Tag Archives: philosophies

Communism

Communism: (n) a political theory derived from Karl Marx advocating a society in which all property is publicly owned

Perhaps the most amazing part of life on Earth is that notions, ideas, religions, philosophies and promotional campaigns can spring forth, and need never establish their validity as long as they’re well-funded.

It’s a bit unnerving.

One might have a tendency to go chasing after the brass band that plays the loudest, because there is no monitoring system to determine where the band is going or if it has any future.

If you want to evaluate the intelligence and ultimate worth of an idea, measure it against three undeniable truths:

  1. Human beings like to lie
  2. Human beings are lazy
  3. Human beings are finicky

I suppose you could argue with these assertions, but in the long run, our race does not like to.

Race, that is.

We want things easy. We want our portion and half of yours. We want to vote on everything, even if it has already been decided by nature.

So it doesn’t take long to realize that communism, and even socialism, have absolutely no chance of ever working as long as the mission is undertaken by human beings.

What you will end up doing is making an exciting start, notice disappointing returns and have to either kill the people who are the laziest, or abandon the foolishness of thinking that any of us are able to share everything in common.

Karl may have made his Marx on Earth, but unfortunately, the system he conjured has a sympathetic edge, and no real ability to cut through the problems.

 

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Cloying

Cloying: (adj) an excess of sweetness, richness, or sentiment.

When we need something and we can’t find what’s real, generally speaking, we have to settle for the best fake available.

I remember the first time I ate imitation crab meat. I had eaten real crab meat before. The imitation did not taste the same. But when I considered the price difference, I allowed that phony crab to attract me–in its cloying way.

It is my great exasperation that we are getting so accustomed to cloying, tugging, pulling, phony emotion out of awkward situations, that we will begin to believe that the original, natural form of feeling is implausible.

After all, since human beings are heart creatures, they need to feel.

Even though there are philosophies, political parties and religions which try to remove sentiment from the equation, we still end up with stiff cardboard cutouts, who every once in a while have to fake paper-thin emotions.

When does it become cloying?

It’s cloying when I realize I need to feel something but don’t, so I insert it anyway–instead of feeling something and needing to express it as soon as possible.

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Alter Ego

dictionary with letter A

Alter ego: (n) a person’s secondary or alternative personalityCould you keep up with two?? Personalities, that is?

Yet I think sometimes we, as human beings, try to maintain an arsenal of personalities under the guise of being diverse, clever, intuitive and powerful.

Actually, there are two philosophies that collide with each other, and as often happens in science, when the two things collide, they cancel each other out.

  • The first philosophy is that we are able to “become all things to all men.”
  • The second one is, “all you have to do is be yourself.”

As always, somewhere between these two monsters lies the frightened child of truth.

If you try to be too varied, people call you wishy-washy, liberal or ill-defined.

Yet if you foolishly go out into the world and try to “be yourself” all the time, you will soon offend others and find yourself alone except for those who hold to your position.

There is a third possibility. “As much as possible, live peaceably with all men.”

I like that one.

Sometimes I find that my personality isn’t suited for the environment, so I just give it the night off. I decide not to be too chatty. I find a lovely corner near the buffet table, sit down and let people find me instead of circulating around, to the annoyance of many and the delight of very few.

Then there are times when there are issues which demand that I stand up for a cause. I have discovered there is really only one cause worth standing up for. Whenever human beings feel like they are advancing their cause by making other people to be less valuable than themselves, I must step in with my personality and object.

Other than that, I have found that letting things just play out normally (and even historically) proves to have sufficient punishment for bad ideas.

I am not always myself–because in some adventures, “me” is not needed.

But I certainly do not try to be so open-minded that my brain cannot close a door to create a sense of privacy.

I try to “live peaceably with all men”–unless they are determined to declare a war on their neighbors.


Ad

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

Ad: (n) an advertisement

dictionary with letter A

Sometimes it’s the way people choose to insult you.

If you’re promoting an idea, a product, or some particular outgrowth of your own efforts, they will accuse you of “advertising.”

Matter of fact, even though we are all basically slaves to the system, we simultaneously insist that we HATE ads. We’ll even try to edit them out of our television programs, and therefore insist upon our independence from such interference. But if we were really all that turned off by ads, Madison Avenue would certainly pick up on our distaste and stop making them.

Are there things that are worth advertising? Because quite honestly, I will put an ad out to the world if I believe in something. I’m not tight-lipped about it at all.

I only require three contingencies to stimulate my passion:

1. It needs to work. I would never want to promote something that was intermittent or just flat-out fails to deliver its promises. That’s the danger of both religion and politics–their adherents have secretly become unbelievers. So the followers are like an old rocker, traveling around from one concert to another in an old beat-up van, peddling t-shirts, who no longer believes in his own slogans.

2. It should make things easier, not harder. Even though I do not think laziness is a virtue, I think over-working is a much worse vice. If you want to improve the world, make a better mouse that doesn’t need to be trapped.

3. It needs to include everybody. I know there are products, ideas and even philosophies which seem to focus on a particular age group. Maybe this is necessary. But I find the greatest value of an idea is how well it can be applied across the board–to all races, genders, ages, creeds, and orientations.

There you go. What is worthy of writing an ad? Anything that fits the criteria listed above.

In other words, an ad should … add.

Everything else is just an imitation and derivation of the hula-hoop.