Tag Archives: evil

De-escalate

De-escalate: (v) to decrease in intensity, magnitude, etc.

It is something I’ve always done.

I never gave it much thought.

To me it just made sense.

For you see, taking the first reaction of a human being who has been startled or hurt is not only unfair—it is not representative of who they are.

I do believe there is a childish portion in each one of us that wants to be offended so we can receive sympathy from those around us about being slighted.

But if you have just run into someone’s car and you’re informing them of that fact, and you expect them to give you a calm, measured response, you just might be evil.

Human beings should be given a chance to de-escalate from their initial response.

I don’t care what it is.

I don’t care if you think they should be more mature.

None of us are.

If we have a moment and realize how poorly we have handled our initial reaction, we often will mellow, apologize and gather our notions in a more thoughtful way.

But we need that time.

We need that mercy.

We need to understand that the first words that come out of somebody’s mouth when he or she feels offended are not conciliatory nor particularly kind.

They are bitter.

They are scolding words looking to heap damage.

It won’t hurt us to give our fellow human beings a chance to get over that initial pain—de-escalate and find a better reaction.

It does require that we have the maturity to know:

First reactions don’t count.

Each one of us deserves an opportunity to reflect and do better.

 

Decree

Decree: (n) a formal and authoritative order

Maybe not formal.

Certainly not overbearingly authoritative.

But it certainly would be nice if one simple thought could permeate the minds and hearts of the human race. It would not be a decree that would solve all the problems, but rather, a climate which fosters the atmosphere for problems to be solved.

Is it too much to ask?

Are we so struck with our own brilliance that we could not faithfully enact a dynamic purpose?

Must everything be our own doing?

Or maybe it has to come from our race. Our religion. Our gender. Or our clan.

Yes, that is our weakness.

We believe we are stronger when we cling to smaller and smaller groups of ourselves and proclaim that particular cloister to be holy.

Meanwhile, to live under a simple decree which births the potential for both creativity and respect for the past seems odd to us, if not evil.

I’m ready.

I am prepared to join with all my brothers and sisters in the human family and agree on something instead of debating everything.

I am weary of promoting my own ideas.

I am aggravated with being fussy.

It’s time for a decree.

I’m certainly willing to consider any thoughts you might like to offer.

But in the meantime, may I present my suggestion?

Like most concepts that would be proffered as universal, it may seem a trifle odd at first, or insufficient.

But let it grow on you.

Let it settle into the middle of your soul and sprout a garden of possibilities.

Here it is—my decree:

“Make it easy.”

Dazzling

Dazzling: (adj) something or someone who impresses deeply; astonishes with delight:

Imagine there are two meters.

One meter measures evil; another, good.

With me so far?

As you look at these meters, you notice there are settings.

On the Evil Meter, there is a top range of really, really bad—and a bottom range of “forgivable.”

On the Good Meter, there’s a top range which is “miraculous,” and on the bottom, “considerate.”

Now.

Is it possible for you and I to understand that how we set these meters depends on how well we get along with other people, and also our outlook about life on Earth?

If I set my Evil Meter too hot, I will find many things distasteful and ungodly, and end up coming across like a judgmental fool.

And if I set my Good Meter to only accept miracles that come from the Throne of God as being the definition of good, I will ignore many kindnesses that pop up in front of my eyes.

It is important that at the end of the day, if asked by our friends and relatives, “And how did you fare?” that we come back with that glorious word:

Dazzling.

To find our journey dazzling, we must calm down our Evil Meter and turn up our Good Meter.

We must be much more likely to find possibilities and blessings than we are to dig up fire and brimstone.

Of course, we’ll be accused by those who are very religious of being liberal, foolish or too easy to satisfy—but these are not the folks we’re out to impress.

We are working and discovering how to find a life that pleases us, pleases others …

And therefore pleases God, Himself.

Cumber

 

Cumber: (v) to hinder or hamper

Pellets of energy.

Think about it.

I know some folks believe that human beings are good, and others insist that we are naturally evil.

This has not been my finding. I would be hard pressed to describe the human race as good, and equally distraught to characterize them as only devious.

Actually, every single day, each one of us is bestowed pellets of energy. Energy doesn’t come with character specifications. It is neither hellish nor celestial.

