Actionable wisdom is the goal

Searching through the Aphors starting with Aphor 2021/06/26 – Quintilian, using the SEARCH box [Aphor wisdom], there was such a plethora of material that rather than clashing two ideas, I was snagged by the reasonableness of the following quote from Finding Wisdom in Trivium:

“Phronesis bestows both an understanding of first principles of general knowledge and good judgment and a shrewd ability to apply what’s appropriate to each situation. It involves being good at reasoning, evaluating evidence, and comparing alternatives. Cicero translated the term as providentia, meaning foresight. The medieval Latin Schoolmen later contracted this into prudentia, referring to the ability to appreciate the uniqueness and complexity of any given situation, with appropriate awareness of the long-term risks and implications of each possible action.” p.322

When reading the links I made in the paragraph above, it became apparent that even in those links the ideas discussed were so generalized that I could gain little wisdom by reading them. They spoke of practical experience as necessary but gave no pointers as to how I could obtain it. On the other hand, Machiavelli did give helpful instructions; for example, get into close contact with the kinds of people whose habits you seek to acquire. That advice is a specific and actionable idea of the type I have been seeking.

With that suggestion in mind, I scanned down a 64-aphor-long “wisdom” list again, watching for actionable wisdom statements, and found a few possible actionable ideas:

Aphor 2021/06/08 – Wisdom

3. The wisdom of cultivating foresight gives you forethought and preparations for the best action, plus inaction, which may be the best action.

4. Wisdom is gained by attending to what is happening, thinking about it, and refining your future wisdom by participating in current events.

5. Wisdom is gained by kicking at reality until you realize that reality can kick you back far harder than you can kick it.

26. Because those with wisdom foresee the probable future, they rarely enter desperate situations requiring desperate actions.

Seek wisdom first – Proverbs 4, KJV

7 Wisdom is the principal thing;

Therefore get wisdom.

And in all your getting, get understanding.

Maxims #161 — Alan Watts

63. Humor is found in laughing at one’s subtle failures, and humanity is not laughing at other people’s blatant failings.

The fourth testing of random Aphor ideas

2. It requires a sane man to intentionally cultivate his mind toward wisdom and away from false thinking.

Aphor 2021/06/08 – Wisdom –

28. Most wisdom is to realize when you have been sitting on your ass long enough, and now is the time for action.

Aphor 2021/06/08 – Truth

7. Seek wisdom and accept the truth, or anti-natural personal confirmation bias will destroy you if it is out of sync with natural reality.

Aphor 2021/06/06 – Thoughts

7. Wisdom is actionable knowledge of how processes work, and it gives us the benefits of seeing the causes and results of using human forethought.

8.* The most valuable thoughts are those that clear obscuring fogs away from practical realities.

I chose the list from an abundance of Aphors that used the word wisdom, but even after sifting through many of them, I found very few were actionable items. So, back in 2013, when I rewrote the Philosophers Squared – 147 Delphic maxims of good behaviors, I tried to make general statements into actionable ones, such as:

1. Pursue goodness.

2. Obey all laws.

3. Praise goodness.

4. Obey your parents.

5. Honor justice.

6. Use your proven wisdom.

7. Base your wisdom on facts.

And 140 more similar action statements.

The 7 Sages of Greece found buried at Pompeii

However, from today’s search-list of wisdom, everything is abstractions with very few concrete things to do. The Proverbs statement is an action statement I was searching for, but the terms are undefined and obscure. I think that idea might mean getting your goals aligned with reality and then get the understanding and skills needed to achieve that reality you value. Try reading it with that meaning in mind, and it might mean that, or not.

Seek wisdom first – Proverbs 4, KJV

7 Wisdom is the principal thing;

Therefore get wisdom.

And in all your getting, get understanding.

The last item on the list above was – 8.* The most valuable thoughts are those that clear obscuring fogs away from practical realities. – The search didn’t find wisdom, but it seemed like a follow-on idea to – 7. Wisdom is actionable knowledge of how processes work, and it gives us the benefits of seeing the causes and results of using human forethought.

It appears that my fifty-six-years-long method for finding wisdom was flawed because my general search strategy statement, derived from Coleridge, “Seek common sense to an uncommon degree,” was not a clear enough actionable idea. That strategy did winnow out nonsense but didn’t provide as clear a statement as my rewrite of the Philosophers Squared – 147 Delphic maxims.

