Author: Philo

human

If

If you can’t be content, be happy. If you can’t be happy, be well. If you can’t be well, be funny. If you can’t be funny, be adamant.

If you can’t be adamant, be curious and if you can’t be curious, be accepting. If you can’t be accepting, be quiet. If you can’t be quiet, be nice.

If you can’t be nice, be helpful. If you can’t be helpful, be mindful. If you can’t be mindful, be useful. If you can’t be useful, be willing.

If you can’t be willing, be honest and if you can’t be honest, be alone. If you can’t be alone then do and say nothing for that is all you are good for.

Visit www.markgowan.com for more writings

Useful

Be useful in the face of uselessness. Utilize any chance to make your world a better place, make your environment one worthy of living. Do not sit idly by, but work towards an ultimate goal, not just simple cash reward but success and happiness. Do what you must to make yourself what you believe you can be.

Be careful in the world. Be skeptical of those empty smiles and thieves and bandits of empathy. Call a spade a spade but don’t lose yourself in the cynical mistrust. Guard that which is most important: your integrity, your character, your trustworthiness. always know that to a salesman you are a dollar bill, to a friend you are one that is to be trusted, to a woman a partner, and to a man a home.

Above all be yourself and do not apologize for what you have honestly come by.

Happy

I once believed that it took a lifetime to find happiness. But now I realize that it does not exist as a state, but as a process. Like most processes happiness has troughs and hills, valleys and mountains. This is why so many of us are so unhappy: we search for the perfect happiness. But the act of searching in some meaningful way for happiness is important. In fact, it is key…key to a happy life.

I’ve written that happiness is overrated and I believe that to be true. But I believe it is only so because of how we view it. The struggle innate in the process of searching for happiness is what counts.

To not struggle to be happy is the ultimate goal This is why the struggle is key. The process of life moves in time and we part of it. Happiness itself is fleeting but the process is ongoing; it is how we live while we choose (or not) to ask why be happy. And if or when we do there will only be one answer and that is that happiness is a good in itself.

We are both lucky and unfortunate enough to desire something as unfathomable and impossible as happiness.

Not

IN a world that is more and more defined by selling information rather than products, we become a product; we are the product. This is no secret, or shouldn’t be. Our privacy means nothing. “Rights” becomes an empty and meaningless word meant to appease our sense of justice. More important becomes our use to others, how we can allow “them” to profit.

This is the society that we live in. To re-create, to find our “rights”, to get out of such a society (if you so desire) is to be ever vigilant, always working towards a clear end: to be left alone by those who will not give you that right.

To retain a vestige of our humanity we must pay the price of “not”.

-of not choosing comfort and ease as ends.

-of not accepting what is presumed to be free, of not following norms, of not accepting any hive mentality.

-of not asking questions in order to turn our heads away from facts and reality.

Remember: we are nothing if not ourselves. Know who that is and what others can do to take that away.

Aphorisms

Simply by thinking right you will go against the grain. Just the act of trying to be moral; you will become a revolutionary.

Truth is hidden and lies are out in the open because Truth is freedom and lies are slavery.

And when, or if you see this you will be alone among the blind. And when, or if you ask you will know that they have put their own eyes out.

Once right is on your side, question it to keep it strong. Once you have truth in your mind, test it to keep it pure. Talk of the heart is nothing more than the empty words of the lost and the religious.

Search for others with right morality and Truth but do not lose hope that there are not many. Walk among the numbers to find rare beauty.

Do not lose hope by not having hope. Such hope is a fool’s game played by those who are standing still and claim they are moving.

To be human; we have to learn not to be a person.

Like a Child

We fall for easy and shiny trinkets and simple, comfortable thoughts. Like a child, we rush forward towards toys and lights. We do not dismiss them for the sugary confection that they are because we do not understand or value a good life. Often, we simply do not understand what those things are. And so we accept what the hive tells us, what the tribe demands.

When we grow, if we are lucky, we walk away from the tribe and find those that have done the same. They are few, but they have all removed the limits of the tribe, self-imposed or otherwise. We learn that man is not the measure of all things. But we come to learn that his ideas can be.

And if we grow to be wise we come to realize that evolution is a blind watchmaker and not an imposing dictator of our lives. We think ourselves towards freedom and with time, we can see past the trinkets and the easy offerings. We learn to walk away from ourselves, and remember who we have become.

