Aphors list by SOURCE DATE

24 Saturday Apr 2021

Posted by probaway in Condensed thoughts, Epigrams

(This list is predated to make a published working list to be used until a more complete but expandable historical list and I can make a parallel alphabetical list.)

I truncated the word Aphor from the OED’s definition of Aphorism. I created it as a unique searchable word that retains the flavor of an aphorism but is intended for finding latent ideas.

The Aphor list by SOURCE DATE gives Probaway’s restatements of ideas, organized by a source person’s indexing-date of birth (postulating exact timing for separation) and lightly cleaned using Grammarly suggestions.

The link under SOURCE PERSON gives Probaway’s earlier list of quotations by the source person.

The Aphors are not direct quotations of sources but are brief statements of core ideas. The goal is not the accuracy of statements but to create an indexed Aphors list of ideas to be clashed against other indexed Aphors to discover ideas that haven’t been recognized earlier. The resultant ideas can be published into an infinitely expandable indexed list of aphor statements beginning with a source person’s postulated date of birth and their name.

Aphor — Author of ideas (Birth – Death) — Wikipedia — Picture

This looks like a formidable list when considering studying the information, but it is so piddling when facing the possibilities. There have been in excess of one hundred billion people live, and every one of them had a philosophy. “[W]hoever could master the premises and combine the methods of both, would possess the entire English philosophy of their age” (Coleridge, X: 121). – https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/

Aphor list by SOURCE DATE

24 Saturday Apr 2021

Posted by probaway in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

> > > > > This post has been updated !!! < < < < <

Aphor wisdom promotes action.

Aphor Author (Birth – Death) Wikipedia Picture

(This list is predated to make a published working list to be used until a more complete but expandable historical list and I can make a parallel alphabetical list.)

I truncated the word Aphor from the OED’s definition of Aphorism. I created it as a unique searchable word that retains the flavor of an aphorism but is intended for finding latent ideas.

The link under SOURCE PERSON gives Probaway’s earlier list of quotations by the source person.

The Aphors are not direct quotations of sources but are my brief restatements of the core ideas. The goal is not the accuracy of statements, but to create an indexed Aphors list of ideas that can be clashed against other indexed Aphors to discover ideas that haven’t been recognized earlier. The resultant ideas can be published into the infinitely expandable indexed list of aphor statements beginning with a source person’s postulated date of birth and their name.

Whoever could master the premises of various philosophies and combine their methods, would possess the entire philosophy of their age. See, (Coleridge, X: 121). – https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/.

Maxims #49 – Chrysippus

06 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by probaway in Aphor

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Go to the Index of 120 Philosophers Squared

Chrysippus of Soli (279-207 BC) was a Classic Greek Stoic philosopher called “the second founder of Stoicism.”

There is little of Chrysippus’ writings to quote, which is a sad state of affairs for a person who was known to be a prolific author. He is said to have composed more than 705 works. All we have of this mountain of work is a few fragments. It was said of him that, “without Chrysippus, there would have been no Stoa,” no Stoics. He created a logical system of philosophical thinking that is similar to geometry, or computer programming logic. But that is also only known from secondary sources. The Greeks were fond of making portrait busts of their heroes because they were fated to live forever in the minds of human society, and we should know what they look like.

Philosophers Squared was created in the spring of 2013 and quotes, new to me, have more recently been placed on the internet. These “new” quotes, already concise, will be treated as departure points for making these reworded Maxims.

Living virtuously is equal to living in accordance with one’s experience of the actual course of nature. From Diogenes Laërtius, vii. 182.

1. Living within the laws of natural reality and using human foresight puts you in harmony with your natural virtues.

Wise people are in want of nothing, and yet need many things. On the other hand, nothing is needed by fools, for they do not understand how to use anything, but are in want of everything. From Moral Epistles by Seneca, iii. 10.

2. Wisdom teaches how to live with what is readily available, but fools don’t know what they need, so they desperately grasp at everything.

