Category — philosophy

There are approximately ten thousand posts backed up in my brain right now, but I've no idea when I'll get a chance to write them, so instead you get one of the (many!) good bits from the Tao Te Ching:

In dwelling, be close to the land.

In meditation, go deep in the heart.

In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.

In speech, be true.

In ruling, be just.

In business, be competent.

In action, watch the timing.

No fight: No blame.

-Chapter Eight

(No, that question wasn't meant to sound filthy, but bonus points to you if it did I guess.  ;)

I've been thinking a lot about that "last inch" lately — the immediate reference in my mind is to V for Vendetta, but it goes farther than that – and yes, times are crazy, as tend to be those that spur such thinking.  Here are some of those thoughts, and of course I'm interested in hearing yours, too.

• The last inch is maybe the first inch, in the sense that it's the first inch of power-cord after the place where you plug into the Source.  It's where the power is the most pure, and also the one remaining piece you need to have in order to say you ex-ist (literally, protrude out into the world of form).
• The last inch is where your mandates for living come from:  Think of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet (and read it if you haven't!), where he asks the young poet to dive down to the part of himself that is essentially, irrevocably alone, and ask it:  Must I write?  (Or "Must I [whatever]?")  If the last inch says yes, then that's not an optional part of life for you; it's part of how your connection to Life (the force) is defined.  In my mind this is similar to asking the coupling on a fiber connection, "Must it be pulses of light?" For someone else — a Cat5-person perhaps — the answer to that wouldn't be "yes, it must"; but if your interface demands it, it must.
• Expanding on that, you can't give away your last inch unless your intent is to give away life, the Universe and everything; and to do that is suicide, so you'd generally better not!  …But if you don't recognize what your last inch is composed of, you may not recognize that you shouldn't offer it up, for someone else, or in exchange for something you really want.  The last inch is dangerous if it's unknown I think.
• Back to "fiber people" and "copper people"…Rilke says that there's a place inside each of us where we're totally alone, and I agree with that — we all go there in the moments before death, at least — but I think for some of us it's our last inch, and for others it isn't.  Some people are made to be bundled — most of them, actually.  But while communication is an essential part of life for almost all of us — what good is a totally isolated interface? — for some of us, a certain amount of insulation is necessary.  We are, perhaps, sensitive to interference, right in that most delicate of places; right where we plug in.

Your last inch can keep you alive, keep you going in the face of amazing adversity, if you know where it is.  And if you don't know where it is and what it requires to function, you can accidentally damage it, which is the spiritual equivalent of damaging your lungs.  

I have time to catch up on projects this weekend, and one that I'm spending a lot of time with is my last inch…when you next get the chance, I recommend this activity highly…while at the same time slapping an NC-17 on it, because good fracking oil-earthquakes is it scary!  ;)

My friend Scott K., who is a regular spouter of wisdom, recently shared with me this gem from a conversation he had with someone who was attempting to — hold your breath for this one — support the Randian "philosophy" espoused in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.  I'm thrilled to re-post his arguments here, because a) they're very good, if not exactly what my slightly-more-cynical self would say; and b) I hate writing about Rand myself because it just makes me froth – on a very real level I don't think her "arguments" are even worth taking seriously enough to rebut, so I just go all OMG ARE YOU SERIOUS MORON at people who defend them.  Scott does a much better job of giving real answers, and not only are they patient and accurate, but I can totally get behind his thinking, which is based pretty firmly in the Golden Rule.  Go, Scott!  ;)

[I can't speak to the veracity of Sergio Marchionne's speech yet, but Scott was nice enough to score me a bit of it, so perhaps -- assuming it's less rage-inducing than Rand, heh -- I'll address that bit separately later.  Also, all the emphases below are mine. --PD]

When I read Atlas Shrugged, I felt like Rand was completely overlooking how we have come to this state of society – we all work together to make a better place, and we pass that down not just to our own children, but to everyone.  I owe (along with those lost to history) those people who decided to build our national infrastructure of roads using public money, which changed the fate of our country in incredible ways.  I owe the people who determined that my mom didn't have to pay taxes because she didn't make enough to buy me shoes as a baby, because I would not be where I am now if she wasn't given the chance to succeed.  She never accepted welfare, but it wasn't because she wasn't eligible.



