Short Thoughts
“Freedom to” vs “Freedom from,” and the impossibility of self-determination
Extending from the previous is another useful rule of thumb: You have freedom to, not freedom from. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in one of the single greatest acts of destruction against the concept of freedom by a United States president, famously listed his “Four Freedoms” which he believed should be guaranteed to all people: Freedom of…
Read MoreRule of Thumb: Rights
If you want a rule of thumb to determine whether or not a proposed right is really a right, here is a simple test: If it requires anything of anyone else, requires any other person to give or do something, then it is not your right. To live is a right. To make other people…
Read MoreWhat is a Right?
(It is a perennial amusement to me to watch a person try to derive the notion of rights without reference to God.) What is a right? “Something a person should have, or should be able to do.” According to whom? “Well, you know, according to the majority.” So if a majority agree that Jews don’t…
Read MoreWhat is faith? And why, when people speak of faith, they usually mean courage.
Faith is simply your reliance on work already done. Consider that you are building a house, or (if that’s a bit ambitious for you) a piece of furniture. You have designed it on paper over the past several days, carefully diagramming and plotting, determining what pieces you will need, the dimensions of each piece, and…
Read MoreIs there any such thing as an opinion?
Opinions are the indulgence of an undisciplined mind—one might say, if one was trying deliberately to be provocative. To be more precise, though, one should say, “If you could ever nail down exactly what an opinion is and find one in nature, it would be purely the indulgence of an undisciplined mind.” Seriously, though, I…
Read MoreThere is no such thing as “Need.”
Or, rather, there is no such thing as “need” in the sense that people commonly think they mean it. I was taught very early, by some well-meaning but not very sophisticated grade-school teacher, the difference between “needs” and “wants;” that a need was something one had to have to live and everything else was a…
Read MoreSarcasm
Sarcasm is like profanity or drunkenness. It is socially acceptable, sometimes socially celebrated, but it is not and never has been good, beautiful, or positive. It is ugly, and you are a lesser person for indulging in it.
Read MoreSwearing Oaths
By the way, isn’t it odd that we refer to profanity as “swearing” and uttering “oaths.” That’s not what those words mean, though, is it? To swear an oath is to make a promise, specifically a promise guaranteed by some collateral outside oneself. I swear an oath on the Bible, or on my mother’s grave,…
Read MoreProfanity
I figure there is enough ugliness in the world without my contribution. I have heard, many times, from people who swear a lot, about the study which supposedly indicated a positive correlation between the use of profanity and the use of language overall—the implication being that people who swear a lot, contrary to what one…
Read MoreStress, PTSD, and a stress-free life
In popular discourse, people use the word “stress” to mean several different things. “Stress” refers the factors which impose upon us. “I’m under a lot of stress at work.” “This is a stressful time in my life.” It refers to one’s experience of those factors. “I’m stressed out.” “My stress level is high right now.” …
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