Advice for the Proletariat

Multitasking: The art of doing as many things as possible, as poorly as possible.

Wealth

I have yet to do anything in my life worthy of extraordinary wealth. Someday that will change.

Tragedy

I do not want to spend the rest of my life worrying about the next tragedy, or in my case, the first tragedy. There is nothing I can do to prevent it.

Bad things will happen, no matter how much I hope against hope that they won’t. Planes will fall out of the sky, cars will crash, and hearts will stop beating. For this I have no solution. Attempting to fight against these disasters is only bringing them into my life. Fighting against tragedy is a negative act in itself. You must avoid travel to stop accidents, you must kill to stop fighting, you must stop living to prevent loss of life. I would be fighting one negative with another, and it is a battle I can not win.

Bad things will happen. However I have found a solution, and a course of action that will not drown my soul in the process. To fight against tragedy my life can be a source of anti-tragedy. I can not live my life striving to stop bad, but I can live my life to do good.

From the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you drift away to sleep you can tailor your actions to make the world a better place, even if all you can affect is your own small world surrounding your own small life. This is the only way to truly win the fight against tragedy.

What exactly it means to ‘do good’ can certainly be debated. If you are not careful your concept of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ can be so skewed that you end up creating more problems than you have solved, a favorite pastime of evangelical Christians. But you can examine your own morality and your own actions. You can reason through your everyday decisions, and be convinced that what you are doing is ‘right’. The steps toward this ‘good’ are small, not drastic, but they are absolutely necessary if you want to shelter yourself from the eminent regret and loss of a tragic and wasted life.

My solution can be summed up like this: I can not spend my days fighting against all the bad things in life, but I can know that every day that I exist makes the world a better place.

Wisdom II... the other kind

"He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot."

Another kind of wisdom from the eminent Groucho. Perhaps a prophetic reference to a certain Chief Executive we all know and love?

Quality

"My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all... We've had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it's just about depleted. Everyone's just about out of gumption. And I think it's about time to return to the rebuilding of this American resource--individual worth. There are political reactionaries who've been saying something close to this for years. I'm not one of them, but to the extent they're talking about real individual worth and not just an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they're right. We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We really do. I hope that in this Chautauqua some directions have been pointed to."

--Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974

Objectivism

I wonder if Objectivism is all one needs to be happy. I somehow doubt that is the only thing. There are many pieces missing.

I have no doubt one can be happy as an Objectivist, but will one always be happy as an Objectivist. If not, what more is needed? What are the missing pieces? The real goal is, after all, happiness.

But I suppose just knowing what you need to be happy doesn't make it magically appear.

Wisdom

Wisdom is a strange quality. It is separate from knowledge, somehow separate from common sense. The only way to gain it may be living through and understanding painful experiences.

Philosophy

I sometimes wonder if this is actually a search for a new philosophy, or if this is simply a search for someone who has said what I already believe.

Atheism

As an Atheist you are forced to account for your actions in life, not in the afterlife. You are forced to live in reality, not fantasy.

A religious zealot prepares his whole life for the moment after death, waisting the precious time he has here, and thinking only of what he believes will come.

An Atheist, in the moment right before the end, may look back on his life and be proud of what he has left to the world, knowing he has used his time wisely.

my head

I feel like someone kicked me in the back of the head last night... did someone kick me in the back of the head last night? No, I don't remember any kickinig. Just drinking, lots of drinking.

The idea of me actually getting any work done is absurd.