Perhaps a rewriting of Aphor 2021/06/08 – Wisdom – 26. Because those with wisdom foresee the probable future, they rarely enter into desperate situations requiring desperate actions. 

Rewrite that statement to make it actionable, and it becomes –

Use foresight to identify situations where desperate situations requiring desperate actions are likely, and unobtrusively choose a different goal.

Covid Log Chart June 30, 2021

Covid Logarithmic Chart June 30, 2021 by Probaway.wordpress.com

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The United States is loosening Covid restrictions almost to nothing, although it is still recommended that everyone wear a face mask when indoors with groups of people as much as possible. Of course everything has now reached the condition of unenforceable suggestions so there will probably be a resurgence of Covid Delta that will sweep the country. The goal of seventy percent fully vaccinated adults has been reached in a few states, and older people and those with preexisting conditions are mostly vaccinated. The death rate may be lower with the Delta surge because it will be younger people who become infected, and they generally fair better. However, just because they don’t get so sick that they are hospitalized, or die, doesn’t mean they won’t have life-long problems, and a premature death. The thirty percent of people who are resistant to getting the Covid vaccine shots are those in the lower social economic groups. There are many efforts to vaccinate them, but they are suspicious of having weird things injected into their arms.

One positive thing about the Covid epidemic, and the fact that many people were wearing masks, was the annual flu season was much milder. I didn’t have a winter cold, and to get that benefit again I may choose to wear a mask when in public this coming winter.

Bend, Oregon, was on the edge of the worst of the extreme heat wave that hit the Pacific Northwest this week. It did officially reach 105 degrees Fahrenheit, but our recording thermometer peaked at 110. We blew cold air through the house overnight with a fan, and closed the cross ventilation windows until 1PM then ran the heat pump until peak temperature at 5PM, and then turned if off. Because of the hot dry weather I have been outside for hour long cleaning episodes all week clearing absolutely everything flammable away from the house.

Of course, being me, it seemed reasonable that I do something obvious that everyone would consider stupid. Because it was so hot outdoors, I took a shower with a shirt on before going out, and that soaking wet shirt helped a lot to keep me cool.

Nature is the arbiter of authority

Aphor 2021/06/26 – Quintilian 24. Nature tends toward equilibrium and harmony but permits anything that can happen to happen.

Yesterday’s post, Respect for authority, was about my problems with official authority figures going back to my first hour of academic instruction in Homedale, Idaho, grade school. Nowadays, and perhaps even back then as a child, my deepest respect lies with nature and its demands. My Aphor above derived from Quintilian is central to my worldview. As I write this it becomes obvious that it is very similar, perhaps even derivative of, Steven J. Gould’s famous theory published in 1972 known as punctuated equilibrium. In that Wikipedia article the concluding paragraph is about Gould’s idea being applied to languages and mythology, and their splitting geographically and then linguistically.

Once a living organism or a system has a built-in reproductive quality with errors and variable environmental factors influencing transmission, there will be an evolution, and over time those evolutions will have the qualities of punctuated equilibrium. Orally transmitted stories have those qualities, and until the printing-press style of mass publication, written documents also displayed those sudden shift qualities.

Evolution has proceeded from survival of what survived in an environment, to sexual selection based on markers of health which was itself based on adaptation to the local environment, to Evish selection based on gossiping women selecting the best men, to artificial selection by humans selecting the species members most beneficial to them for food etc., to CRISPR which permits intentional modification of genes for as yet to be explored morphological changes.

The whole of the Aphor game strategy I have been creating is to seek out and explore and evolve more quickly the examples of both phyletic gradualism and punctuated evolution. Phyletic gradualism moves in graphic diagrams via small and Y shaped intellectually obvious gradual adaptations to existing ideas, but punctuational ideas are distinct H shaped jumps followed by stasis. The Aphor game offers both the Y and H intellectual evolutions by clashing distinct ideas and generating monsters and chimeras as well as gradual changes. Some of these weird ideas will be obviously useful once stated clearly.

We will discover even stranger beings than this with Aphor games and CRISPR.

