NOTE:  IF YOU ENJOY THESE REFLECTIONS MORE THAN 1,000 CAN BE FOUND IN MY BOOK, ”AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RESTLESS MIND–VOLUME ONE,” AND AN EQUAL NUMBER IN “VOLUME TWO.”

2/24/17     It is a great mistake to think that small acts of compassion and generosity cannot change the world for the better, since they are the only things that ever have.  

2/24/17    I know nothing about those who claim the universe and all therein is nothing but random meaningless chance.  Perhaps their lives are truly so.  Perhaps that is how they choose it to be.  I only know only that my life has meaning.  I cannot will it to be otherwise.  I may never know the fullness of its meaning, but I do know that life is eternal becoming.  That alone is more than enough meaning.

2/24/17    Surely there was love, beauty, grace, emotion, and spirit before reason and logic.  Perhaps our higher faculties are not higher at all, but newer, less highly evolved, less finished.  When Descartes, Newton and their kind elevated reason, logic and mathematics above all other capacities, and science above all other methods, did they merely free immature faculties from essential restraint?  There is an ominous feeling throughout the land that we are moving blindly where no loving, caring person ought to go.

2/24/17     Religion claims we must obey the mandates of  god, and clergy can tell us what they are.  Science claims we must obey the laws of nature, and scientists can tell us what they are.  Both claims are absurdly pretentious.

2/24/17     Constructive, humane behavior cannot be achieved by external force. It arises from within.  It can be educed but cannot be compelled.  It is a rare leader who understands this, let alone practices it. 

2/24/17     The universe does not exert force in any meaningful sense.  It does not “force” the planets into orbit, or “command” them to do anything.  It merely  places an attraction in their path to which they  respond in accordance with their nature.  It would be a blessing if people who aspire to be great could understand this principle and behave in accordance with it.  

2/24/17     Language is the ghost of living.  It cannot reckon reality.  Words only hint at such things as the heave and thunder of storming, ocean surf, or the silence and mystery of primeval forest – – – such things as love, hate, empathy and generosity.  Language can do no more than dredge up skeletal memories of the past and cast up spectral shadows of the future.    

2/1/17     At its beginning, the single fertilized cell has capacity to be any kind of cell.  As division occurs and growth commences, commitment emerges and each cell’s nature becomes fixed for the remainder of its life.  It is no different for the newly born individual.  Society and civilization are the aggregate of those individual commitments.   

2/1/17     Mankind is not charged with determining whether the universe has purpose or is a matter of blind chance, whether energy is finite or infinite, whether intelligence is innate or divine, whether consciousness is universal or unique, whether life has meaning or “is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”, or a whole host of other things that are the source of so much mental agitation, concern, and controversy.  

2-1-17     Perhaps the greatest mental disease of all is belief that science and technology can create an artificial environment that will free mankind forever from the “tyranny of nature”: that the promised land is to be a construct of man, rather than a beneficence of nature.  

2/1/17     The constitution of the United States first and foremost a codification of doubt and skepticism regarding the  perfectibility of people and the beneficence of government.   

2/1/17     Society has tried them all – – – a genetic aristocracy, a landed aristocracy, a political aristocracy, a scientific aristocracy, a moneyed aristocracy, an intellectual aristocracy.  Might it be wise to try an ethical aristocracy, or better yet, no aristocracy at all?

2/1/17     Government of the people, by the people and for the people sounds grand;  but what if the people are ignorant, vain, greedy, and immoral?  Does that mean they should create an ignorant, vain, greedy, immoral government, and if they did, whether they would be well served by it?

2/1/17     Present concepts of societal organization, political, economic and social, to which we entrust the future, have become giant casinos in which we gamble wildly using the lives of our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren as chips.

2/1/17     Banks have no need to turn straw into gold.  They have a better racket.  They collect vast amounts of interest from the loan of money that the law permits them to create out of thin air.  

2/1/17     To assert that one has great capacity, but has the misfortune of never having had a great cause to set it in motion is absurd.  Great capacity finds great causes everywhere.  It is capacity that ignites cause, not cause that ignites capacity. 

2/1/17     Natures methods are prodigal, but the results are singularly unique.  A billion spores and one mushroom.  A million nuts and one tree.  A thousand blossoms and one fruit.  Just so the mind.  A billion thoughts and one idea.  A million ideas and one trifle of understanding.  A thousand trifles of understanding and one modicum of wisdom.