On a personal level, I think that while my success in life is certainly not possible without my own efforts, it is also a matter of blind luck at having been born where, when, and to whom I was born to, and that if I didn't have the benefits I did not earn before I was of working age, I would be in significant trouble.  



I am proud of the things I have done and the person I have tried to be, but our country does not owe me – I owe it.  And I think that everyone else who has driven on public roads, enjoyed greenery that would otherwise be developed, has flouridated water, and enjoys vehicles that get more than 10 miles to the gallon also owe those people.  I can't pay it back to them, so I pay it forward.



Everyone in society benefits from keeping people healthy and educated.  Whether they deserve it or not, whether they have worked hard for it or not, allowing people to wallow in their miserable, painful lives until their untimely death does not help our GDP, and it is not moving forward toward a society I want to be in.  It is not in our self-interest as a nation to not take care of our own, unless you subscribe to the brutal eugenics some people mistake for natural selection, and in that case, it is a step too far for me.  The people Atlas Shrugged would reject are human beings as valid as any 'hard worker' is, with just as much of a right to exist (ethically speaking).



If a small portion of my income goes to someone who buys twinkies as their only source of pleasure and sustenance, I don't care.  It is a very small price to pay for having the opportunity to be college-educated, to work in a comfortable office, to make more money than I need to survive, to have medical insurance, to be able to get in my car and drive anywhere in this entire country I want to go, at my own whim, when other people are literally incapable of leaving the city because they can't afford the time off, the gas, or car.  I have friends who can loan me cash if I need it, family who can take me in if I'm suddenly unemployed, and I live in a society that will help me pay my bills because it is better for me to find a job and continue to contribute than to lose me forever.



I would prefer for there not to be waste or greed or corruption, but this is the real world, and just like communism is a failure (by its own rules) due to human greed, strict and total free market capitalism is a societal failure due to the corruption and greed of individuals.  People do NOT behave in their best long-term interest, and corporations don't either – they behave in ways that are best for the short-term gain of their stockholders, to the folly of future generations.  No offense to stockholders. ;)



I accept that I worked hard for money that will go toward some things I do not desire and would not choose.  I think the fear that other people might get something that they don't deserve when we're talking about a block of cheese or a flu shot, is cruel and sad.  That doesn't mean I won't stand up and make my opinions known, or try to influence my politicians toward where I think my money should be spent.



There are also people who work their asses off, put themselves through college, get laid off through no fault of their own, become homeless, and die due to those conditions.  I know of no technique to determine the difference between those who "deserve" charity and those who do not with 100% certainty.  Either way, though, I have it so, so much better than so many people in this world, both through skill and luck, and I think it is ridiculous hubris for me to think that I should not be contributing to my community and society.  I don't believe in God, but the phrase "There but for the grace of God go I" has rung through my head ever since (yes, I'm invoking her) my grandmother said it to me, and I try to always keep it in mind.  [I love that phrase; I just shorten it to "There but for Grace go I".  However, keeping God in it is a nice reminder to Christians, I think, that in spite of what most Megachurches will tell you nowadays, God does not in fact ensure that all the people he likes are born white and wealthy as a reward for their awesomeness, and Jesus was pretty clear about making sure that everyone is taken care of, whether you think they deserve it or not.  And speaking of deserving things, people who claim to be Christian and Randian deserve to explode in a flaming gout of poor reading comprehension.  -PD]



I believe in the power of capitalism to move society forward, just as I believe that someone with power -must- represent those interests that are -NOT- met by money alone.  [And I totally want to discuss this bit more with Scott, because I'm not sure I do believe it...but I love him and I respect his opinions enough to post all of them.  ;)]

Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Chrysler and Fiat, had a few things to say about what's going on right now and what impact it has on business at a conference recently.  He is one of the most incredibly successful CEOs to exist in this generation, having brought back companies from the brink of death, and I believe firmly in the things he said.