Respect for authority

Aphor 2021/06/26 – Quintilian 62. A premature shooting beyond the wisdom of one’s teachers undermines respect for authority and the ambition to become an authority.

When I wrote this Aphor I was not thinking about myself, or my personal history, and yet this is exactly my personal problem from my first hour in grade school at age five. I started early, and as Homedale, Idaho, was a very small town, the 1st grade through 3rd was in one small room, so I like to claim I started in the 3rd grade when I was five. It was a comic beginning that was an Eidemiller family story for years. Below is a clip from how I told that story on 02 Oct 2017, as a writer’s group timed 45 minute essay – In my meditation.

I am such a bore that several times per day people tell me to shut up. They are usually polite in their phrasing of that request, but the message is always clear. This problem began at my very first day in school back at Homedale, Idaho, when I was five years old. I was put into school because there wasn’t anything for me to be doing out on the family farm, and the teacher was my cousin Millie, so it was an easy thing for me to transition from playing at home to playing at school. Homedale was a tiny town at that time and our tiny schoolhouse was big enough for a dozen or so kids, which meant in this case that all of the local kids grade one through three met in that one small room. It didn’t seem strange to anyone that I wasn’t even old enough to be admitted to the first grade in most school districts, but there I was all polished up and filled with smiles sitting in the center of the front row. That seating arrangement was probably so Millie could keep my youthful enthusiasm under control better, but I took it as an honor to be front and center.

This picture, taken a few minutes before my first academic adventure, by my grandpa Glenn Sr. It was labeled Charles’s first day of school. My uncle Glenn Jr. already has his Homedale H.

Within minutes of this photo, when the classroom was stuffed with little kids, I began my formal education with Millie informing us of the rules. Basically, that was to sit quietly in our seats until recess times, to pay attention to the teacher, and to raise our hands before speaking. So, immediately I raised my hand and started talking. Millie was standing in front of me and was talking too, so I shut up, but in a few moments a new thought came to me and I started talking again. Millie told me that I must raise my hand before talking. So, once again I stopped talking and Millie continued with her first day’s lesson plan.

A little time went by and I had another thought and raised my hand and started talking. Millie once again told me that I must raise my hand before talking, to which I replied, “Millie, I do have my hand up.” She, rather patiently, told me that I must wait until I am called upon before I start talking. “But,” I said, “Millie, you don’t hold up your hand when you’re talking.”

That was my first day and the first hour of my formal education, and it is characteristic of every hour of group meetings to this day. I could give a multitude of examples of that kind of response to my public presence. I think I have a genetic propensity for this style of behavior, and so I don’t feel any particular resentment to people responding to me as if I am a dunce. Later that day I was talking with my grandmother about how I should respond to what I felt was an unfair imposition on my liberty, and she, no doubt, gave me very mature reflections on how I should respond, but in my meditation, I was alone in process and I chose to be who I am and how I am.

Over the years I have done what I saw to be the right thing to do and have been able to get away with being me. It has cost those around me considerable aggravation and that includes those with legal power over me, like my teachers, my commanding officers in the USAF, and the government officials too, including people like Senator Joe McCarthy, and even people in Bend.

All of those people and even Governor Ronald Reagan have lost their battles for control over me.

I was thirty steps to the right of the circular fountain a minute before this photo was made.

Without Free Speech you have no rights at all.

Within a few months of California Governor Ronald Reagan authorizing this suppression of public speech, this plaza was open totally opened, and kids from all over the world have been there handing out information. Campus all over the United States were opened up to free speech because of this battle that Reagan lost.

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As a probe into the value of the Aphor game, it is reasonable to search the word respect.

Aphor 2021/06/08 – Truth

15. To respect fact-based truth protects you from the frail human vanities, which install unverifiable fantasy as their reality.

Aphor 2021/05/21 – Love

1. Love is the expression of respect for another’s entire being.

Aphor 2021/05/21 – Life

16. Your life is most meaningful to those who love you, so always treat them kindly and with respect.

Aphor 2021/05/17 – Humility

8. Humility is created in you by the unsolicited discovery by other people of your many qualities, which they respect in their conversations with you.

