Honest thought and analysis on a variety of subjects, often spiced with humor
(About a 4 minute read)
Have you ever thought pop music increasingly sounds the same? If so, that might have something to do with the fact that most of it — the majority of chart-topping songs — are written by just two people.
Max Martin, who is Swiss, and Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, who is American, account for over half the chart-topping pop songs heard in the world today. Or so I’ve been hearing (shameless pun intended).
“The description of the proud or magnanimous man [in Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics] is very interesting as showing the difference between pagan and Christian ethics…”. — Bertrand Russell.
SUMMARY: Pride to Aristotle was a virtue, and a means to happiness, but to Christians, it is a sin, and a means to unhappiness.
(About a 7 minute read)
In Judaism, pride is called the root of all evil, a valuation that seems in part to have been carried over into Christianity, for Christians regard pride as the first and foremost of the Seven Deadly Sins.
In Catholicism, the Seven Deadly Sins are not to be confused with “Mortal Sins” — they do not automatically damn you to hell if you fail to repent of them before death, but they are pretty much bad enough anyway.
In contrast to the Jewish and Christian views, pride was an actual virtue to Aristotle. Which of course, raises the question, “Why did Aristotle think pride was a virtue?”
“Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above.” — Katherine Hepburn, African Queen.
SUMMARY: Our cultures need to be doing more to ameliorate the effects of our negative human instincts.
(About a 4 minute read)
It’s my impression that most of us these days are at least dimly aware that human nature can be out of joint with human happiness. That is, we can have a disposition or inclination to certain feelings and behaviors that more or less inevitably lead us into unhappy situations, and even misery.
Warfare is an example of that. While humans apparently do not have an actual instinct to war upon each other, we do indeed have a full set of instincts that mean war is all but directly hardwired into our DNA.
SUMMARY: Reflections on the future of humanity.
(About a 7 minute read)
I read a post yesterday on Bojana’s blog that got me thinking about the future of humanity. That’s a topic that is more or less always in the back of my mind, but which I seldom write about.
I seldom write about it largely because it’s such a complex topic that I’m not sure what can be said about it that might someday more or less pan out as true. Bojana’s approach to the topic was a pretty sound one — she mulled over her observations of her toddler and his friends as they were playing together. The future, of course, begins with how we raise our kids.
SUMMARY: Common mistakes people make while watching erotic dancers, plus the best way to do it in order to fully appreciate the nature of erotic dance.
(About a 6 minute read)
It seems curious to me that — from my point of view — people first make sex a problem when it need not be a problem, then they condemn sex for the mess they’ve made of it.
Why is that so? Why do we think sex is the problem when it’s so obvious to anyone willing to look closely at it that it’s us — our attitude and approach to it — that are the problem?
Continue reading “How to Watch Strippers (And Why You Should Care)”
“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.” ―
SUMMARY: Mystics naturally speak of the experience that distinguishes them from other folks using words and terms derived from their individual cultures. Hence, they typically speak of having experienced “god”, but upon examination, their notions of god often tend to have more in common with other mystics than they do with common cultural notions of god. Central to virtually all theistic mysticism is the notion that god — or ultimate reality — is an all-encompassing oneness or One, despite any appearances to the contrary.
(About a 10 minute read)
I first became interested in mysticism about 40 years ago. I was a sophomore at university and seriously concerned with finding an objective basis for values.
At the time, I believed — like many people still do — that unless an objective basis for values could be found, “anything was permissible”. No evil, however great, could be objectively opposed. And that frightened me.
Unfortunately, the more I learned, the less there seemed to be any possibility of an objective basis. But then I came across the writings of various mystics.
(About a 5 minute read)
I once read that on a moonless night, no more than about 5,000 stars are visible to the naked eye. Yet, to us that number might as well be a million, given how poor our judgement of numerical quantities is.
Apparently, most of us cannot instantly, without counting, recognize the difference between such a small quantity as eight and nine items — let alone the difference between 5,000 and 1,000,000.
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Can you imagine what a paradise this earth would be for (especially) young men if women did not need to fear getting to know them? Not only would it be easy to get a first date, but you could take her just about anywhere.