He ended his speech with this: "This is a story of revitalization in a company that was regarded as irrelevant, set in a city that had been disparaged as a failure.  It is just one example of how impossible feats of recovery can be achieved if we work together in good faith, realizing that we have a stake in each other's success." 

Yes, yes, there are exercise (new plan, woot!) and sleep updates (still polyphasic, adjustment symptoms present but minimal) — but there's also something more important to talk about, so Imma do that for a minute first.

I think I've found a major piece of the difference between being a Good vs a Bad person.  Now, quick, two caveats:

• I'm totally using the words "Good" and "Bad" as shorthand — I'm referring, not to moral judgment or societal normative values, but to a subjective value of positiveness that we can all (objectively) agree with:  "Good" people have few regrets, and can sleep with the ones they have, and go through their days feeling generally light-hearted and prone to kindness.  "Bad" people are bitter, chewed by old regrets and more concerned with their own daily unhappiness than much else.  Sure there's a continuum, but most people at least perceive themselves (and others) as falling more on one side of the scale than the other. 
• There's nearly a whole branch of Philosophy devoted to what it means "to be" any kind of "person".  The common vernacular is to take it as a statement of identity — of am-ness — but I would caution against that, tempting as it is.  It almost always results in moral judgments and illogic.  Consider this construction, of "being a Good/Bad person" to be a major shorthand as well — shorthand for a complex emotional and psychological dynamic state of being that comprises a great part of our self-perceived degree of happiness, and is, if not the same thing as "me", a really major part of what it means to live "my" life.  That one is preferable goes without saying, and it's inarguable from a valid first-person perspective which abides.  That's really all we need from it for this topic.

It goes without saying that being "Good" makes it easier to continue being Good and being "Bad" makes propagation of that state more likely too.  Those who are Bad and want to be happy have to make a serious effort to change their thinking, or something must change it for them:  anger and pain create more of the same.

The reigning theory, as presented to me by my world anyway, is that Good people have been dealt less shit in this world.  Having been mistreated, victimized, and made to suffer is considered the thing that "causes" Badness.  (Or else it's considered just a choice by judgmental people, but I'm not even entertaining that view for now.  I feel I could shoot it down easily if needed.)  People in that state of Badness, even, often claim that they're responding in the only or natural way to some victimization(s) they have suffered.

I submit that I have seen no evidence that suffering causes Badness, though certainly the more of it one has, the more opportunity for Badness is present*.  It's easier to not be bitter, regretful and to lash out at others with your pain when you're in very little pain**, sure.  But correlation, as we Americans really ought to all have tattooed on our pseudoscientific foreheads, is not causation.

*However, so is more opportunity for Goodness.  I'm not going to stop to explain why, as I think it's obvious with a little pondering, but it is cool to note that, if the below is true, people who haven't eaten shit sandwiches are neither Good nor Bad.
**I would argue that no living human being is in no pain.  It's not possible.  Loss and hurt are integral parts of our existence from day one.  And anyone who says otherwise is selling something.  ;)

But I think that, recently, I did identify something that seems the cause and root of Badness in people.  It's tough to find a perfect name for, but we could call it any of the following:  resistance; denial; unwillingness to grant the inevitability of what is; arrogance concerning reality; failure to accept the is-ness of the present; harboring a constant internal "NO".

I've talked about this thing before — as have many — but today I saw in it a core-ness that I don't think I'd recognized previously.  I don't think Acceptance (to pick a word) is a/the key to happiness anymore…I think it may be the single difference; the sufficient condition; the jumper-switch itself, the thing that means there will be Goodness or Badness in a person (and in direct proportion to their level/concentration of Acceptance).