Aphor 2021/05/13 – Forgiveness

16. Forgiving a tiny infraction of someone’s social conduct cultivates the ability to forgive more severe violations that require reestablishing mutual respect.

Aphor 2021/005/11 – Fame

4. Seeking fame is an adolescent desire to be respected carried to its public extreme.

15. To seek fame is to seek the adulation of the crowd of innocents who respect fame rather than contentment.

Aphor 2021/05/08 – Energy

10. Be present, attentive, and respectful to angry energy, but do not rise to action until you can win with your available advantages.

Maxims #97B — David Kellogg Lewis

1.3. If our philosophizing succeeds in respecting our preconceptions and being clearly stated, we accept it as credible.

Maxims #165 — Mary Wollstonecraft

1. Women must demand respect for the powers they possess and reject the pity granted to them for their conjectured weakness.

5. In human societies, respectability is granted to one’s station in life and not to the quality of performance of the duties of their role.

13. Physical weakness of a woman may excite tenderness in her man, but fondness is a poor substitute for the friendship of respected equals.

16. Women do not wish to overthrow their men but be respected as equal players in life.

Maxims #157 — Mark Twain

81.” When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.

87.” Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, and all His work must be contemplated with respect.

136.” Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.

Maxims #155 — Theophrastus

29. Meanness is indifference to the respect usually granted to others by polite people.

36. A rascal-seeker associates with toughies who inspire public awe to fill his acquaintances with the respect he feels he deserves.

Maxims #151 — Baruch Spinoza

36. He who seeks equality between all people seeks an impossibility; however, we can seek to approach respectfulness between everyone.

Maxims #150 – Socrates

37. It was ever thus; the youth have lost respect for their elders, have contempt for authority, tyrannize their teachers, and gobble up their food.

Maxims # 145 — 7 Sages Delphic maxims

18. Respect the inevitable.

28. Be respectful of everyone.

34. Respect people’s stuff.

35. Respect people’s thoughts.

42. Respect refugees.

123. Respect people’s silly beliefs.

126. Respect everyone, like elders.

129. Treat yourself with respect.

Maxims #144 — Seneca

COMMENTS – It’s a world where you accept what you have, cherish and cultivate your inner qualities of kindness and respect, and let those things of the external world, over which you have little control, behave as they will.

Maxims #134 – Michael Sandel

24. We may show mutual respect for those we are arguing with by encouraging them to bring their convictions to the discussion.

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That Aphor search found a lot more “respect” than I expected! But it is apparent to me that as a five year old I had a lot to learn about respecting those in authority over my behavior. Joe McCarthy, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Curtis LeMay among many others who would whole-heartedly agree.

Is lying a proper use of beauty?

Quotes #51 & #64 from yesterday’s Aphor 2021/06/26 – Quintilian caught my attention because of the implication that beauty was associated with lying. Over the years I have been disturbed with John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, which concludes with the immortal lines “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” To me at poem has the undertone of an unintentional falsehood, but on closer inspection it might be a carefully concocted lie.

The concluding lines from Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
         When old age shall this generation waste,
                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
         “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

John Keats’ Grecian Urn

51. It is a perfection of art when you look at the content and not the skill in creating it.

64. Poets exercise the liberty of poetic license to tell beautiful lies that we yearn to believe.

These two Aphors appear to support a poet’s right to lie because we humans prefer a blatant lie that is beautifully dressed up to a simple truth standing naked before us. I, too, like to experience the various forms of beauty with the feelings of beauty they create in me, by the appropriateness of the relationships being presented. But then, there is the artistic license, which juxtaposes various details and blends them to make them feel correct. They are correct exactly as presented, but we as consumers of the internal state produce but do not notice the patterning that creates the positive effects and only feel the rightness of the completed work.
A quintessence of over-generalization like “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” comes to any sane person as absurd. And yet, we are so in love with those linked concepts that we want to believe it, that we choose to accept it, even though we know it isn’t true; that we are certain it is a preposterous lie. “All you need is love, love. Love is all you need. Boop de boop de doo,” promised the Beatles. Or James Joyce: “The spirit which proceeds out of truth and beauty is the holy spirit of joy. These are realities, and these alone give and sustain life.”
All of those are lies, beautiful lies. Thus we might conclude that all truths are lies, and all lies are truths, and that isn’t all I need to know on earth. Pfuu and piffle!

