Armenio Pereira
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“Morality is doing what is right regardless of what everyone else is doing.” (my emphasis)
Good everyone seems to know what short term doing what is right is all about, because long term doing what is right can proof to be – if one lives long enough – an entirely different concept altogether.
no merit – no blame
What would be of Christianity without the Iscariot, of the Jews without Adolf, of Samson without Delilah, of Biden without Trump?
Surfin’ the paradoxical wave we must, until we drown.
As Douglas Adams put it, flying is a matter of forgetting how to fall.Tough times make men and women alike relearn what’s essential.
No participation awards.
No brownie points.
The recipe for a healthy society.
(Keeping in mind, however, that even healthy societies decay*, become sick, and disappear, leaving but a handful of mostly misunderstood – by future sentient beings – artifacts.)* Mainly because leaders grow soft, careless or simply lose the drive to weed out all those who suck.
[ a brief history of atheism ]
One jolly afternoon, two gods met. The laborious one exclaimed: “I will create the Universe, and everything in it!” The lazy one declared, “and I will destroy it.” “Very well,” retorted the former.
And off they went, into their separate ways, confused by the cloud and the silver lining.What is a human’s best interest?
To minimize pain’s duration and intensity.
The troubles begin when a human consider that, in order to cut short his/her own pain, inflicting pain on other(s) is a valid course of action.Is there anything outside God’s will?
Even the things we can barely understand or hardly stand?
Are we damned (f*cked, if you will) or are we blessed?
Neither: we’re Godsend.Thank you for all you do.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust:
mortals…
Cosmic debris…
Universal mortar (binding shadow & light)Living: to reinforce the self or to learn to make do without.
We all know where this is heading; remembering is the adventurous and, to some, the courageous part.Civilization is a faux remedy – a placebo, if you prefer – to a God that, seemingly, does not provide.
A question then arises: will we ever have enough?So, according to Evo Morales, Mr. Assange is the only person holding all the pertinent info concerning the crimes committed against humanity – sheesh, what a way of running an organization.
Ideals are unreal, whereas what’s real is crystal clear.
Ideals get bloated, and then are botched.
Stick to the basic needs (breathe, sleep, excrete, self-restraint, eat) and Truth will be close at hand.Consciousness is a volatile – sometimes explosive – admixture of bodily defaults (aka needs) and spiritual designs.
“[…] although China was exceptional in that it has arisen by its manpower despite its total dependence on the west’s brain power […]” (my emphasis)
With all due respect, you need to diversify your information sources: paper – arguably the most terrific and terrible of the human inventions – was most probably than not invented by the Chinese, who also spearheaded and spread its use (not to mention gunpowder.)
“The world is cyclical […]”
“Some of the problems the west has at the moment are that people are not free […]”
If the world is cyclical – and perhaps it is – then how can people be free?Progress brought us here, to the verge of annihilation and to the society of permanent fear.
By all means enjoy yourself and the shiny gadgetry “progress” entails while it lasts.Human population reduction: needed, irrelevant or psychopathic endeavor?
Everything is required, until it ceases to be.
If you try to elevate people’s virtues, be aware that you will also elevate people’s vices.
Why is this fraught with danger?
Because whilst virtues are open source/public, vices are proprietary/private – you can always estimate what virtues’ may bring, but you will never know what vices’ can hide.65 (excerpt)
Taoist rulers of old did not enlighten people but left them dull.
People are difficult to govern because they are very clever. Therefore, ruling through cleverness leads to rebellion. Not leading through cleverness brings good fortune.
Know these two things and understand the enduring pattern. […]Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (Stephen Addiss & Stanley Lombardo – English version, 1993)
“Portugal has nearly run out of people to vaccinate.
Portugal is still running with highest Covid case count in Europe”The Portuguese are among the most hopelessly clueless people roaming the planet. (I know, I live there.)
Passing blame is the easy way out – the toughest thing is to dismiss blame altogether.
23 – 26 – 27
Spare words; nature’s way. Violent winds do not blow all morning. Sudden rain cannot pour all day.
What causes these things? Heaven and Earth. If Heaven and Earth do not blow and pour for long, How much less should humans? […]
Gravity is the root of lightness, Stillness the master of passion. […]
When a lord of ten thousand chariots Behaves lightly in this world, Lightness loses its root, Passion loses its master.
Good travelers leave no tracks. Good words leave no trace. Good counting needs no markers. […] [T]he good person is the bad person’s teacher, And the bad person Is the good person’s resource.
Not to value the teacher, Not to love the resource, Causes great confusion even for the intelligent. This is called the vital secret.Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (Stephen Addiss & Stanley Lombardo – English version, 1993)
Neither improving nor debasing – part & parcel of Change, we all are.
Let go of your passions (from Church Latin passiō suffering) if you can, carry on with them if you must.