Sadly, I learned this by watching a largely-Good person go startlingly (and hopefully temporarily) Bad* as a result of lack of Acceptance in the face of a nasty loss.  I had the opportunity (though nothing was pleasant about it) to watch as failure to accept, refusal to live with, and insistence on the wrongness of reality literally ate someone's heart alive.  I watched all the selflessness and kindness and compassion and strength (and there was so, so much of that) in someone turn to endless complaining, blaming, hatred and even greed.  Someone whose biggest flaw previously was probably a tendency to offer too much to people and give everyone the benefit of the doubt even when it was stupid became, in no more than a year, someone who grasped at everything perceived as "theirs"; someone who spewed bile and demanded that everyone take sides, and who lashed out at even people who tried to help.  Even after most of the people involved had put the unfortunate situation behind them, this person would bitterly bring it up, would nastily spread gossip, drop comments and toss out insults, at every opportunity.  And here's the thing:  This is a person who's been dealt mad shit before, who's been victimized on levels I could not imagine myself, but through honest appraisal of that reality had cultivated the aforementioned kindness and selflessness, turning victimhood into compassion and depth of understanding. 

*I want to reiterate here that this is not about moral judgment. Bad in this context != wrong or deserving of punishment; in fact it is the punishment, albeit self-inflicted.

It was the difference that really rocked me.  Being served Plate of Shit #1 and working to accept it — not to condone or celebrate it, but to fully admit that it was, independent of judgments — created (after a long healing process no doubt; I wasn't there for it) a person whose Goodness–whose happiness in adverse circumstances, and willingness to love people and enjoy life–often left me speechless.  But later in life, being served Plate of Shit #2 (which was inarguably less shitty than Plate #1, too) and absolutely refusing to accept it created a person who, while far from entirely or purely Bad, drove away many with constant accusations and bitter ill-wishing, and suffered months and months of stewing in unpleasantness.

There's a lesson here — a big one.

Plates #1 and #2 both involved being betrayed by trusted people, hurt badly in the process, and then left to recover from it largely on one's own.  It's the kind of shit sandwich that we're all, I think, served up sometimes; and we all, or certainly most of us, go through a period of F U, of being stung and unable to deal with humanity for a while.  But then, the question is, do you eventually accept it, acknowledge that it's real and in essence, moral-less?  Do you come to that place (I remember well, about 4 months after my divorce, when I came to it) of saying "Well, that sucked, but life is life and there's no sense hating all over everything just because this happened; things can be ok anyway"? 

Now you may well say, "Well yes, but obviously more time, more healing, is needed" — and I completely agree.  But what is that healing?  What makes healing possible; how does it progress for some and stall for others?  I argue that the healing process, while it certainly must take different lengths of time* for different people eating different shit sandwiches, is inseparable from Acceptance.

*Though by my theory, in a person capable of "perfect" Acceptance, this period would be very very short.

I can't do anything (that I'm aware of) about what happened in the case that has provided such an education for me.  But I can take that lesson to heart, because it's also inarguable that I carry some bitterness and non-Acceptance with me, specifically about a shit sandwich the Universe served up for me last year.  I'm past the worst of it, but it still causes me a regular, pretty horrible kind of pain, and when it does I feel myself pulled back towards anger and railing against the unfairness of it all, plus hatred of the numerous people who did me wrong during that time.  And that absolutely affects how I act towards everyone, including myself.  I'm grateful for the clarity with which I can now see that those emotions and lack of Acceptance are, in fact, the same thing; and I'm grateful to be able to feel (i.e. know more than intellectually) the correlation between those things and Badness in me.  Lack of Acceptance makes me draw in, curl up, and snarl; makes me turn away from others, tending to offer nothing more than a middle finger no matter what their needs.  Even when I want to be kind and understanding, the pull inside me is towards coldness, avoidance, and if confronted, lashing out.

Bad people* have not, by and large, decided to be Bad*.  I bet that most of them strive daily to be Good.  But many don't understand — and it's not like this is advertised on billboards — that being Good is easy when the pull inside you is for it; and that pull is directly resultant from the level of Acceptance of What Is that you've cultivated.  (For a more detailed understanding of Acceptance of What Is, see all of Eastern philosophy…or as a shortcut see the definitions of hexagram #17, SUI  / FOLLOWING.)

*time to reiterate that caveat again…

No matter how bad what's happened is, by accepting it fully, we can keep it from making we ourselves Bad.