He who is running a race ought to endeavor and strive to the utmost of his ability to come off victor; but it is utterly wrong for him to trip up his competitor, or to push him aside. So in life it is not unfair for one to seek for himself what may accrue to his benefit; but it is not right to take it from another. From De Officiis by Cicero, iii. 10.

3. It is proper to strive for what is needed for living, but not with a theft from another who also needs it for living.

If I had followed the multitude, I should not have studied philosophy. From Diogenes Laërtius, vii. 182.

4. We should seek those things that will be helpful to our future, and that is a part of natural philosophy.

If I knew that it was fated for me to be sick, I would even wish for it; for the foot also, if it had intelligence, would volunteer to get muddy. From Epictetus, Discourses, ii. 6. 10.

5. We are fated to obey gravity and other natural things like death, and we will profit by understanding these things, so we may cooperate with them appropriately.

The universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul. From De Natura Deorum by Cicero, i. 15.

6. The universe is the totality of everything, and we can name it God; thus we humans, conscious of that idea, are the part of the universe perceiving itself.

We should infer in the case of a beautiful dwelling-place that it was built for its owners and not for mice; we ought, therefore, in the same way to regard the universe as the dwelling-place of the gods. From De Natura Deorum by Cicero, iii. 10.

7. The universe was made by god for its use, and we are like mice in body, but a companion of god in our minds.

I found while writing this post that I was feeling like a companion with Chrysippus, walking the same path, but with a 21st century tilt.

Some common thoughts stated as maxims, #9

11 Friday Sep 2020

Posted by probaway in Epigrams, psychology, survival

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Big nose, Epictetus, Maxims #9, Seneca

Are these maxims for the feeble-minded or a sage?

Useful links to living are found in Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
He hung himself with his tongue and bit it hard when the day came.
Three-fourths of the Earth was his home, but now he lives in a pond in Tibet.
He’s a pleasant person when he’s pleased, but he’s seldom pleased.
An ugly man who creates beautiful things is thought beautiful.
He has an enthusiastic conversation ready for anyone who smiles at him.
A man is never lonely when he’s striving toward a worthwhile goal.
Begin with a pleasant smile, then a laugh about one’s self, and listen carefully.
Everyone’s a fool at a riot, but the ones with cool heads don’t risk their bodies.
A poor man is satisfied with his lot, but billionaires didn’t get rich being satisfied.
Yes, they do look impressive together; it’s a huge belly to match his fat head.
Bake good bread, and butter will soon find its proper place.
It took many candles to write Moby Dick. [Candles were made of whales’ blubber.]
He lives the longest who creates the most surviving things.
A meaningless life drags the hours, but a meaningful life packs the years.
He’s earned so many feathers of admiration his head looks like a peacock.
He set my house afire to roast his eggs of revenge for his long-dead father.
Pee with your back to the sunshine if you’re afraid of a wee-wee sunburn.
He who greases his car’s axles saves many times the price in fuel and parts.
Born a fool, raised by fools, marry a fool, generate fools, and die a proud fool.
He who offers his honey pot to a bear won’t have any honey left for himself.
Carry my heavy loads and me, and you will understand why I sweat the little stuff.
He who is a friend to everyone must be prepared for many painful events.
With every visit, take a gift, and from every guest expect one.
When you have an excellent book to read, you are in good company.
If someone betrays you, examine previous events and investigate every precursor.
Someone who cheats at little things will cheat at big ones too and create calamities.
Decide business dilemmas when at work, join in family events, and sleep soundly.
Surviving today’s failures gives you tonight to recover and tomorrow to succeed.
If you hate crowds of people, you should avoid becoming a football fan.
He who has given his heart will soon give his mind and then his money.
Religion and church bind strangers together into a community but repel close kin.
A kid who grasps for ground sugar candy drops most of it onto the ground.
One who has covered the basics of life has free time to hunt for rare opportunities.
People who have big noses have trouble seeing past them, as does everyone else.

The goal of these maxims is to stimulate new ideas by clashing some of those seemingly opposite ideas into a synthesis idea. The experiment will begin with about thirty sets of these modernized old ideas, and then search for other lists of ideas to do this clashing process upon.

Seeking a route out of public chaos and private anxiety.

