from his connections in Moscow and St. Petersburg. “You have never seen so much white gash.” The trade was so rich they could replace the girls every six months; we pass them on down the line, do not worry, how was that for a guarantee? “I am talking crème de la crème, I am talking ladies who will score a thousand a half-hour, we pack with clothes or without, I am talking unbroken flow to the point of purchase.” #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7
I narrowed in on the pimp, and the big rawboned oversold bodyguard who was hovering around him, a drone in a badly cut dinner jacket with traces of white powder on his lapels. Drug slobs. All of them drug slobs. Even the white-jacket waiters passing glasses of champagne were high. The bald-headed man from Oakland pushed his way to the pimp: how much for the redhead? He wanted a right to top anybody’s price, “hear me?” They were all giving him the word in passing whispers, and he was now staring at me full-time. Granting that some people after once realizing their doom cannot banish the thought of it from their minds, so much so that it interferes with all their other activities, this is neither inevitable nor at all common. It is, on the contrary, in the opinion of all except some existentialist morbid and pathological. The realization that one is a mortal does not in the case of most people prevent them from engaging in activities which they regard as valuable or from enjoy the things they used to enjoy. To be told that one is not living “authentically” if one does not brood about death day and night is simply to be insulted gratuitously. And this was certain not as great as music by 2Pac or Notorious BIG. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7
A person who knows that his talents are not as great as he would wish or that he is not as handsome as he would have liked to be, or that he is not a real rapper is not usually judged to live “inauthentically,” but on the contrary to be sensible if he does not constantly brood about his limitations and shortcomings and uses whatever talents he does possess to maximum advantage. You have been watching me face to face long enough that I feel like you should know me and what I am all about. Sure, there are a lot stories of who I am and people try to play into them, but you see it is not working. I find it amazing that people who have never talked to me a day in my life are obsessed with me and think they know what I am all about. A guy from Detroit with beautiful white hands was murmuring on about how he would put that young lady up in a crib in Miami Beach and give her anything she wanted, lady like that, you could not let this business dumb you down to where—the claim that death is better than life. It should be remembered that we are here concerned with such pronouncements when they are intended not merely as the expression of certain moods, but as statements which are in some sense true or objectively warranted. It may be argued that a value comparison—any judgment to the effect that A is better or worse than B or as good as B—makes sense only if both A and B are, in the relevant respects, in principle open to inspect. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 7
If somebody says, for example, that Reese Witherspoon is a better actress than Neve Campbell, this seems quite intelligible. Or, again, if it is said that life for Jewish people is better in the United States of American than it was in Germany under the Nazis, this also seems readily intelligible. Or if someone says that there is discrimination in the housing code in San Francisco, California USA because if an earthquake strikes and destroys a significant number of San Francisco’s soft-story residential buildings (building with three or less units), the city will face an instant housing crisis because most of the units within these buildings are currently rent controlled. If these buildings collapse, they will be rebuilt in the absence of such tenant protection codes, and former residents would like be priced out of the housing market (source: Alastair Bland of East Bay Express), as opposed to Colin Kaepernick sitting down during the national anthem, as a protest, claiming there is ongoing discrimination, but not sighting specific codes of violation. In such cases the terms of the comparison are observable or at any rate describable. #RyanPhillipe 4 of 7
I smiled at the pimp. I had my elbows on the black iron fence behind me, heel hooked on the lower bar, black sunglasses down. White polo shirt and khaki short and white tennis shoes on. I loved my own clothes. The pimp sidled over, throwing sharp highly personal smiles here and there like cheap necklaces at Mardi Gras. On my right side (she was on my left) he said, “Give you a hundred grand for her now, no questions asked, got the cash in my coat.” “What if she does not go for it?” I asked, eyes on the shifting clattering party. Sudden smell of caviar, cheeses, fresh fruits, hmmm. “I will take care of that,” he said, with a scornful laugh. “You just take the other guy and leave her here.” “And later on?” I asked. “There is no later on. Do you know who I am?” He felt sorry for me. “You are fancy but you are stupid. Two hundred thousand for her. Take it or leave it. Five seconds. No more.” I burst into a soft laugh. I looked into his heartless frenzied eyes. Pupils enormous. Stanford Law School, drug trade, female slavery. Up and up and down and down. He flashed his glossy perfectly bleached teeth. “You should have asked around about me,” he said. “Want a job? I will teach you so much people will think you are smart.” #RyanPhillippe 5 of 7
“Get the host a chair,” I said to the first waiter I could snare. Half the drinks on his tray crashed into the other. Customers turning, murmuring. After all, the host had slipped down to the tile floor. Not so good for the slave trade. If the conception of an afterlife is intelligible, then it would make sense for a believer or for somebody who has not made up his mind to say such things as, “Death cannot be worse than this life” or “I wonder if it will be any better for me after I am dead.” Again, the survivors can meaningfully say about a deceased individual “It is better (for the World) the he is dead” or the opposite. For the person himself, however, if there is no afterlife, death is not a possible object of observation or experience, and statements by him that his own life is better than, as good as, or worse than his own death, unless they are intended to be no more than expressions of certain wishes or moods, must be dismissed as senseless. At first sight the contention that in circumstances under discussion value comparison between life and death are senseless many seem implausible because of the widespread tendency to think of death as a shadowy kind of life—as sleep, rest, or some kind of home-coming. Such descriptions may be admirable as poetry or consolation, but taken literally they are simply false. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7