Aphor 2021/06/26 – Quintilian

Quintilian (~35 AD ~ 100) was in  Emperor Galba‘s retinue following Nero’s death, and Emperor Vespasian made him a consul and tutor to his nephews. His textbook was used for two millennia. I paraphrase one of his quotes as Watch for strange things that work and combine them with many other things that work.

1. If we overthink a goal without action, it becomes confounded by problems.

2. We must speak so clearly that no one can misunderstand us.

3. Speak in such a way that encourages the audience to want to understand.

4. We can form our ideal habits by imitating the best examples available.

5. Your acting immediately in unusual situations relies on the random habits of a younger and less experienced person.

6. Speaking in harmony with the trend of the moment brings forth ideas readily accepted by everyone.

7. Face the audience and speak to the subject being discussed so clearly that no one can misinterpret what you mean without appearing a fool.

8. Precepts learned while interacting with relevant experiences are most likely to be effective in future applications.

9. The relevant emotional experiences of a speaker inspire his eloquence.

10. Speakers who look wise to fools will sound stupid to reasonable people.

11. The power of conviction of a speaker of absurdities will convert more people than a dull presentation of facts.

12. Opportunities are slippery like fish, and we must time our pull to action on the first perceptible nibble.

13. The master understands the structure of his art, but the buyer feels the pleasure.

14. The student who sees no evil speaks no evil, will do no evil, and vice versa.

15. When speaking, eliminate the pompous, promote the simple, smooth the chaotic, introduce clarity, and soften absolutes.

16. A liar must remember what he said to whom and to whom they will tell his lie.

17. It is easier to speak convincingly from a few believable stories than from an abundance of easily verifiable facts.

18. Humans’ ability to speak to one another has given them power over all other living things.

19. We excuse our lack of action as being controlled by our previous commitments.

20. While casually examining a strange something everyone has ignored, we may notice a valuable quality everyone can use.

21. Your humor will often be received as sarcastic criticism and make enemies.

22. A sudden change of fortune can wreak havoc on a man unused to wealth or poverty.

23. Ambition spurs accomplishments and disasters.

24. Nature tends toward equilibrium and harmony but permits anything that can happen to happen.

25. A naturally ignorant man who cannot learn from experience will be impossible to teach anything with academic facts.

26. The goal of teaching is to have the student crave to use his abilities, but a harsh rebuke for a failure may cause him to cease trying.

27. Exposing oneself to clear-thinking, excellent speakers of a language is the best way to learn that culture.

28. When all options for success on a problem are gone, place your full attention on something where you can succeed.

29. A wealthy person has no understanding of the problems of poverty and vice versa.

30. A highly enforced awareness of personal guilt will drag anyone into despondency and torpidity.

31. The laughter of responsible people brings the flexibility of mind into discovering new things, but it can drag fools into derision.

32. Everything that now exists had a beginning and will have an end.

33. Everyone wants to be known for knowing something better than anyone.

34. We imitate others because we have genes that propel us to have those qualities that we observe in our social group.

35. While you are directing your attention to some particular thing, you will be oblivious to everything else except reflex-inducing threats.

36. I should like my students’ parents to be thoughtful, well-educated people.

37. The student who gives the slightest promise has fixed ideas that prohibit exploring outside of their fixed boundaries.

38. He that prematurely finds a fixed form of behavior locks into a system that will deprive him of the ability to adapt to an ever-changing world.

39. Having a present fear that the future will be different from the current situation locks a comfortable person into resistance to all adaptations.

40. The obscurity of a writer is proportional to his incapacity for promotion from himself and others.

41. It would be better for humanity that a man is never born than that he developed a passion for destroying other people.

42. Suffering itself is more character-building than the apprehension of suffering is for improving one’s disposition.

43. Unattainable hopes become destructive to those who earnestly pursue them.

44. It is a mistake to undervalue people who can write well, as writing well proves they can think well.

45. Those who seek the praise of fools will be accepted as fools by the wise.

46. It bears repeating that people of low intelligence can not learn abstract reasoning.

47. Teachers who have larger audiences believe they should receive more pay.

48. Our minds and stomach love a varied diet, and your conscious being can choose to grant them their wishes.

49. The life forms of our world are infinite in variety, as are the potential thoughts of humans.

50. Opportunities and possible punishments only delay the man who is now speaking evil without acting upon his words.

51. It is a perfection of art when you look at the content and not the skill in creating it.

52. An honorable man never swears, except when appropriate.

53. Ambition is a vice eschewed by honorable men.

54. When a brilliant soul languishes in the wilderness for too long, it grows rust that eventually generates phantoms for friends.