It’s just energy.

And because it’s energy, it can be useful, and it can also be squandered.

Every morning when I rise, I yearn for my pellets of energy. I’m careful not to make too many promises, just in case I turn into an asshole between breakfast and lunch.

But I am fully aware that my value to other folks lies in realizing that if I don’t use my pellets of energy well, I’m just hanging around cumbering the Earth.

We don’t use the word “cumber” anymore.

It’s an Old English term, often associated with Biblical quotes.

But it fascinates me that we struggle for longevity without demanding that it be accompanied with purpose.

There has to be something more than gardening.

We can’t expect to sustain value merely from arriving on time to our doctor appointments.

And for the younger crowd, simply passing a test does not qualify anyone for superb consideration.

I don’t want to cumber the Earth. I don’t want my family to be ashamed of themselves because they wistfully wonder when I’m finally going to croak.

I want myself—and hopefully everyone else—to be fully aware of why I still hang around and notice the by-products of my hanging.

I do not want to cumber your life.

I do not want to cumber the Earth, filling it with carbon dioxide instead of sucking some of it back out.

I do not want my friends to feel responsibility to me today because of what I did yesterday.

I do not want to cumber the ground, the Earth, my surroundings, my loved ones or the cosmos.

I would like to take my pellets of energy and turn them into goodness instead of mediocrity or darkness.

What shall we do with these pellets of energy?

Get ready—it’s coming around again tomorrow.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crystal

Crystal: (n) a clear, transparent mineral or glass resembling ice.

 “I want to make this crystal-clear.”

Have you heard this statement?

Every time someone speaks these words, I consider crystal.

Crystal is not a pane of glass which you can see through clearly to the other side.

It appears to be. It seems to be pure.

But when you look through crystal there are distortions.

Things are just a little twisted.

The light bends through, creating contorted images.

Yet it’s very easy to insist to those around us that this “crystal vision” is an accurate representation of what we are viewing.

We have become too successful in our society at hiding evil behind a crystal lens, which has been cut, trimmed and placed in a position to convey the image we wish to portray instead of what is real.

It’s like a pair of glasses–every pair works for only one person.

The lenses have been cut, sized and measured for the eyesight of that individual. When we wear the spectacles of another traveler, our vision is clouded and sometimes even makes our heads spin.

What we really want to do is work on our eyesight and purify it.

Make sure the light of our body is our eye and it’s like a pane of glass.

So even if we decide to wear a pair of glasses for fashion, all we need to do is put glass in them, without messing with the adjustment.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

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Crept

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crept: (v) to move slowly or with great stealth

Lying quietly on my bed in the darkened room, I allowed fear to enter my heart.

It was all so foolish.

I was suddenly overtaken by an exaggerated sense of my mortality. It reminded me of the time I was a nine-year-old boy and overheard someone say that a patient in a hospital had died from swallowing his tongue.

I didn’t know you could swallow your tongue

But all that night I kept waking up, heart pounding, convinced that my tongue had crept down my throat and was trying to enter my stomach.

Although awareness of pending difficulties or threatening illnesses is common, it is not good for us to allow the apprehensions that have crept into our hearts to sneak into our thoughts and manipulate our actions.

Lying there on the bed, I tried to rebuke myself, but still found that when I closed my eyes, visions of my own demise persisted. And even when I dozed, my dreams were determined to become nightmares.

We are silly. I am Chief of Silly.

But once evil has crept into our lives, there has to be a ceremony—a exorcism—from all such darkness.

 

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Cramp Someone’s Style

Cramp someone’s style: (v) to prevent someone from free action or expression

 Evil is sneaky.

Evil rarely attacks good.

Evil doesn’t necessarily criticize good.

Evil just makes good look limited—and we, as human beings, foolishly make the decision that trying to find a better way of living just ends up cramping our style.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

It’s happening every day in our world. Folks are so afraid of being vanilla that they try to come up with their own flavor, and when they find it distasteful, they discover they’re stuck with it because it’s become their trademark.

We are completely convinced that the “good boy” cannot be a dynamo in bed as a lover. No, it’s the over-drinking, under-thinking, greasy-haired, motorcycle-riding, jobless fellow who has the secret to the female orgasm.