Sometimes I wonder why no one wants to take me out and show me a good time? Luscious gloom of hotel mezzanine floor, marble and golden lights, mirrored elevator, swoosh of doors, glowing fields of carpet, gift shop full of pink stuffed monsters, heavy glass, outside pavements, filth, shrieks of tourist laughter, innocent and deodorized half-naked people of all ages in wrinkle-free scraps of brightly dyed clothing, paper trash in gutters, glorious heat, screeching roar of the crowded Oracle Arena. So many…many good people…so very happy. When the small self is transcended, the true inner Self shines forth. Let go and let God. Be still and know that I am God. Turn your life and will over to the care of God as you understand Him. Surrender to what is, for God is in all thing. Those who do not consciously have any religious or spiritual goals have remarked that it facilitates their capacity of lovingness, which is substantially increases their happiness and well-being. God is one of the major archetypes in the unconscious, each person has to take a position about God whether they like it or not. God brings resolution to long standing conflicts. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7
No Matter how Hard Life is the Ability to Love and Be Loved makes it Worthwhile
Sometimes I am utterly overwhelmed by the transitory nature of all human achievements. Some much tragedy has happened in recent years, that many fear today or tomorrow, a hazard or passing will come to someone we love, and nothing will be left, but stench and worms. Hopefully my affairs will never be forgotten, may the live on for hundreds of years. The fate of man sometimes reminds me of the traveler in the Eastern tale who, pursued by an enraged beast, seeks refuge in a dry well. At the bottom of the well he sees a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. To escape the enraged beast above and the dragon below, he looks around he notices that two eagles are gnawing at the stem of the twig. He realizes very soon that the twig will snap and he will fall to his doom, but at the same time he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the branch and reaches out with his tongue to lick them. So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces….I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure…I only saw the unescapable dragon and the eagles, and I could not tear my gaze from them. And this is not a fable, but the real unanswerable truth. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
These considerations inevitably lead to the conclusion that life is unpredictable, and no reasonable meaning can be given to a single action or to a whole life. What ways out are available to a human being who finds himself in this terrible position? The first way out is ignorance. People who adopt this solution (chiefly very dull people) have simply not or not yet faced the questions that were tormenting him. Once a person has fully realized what being mortal means, this solution is not available to him. Another way is the of Epicureanism, which consists in admitting the hopelessness of life, but seizing as many of life’s pleasures as possible while they are within reach. It consists in disregarding the dragon and the eagles and licking the honey in the best way, especially if much of it is around. This solution is adopted by the majority of the people belonging to my circle, by which means the well-to-do ad intellectuals. Nonetheless, the vast majority of human beings are not well-to-do hence have little or no honey at their disposal and also because of it is a matter of accident whether one is among those who have honey or those who have not. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
Moreover, it requires a special moral dullness, which I myself lack, to enjoy the honey while knowing the truth about being mortal and the deprivations of the great majority of other mortals. Another solution is to remove oneself from the World, but that is not the way of the strong nor those who are full of energy. The ability to live is chosen by people who are exceptionally strong and consistent people. After they realize that is it better to be alive than not to exists, and they find that life has meaning. The means for living a great life are readily at the hands of everybody, but one cannot be too cowardly nor too irrational to avail themselves of them. Finally, there is the way of honor. This consists in seeing the truth ad clinging to life nevertheless, People of this kind have the strength to act rationally. When people say life is short, they are actually intelligent and realistic in their summary and surely have conceded that there is much truth in the pessimists’ claim. Stated differently, what they are saying is that few people achieve real and lasting happiness, that the joys of life (where there are any) pass away much too soon, that totally unpredictable events frequently upset the best intention and wreck the nobles plans—this and much more along the same line is surely undeniable. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5
Although one should not dogmatize that there will be no significant improvements in the future, the fate of past revelations, undertaken to rid man of some of his apparently avoidable suffering, does not inspire great hope. The thought of being mortal, too, even in those who are not so overwhelmed by it can be quite unendurable. Moreover, to many who have reflected on the implications of physical theory it seems plain that because of the constant increase of entropy in the Universe al life anywhere will eventually cease to exist. Forebodings of this this kind actually move people to be good people and achieve the most they can in life and do it in an honest fashion. All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a Universe in ruins. In the longest run the sum of all human endeavor has no recognizable significance. So make the best of your situation no matter how great or bleak it seems to you. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
Do not waste your life being mean and bitter because death is something terrible as it terminates the possibility of any of the experience we value, and thinking about being mortal is what scares so many people. And if something, y, is bad because it is the termination of something, x, this can be so only if x is good or have positive value. If x were not good, the termination of x would not be bad. One cannot consistently say they hate life, and it is worthless, and fear death. That is a contradiction. If life did have positive value prior to one’s realization of death but that once a person has become aware of the inevitability of his destruction life becomes unbearable and that this is the real issue. Why he that cuts off twenty years of life cuts off so many years of fearing being a mortal. Grant that, and then is death a benefit: so are we some have abridged their time of fearing death. Stated differently, when people know they did not make the best of their lives and did not enjoy it to the best of their ability, then in their old age they condemn life, but secretly they wish that they were still young and could go on living longer. Life is not easy, but most people enjoy being here. The ability to love and be loved makes it all worth it. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
