Thought Seeds #1
Short reflections & quotes from January of 2025.
-1- A culture living perpetually in fear struggles to be an innovative one. Therefore it is in the process of dieing afraid.
-2- From Plato, when one is able to recognize beauty in its greatest shape and form, they also recognize immortality. A life devoted as such, represents the birth of virtue; and on the cycle continues…
-3- Understanding anything begins with the number 2, because nothing can exist solely ‘on its own’.
-4- One must possess a comprehensive understanding of a scientific field of study before an anomalous circumstance can emerge.
-5- How many jobs amount to the following pitch: here’s some money in exchange for your life.
-6- Hopelessness can never be an excuse not to try. The young often have no urgency, and the old believe it’s too late. Hopelessness begets all equally.
-7- I would hesitate to say that the universe is like ‘this thing’. It feels far more accurate to infer the reverse logic; to say that ‘this thing is like the universe’. Why the distinction? Because the universe is already modelled, and we are constantly trying to re-model it in everything we do. It cannot be the reverse.
-8- On compulsivity: ask yourself: “What would happen if I re-route my compulsive energy in another direction?” A day goes by; a week; a month; what has happened? Energy that is compulsive and undesirable can be harnessed and maintained and thus acted with by merely remaining curious to the effects of holding it in stasis.
-9- Philosophy matters because of its non-universality. Everyone adopts a set of values to be ‘their philosophy’, willingly or otherwise. If you have never studied any philosophy, nor spent any time considering for yourself what your beliefs are about the nature of reality and of what your mind is able to intuit in response, then you are far more susceptible to being coerced into becoming the pawn of someone else’s ideology.
-10- We should never lose sense of our relative perception of time. To say something like: ‘you’re wasting your time’, is meaningless, because we cannot know if it is true. We ask on many an occasion for ‘more time’; to be given more time before death claims us, yet we never know whether or not our requests have been answered. But it is nevertheless in our interest to act as though we have been given enough, and that earning more time is simply a matter of doing the ‘right amount’ of good. Despite all, even after our time completely passes, we can still be laid to rest feeling as though much of it was wasted… or not… we perceive its relativity for ourselves.
-11- I have struggled to understand the worse outcome for the ignorant soul trapped in the cave: (1) to make the turn around to see the true essence of the light, and having been naturally compelled to make movement toward its source, standing at the precipice of its entry into your den, not knowing the course of action that would be best to take next. Is it freedom you crave? No, ultimately, it is not freedom, you crave softness, the comfort in remaining where you’ve been. But the comfortable caress is now gone, it has lost you, just the same as you now becoming lost. There is difference in choosing and in not-having-had-the-choice, oh ignorant one! How will you go back to sitting in darkness without a numbing aid to be your companion, helping you once again not to see? A pathetic sort of demeanor. (2) And then would it not have been better for you never to have had the choice? Who chose you? What happens to the ones that do not pass the test? A sad question but I feel I must know.
“Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter and the seed, which our soul, more powerful than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.”
- Michel de Montaigne, Essays
“The problem with the ignorant person is precisely that, despite not being good or intelligent, he regards himself as satisfactory. If someone doesn’t think he’s in need of something, he can’t desire what he doesn’t think he needs.”
- Plato, The Symposium