Counterproductive

Counterproductive: (adj) tending to defeat one’s purpose

I think it is wisdom to take a moment—maybe even sit down—and consider what it means to be a productive person.

There are five words that come to my mind:

  1. Solvent
  2. Temperate
  3. Loving
  4. Generous
  5. Focused

Now, there may be others, but you can take these five attributes, blend them together and end up with a productive human life.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

So let’s take a moment and consider what is counterproductive.

Starting with Number 1, solvent, I would assume the counter would be financially in need, as impulsive would be the opposite of temperate.

Let’s move along. Shall we say that spiteful might be considered counterproductive to loving? And stingy undoubtedly would discourage generosity.

Distracted certainly is the antithesis of focused.

So what do you get when you put together a human life which is financially in need, impulsive, spiteful, stingy and distracted?

It seems to me that you might end up with the American culture—so intent on individual families that it lacks vision for the entire humanity on Earth, and also so entwined with the Internet that opportunity which often stumbles into the room is ignored in favor of binge-watching.

I’m not so sure you can build a human being of quality, soul or mercy by trying to emphasize counterproductive values.

I think our first step into escaping our own trap of inefficiency is to realize that we’re all in this together—over the seven continents, all of the countries, all the races, all the religions and both genders.

In doing so, we might begin to produce instead of having our fruit rot on the vine.


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Conceive

Conceive: (v) to form or devise a plan

“The imaginations of a man’s heart are evil continually from his youth.”

Rather than considering this a degrading statement from the Good Book, we should understand that it is the working climate and funny wisdom on words that begin with a C
environment that exists in the interactions of human beings, as we attempt to move forward beyond our jungle roots to a lifestyle with a higher sensitivity.

What we’re working on is how we conceive things.

If every woman is just a storage house for a pair of breasts and a vagina, and every man has to be concerned about the length of his penis, as every country contends that it is the first and the best, and all religions struggle for supernal supremacy, it is a good idea to slow down and realize that since we normally conceive things in wickedness, it might be healthy to saturate ourselves in contentment and find deeper and purer motives for our actions.

We don’t have to.

We can become defensive and think that since everybody else is so rudely constructed, we must maintain our lack of civility if we want to survive.

Yet in a rock fight, the only people who escape injury are those who refuse to throw rocks, but instead, retreat to contemplate richer and more enlightened solutions.

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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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Comeuppance

Comeuppance: (n) a punishment or fate that someone deserves.

Sometimes I’m convinced that there are no history books. Matter of fact, I’ve gone on the Internet to make sure they still sell them.

Sure enough, there they are.

So my second supposition is that they just must not be very popular.

Because it does not take too long when perusing a history book, to realize that if you’re going to cheat, lie, steal, abuse or kill, you’re going to get your comeuppance.

You may do it for a while, with authority, seemingly uncontested.

But there is always someone, or sometimes it’s a whole clump of people, who will rise up and stop the foolishness before the human race ends up in the ground with its bones being eventually studied by some other species in ten thousand years.

You just can’t pursue evil and succeed.

That’s enough reason right there to at least consider the option of good.

Yet all of our entertainment, our politics, and even our religions are so power-hungry that they present the illusion that evil might just have a bad enough day to have a good day, and beat the crap out of righteousness.

It doesn’t seem to bother people that it’s never happened.

After all, Adolph Hitler, who thought his Third Reich was going to last a thousand years, fell a bit short. Thirteen years were all he got.

Oh, yes–he destroyed a lot of people along the way and maybe he should have been stopped earlier, but you will notice, he’s not around to take interviews on the subject.

It’s something I need to remind myself of from time to time. I can go ahead and tell that little white lie, and maybe even think I got by with it.

But after a while, the feeling of self-confidence about being nasty catches up with me.

And I do get my comeuppance.

Even worse than that, I end up looking like a fool to have pursued such a retarded, unfulfilling and doomed process.

 

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-cide

-cide: (combining form) denoting a person or substance that kills.

Sitting here leisurely in my comfortable chair being allowed the luxury of thought, I am suddenly and completely overwhelmed with the futility of killing.

I don’t know why it struck me that way this morning. I didn’t have any trouble eating my breakfast sausage, which certainly required the life
of a pig (or was it a turkey?)

But overall, I am bewildered.

It seems to me that as long as we live in a world where an insult from our neighbor causes us to close down communication, and further intimidation coming from this newly found enemy pushes us to contemplate violence, won’t we always just be two steps away from murder–especially when those portions of life which are supposed to soften our hearts–moments like spirituality–are mysteriously fueled by feuds and sensations of supremacy? What will ever drag us away from the “killing fields?”

I shall not continue sharing much more because I fear that I’m waxing eloquent instead of relevant.

Are there people, creatures, causes, nations or even religions that deserve to be eliminated?

I don’t know.

I guess, this morning, all I’m telling you is, I sure as hell don’t want to be the one to de-“cide.”

 

 

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Cemetery

Cemetery: (n) a burial ground; a graveyard

No racial tension.

The same space available for everyone.

No complaints.

No gender bias.

No discussion about sexual preference.

No religious distinction.

No hurry.

No worry.

No flurry to scurry.

No argument.

No political debates.

No special treatment.

No punishment.

No ego.

No money required.

No need to tout your resume.

No disease.

No more death.

Welcome to the cemetery.

Come and spend a spell.

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Benediction

Benediction: (n) bestowing a blessing at the end

Dictionary B

Granting rights does not remove the wrongs.