Wow, I apologize for the wording there…this stuff just makes julienned fries out of pronouns.  I hope the point survives, and if not, let me know; I'm happy to keep trying.  It's, well, what I do.  ;)

New quote added to the Random Quotes scroller:

"Seven Deadly Sins:
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Science without humanity
Knowledge without character
Politics without principle
Commerce without morality
Worship without sacrifice."  – Mahatma Gandhi

I like this more complete formulation of a "sin"…as a Catholic child I was basically taught that single words ("wealth", "pleasure", etc.) were "bad", without any reference to why or how or what could bring them into balance so they could be good.

Gandhi makes the excellent point that a thing or condition like Wealth or Knowledge can be good or bad, depending on whether it's in balance.

I might even add some others:

Cursing without grammar
Gifts without gratitude
Work without goals
Help without sympathy

…Can you think of any?

ON is OFF.

Or rather, ON is a natural state; OFF is something getting in its way.  To get to ON, you drop the stuff that's holding you in OFF — you take the OFF off.

The secret to mastery is to part the curtain of your own thinking; to get your mind out of the way so that you can interact directly, swim without a wetsuit, use all that sensory equipment in your cranium (and body) without forty "safety" filters in the way.  Those filters may be making you feel safer, but that's an illusion, a sales pitch; you're built to plug straight in.  This is Reality and you're a child of it, and if staring it right in the face shatters your whole frail tangly Psychology, guess what?  You didn't need it anyway. 

Are you made in God's image or not?  Does God need a mental hazmat suit to live in the world?  Is there any reason Adam and Eve can't go naked besides their own fear?

Everyone who has ever done something perfectly — sung, skateboarded, wrote, or even just sat in a room — knows this; you don't do it perfectly by doing it a certain way — you do it perfectly by getting the hell out of the way and letting it be done.  (This is why you have to learn to do it first; until the mechanics of it are rote, second-nature, you can't fully shut off your mind and let it come naturally.  Ask any martial artist.)

You don't think about the results, you don't think about how you look or why you're doing it.  You don't think.  You do, but not in the sense we construct that sentence in English:  "you" don't "do"; more you arrange things so that you are done.  (You yin-do, I would say.)  The activity, whatever it is, happens in a pure unfiltered form; you put yourself between it and Reality as a conduit.  You are spoken through, by Tao, or God if you don't mind sloppy definitions.

But look:  If you've ever sung, or danced, or climbed a mountain this way, you're missing the point if you think it's about singing or climbing; this is how you should be all the time.  This is what mastery of existence is.  Get rid of all the filters…the illusions of control, the attempts at planning, the mental blast-shielding.  The world may look radioactive, but it won't hurt you; in fact, when you do get hurt it's because your hazmat suit gets buffeted, twisted or heated and that hurts you.  Without it, you're invincible.

Isn't this the point of every story, the lesson of every hero?  Strip!  Walk completely without fear and there will be nothing to fear!  Turn off the targeting computer, Luke; suspend your critical disbelief, Bastien; let go of your past and your shame, Vash.  None of it is really helping you…in fact, the opposite is true. 

Pascal said that the source of all our discontent can be found in our inability to sit quietly in a room.  I think he meant our inability to shut things off (turn the OFF off) to the point where we can just sit — or just do anything.  But that's not to make it sound easy (simple, yes; easy, no)…turning off the targeting computer before taking the shot of your life with worlds hanging in the balance is actually kind of a weeny pale description of the level of stress and fear involved, for most people. 

But the fear is just the alarm-system on the hazmat suit; it is meaningless beyond its own confines.  Extreme or life-threatening activities cause you to skip over the fear, to ignore the alarms, because you don't have time, and physical survival is an easy way to trump the insistence of psychology that you Not Go There.  It's not actually hard to be fully present while clinging to the side of a mountain; and this is probably largely why people do it, and similar things. 

This is  why the true test is being able to "sit in a room"…when you can do that, you've managed to drop the curtain on your own, without some kind of emergency to distract you from the discomfort of it, or even a rote task like singing or painting to smooth the transition.

