“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.”
- Dalinar Kholin
I am typically this when someone accuses me of being a hypocrite. Either way, I certainly do tolerate it though, in fact I have a system for it.
Whoa I’ve never thought this thought. Thank you for sharing.
Life before death, Radiant.
I’m a simple man:
“What day is it?” asked Pooh.
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.
Based pooh
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France
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“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”
- H.G. Wells
“1 in a million chances happen 9 times out of 10”
— Terry PratchettSir Terry is all to easy to quote. This one always gets me thinking:
"There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate. Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense.
It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers—say, three per citizen. Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day.
Some citizens took the not-unreasonable view that something had gone a bit askew if only naughty people were carrying arms. And they got arrested in large numbers.
The average copper, when he’s been kicked in the nadgers once too often and has reason to believe that his bosses don’t much care, has an understandable tendency to prefer to arrest those people who won’t instantly try to stab him, especially if they act a bit snotty and wear more expensive clothes than he personally can afford.
The rate of arrests shot right up, and Swing had been very pleased about that. Admittedly, most of the arrests had been for possessing weaponry after dark, but quite a few had been for assaults on the Watch by irate citizens.
That was Assault On A City Official, a very important and despicable crime, and, as such, far more important than all these thefts that were going on everywhere. It wasn’t that the city was lawless. It had plenty of laws. It just didn’t offer many opportunities not to break them.
Swing didn’t seem to have grasped the idea that the system was supposed to take criminals and, in some rough-and-ready fashion, force them into becoming honest men. Instead, he’d taken honest men and turned them into criminals. And the Watch, by and large, into just another gang."
And that from a liberal Englishman. I was taken aback reading Monstrous Regiment. "Did this guy write a book full of trans characters 21-years ago?! (Honestly, it got a little silly at the end with all the characters ending up trans, and a couple gay I think.)
He’s also easy to read. Too often I see a comment with this much text and lose interest instantly, but I didn’t even notice that this comment doesn’t even fit on my screen until I started typing this
”A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts.” Alan Watts
I think it’s just a reminder of the pointlessness of overthinking. I find it poignant because I spend a lot of time lost in rumination, myself
Alan Watts is so fun. He used words like that monk lady in the marvel movies that slaps people out of their bodies.
He’s masterful with words. So masterful he makes it look easy.
So many teachers like “beyond this point words fail”, and they’ve got a good point, but Watts goes “let me give it a shot” and then conveys things in words that can take years to grasp through the brute force method of direct perception.
People shit on words, and with very good reason, but they are the chutes and ladders that make enlightenment in a single lifetime possible if one’s lucky enough to have a teacher like Watts.
Yes!
“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.” Alan Watts
The willow knows what the storm does not: that the power to endure harm outlives the power to inflict it.
From the Magic: The Gathering card “Blood of the Martyr”
Oi oi oi. Me gotta hurt in here. Me smell a ting is near. Gonna bosh, and gonna nosh, and then the ting will disappear.
— Uthden Troll
Those who will not follow are doomed to lead.
From the Magic: The Gathering card “Anarchist”
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What is better: to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?
-Paarthurnax
(- also Catholicism)
If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.
- H. H. Dalai Lama
I totally agree. Worrying, as an action, is useless. Worry as a feeling, an emotional signal, is useful.
Worry is like a messenger from your subconscious. It’s a signal there’s a gap between your opportunity and your action. As soon as you see the worry, you can turn it off by getting back in line with your conscience.
Worry is part of “the wisdom to know the difference”. It indicates you haven’t yet determined which of those two it is: a thing you can change, or a thing you can’t.
So worrying is useless, in the same way sitting there listening to an alarm bell is useless. The alarm is a useful signal. Indulging in it is not.
Shut off the alarm and address the problem. In this case the problem is not “something I value is gonna get hurt”. It’s “something I value is gonna get hurt, and I don’t yet know whether I should be doing something about it or not”.
The best way out the is:
worry -> map out the problem -> [branch] (help how you can OR accept it)
You can pluck the worry out of your mind if you’re a skillful meditator. Just kill it like a computer process. But it will come up again until you remove its root, which is vagueness about the line between “the courage to change things I can” and “the serenity to accept yhe things I cannot”.
So, like I said, worry is a component of “the wisdom to know the difference”. It is that wisdom’s triggering mechanism.
In my opinion, at least.
Are you influenced by a buddhist lineage?
“Change and comfort rarely come together”
- Unattributed quote from a manager I work with
I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks he knows. I neither know nor think I know.
- Socrates
Unfortunately, a lot of smart people still have this problem. I’d say I’m pretty damn well rounded and all that’s taught me is how easy it is to find a subject that I don’t know that’s still very important. Meanwhile, you can hardly throw a rock without finding an engineer that thinks he should rule the world.
To be fair to the engineers it’s not hard to do a better job then the people paid to be make our lives miserable for the profit of a few.
A lot of engineers end up becoming those people. Elon Musk isn’t even an engineer, but that’s the general vibe I’m thinking of.
Please don’t compare the benefactor of an apartheid gem mine to an engineer. Just because a lot fo dumbasses are engineers, doesn’t mean Musk the dumbass is an engineer.
Which is why I specifically pointed that out.
He’s just a guy who plays an engineer on TV, and in his own imagination. In reality, he got where he is by starting mildly rich, and then stumbling into blockbuster tech companies like 3 times in a row.
I’ve spent decades trying to learn a little about everything. And I do know quite a bit! Yet I’m always taken aback to find some dumb thing I’d never heard of or considered, some new angle.
At this point I think I might be well knowledgeable about the time I hit 200, maybe 250. Not gonna make it.
Off the top of my head, I’m going to go with Hanlon’s razor: “Don’t attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity”
Although, it’s somewhat complicated by the existence of willful or lazy ignorance.
Generally, by the existence of malice’s ability to understand and then use Hanlon’s Razor to provide itself cover.
Knowing the enemy’s heuristics allows you to deceive and manipulate them. Hence, heuristics themselves come with a cost during war.
Then the problem is: are we at war or not? Malice thinks we are. Incompetence maybe not.
Round and round we go. Which could be our own incompetence, or malice’s plan all along. Fuck.
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.
Or, if you like it more pithy: “The difference between theory and practice is larger in practice than it is in theory.”
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
Aren’t you confusing cynicism with skepticism?
No, “those” people are
When working on an office, it’s great and all that you have “the power of accurate observation” but god our Debbie downer is insufferable.
That’s a pretty accurate way of looking at things.
I doubt.
When I was in high school, a friend of mine came from a Republican family. He once told me “You think that if it would be nice that a thing were true, that means it is true”.
It took me a long time to understand what he meant, but I finally do, and he was spot on with how my philosophy worked.
Choosing proprietary tools and services for your free software project ultimately sends a message to downstream developers and users of your project that freedom of all users—developers included—is not a priority.
— Matt Lee, https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/opinion-github-vs-gitlab
On a post about GitHub Vs Gitlab - lol.
Quote is still relevant. GitLab wouldn’t be my first choice but open core is better than fully proprietary. The work on Ayulla is a bit more interesting at the moment for the Git space, but I would prefer something atop Darcs or Pijul to Git.
