With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going past them into the impossible.
August 30, 2009 - 3:31 p.m.
I don't think I'll get far writing about what I did yesterday. The furthest I got from my apartment was the garbage shoot directly across the hall.
My elbow was healed enough that I forgot that I had reinjured it. I guess the icing did it some good.
Today is rapidly disappearing. I slept very late, after 11. It's Sunday so I spent time reading the Times. Now it's 2:45 and I'm updating. It's a gorgeous day and I want to go for a walk. I also want to do some shopping. We'll see what I can get done.
One of my foibles is enjoying other people's foibles. To justify this guilty pleasure I try to learn from them. I was recently reminded of something that happened ages ago. Someone was totally dismissive of my understanding of something. Now I might be wrong but I don't think so and I just got evidence that I was right. That isn't what matters though. What matters is that I act dismissive of people. Now yes, it is dismissive of things that are totally ridiculous but that isn't an excuse. When someone, especially a friend, shows a total misunderstanding of something I should view that as a teachable moment. I usually do, but not always.
Speaking of teachable moments. At FRFF Magpie did a song about mountain top removal mining of coal. A process they and I deplore. Before the song they said, "I don't know about Falcon Ridge but much of New York City's energy comes from coal." I knew that was wrong and told the people sitting near me. Now a month later I remembered to write them and tell them. I even did some research and linked to websites that tell where the City gets its energy. They wrote me a nice letter back thanking me for the correction. I knew I liked them. Respect for the facts is as important, no more important, than being on the right side of a political debate. So much of what has gone wrong in the country has been the result of not having that respect. It comes believing that truth is revealed not discovered.
Now I'm going to go out and enjoy what is left of this glorious day.
Party of the Second Part - September 07, 2009
Music Has Charms to Heal the Savage Ileum - September 06, 2009
The Child That is Father to the Nerd - September 02, 2009
On the Natural Road to Auto Inspection - September 01, 2009
A Retro-Walk Into My Soul - August 31, 2009
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile August 30, 2009