55. The pretended admission of a fault is sarcasm directed at oneself but may easily spill over into one’s friendships.

56. A teacher rewards a boy who seeks rewards and avoids reproach and expects many good things from this maturity.

57. We may enjoy lawful desires as they are not prone to the excesses of forbidden pleasures.

58. An exciting thought can provide a place of seclusion even in a crowd.

59. One may work for a long time on a single big problem by breaking it into interesting minor problems that accumulate successes.

60. A wide variety of happenstance events exercise the mind, but the contemplation of good and bad virtues molds one’s character.

61. Ambition includes having the desire for power over other individuals, which multiplies one’s personal power to influence the public.

62. A premature shooting beyond the wisdom of one’s teachers undermines respect for authority and the ambition to become an authority.

63. A liar and cheat are on a short path to destruction.

64. Poets exercise the liberty of poetic license to tell beautiful lies that we yearn to believe.

65. A dull student will derive no more benefit from this teaching than barren earth having a book on agriculture plowed into it.

Covid Log Chart June 25, 2021

The American curve has flattened noticeably since Biden took office as President of the United States on January 20, 2021. A dotted blue line labeled “Cases projection from January 25, 2021” illustrated what appeared at that time to be a simple projection of a straight line for the World Covid case rate. The US had the most cases of any country at that time, but with the moving of Covid vaccines from the shelves of the vaccine manufactures into the arms of American citizens the slope of American cases and the whole World cases took a clearly visible turn for the better. A great effort is now being pushed to get the total vaccinations in Americans up to seventy percent, but it is slowing because thirty percent of the people are resistant to vaccinations. Unfortunately for those people, the new Covid Delta variant is more contagious and more deadly, and those millions of unvaccinated people are the ones who will suffer sickness and death.

Often it is prudent to be the last in line for new experiments, but in this case the results are clear that those millions of people with vaccines are surviving Covid much better than those without them.

There is a limit to adaptive energy.

Ever since January 1, 2008, these Probaway posts have come every day, with skips only occurring a couple of times when there was an internet problem. The posts have gone up when I was sick with a cold, or when I was on a trip with no internet access, and had to find publicly open portals. But, last night and tonight, I haven’t had any new ideas that sparked me enough to do a post. There is still an hour of time to write a post, and I do have many ideas that are goading me, but the adaptive energy needed to pursue them isn’t here. Last night the usual monthly break was taken and a Tao post went up, but it wasn’t enough to restore my vigor, and I was wondering what is happening. The biggest thing that is different about the last few days is the effort to cope with weeds around my house. We kept waiting for the weather not to drop below freezing so the garden could be planted, but that didn’t happen; however, the weeds loved the weather and grew rapidly, and then it got hot and they exploded. The weather is now hot and is forecast to get record-breaking hot over the next five days.

A lot of people around here cope with weeds by paving over their area, others by putting wood chips a couple of inches deep which prevents weeds, but I prefer a natural environment, including the weeds, but this year that strategy turned into a disaster. I pulled a ton of weeds, perhaps more, out of the ground. I don’t mind hard physical work, but somehow it was meaningless work, and fighting against my own principles of cooperating with nature. So, I am writing this pathetic bit of nonsense. Part of the problem is Pinterest, Microsoft, and others who are obviously tracking me and giving me popups that they know I will be interested in, and so I’ve been distracted by my own interests, but they interfere with my life.

The media is distracting me, and probably you too, from controlling our lives by targeting us with interesting stuff they know we like and therefore it is hard to ignore. I can easily ignore foods I like by keeping them out of sight, but I can’t ignore popups because they won’t go away, and I can’t make them go away. Today’s latest one pops up some interesting things when I do ordinary word processing operations, and it takes several clicks of their stuff to get back to doing whatever it was that I was doing, which sometimes has been hidden under their stuff. “You’ve got 56 new Pins waiting for you. New ideas for you to check out!” There is no X, and only a Close which sometimes goes directly to their site.