I've never sat in a room, not without some major emotional crisis going on that functioned pretty much the same as clinging to the side of a mountain.

I did, however, walk across a floor today.

It was amazing. 

Principles are those opinions you have about what's right and smart to do in life, and what isn't.  They're just opinions and everyone doesn't agree on them by a long shot, but they can still be a really useful, perhaps essential, part of living a good life…if they're used properly.  If not, they're just words, words that waste your time now and make you look and feel like an a-hole later.

Principles include things like "Don't lend or borrow money," "Be faithful to your spouse," and "Don't make major decisions too quickly."  They're usually, but not always, in this form — what's called a hypothetical imperative, which is a dictate based on a potential (hypothetical) situation.  I'm not a fan of using hypothetical imperatives as the rules by which to live one's life (hence why none of my Higher Laws are of this type–more on hypothetical imperatives here and here), because they're simplifications and don't apply to everyone in every situation — but that doesn't make them useless.  Laws are one thing; principles are another.

Principles give you guide-wires in specific situations.  If I have a firm principle about spousal fidelity and I'm confronted with the opportunity to cheat, then I have a clear and automatic reason not to:  I can, by way of my principles, pre-decide, outside the heat of a difficult moment, how I would like to handle it. 

But of course principles only work if you, you know, use them.  Something that doesn't seem to be well-understood (at least in people I'm confronting lately) is that a principle is developed in the off-hours, when there's nothing specific happening (at least to you) and time to think, and used in the thick of things, when you have to make a difficult decision.  Some people seem to be all about the having of principles in-between tough decisions, but when the situation the principle is hypothesizing actually happens, they throw the principle away. 

And this is easy to do, which is the main reason you have to be willing to try not to do it — it's super easy to tell yourself, "Well, when I formed that principle, I had no idea I'd wind up in this particular situation" — of course you didn't; that's the point.  This situation is probably highly emotionally charged and tricky to think clearly in, and that's why you took the time beforehand to form a principle about what to do in these types of situations. 

And that was a wise idea:  There's a reason we value principles, principled people and principled actions — they make for better decisions, 99% of the time, over making snap judgments in the middle of heated situations.

Example 1:  Two different men have one too many drinks and wind up in fistfights.  Both win; both cock back for the final devastating blow.  One hasn't really given situations like this much thought; the other has thought, said and maybe even written about how important it is to use only just as much violence as necessary, and no more.  Those thoughts, and the cognitive dissonance created by being about to act contrary to so many prior statements, penetrate the adrenaline and the alcohol and stay Guy Two's hand.  Guy One is now in jail for seriously injuring someone.

(A similar example that may speak to more people is having a principle about not driving while intoxicated…I personally have seen that principle stop, and not stop, numerous tragedies.)

Example 2:  Two different women are passionately kissing men they'd really like to be in bed with, like, right-to-the-now.  Neither has access to birth control at the moment, but Girl One has a die-hard principle of don't mess around when it comes to birth control to fall back on.  She pulls back, and either engages in a lesser sex act for now, or learns in the nick of time that this guy is one of those douchebags who will try to push you into unsafe acts (and thus avoids a relationship that never should have been anyway).  Girl Two is now staring down the barrel of a much, much worse situation.

(For what it's worth, I've been both Guy Two and Girl One; and I've known both Guy One and Girl Two.  So those are not out-of-my-butt examples at all.)

So principles are great–different from Laws but still great to have–and can really improve the quality of your life.  But getting any use out of them requires two separate works:  First, carefully form them and Second, USE THEM when the time comes.  Generally speaking, if you have to talk yourself out of one of your principles in order to do something, you'll probably regret it — and it's a good idea to make it as difficult as possible to talk yourself out of them, especially the ones you really believe in. 

In the heat of a tricky situation, cognitive bias is in full swing, and your wider vision is impaired by emotional manipulations — yours and other people's.  That's exactly when you want to have good principles, and the guts to follow through and use them.  So why the tendency not to?

