Category Archives: Philosophy
Einstein: “A horse for single harness”
“My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women. I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or team work. I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or state, to my circle of friends, or even to my own family. These ties have always been accompanied by a vague aloofness, and the wish to withdraw into myself increases with the years.
Such isolation is sometimes bitter, but I do not regret being cut off from the understanding and sympathy of other men. I lose something by it, to be sure, but I am compensated for it in being rendered independent of the customs, opinions, and prejudices of others, and am not tempted to rest my peace of mind upon such shifting foundations.”
Excerpt from an essay by Albert Einstein (Living Philosophies):
Happiness
I guess intelligent people could argue about whether happiness is something that happens to you or something you can make happen. Gary van Warmerdam believes and, more importantly, makes me believe, we can achieve happiness. We can make it happen. This is a topic I don’t post on too often. The idea of “changing your life” can sound weird if you’re not “ready.” When you are, Mr. van Warmerdam might be just the guy to help you get there.
Note: Gary was probably the one person most responsible for introducing me to meditation practice.
The Loser Decision
Reply
“It’s an objective fact that life often presents us with choices where the comfortable decision leads nowhere and one that threatens your ego has all the potential in the world. You need a healthy ego to endure the abuse that comes with any sort of success. The trick is to think of your ego as your goofy best friend who lends moral support but doesn’t know shit.”
— Scott Adams
Rounders vs. Accumulators
“Most people have at least a few big problems in their life. But the vast majority of life’s problems are the little kind. There are two ways to deal with the little problems.
ROUNDERS: This group rounds things off. A problem that’s a two on a scale of one to ten gets rounded to zero. If a rounder has five problems that are all about a two on a scale of one to ten, he’ll tell you he has no problems.
ACCUMULATORS: Accumulators add up all the little problems until they equal one big problem. If an accumulator has five problems that are each a two on a scale of one to ten, that feels like having one problem that’s a ten.
At the end of this thought-provoking post, Mr. Adams gives his readers an assignment: Describe your own job in one sentence. For example: “I help people hate each other.” (Divorce Lawyer)
That “in one sentence” part makes it very difficult. The best I could come up with is: “I drive one of the Sunday School buses for the Church of the Web.”
Life After Death
“A must read for everyone who will die.” That’s how one reviewer describes Deepak Chopra’s “Life After Death.” I ordered the book after seeing Dr. Chopra on The Colbert Report. The title pretty much describes the book which got a fair amount of highlighter (my measure of good non-fiction). Here’s one graf from page 239:
“In spiritual terms the cycle of birth and rebirth is a workshop for making creative leaps of the soul. The natural and the supernatural are not doing different things but are involved in transformation on separate levels. At the moment of death the ingredients of your old body and old identity disappear. Your DNA and everything it created devolve back to their simple component parts. Your memories dissolve back into raw information. None of this raw material is simply recombined to produced a slightly altered person. To produce a new body capable of making new memories, the person who emerges must be new. You do not acquire a new soul, because the soul doesn’t have content. It’s not “you” but the center around which “you” coalesces, time after time. It’s your zero point.”
I’ve never studied or researched reincarnation, but I’ve always had a curiosity about and openess to the idea. In 1988 I wrote:
“As I think about the idea of a past existence, I feel a fondness for this “earlier me”. A sense of gratitude for whatever spiritual progress he was able to achieve. At the same time, I feel a sense of anticipation or expectation for my “next life”. And some responsibility to that future self. I’d like to move him (or her?) along as far as I can on this “cosmic lap.” To move him closer to…a perfect consciousness? Nirvana?”
“Mixed in with all of that is a sense of relief that I don’t have to complete everything in this lifetime. This is not the only shot I’ll get. And this awareness is vital because we all know –consciously or subconsciously– that we won’t “get it all done” in a spiritual sense. We hope (and work) for progress but a single” lifetime seems hopelessly short.”
Upon rereading the full post, I’m struck by how close I got (to Dr. Chopra’s explanation), given my complete ignorance.
I confess I could never stretch my common sense and logic (and faith?) around many of the stories in the Bible. And my recent read of Richard Dawkins’ case for atheism (The God Delusion) didn’t convince me. But I really enjoyed Life After Death and will read more by Dr. Chopra.
