Defined By Our Actions
We are defined by our actions. We are defined by what we do. Actions matter more than thoughts or intentions or that lowest of human activities — potential. Now words are also a type of action and they mean a great deal to me, though I always bear in mind that when there is a [...]
Synthesis And Analysis
As I get older, I learn more and more that in truth with music each component’s perfection is the sole concern. Five perfect performances played simultaneously mix regardless of whether the others were taken into consideration. The fact is that the only thing you need into account about the performance of anyone else is the [...]
The Walden Drive
The heating scarcely warms my apartment at all. It is cold inside. There’s no mincing of words that can change that. It’s cold inside my apartment. Maybe I should grow accustomed to that, though. Maybe what we all need is a little more of the Walden drive and a little bit of reversing the needless [...]
Types Of Elitism
There are many types of elitism: some beautiful and some ugly. One ugly form is to display one’s achievements as boasting and as an attempt to feel above others. One beautiful form is to acknowledge that one is above others and to call back to them, “catch up. I’m not going to go at your [...]
All Things Come With Time
An interesting analysis of Sappho’s poem beginning with “Δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα” that I found recently. All things come with time: reading the analysis cited above (sadly only in Spanish), I just now realized why those lines from Sappho start with that word “μὲν” that seemed wholly superfluous to me before. It’s almost sad to [...]
To Feel Superior
I cannot deny that I often have a drive to feel superior to others and when I feel my sense of superioty jeapordized by something impressive in another, I will find ways to devalue their achievements to bring them once again beneath me in my estimation. Yet, another part of me is so often miserable [...]
Europeans And Americans
How enormously different Europeans seem from Americans! They seem, without exception, more introverted and calmer. They seem more grounded, more virtuous, more traditional, more intelligent, more peaceful and more peacable.
Health
Health is being able to look at oneself and see successes and failures. One says, “this I should repeat and always do as well as I did it that time; that I should do much better than I have so far.”
Dangers For Idealists
Perhaps the most dangerous thing an idealistic young man can do is to get himself involved with political activists. No group will rob him of his idealism faster as no group displays such incongruity between ideals and practice.
Only In America
“The new Darwin Exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History has ‘failed to find a corporate sponsor in the United States because American companies are anxious not to take sides in the heated debate between scientists and fundamentalist Christians over the theory of evolution’ according to articles at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Telegraph, [...]