We have become a society which is obsessed with the notion of “human rights,” failing to understand that being granted a voice doesn’t guarantee that you’re being heard.

Because of this error in judgment, we often feel satisfied and pronounce a benediction of completion over projects that are still quite incomplete.

So suddenly we are confronted with some nasty occurrences of racism, prejudice, misogyny, ill-founded anger and wickedness.

  • We feign surprise.
  • We’re really not.

It is important to give rights to other races, other religions and other lifestyles. But it isn’t a blanket pardon for all their inconsistencies and anti-human aspects–which still need to be addressed–nor for the lingering prejudices which we regard to be “respecting their culture.”

We pronounce benedictions much too soon.

The service is not over.

There is still much we need to do, with a servant’s heart, to correct many a wrong … even though the rights are intact.

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Ayatollah

Ayatollah: (n) a Shiite religious leader in Iran.

I would like to broaden the definition of “asshole.”dictionary with letter A

It’s not that I want to use the word more. You can feel free to change the term if you so desire.

I believe an asshole is anyone who promotes his or her peculiarity as making them better than other people.

Whenever I see pictures of clerics of all religions, wearing their costumes and establishing their dominance through facial hair, robes and funny hats, the first thought that comes to my mind is “asshole”–especially when they begin to espouse that their particular garb and gab is supreme.

Here’s what I think: if you need a costume to promote your ideas and it’s not Halloween, you are officially an asshole.

Because my understanding is that the great men of history, who truly had something important to say, were very careful to blend in with the masses, using a common head and a common thread instead of standing afar off and yelling extreme disapproval at the top of their lungs.

So to all the priests, preachers, mullahs, ayatollahs and dollies who apparently breed llamas, I pronounce you irrelevant.

You will remain irrelevant as long as you insist that you have come to save the world, which generally speaking … you choose to condemn.

 

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Arrogate

Arrogate: (v) to take or claim (something) without justification.dictionary with letter A

  • I don’t join a club because I don’t like to club people.
  • I’ve never added my membership to a party because I hate to get drunk on my own opinion.
  • And I’m not an adherent to any specific religion because I’m obnoxious when I’m religious.

For you see, it’s like I started off my life with a huge suitcase full of beliefs, ideas, prejudices, quirks and preferences. I kissed my family goodbye and showed up at the railway station to go off to the College of Humanity with this burdensome baggage, proudly hauling it along to demonstrate my faithfulness to the causes enclosed.

After a few miles, I grew weary of the task, so I opened it up and discovered there were many things that were either too small for me, useless to my present condition, or somewhat unidentifiable.

Seeing a trash can nearby, I availed myself of its open-mindedness and dumped this unnecessary carry-on.

I walked a little further, got a little older, and my muscles began to complain about their mission of toting. So I opened it one more time, and lo and behold, things that once seemed sacred were now outdated and meaningless.

A new dumping.

So I tread on into my middle years, still faithful to display the luggage originally provided. Then one day I decided to open up the container and I discovered that everything that had been packed in there for me was gone, and all that remained was an empty valise.

I took a risk.

I cast it aside.

This accomplished, I realized there were only three things I held dear:

  1. I am responsible for my own life so I should stop being a jerk.
  2. People are not going to treat me any better than I treat them.
  3. Having more than I need makes me worry instead of prosper.

Today I try very hard to keep from accumulating trinkets which are thrust upon me by those who feel uncomfortable with me being unencumbered.

I am polite … but I scurry away from their insistence.

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Arbiter

dictionary with letter A

Arbiter: (n) a person who settles a dispute. 

Compromise is popular.

It has become so accepted that when someone utters the phrase, “We all need to compromise,” there is practically a collective “Amen” spoken in the room.

To achieve compromise, we often require an arbiter.

These are people who feel they are valuable by taking a bit of one side and mingling a little of another side to come up with a whole new rendition, which is only partially accepted by each individual party.

Honestly, this doesn’t work anywhere else in life.

Aside from Tex-Mex food, mixing cuisines is normally a disaster.

An ecumenical philosophy which includes all religions leaves you with precepts that should be written on fortune cookies and have about as much significance.

Congress gathering to mesh their opinions into a bill usually leaves us with a law which attempts to cover the subject like a blanket with our feet sticking out the end.

The times I found myself being an arbiter, I discovered a truth. Since the individuals were already disagreeing, trying to get them to sign off on a diluted format would be unsatisfying to both of them, and probably ignored in the long run.

I don’t believe in compromise. I hold to a philosophy of submission.

If two people are arguing, it’s likely that neither one has the total perspective.

If you can help people land on what has historical value, personal satisfaction and global respect, then asking them to submit to that conclusion creates the climate for a healing situation.

We can do this with anything.

Any issues possesses a core of emotional, spiritual and mental health which can be tapped if we’re not so intent on promoting our own cause.

But to do so, we must submit to ideals and truths which may be different from our own popular cultural outlook.

They say that politics is built on compromise. Actually, politics should be built on common sense. Each amendment to the Constitution should be looked at through the eyes of our generation and interpreted to honor the original freedoms without holding to the letter of the law.

The same thing would be true of corporate by-laws, marital relationships and even our reverence for the Good Book.

Compromise is the belief that there is “right” everywhere, and we just need to blend our “rights” together.

Knowing the nature of human beings, it’s more likely that we’re slightly mistaken in the first place, and we need to find common ground by submitting to more mature wisdom.

 

 

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