30 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by probaway in Covid, diary, happiness, Health, Kindness, survival

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

public chaos, Seeking a way out

A rational person living in the United States today can not be anything but depressed by the response of all of our governments — national, state, and local — to the Covid pandemic. They consistently seem to choose a route that is too little too late and present their “official solutions” in ways that will create modest responses from reasonable adherents and violent protests from free-thinkers who believe personal selfishness trumps any social responsibility. So, there have been massive counterproductive media actions supporting normal people to behave in ways that in China would have landed them on a personal reform farm for several years of learning more socially acceptable behaviors. Here in the US there is a consistent hope presented that things are getting better while the statistics are steadily getting worse. And not just worse, but logarithmically worse.

But how can I cope with this nonsense? I have been a stoic even before my teenage years without having any direct exposure to the classic stoics. I spent a lot of time in my early youth with my mother’s parents on their farm near Homedale, Idaho. That was where I went to the 1st grade of grammar school, which included the 2nd and 3rd grades. I like to say that I started school when five years old in the 3rd grade, and created a family legend of learning to talk in school only while holding up my hand and challenging Milly my teacher (and cousin) for not holding up her hand when she spoke.

I mention my grandparents because they both had learned Latin in high school back in Covington, Ohio, and would occasionally use Latin terms for common items like naming our cow Boz, and the pig Suie, et cetera. They spoke occasionally of Seneca I suppose, because I knew that name when a child. They were very common-sense people, and my grandmother reminded me many times, “Remember, Charles, that we are just plain folks.” I know there was something of a pre-hippy quality about her and her leading her family back into a healthy back-to-the-earth lifestyle.

My thoughts of her bring me back to the Classic Stoic Romans such as Seneca and Epictetus, whom she and my grandfather probably studied in school. So I suspect they imbued me with those ideals without me, or possibly even they, knowing they were doing it. I was the “seventh child” she raised, and I can now look back on some things she did with appreciation. I had perfect freedom of choice because I never did anything bad. I can say that I learned my morality by their examples of how to behave like good people. To them, that meant honest, often humorous talk, consistently doing one’s duty in a cheerful way, and being there when needed. Thank you Grand-ma and pa for your guidance of me and your children, including my Mom. These were all wonderful people, whom I liked very much at that time, but in remembrance I revere.

They seem to be my motivation to try to take responsibility for saving the world and its people from the chaos that is growing. I prefer to believe that presenting facts clearly enough will change people’s minds and show them a better route into their more successful future. Thus, my efforts to create the Logarithmic Covid charts with their projections, and the Baby Shampoo cleansing of the sinuses to subdue the Covid viruses where they replicate, and the super-cheap flapper valve breathing filter mask for purifying air being breathed in and breathed out.

Those are among the routes I have been using to find a way out of the current public chaos and private anxiety.

