"Moderation in all things includes moderation. To be truly moderate, you must be extreme in some things." --Valerie Whitcomb
"The consistency of America's luck may have fooled many of us into forgetting we are all lucky to be born here, lucky to be living now. . . We were born into it. We were lucky. We were blessed. We thought we were the heirs of John Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas Edison, Jonas Salk. . . . And we are. But still, every generation ya gotta earn it. It doesn't mean you're better, it means you're lucky and ya gotta earn it." Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, 10/26/2001.
Unfortunately, some people don't realize how lucky they are. That's what learning is all about. This is also why I laugh whenever folks say that "things were so much better in the good old days". Which good old days? Regardless of where you look, life was pretty bleak. Discrimination was legal. Enslavement was legal. (Yes, "even white folks" could be enslaved, so long as you called it "indentured servitude"). When disease struck, it was rampant. The Wild West alone had cholera, dysentery, smallpox, measles, and mountain fever. Also count scurvy, typhoid, and tuberculosis. So while some people talk about "the good old days", every day I thank $deity$ for being born in the "boring old 20th century", and I thank folks like Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur, Jonas Salk, and Alexander Fleming. (Whoops, sorry to rant ... my bad!)
Meh. According to my grandfather, if you didn't grow up in the depression, lose at least 2 immediate family members to influenza or polio, and get shot in Belgium before you turned 25, your generation ain't shit.
I'll see the Great Depression and raise the Oregon Trail. So many folks died on the Trail of cholera alone, it's not funny. And this is one reason why I can't understand why, apparently, there are so many people in Russia who are "nostalgic" for Communist rule ... and even vote for the Communist Party. WTF are you guys, a bunch of masochists?! Then again, I suppose only a generation so saturated with nonstop fast-food and entertainment could ask a question as asinine as "Would living in a 1984-like world be that bad?" (Yes, thank you, Quora). At least he's trying to learn, I guess?
“She asks me to kill the spider. Instead, I get the most peaceful weapons I can find. I take a cup and a napkin. I catch the spider, put it outside and allow it to walk away. If I am ever caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, just being alive and not bothering anyone, I hope I am greeted with the same kind of mercy.” ― Rudy Francisco, Helium
“The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.” ― George Bernard Shaw, The Quintessence of Ibsenism
Having read some of Ibsen's plays (e.g. The Master Builder, An Enemy of the People), I can understand what GBS meant. "The theory of legal procedure is that if you set two liars to expose one another, the truth will emerge." (G. B. Shaw)
And I, for one, am glad to be living in the era of Novocaine. Whenever I see a bumper sticker that says "God Bless America", I think that America is already far too blessed... so blessed that we are oblivious to the fact that we are blessed. But if I put a "God Bless Gaza" or "God Bless Ukraine" bumper sticker on my car (to cite two places that need God's blessing far more than we do) I would probably be considered unpatriotic and subversive.
Alexander Pope, a famous writer of epigrams, was commissioned by the Queen of England to write a short poem that could be engraved onto the collar of one of the dogs she was keeping at Kew Gardens. He gave her this: "I am Her Majesty's dog at Kew Pray tell me, sir: whose dog are you?"
"The way out of suffering is not through aiming to have the best of everything, but through being able to use wisely what we do have: the kind of character we happen to have, with all its virtues and faults, and the situation we're in, whether we are a monk, a nun, or a layperson, rich or poor, employed or unemployed." Ajahn Sumedho.
One of the most beautiful lines I'd ever read: "She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together." ("A Girl I Knew", J. D. Salinger)
"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough." Toni Morrison. Perhaps that's why I stumble often into writer's block. There seems less and less reason to try and memorialize things, even thoughts and ideas and story lines. And that doesn't have to be a bad thing.
"Consider the Earth's history as the old measure of the English yard, the distance from the King's nose to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history." Stephen Jay Gould
"So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past." (The end of "The Great Gatsby", F. Scott Fitzgerald)
I'm reminded of a story about Mark Twain and his very fashionable and respectable New England wife, Livy. One morning, Twain reached into his wardrobe and pulled out a shirt missing a button. He cursed volubly and pulled out another shirt, which was also missing a button. After pulling out a third shirt without a button, Twain turned his face to the heavens and gave vent to his feelings with a long and salty recitation. With the air around him flashing blue, he turned to the door and saw his wife, who shook her head at him sorrowfully. Trying to cure him of his crude riverboat speech, Mrs. Twain repeated back to him all the words he had just used, while the thunder-struck Twain stood and listened. When she had finished, Twain shook his head ruefully and commented, "My dear, you have the words, but you just don't have the music.”
"You've got that idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all." GK Chesterton.
Very true. How many times in history have the nobility objected to the monarchy trying to curb their privileges?
Well there was the English War of the Roses, which pitted half the nobility against the other half, playing Keep-Away with the crown.
Basically, yes. The Magna Carta did absolute squat for slaves, villeins, commoners and artisans; it was all "You're not allowed to tell us nobles what to do, Monarch Boy!" The one good thing that can be said about Magna Carta is that it outlawed Absolute Monarchy, aka the Divine Right of Kings. At least until the next king came along and ripped it up. LOL! I never thought of it that way, but you're right. The English Civil War is also a good example, except it was two bunches of upper-class twits fighting over whether England would be a monarchical Tyranny or areligious Tyranny. (Either way, it would all end in Tyr's). I might have asked why we can't all get along, except for the obvious answer: money and power. I want what's yours! What's yours is mine! Mwahahaha, etc.!