No redemption – no damnation – only acceptance“[…] texting – not talking – could be the key […]” (Herald Sun)
For once, I agree. Let’s then prevent all those who became silent from tweeting, and paradise will be close at hand.
There are no victories or defeats – only transfers of energy.
Since humans have been endowed with large memory units (the brain) – well, a fair amount of them, anyway – they also have been “doomed” with the sense of gradation. That’s why small transfers of energy are usually seen as innocuous or outright ignored (at our own peril), while large ones are treated as defeats/victories, depending on how one is suited to deal with such energy transfers.“How Did America Become Ruled By Its Military-Industrial Complex? (Zuesse)”
The military-industrial complex hired the smartest ones.
A Sisyphean apothegm
Why do humans long for God?
Because humans are perfect questions (questions to which there isn’t a definite answer) and God is the perfect answer (an answer that doesn’t require any question.)(Question/answer pairs are neither answers nor questions – they form a conclusion, and conclusions are unnatural because with their beginnings and endings they don’t respect the cyclical nature of the Universe.)
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Banish learning, discard knowledge: People will gain a hundredfold.
Banish benevolence, discard righteousness: People will return to duty and compassion.
Banish skill, discard profit: There will be no more thieves.
These three statements are not enough. One more step is necessary.
Look at plain silk; hold uncarved wood. The self dwindles; desires fade.Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (Stephen Addiss & Stanley Lombardo – English version, 1993)
Prisoners of the Body/needs
Prisoners of the Mind/delusions
Prisoners of the Future/expectations
Prisoners of the Past/regrets
Freedom?
Dream on/if that offers some reliefKnowledge:
– transmissible;
– dynamic;
– collective;
– external;
– hosted by the brain;
– transient*;
– (determined by the) here.Wisdom:
– intransmissible;
– static;
– individual;
– internal;
– dwells in the heart;
– eternal;
– (happening) now.* e.g., we forgot how to make concrete (opus caementicium) – namely the water/cement ratio – the way the Romans did (circa 150 BC); we forgot (“misplaced the data”) how to go to the moon.
Carbon-based life forms.
Knowledge: coal fueling the vanity bonfire.
Wisdom, a diamant needed to cut through.
Not enough wisdom going around to avoid ending up
being consumed.“Misinformation is dangerous. Silencing doctors is even more so.”
(Texas “Truth” Foundation)(… two years and millions of jabs later…)
Another Dr. who has started to warn us… He was getting ready to testify against the shots.For the most part, the doctors did a fine job at silencing themselves.
(It’s kinda sickening – pun intended – to see the efforts to whitewash the medical profession role in the present mess.)Accomplished maturity: the mastering of enough lexicon to be able to sustain a plethora of opinions, from the most petty to the most wacky.
I went to bed one night in a more or less sane planet; I woke up the next day only to find myself enmeshed in a full fledged kakistocracy.
How did that happen?
(I have no right to cry wolf.)Truth bombs abound, truth craters all around.
How to navigate our way through such a difficult terrain?@John Day
I do not possess Dr. D’s intellectual acumen – nor your knack at playing thought police.
That the plutocrats, kritocrats, kakistocrats, “democrats”, faucicrats, gate-o-crats and other schwab-o-crats are insufferable SOBs is by now a more than widely agreed upon opinion (in these circles, I mean); eventually we will have to move on from there and do something, or nothing.
To flee l’ennui – that’s the name of the game
We do it – the Universe does it
You can elaborate – there’s no need to complicate
The Everlasting Dissatisfaction keeps things in motion
That’s all there is to it – it’s all we ever need to know.(to be forgotten is to be forgiven)
@D Benton Smith
Theories can be extended to the infinite, limited only by the boundaries of one’s own imagination.
I can advance theories as long as I keep the faculties to do so and you can keep on refuting them to your heart’s content.
Couldn’t avoid to notice the conspicuous absence of any refutation regarding volition and change.
Best regards.@D Benton Smith
Do your body change by your own volition? Or regardless?
Oswald Spengler postulated that civilizations are akin to organisms, I take this idea a step further by saying that events are also akin to organisms.
As always has been the case, the current mess will inflate, reach a peak and then subside, regardless of any individual or collective “volition”. (Just how many humans will remain in the aftermath and, if any, how will they recouple & reorganize is another issue altogether, one that, to be tackled in a serious fashion, needs to consider a profound shift in the ways humans behave – that shift is the underlying motif of my comments.)
The best proof that even the more “rational” people are deeply superstitious is the deeply entrenched belief that the behaviors, procedures, methods and thought processes which brought us into this mess will somehow get us out of it.
As always has been the case, the current mess will inflate, reach a peak and then subside, regardless of any individual or collective “volition”.
Very few are able to detach themselves from the hysteria & depression considered to be de rigueur in such occasions – my salute to them.
Producing any assertion or “serious” analysis about Joe Biden (the actual Joseph Robinette, not the puppet masters handling him) and his deeds and ways is even more ludicrous than the man himself.