In politics, we contend that anyone who sits around and discusses how to run the government is too boring to vote for, and we want somebody in there to shake things up—even though it may create problems of earthquake proportions.

We are just so afraid that our style is going to be cramped and we’re in danger of being boxed in that we find ourselves beckoned to an isolated corner, to be tempted by a “snake in the grass” with something that ends up fruitless.

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Corrupt

Corrupt: (adj) lacking integrity; crooked

Corruption thrives because there are too many people looking for it instead of admitting it.

That’s the truth.

As long as I spend my life believing that what is corrupt would never exist in me or being unwilling to consider the possibility, I will become somebody else’s corruption.

Corrupt is what we should be looking for in ourselves so that when we find it, we can correct it before it corrupts us further, and makes it obvious to those around us that we are corruptible.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

But somehow or another, there is no sin or evil that looks quite as bad when I am sporting it. I can only truly see what is corrupt when you are wearing it.

Therefore, self-deception keeps us all living in a world of perpetual corruption—because altering someone else’s foul behavior is nearly impossible.

What would it take for us to understand that finding what is corrupt inside us will stop us from being labeled as evil?

Do I really think that I will convince the people around me that I’m incapable of corruption? Certainly not.

They’re looking for it in me.

They’re waiting for me to sprout the horns of the devil.

They aren’t horrible—they just want to be sure they aren’t the horrible ones, and the best way to keep yourself from being tagged as wicked is to hunt down witches and point the finger in a direction far from where you are.

When my name is mentioned in front of many people in this world, smiles come to their faces, and maybe even some tears of appreciation. But as God is my witness, I will tell you that to others on this planet, I was corrupt.

I will spend the rest of my life making sure that as often as possible, this is in the past tense and not a clear and present danger.


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Core

Core: (n) the center of anything.

“At the core…”

I’ve used this phrase all my life.

To me, the core has always represented the purity—the genesis—of an idea or substance.

Yet an apple core is tossed away.

The core of the Earth is ablaze with fire and molten rock.

But without the core of the apple, you have no seeds for future apples. And from my understanding, without the molten core of the Earth, the whole balance of our ecosystem is upset.

I’ve heard people talk about core values. What are core values? Are they things I think are important, that you might not? Or are they things that are important to everybody? And what would those be? And if they do exist, why aren’t we talking more about them?funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

For instance, are there a variety of ways to tell the truth?

Is there a core approach to being accepting of others?

I would love to sit down and chat about what produces the seeds of life inside us and keeps the fires burning.

I have two core values—two cores to my center, two central intelligence agencies within me, which are irrefutable and cannot be changed.

The first one is that I am often wrong.

Without this core, I naturally begin to believe I am right. This is not only obnoxious but has historically proven to be dangerous.

The second core is no one is better than anyone else.

I have been around people who argue this point. They believe some people are born evil, others blessed.

But I contend that allowing ourselves this piece of nonsense always leads to bigotry, anger and war.

Yeah—I guess those are my two core values:

I’m often wrong.

And we’re all the same.


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Confusion

Confusion: (n) lack of understanding; uncertain, bewilderment.

People often get confused about confusion.

I suppose that’s because if you allow it to happen, it can be very confusing.

It occurs when we begin to believe that complicated answers are better than simple ones. We also start feeling there are questions that have no answer funny wisdom on words that begin with a C
whatsoever, and therefore the situations must be endured instead of conquered.

If you can convince someone that evil is powerful, ignorance is supreme, indifference is rampant, God is impotent and human beings are careless, then you can pretty well control the narrative and generate a climate of gloom and doom. Once you do this, it’s possible to control people simply by frightening them.

Yet, it’s difficult to scare people who have joy.

Fear is hard to promote among those involved in true love.

And terrorizing an individual who has faith is nearly impossible.

To create confusion, you must present a dilemma in which the problems seem insurmountable and the resources, limited.

Every dictator, tyrant, false teacher and unrighteous religion has maintained a following of human beings simply by convincing them that the problems are so immense that to continue to try to resolve them would only create more confusion.

If you want to save the world, simplify things.

And as you do, sprout a smile.

 

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