I suspect it comes down to Wanting To Be Right All The Time — we don't like admitting that there are such things as situations that make us lose control, where we can be manipulated by others and by our less-good selves.  But this fear is a self-fulfilling prophecy:  By letting it talk you out of using your principles when they're needed, they make you way more manipulable than you would be otherwise. 

Know Thyself, know your weaknesses, and put measures in place to shore them up in times of need.  (Oddly enough, this is advice I often give relating to polyphasic sleep, too.  Any endeavor that requires going up against your own weaknesses benefits from pre-thinking and principles.)

…By Ralph Waldo Emerson.  I copied some of this for a friend the other day, a friend who isn't as happy with "thick" reading as I am, and he made me realize that if you sift through the rather dense weave of old language and dense arguments with your fingers, you can pull gems out of Emerson that will make anyone's day. 

This is a list of the best sentences, if you will, from this excellent essay, with my adjustments and occasional commentary in brackets and elipses.  It's less a collection of quotes, and more an outline of the piece.  If you like it, please understand that the whole tangly mess is brilliant and wonderfully worth it to read and you should do it no matter how long it takes you; but for some geniuses like Emerson, even skimming the bones of his thoughts are marvelously good for ours, so I offer these here for the time-stripped and classics-averse to enjoy too.

• Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost

• Great works of art…teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility…most…when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
  

• We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.  …but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.  [I want that on a T-shirt.  In Chinese.]

• Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the [self-reliance] of every one of its members. … The virtue in most request is conformity.

• Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. 

  [There's a great part right after this where he describes a churchgoer asking him when he's young, essentially "how can you trust your impulses when they might come from the Devil?", and his answer is, "I don't think so, but (quote) If I'm the Devil's child, then I'll live from the Devil."  For Emerson, self-reliance meant having the guts to be what you were created to be, and having enough faith to not doubt the usefulness of your own creation.  <3!]

• Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none.

• I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

  [Italics mine.  An excellent example, perhaps one of the best, of a positive argument from existentialism!]

• It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

• The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character.

• But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

• The sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows.

• [There are some bits that just can't be condensed...the "foolish consistency" argument is amazing, but it's all or nothing...]

• Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.

• Be it how it will, do right now.  [If that's not Zen, I don't know what is.]

• Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative.

• That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.

  [Fascinating that we don't seem to have a story like that nowadays.]

• What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? 

  [This one I put in just for sheer gorgeousness, and to point out that science has informed beautiful literature for a long long time...this whole section is a great example.  And by the way, the "power" he's referring to here is Spontaneity or Intuition, if you were curious. ;)]

• The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.

• Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. 

  [This, and what follows it in the text, may be my favorite bit.]

• [Only Life] avails, not the having lived.

  [In the original it's "Life only avails", but that antiquated construction confuses the point for some people.  I love, love, love this one; I think it's the greatest wisdom one could possibly carry forward into growing old.  Only Life...not the "having lived".  It's sort of a restatement of my Higher Law #1:  Keep Trying.  Only said much, much better...but there's no shame at all in being jealous of Emerson I think.  (Well, he would think there was.  But he dead.  ;)]

• I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

• Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law.

• The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.

• Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good, — is vicious.  [AMEN!]

• Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.

• Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.

• Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.   [Fascinating point, which he supports with arguments later on; for example, "The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. ... He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun."]

• Great men…leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and, in his turn, [a] founder.

• Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long…They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.  But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature.

• Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.  [These are the last two lines. ;)]

*One last comment — Emerson refers to "man" and "manhood" throughout this piece, and others.  I believe his sexism is ignorance, and further I firmly believe that if I had an hour with the man, I could talk him right out of it, because he was obviously a clear thinker and a believer in honesty and universalism of principle.  Hence, it doesn't upset me here like it does in some other writings…in the time he was writing, to say anything else (he/she?) would have been pretty literally unthinkable; it would have been such a huge point as to require a separate essay.  But it is worth meditating on how this wasn't that long ago, really, that freedom and education and uprightness and full life meant, literally, "manhood".  And that not only doesn't it mean that today, but I can openly write here about it, throw my education around and furthermore, openly threaten to kick anyone's ass (or perhaps flash my tits at them) who disagrees with me.  Viva las modernity.  ;)

Boy, they weren't kidding when they said the answers are in you.  I'm learning so much philosophically from studying the mechanics of my own body, it isn't even funny; and it isn't funny how angry it's making me that there aren't classes in this in the academic world, either.