Now I’m worried about Scott Adams
Is it even remotely possible that Scott Adams is reading this blog? In October I offered some thoughts on worry:
We know –looking back– that most of the things we worried about did NOT happen. The really bad shit that happens in life is almost always totally unexpected. Out of the blue (or black, if you prefer). Didn’t see it coming at all.
Today, Dilbert’s dad took the idea up a notch or two:
First, I’m not worried about any problem that we can see coming. If you look at the history of the world, almost any time we thought we knew something bad was going to happen AND we had years of warning, things turned out okay.
I’m just saying…
The five things that matter
I’ve been feeling a little ancient lately, but Halley Suitt reminds me that’s not one of the five things that matter. Five for five.
Some days, I feel so so so so old. I feel a bit like Methuselah, who, if you recall, lived 900 years. Being old, you forget sometimes what it’s like to be young. You just don’t get it.
I feel old when I talk to people who are something like 18 or 23 or 36 and they are all caught up in stupid stuff that doesn’t matter and once you’re a little aged like me, you want to tell them … “but, that thing, … that thing you’re worrying about, … see, you don’t get it yet, … but that doesn’t matter. Just doesn’t matter at all.”
Of course it would be rude and annoying to say that kind of comment, so you keep it to yourself.
So the good part of being old is knowing what really doesn’t matter. And that what does matter, you can count on the fingers of one hand. You know they would have given us hands with 17 fingers if all that stupid stuff counted.
There really are only about five things that matter:
Thumb: You love someone.
Pointer: Someone loves you.
Middle Finger: Your work: you have the bravery to do what you love and really become yourself and screw what anyone else thinks about it.
Ring Finger: Connection to people, family, friends
Pinky: Eat, drink, be merry.
Scott Adam’s secret to success
“My other superpower is that I don’t mind embarrassing myself in public. If I had to pick one quality that best predicts success (other than wanting to be successful) it would be the willingness to risk embarrassment.”
— Scott Adams
I am not a team player
I think I cooperate and collaborate well, but I’m not good at being on The Team. Coaches and Team Leaders tell us, “Come on! We can accomplish so much more if we work together as a Team. We gotta pull together!” Once a Team is formed, one of the first orders of business is to choose a “team captain” who tells the rest of the Team what to do. They tend to have the greatest appreciation for the need for “teamwork.” This is exactly the kind of thinking that makes me a poor team player.
But I love to play the game. Hated Little League…loved playing Indian Ball in the field in front of our house. Hated varsity basketball…loved pick-up games at the park. We had teams but they were temporary. We’d play a couple of games and then switch up sides. If the game was too one-sided, we’d adjust the teams to get a closer game. It was about having a good game, see? Not which team won.
Religion has teams (Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, etc.) and leagues (Christians; Jews; Muslims; etc.). If you are “on” a team, it’s okay to hate –and sometimes kill– members of the other team. Usually God (yours, not theirs) says it’s okay to do this. Sometimes you even have to die for your team.
There are only two teams in the game of politics: Republicans and Democrats. If you want to play, you have to be on one of those teams. Recently, politics has gotten all mixed up with religion. The star player for the Republican team is a dim-witted good old boy with a rich daddy, but very religious. If you believe the polls, almost nobody –including the folks on his own team– thinks this guy is doing a good job. If the other team (in this case, the Democrats) wasn’t waiting in the dugout to say “we told you so,” most people on the Republican team would send W and his pals back to Texas where he couldn’t do much harm.
The United States Congress is hopelessly fucked up and it’s all because of the teams. Is there even anything in our constitution about Republicans and Democrats? I don’t think so. So here’s what I’d do. At the beginning of every session of congress, we divide up into two groups, by random drawing. Instead of parties or teams, we’ll call one group the Chipmunks and the other the Ground Squirrels (so they won’t take themselves so seriously). If you get reelected and come back next year, you might be in the other group so there’s no point in fucking them over this year. Since we’re reshuffling the deck every year and you don’t have any permanent “team members,” it becomes more about the game than the teams.
All of which explains why I was always chosen last.