The Forest for the Trees

“For every palace that I see rising in the capital, I seem to see a whole rural district laid to waste.” -Rousseau, The Social Contract

While there is a beautiful world “out there” there are people in it that are not so good. It is these people that we meet that seem ready with easy answers. They seem to be blind to the beauty in the world, only seeing it as a resource, a thing to use.

They come in many forms: rich and poor, educated and ignorant, friend and enemy. They intentionally or unintentionally argue that they have the answers to your worries, to your concerns, and will sell you answers that are opposed to Truth.

Free yourself from this riff-raff and the traps that they set forth. Turn away and remember that the world is not “out there” but everywhere, and is a beautiful place. Look beyond the lights and the cement and the merchants. Look out beyond the horizon and to the trees in the distance.

The Trouble With People

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard

“When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent” -Isaac Asimov

A fact is a fact. But it is important to remember that it is the process that makes a fact a fact. The process, the coming to, the fruition, the inference, warrant and evidence is what matters. The process matters because it builds the argument, the act of strength rather than the illusion. It is the process that makes us human, that makes us people rather than simply apes that stand upright and bellow emptily.

To be a person, to consider one’s self a person is to understand the process that it takes to be a person, to differentiate one’s self from those that simply accept. That predisposition to be a part, to be accepted, to be liked, to be the same, to circumvent the all-important process is the ultimate failure of us as people.

The trouble with people is that we are people without a process. We carry our insouciance with pride and relish the feeling that it gives us. We arrogantly believe what isn’t true, and certainly refuse to believe what is true. We haughtily wave our flags and flagrantly dismiss the one thing that makes us civil: the process to become intelligent.

Prejudice

Prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance – Nathan Rutstein

We all succumb to prejudice.  It is in our genetic makeup.  It follows us around like a stink that just won’t go away.  We don’t notice it because it is always around.  We breath it in and call it fresh.

It doesn’t take much to bring out the flowery stench, at least in our own minds; in the secret recesses of thought that come over us when we least expect it, when we “notice”.

We are all bigots to a certain degree.  We have to live with it even though we try not to.  Some have simply succumbed to the contradiction of thought that rolls through their minds.  Others dismiss it as impossibility while unfurling their national pride.

But in order to do those things they have to dismiss the fact that they have an “emotional commitment to ignorance.”  But of course, such people don’t think that way, if they think at all.

They simply know they are better.  They know that they are above the fray.  They are simply prejudiced.

This Happened

“You know those protesters are being paid by somebody.”
“Which protesters?’
“Those up in Wisconsin and Portland.”
“Oh, so you are referring to the black protesters regarding the police violence and stuff.”
“Well, they are being paid.  There’s no way they can afford those hotels they stay in.  They don’t work.”
“You don’t know anything about those people.  You are making unwarranted assumptions, and my guess is that you are trying to blame the ‘left’ or ‘Democrats’.  I don’t care, but I think that’s probably what you’re doing.”
“I know what I see.  And yes, it’s probably the liberal communists.”
“They’re what?!”
“They’re communists.”
“Your need to stop watching so much Fox News and get your facts straight.  I’ll bet you don’t even know what communism is.”
“Of course, I DO know what it is.”
“Then what is it?  Define it.”
“I don’t have to do any such thing.”
“You don’t know what it is.  You’re not really even making an argument.  You’re just making unwarranted claims.”

“That’s just your opinion.  AND I know what communism is.”
“Well some of this is my opinion, but  I haven’t made any claims, and I’m asking you to back up what your saying.  I’m just asking for a logical argument.  We have to define terms if we’re going to have this discussion.”
“Your just trying pull  intellectual, elitist tricks.”
“No.  I’m just trying to have a logical argument.  And you won’t define your terms.  We have to be on the same page if we’re to have this discussion.  And don’t get mad.  You started this.”
“No, you’re just trying to make me feel foolish.  I know what logic is, and I’m being logical.”
“Now why would I do that?  I’m not.  I’m just not going to get in a pissing match about opinions.  But I don’t believe you know what logic is.  If you do, define it.”
“I don’t have to.  You define it.”
“I’m not the one making all these claims and I won’t define it for you.”
“You think I’m ignorant.”
“You are ignorant.  But, so am I about a lot of things.  There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“And I don’t watch that much Fox News.  I get a lot of my news from Epoch News.”

“I don’t know them.

“See.  You don’t know everything.”

“I never said I did.”