Let's not be like others, because we are not like others

"For eyes, bright

For ears, penetrating

For countenance, cordial

For demeanor, humble

For words, trustworthy

For service, reverent

For doubt, questioning

For anger, circumspect

For facing a chance to profit, moral."

Confucius

We chase misprinted lies

The Black Goat

The black goat trotted around a small room. Was it afraid? It started running into the walls. There was no blood but the walls started to crack. It hurt. The black goat became more aggressive; it seemed to have grown in size and with more force threw its weight at the walls. It hurt more. It grew horns like a ram. Curling backwards stylishly. Head like a rock. Head like a rock star. It attacked the walls without reservations. Smashing. It hurt massive. Where was the pain coming from? I looked down. My chest felt like it was about tear open. The trembling pain escalates. Okay. I am the wall? The black goat trotted into the room. Okay. I am not the wall? The black goat looked vicious. I'm afraid. If a black goat could come out of my body it may help. It actually does, slowly - with no sound. The pain is crippling but blunt. It is graphic but monochromatic. It is silent but complex. It isn't worth making a big fuss but it doesn't stop.


23
 

The White Mind

11

Skill of the Particular

"What makes statesmen, like drivers of cars, successful is that they do not think in general terms - that is, they do not primarily ask themselves in what respect a given situation is like or unlike other situations in the long course of human history. Their merit is that they grasp the unique combination of characteristics that constitute this particular situation - this and no other. What they are said to be able to do is to understand the character of a particular movement, of a particular individual, of a unique state of affairs, of a unique atmosphere, of some particular combination of economic, political, personal factors; and we do not readily suppose that this capacity can literally be taught."

Isaiah Berlin

You should see how it feels with your feet on the ground

The Binding Fabric that is Justice

"If there is any society among robbers and murderers, they must at least abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it. Justice, is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice."

Adam Smith

The Resonance of the Omitted Thing

"There's a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like a shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing."

Wolf Hall

Was it a trickster using mirrors and sleight of hand

Eyes that are seen

18

The Effect of the Division of Labour

"The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education. When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were perhaps very much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could perceive any remarkable difference."

Adam Smith

The Soul's Mirror

"We can never survey our own sentiments and motives, we can never form any judgment concerning them, unless we remove ourselves, as it were, from our own natural stations, and endeavour to view them as at a certain distance from us. But we can do this in no other way than by endeavouring to view them with the eyes of other people, or as other people are likely to view them."

Adam Smith

Porcupines in Winter

"On a cold winter's day, a group of porcupines huddled together to stay warm and keep from freezing. But soon they felt one another's quills and moved apart. When the need for warmth brought them closer together again, their quills again forced them apart. They were driven back and forth at the mercy of their discomforts until they found the distance from one another that provided both a maximum of warmth and a minimum of pain. In human beings, the emptiness and monotony of the isolated self produces a need for society. This brings people together, but their many offensive qualities and intolerable faults drive them apart again. The optimum distance that they finally find that permits them to coexist is embodied in politeness and good manners. Because of this distance between us, we can only partially satisfy our need for warmth, but at the same time, we are spared the stab of one another's quills."

Arthur Schopenhauer

If

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!"

Rudyard Kipling