“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.”
- Dalinar Kholin
I am typically this when someone accuses me of being a hypocrite. Either way, I certainly do tolerate it though, in fact I have a system for it.
Whoa I’ve never thought this thought. Thank you for sharing.
Life before death, Radiant.
I’m a simple man:
“What day is it?” asked Pooh.
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.
Based pooh
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France
That’s pretty funny
The willow knows what the storm does not: that the power to endure harm outlives the power to inflict it.
From the Magic: The Gathering card “Blood of the Martyr”
Oi oi oi. Me gotta hurt in here. Me smell a ting is near. Gonna bosh, and gonna nosh, and then the ting will disappear.
— Uthden Troll
Those who will not follow are doomed to lead.
From the Magic: The Gathering card “Anarchist”
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The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
When working on an office, it’s great and all that you have “the power of accurate observation” but god our Debbie downer is insufferable.
Aren’t you confusing cynicism with skepticism?
No, “those” people are
That’s a pretty accurate way of looking at things.
I doubt.
When I was in high school, a friend of mine came from a Republican family. He once told me “You think that if it would be nice that a thing were true, that means it is true”.
It took me a long time to understand what he meant, but I finally do, and he was spot on with how my philosophy worked.
“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”
- H.G. Wells
“The problem with internet quotes is that you cannot always depend on their accuracy.”
― Abraham Lincoln 1864
This too shall pass.
No matter how good or bad your life is, there will ways be change.
That works both ways though. Even the fable where the quote originated had that as a takeaway.
This. Temporariness is temporary. Soon everything will be permanent.
I mean the “this too shall pass” part. When people say the quote, usually it’s the kind of person who sees the negative treated differently than they treat the positive.
It won’t be that way forever though
I’m paraphrasing but it was something along the lines of
‘Something that will make me sad when I am happy and happy when I am sad’
The story goes, or the way that I was told, there was a king that always felt too high and then he felt too low. And so he called all his wise men to the hall, and he begged them for a gift to end the rises and the falls. But here’s the thing—they came back with a ring. It was simple, and was plainly unbefitting of a king, and engraved in black—well it had no front or back, but there were words around the band that said “just know this too shall pass.”
“1 in a million chances happen 9 times out of 10”
— Terry PratchettSir Terry is all to easy to quote. This one always gets me thinking:
"There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate. Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense.
It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers—say, three per citizen. Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day.
Some citizens took the not-unreasonable view that something had gone a bit askew if only naughty people were carrying arms. And they got arrested in large numbers.
The average copper, when he’s been kicked in the nadgers once too often and has reason to believe that his bosses don’t much care, has an understandable tendency to prefer to arrest those people who won’t instantly try to stab him, especially if they act a bit snotty and wear more expensive clothes than he personally can afford.
The rate of arrests shot right up, and Swing had been very pleased about that. Admittedly, most of the arrests had been for possessing weaponry after dark, but quite a few had been for assaults on the Watch by irate citizens.
That was Assault On A City Official, a very important and despicable crime, and, as such, far more important than all these thefts that were going on everywhere. It wasn’t that the city was lawless. It had plenty of laws. It just didn’t offer many opportunities not to break them.
Swing didn’t seem to have grasped the idea that the system was supposed to take criminals and, in some rough-and-ready fashion, force them into becoming honest men. Instead, he’d taken honest men and turned them into criminals. And the Watch, by and large, into just another gang."
And that from a liberal Englishman. I was taken aback reading Monstrous Regiment. "Did this guy write a book full of trans characters 21-years ago?! (Honestly, it got a little silly at the end with all the characters ending up trans, and a couple gay I think.)
He’s also easy to read. Too often I see a comment with this much text and lose interest instantly, but I didn’t even notice that this comment doesn’t even fit on my screen until I started typing this
”A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts.” Alan Watts
I think it’s just a reminder of the pointlessness of overthinking. I find it poignant because I spend a lot of time lost in rumination, myself
Alan Watts is so fun. He used words like that monk lady in the marvel movies that slaps people out of their bodies.
He’s masterful with words. So masterful he makes it look easy.
So many teachers like “beyond this point words fail”, and they’ve got a good point, but Watts goes “let me give it a shot” and then conveys things in words that can take years to grasp through the brute force method of direct perception.
People shit on words, and with very good reason, but they are the chutes and ladders that make enlightenment in a single lifetime possible if one’s lucky enough to have a teacher like Watts.
Yes!
“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.” Alan Watts
David Foster Wallace: You’ll stop worrying* what others think about you when you realize how seldom they do.
* It might ‘caring’ rather than ‘worrying’, I’m not sure, and can’t be bothered finding the book to check it.
It’s also possible that DFW didn’t coin this phrase.
What is better: to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?
-Paarthurnax
(- also Catholicism)
“To know which questions are unanswerable, and to not answer them: this is the skill that is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
- Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula LeGuin has definitely seen some shit
Being a socialist living under capitalism will do that to you.
lol not politics I mean some shit. Pretty sure she survived a nuclear holocaust in a parallel dimension, at least
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.
Or, if you like it more pithy: “The difference between theory and practice is larger in practice than it is in theory.”
If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.
- H. H. Dalai Lama
I totally agree. Worrying, as an action, is useless. Worry as a feeling, an emotional signal, is useful.
Worry is like a messenger from your subconscious. It’s a signal there’s a gap between your opportunity and your action. As soon as you see the worry, you can turn it off by getting back in line with your conscience.
Worry is part of “the wisdom to know the difference”. It indicates you haven’t yet determined which of those two it is: a thing you can change, or a thing you can’t.
So worrying is useless, in the same way sitting there listening to an alarm bell is useless. The alarm is a useful signal. Indulging in it is not.
Shut off the alarm and address the problem. In this case the problem is not “something I value is gonna get hurt”. It’s “something I value is gonna get hurt, and I don’t yet know whether I should be doing something about it or not”.
The best way out the is:
worry -> map out the problem -> [branch] (help how you can OR accept it)
You can pluck the worry out of your mind if you’re a skillful meditator. Just kill it like a computer process. But it will come up again until you remove its root, which is vagueness about the line between “the courage to change things I can” and “the serenity to accept yhe things I cannot”.
So, like I said, worry is a component of “the wisdom to know the difference”. It is that wisdom’s triggering mechanism.
In my opinion, at least.
Are you influenced by a buddhist lineage?