Small Talk (41)

aphorisms and short reflections

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a seasoned observer always adds a grain of salt









two wrongs make a right, and a left.










the one true church is like the holy roman empire: not one, not true, not a church.











my fiction is about ideas that are of interest mostly to people who don't read fiction. a bad marketing strategy.









wit is a quality that appears towards the end of a civilization. just in time.









his name was Justin Time, and he was always late.








etymologically speaking i belong to the one, holy, idiotic church.










when i was in university none of the classes had any class.










it used to be said that those who couldn't do, taught. now it's those who couldn't learn.










the road to good intentions is paved with hell









human life is sacred. inhuman life is not.











english is the best language in the same way that chopsticks are the best eating utensils. i had the realization about chopsticks while watching indians eat with their hands. this was once also the case in the west, or close to it. poor people had perhaps a knife, but cutlery was generally only available for the upper classes, for obvious reasons. in the far east, because they had a non-specialized utensil, even the lower classes could avoid eating with their hands and thus it served as a way to, at least, avoid debasement among them. etiquette could be applied across the board. this might seem unrelated, but unlike india and the west, where caste was the ruling principle, in ancient china, it was family and meritocracy. as an example, see the imperial examination, which goes back at least 1500 years - and likely much further back. lastly, all this is related to one larger point: specialization is, in many senses, arrested development. humans are the least specialized of all species, and that weakness surpasses all specialized strengths. english is not a specialized language, and this is why it can incorporate so much that is foreign within its structure, and thus it conquered the world in a way that no other language ever did.







some years ago i ran into an old french teacher, who i hadn't seen in ten years at that point. she told me that every year the kids get worse in all respects, and nothing can be done. so much so that she remembered us fondly (and i know she used to think we were awful). and to be fair, we were indeed awful. just not as awful as the ones that came after. whatever the metric, it is worse: intelligence, literacy, interest, respect, manners, all of the above. and of course, there is an elephant in the room that no one can speak of.









i'm against the opposite of contrariness









i am quite certain of my doubts








my fundamental problem with the idea of universal salvation and the restoration of all things is not that 'bad people' need to suffer because justice demands it or some other variation of this idea. it's rather that without a real risk of defeat, there is no meaning to any victory. and if it's all meant to be restored in the end, there was no point to begin with.








every fairy tale ends with 'and they lived happily ever after'. it is true. but one can then tell another story starting after that.







the war will never end, and that's why we must focus on the battles at hand

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