Here's something I learned from trying to perfect a Qi-driven punch.  (By the way, I capitalize Qi the way I'd imagine we'd capitalize Ocean if there was only one; and I italicize it to note that it's a transliteration of a foreign term and should be pronounced "chi".)

Intentional living is a lot, lot more about letting go at the right time than it is about reaching for anything.  Reaching, wanting, desiring things is pushing your energy out into a void, because the thing you're aiming for isn't there yet.  It's also, by necessity, neglecting to put that energy into doing the best you can with what you're already holding. 

Everything you hold, you will need to let go of.  Other things will be placed in front of you and you'll need to let go of some things in order to take new things; sometimes you'll also need to let go because it's just time for those things to enter non-existence (or time for you to).  Fearing or obsessing about what that's going to be like is both pointless (you simply can't know what it'll be like) and, again, wasting energy that you could be using to do the best job holding them that you can.

So you throw* a perfect punch* by using your energy correctly:  You focus on what you're holding; you be ready to let it go when it's time — not too soon, and not too late.  If you're ignoring it to reach for other things, or to fear letting it go when the time comes, you're letting go too soon.  By releasing (any energy: physical, emotional, etc) at just the right time, you gain incredible power.

In other terminology, perfect yang is surrounded by perfect yin.  Since we move in time, and the yang is a split instant whereas the yin is all the time that leads up to and follows it, the yin is much more accessible to our control. 

In other, other terminology, you can make a perfect action by getting all the stillness on either side of it just right.

*insert any verb & noun here

If you want to save your most valuable relationships, and all the prized possessions of your life (material and otherwise), you must do this, and you must do it quickly:  Admit that there is something miswired in your brain, a bit of bad code, and that that's what causes you to lash out, or in; to hate and fear and hurt.  Forgive yourself for this — it is not your fault — but admit that it is there.  And don't wait.

You may be afraid to do this, to admit this problem, because the next logical question is, "What do I do about such a huge and terrifying problem?  Who's going to fix my head, my heart, my soul for me?  Isn't a misconfiguration in my core something that only my Creator could fix??"  — I like to refer to this as Warranty Panic.  We all fear that we don't have access to the entity that built us; that we can't be taken back to the dealer for a repair.  This makes admitting that a repair is needed a truly terrifying thing, when you're talking about your own self, your personality, the awareness that runs your life.  But ignoring the smell of smoke is not the proper response — and anyway, thankfully all the panic is unnecessary.  Our Creator, whatever it was, made us to self-heal.

And this is an easy problem to heal.  You have all the tools and knowledge to do it already — even if you're old, or stupid, or a child.  How can this be, you ask?

You have all the tools because all you need to do is look at it. 

Not once, in some mega-special super-introspective way, under a Banyan tree.  Just in the regular way, but all the time — by noticing, every time you feel the pain, what your mind is doing.  Just…see it.  You don't have to have an opinion on it, or fix it, or blame anyone for it — just see it.  See it clearly, fully, feel it, and accept it.  If it happens to occur to you why your mind is doing this thing — because you were taught something, or experienced something, or are operating on an old assumption — well, great.  But that's not even necessary.  The light from the flashlight of your attention is the Vorpal Sword to this monster, and you need nothing else to stop the pain, now and forever.

Learn to pay attention to your mind.  Practice seeing it, watching what it's doing.  This is easy when nothing big deal is going on, so use those times to gain the skill; and then you can pull out that flashlight during the darkest moments, and prevail handily over even the worst pain — and even more importantly, eventually you will prevail over the cause of all pain. 

It's your nature to doubt.  But before you doubt me, ask yourself, What can I lose by trying this?  It is the most harmless cure anyone has ever offered you, is it not?

…Told to me in a dream.  Thought you should have it.  ;)

P.S.  "Don't fight the darkness, bring the light" indeed!