I could go on and on, but instead I’m going to take a warm bath.

The Tao Teh Ching – #79 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn

79

Reconciling a quarrel is sure to leave some rancor behind,
And things will never return to their former simplicity.
Therefore create agreement with potential adversaries, and
Never assign guilt in any way.
The virtuous man tries to reconcile guilt;
The virtue less man tries to assign guilt.
—
The way of nature has no preferred person;
It constantly supplies its self to everyone.

80

Philosophers Squared – Quintilian

Go to the Index of Philosophers Squared

Quintilian (~35 AD ~ 100) was in  Emperor Galba‘s retinue following Nero’s death, and  Emperor Vespasian made him a consul, and tutor to his nephews. His textbook was used for two millennia. I paraphrase one of his quotes as Watch for strange things that work and combine them with many other things that work.

Quotes from Quintilian – these are copied from the web, but these statements were copied from other people’s translations of Quintilian. All the same the list has been compiled which can be found at Overall Motivation. I needed a long list to work with for creating the Aphors. However, these quotes are already acceptable statements. Strangely, none of them get to the heart of Quintilian’s general system which was discussed in yesterday’s Probaway post.

1.  

1. Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
2. We should not speak so that it is possible for the audience to understand us, but so that it is impossible for them to misunderstand us.
3. The study depends on the goodwill of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion.
4. We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
5. Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.
6. That which offends the ear will not easily gain admission to the mind.
7. One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
8. In almost everything, the experience is more valuable than precept.
9. It is the heart that inspires eloquence.
10. Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.
11. A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.
12. While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. the opportunity is lost.
13. The learned understand the reason of art; the unlearned feel the pleasure.
14. An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
15. Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute.
16. A liar should have a good memory.
17. For the mind is all the easier to teach before it is set.
18. God, that all-powerful Creator of nature and architect of the world, has impressed man with no character so proper to distinguish him from other animals, as by the faculty of speech.
19. We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
20. While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
21. A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
22. Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.
23. Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.
24. Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.
25. Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
26. It is worthwhile too to warn the teacher that undue severity in correcting faults is liable at times to discourage a boy’s mind from the effort.
27. Usage is the best language teacher.
28. When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.
29. The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.
30. Conscience is a thousand witnesses.
31. Sayings designed to raise a laugh are generally untrue and never complimentary. Laughter is never far removed from derision.
32. Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.
33. There is no one who would not rather appear to know than to be taught.
34. A great part of art consists in imitation. For the whole conduct of life is based on this: that what we admire in others we want to do ourselves.
35. If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.
36. As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone., on education
37. To my mind, the boy who gives the least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
38. That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.
39. Fear of the future is worse than one’s present fortune.
40. The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
41. For it would have been better that man should have been born dumb, nay, void of all reason, rather than that he should employ the gifts of Providence to the destruction of his neighbor.
42. Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the apprehension of suffering.
43. Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.
44. Men of quality are in the wrong to undervalue, as they often do, the practice of a fair and quick hand in writing; for it is no immaterial accomplishment.
45. Those who wish to appear learned to fools, appear as fools to the learned.
46. One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy.
47. For all the best teachers pride themselves on having a large number of pupils and think themselves worthy of a bigger audience.
48. Our minds are like our stomachs; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.
49. The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
50. He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
51. The perfection of art is to conceal art.
52. To swear, except when necessary, is becoming an honorable man.
53. Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
54. The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from anyone.
55. The pretended admission of a fault on our part creates an excellent impression.
56. Give me the boy who rouses when he is praised, who profits when he is encouraged and who cries when he is defeated. Such a boy will be fired by ambition; he will be stung by reproach, and animated by preference; never shall I apprehend any bad consequences from idleness in such a boy.
57. Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
58. In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.
59. It is easier to do many things than to do one thing continuously for a long time.
60. The mind is exercised by the variety and multiplicity of the subject matter, while the character is molded by the contemplation of virtue and vice.
61. Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue.
62. It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
63. It is fitting that a liar should be a man of a good memory.
64. Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.
65. Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.