Tag Archives: inventors

Asbestos

Asbestos: (n) an insulator which has been implicated for causing certain cancers.dictionary with letter A

It has taken me many years to balance my life by realizing that there are two questions which have to be answered in the pursuit of success. I will not mislead you by saying that I am always comfortable in balancing the pair, but I do know that to be truly successful and leave behind a worthy legacy, I have to please both Mother Nature and Father God.

Mother Nature wants me to find out what works.

That’s really it. Mother Nature is not terribly concerned about other things, just about whether I honor history, I accept what’s provided and I submit to common sense. The question is:

“Does it work?”

Now, some people stop there. This would be the folks that came up with asbestos.

They found a material which was very effective at insulating against heat and at preventing objects from catching on fire. When it was discovered, I am sure there was a shout of victory from those who felt they had taken on the universe and won the battle.

But they failed to ask the second question–the one that Father God expects us to consider before proceeding on:

“Does it hurt people?”

There are many things that seem to work, but they hurt people.

My dear friend, war often seems like a good idea until we start running out of body bags.

Some business practices which trim the budget by cutting the work force have the smell of fiscal propriety, but later on down the road when the commerce picks up a bit and the economy improves, the companies who followed the path look short-sighted and dastardly.

If the people who manufactured asbestos had taken the time to consider its effect on the human lungs, they wouldn’t have created the mess–in this case, mesothelioma.

Would we have been delayed a trifle in our progress? Perhaps.

But I have more faith in the ingenious abilities of our inventors than I do in the accountants making sure to stay cheap–and sometimes deadly.

It takes two questions:

  • Does it work?
  • Will it hurt people?

Until we have a world that understands this concept, we will continue to sacrifice humanity in the name of progress.

 

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Anti-hero

dictionary with letter A

Anti-hero (n): a central character in a story, movie, or drama who lacks conventional heroic attributes.

Is it an oxymoron or just redundant?

For after all, there are no true heroes who fit the criteria we normally assess to such an honor.

  • All heroes come from nowhere just in the nick of time.
  • They cannot be manufactured–though we have hammered away.
  • They cannot be educated, though classes continue to be held.
  • They cannot be ordained, though religious institutions anoint at will.
  • And they are not born heroes.

One of the greatest misconceptions in our culture is the notion that people are born any particular way. We are all birthed with the need to be born again–emotionally, spiritually, mentally and physically–or else to be cast in the role of being mere understudies of our parents’ stage work.

No one would expect a scrawny attorney from Illinois to be the central figure for the emancipation of the black race and the maintaining of the union of our country.

No one could ever have anticipated that a young man who struggled with math would later convince us that E does equal MC squared.

Could anyone have foreseen that a gentleman of great promise who was struck with polio and was confined to a wheelchair would be elected president four times, guiding us through a national depression and a world war?

Looking at a string of poets, musicians, authors, statesmen, inventors and liberators, there is not one of them who was naturally inclined to greatness.

It is those we preen to be heroes who disappoint us and those who we have cursed to obscurity who end up astounding us.

After all, could anyone have thought that a refugee to Egypt, who grew up in a village of less than five hundred people, the son of a carpenter, would be proclaimed the light of the world?

 

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