Aphors list by SOURCE DATE

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by probaway in Aphor

≈ 72 Comments

Aphor — Author of ideas (Birth -> Death) — Wikipedia — Picture

2650/00/00/ BC — Imhotep (2650 – 2600 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
635/00/00/ BC — Thales of Miletus (635 – 543 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
570/00/00/ BC — Xenophanes (570 – 480 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
535/00/00/ BC — Heraclitus Ephesus (535 – 475 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
515/00/00/ BC — Parmenides (515 – 540 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
510/00/00/ BC — Anaxagoras (510 – 428 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
510/00/00/ BC — 7 Sages of Ancient Greece (510) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
495/00/00/ BC — Pericles (495 – 429 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
490/00/00/ BC — Zeno of Elea (490 – 430 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
490/00/00/ BC — Empedocles (490 BC – 430 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
481/00/00/ BC — Protagoras (c. 481 – 420 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
470/00/00/ BC — Socrates (470 – 399 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
460/00/00/ BC — Democritus (460 – 370 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
445/00/00/ BC — Antisthenes (445 – 365) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
445/00/00/ BC — Plato (445 – 347 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
412/00/00/ BC — Diogenes of Sinope (412 – 323 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
384/00/00/ BC — Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
372/00/00/ BC — Theophrastus (372 – 287 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
341/00/00/ BC — Epicurus (341 BC – 270 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
333/00/00/ BC — Zeno of Citium (333 – 264 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
279/00/00/ BC — Chrysippus (279 – 207 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
106/00/00/ BC — Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
20/00/00/ BC — Philo Judaeus (20 BC – 40 AD) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
4/00/00/ BC — Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
46/00/00/ — Plutarch of Chaeronia (45 – 120) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
55/00/00/ — Epictetus (55 – 135 AD) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
121/04/26/ — Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
204/00/00/ — Plotinus (204 – 270) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
354/11/13/ — St. Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
370/00/00/ — Hypatia of Alexandria (370 – 415) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1033/00/00/ — St. Anselm (1034 – 1109) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1225/00/00/ — St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1266/00/00/ — Duns Scotus (1266 – 1308) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1285/00/00/ — William of Occam (1285 – 1349) — Wiki, – Pic – AI –
1389/09/27/ — Cosimo de Medici (1389 – 1464) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1466/10/28/ — Erasmus (1466 – 1536) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1469/05/03/ — Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1473/02/19/ — Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1478/02/07/ — Thomas More (1478 – 1535) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1533/02/28/ — Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1561/01/22/ — Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1564/02/15/ — Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1588/04/05/ — Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1596/03/31/ — René Descartes (1596 – 1650) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1612/02/06/ — Antoine Arnauld (1612 – 1694) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1623/06/19/ — Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1632/00/00/ — Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1632/11/24/ — John Locke (1632 – 1704) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1638/08/06/ — Nicolas Malebranche (1638 – 1715) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1643/01/04/ — Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) — Wiki – Pic – AI – AI –
1646/07/01/ — Gottfried Leibniz (1646 – 1716) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1685/03/12/ — George Berkeley (1685 – 1753) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1689/01/18/ — Montesquieu (1689 – 1755) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1694/11/21/ — Voltaire (1694 – 1778) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1710/05/07/ — Thomas Reid (1710 – 1796) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1711/05/07/ — David Hume (1711 – 1776) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1712/06/28/ — Jean-Jac. Rousseau (1712 – 1778) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1713/10/05/ — Denis Diderot (1713 – 1784) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1723/06/05/ — Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1724/04/22/ — Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1737/02/09/ — Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1748/02/15/ — Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1759/04/27/ — Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1759/11/10/ — Friedrich Schiller (1759 – 1805) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1770/08/27/ — Georg Hegel (1770 – 1831) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1775/01/27/ — Friedrich Schelling (1775 – 1852) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1788/02/22/ — Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1798/01/19/ — Auguste Comte (1788 – 1857) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1806/05/20/ — John Stuart Mill (1788 – 1873) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1809/02/12/ — Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1813/05/05/ — Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1818/05/05/ — Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1820/11/28/ — Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1823/01/08/ — Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 – 1913) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1835/11/30/ — Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1838/02/18/ — Ernst Mach (1838 – 1916) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1838/05/31/ — Henry Sidgwick (1838- 1900) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1839/09/10/ — Charles Peirce (1839 – 1914) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1840/09/27/ — Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840 – 1914) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1842/01/11/ — William James (1842 – 1910) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1842/06/24/ — Ambrose Bierce (1843 – 1913) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1844/10/15/ — Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1848/11/08/ — Gottlob Frege (1848 – 1925) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1856/05/06/ — Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1857/11/26/ — Ferdinand Saussure (1857 – 1913) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1858/04/15/ — Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1859/04/08/ — Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1859/10/18/ — Henri Bergson (1859– 1941) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1859/10/20/ — John Dewey (1859 – 1952) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1861/02/15/ — Alfred N. Whitehead (1861 – 1947) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1870/04/22/ — Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1872/05/18/ — Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1873/11/04/ — G. E. Moore (1873 – 1958) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1875/07/26/ — Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1879/03/14/ — Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1882/04/14/ — Moritz Schlick (1882 – 1936)— Wiki – Pic – AI –
1883/02/23/ — Karl Jaspers (1875 – 1961) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1883/06/05/ — John Maynard Keynes (1883 – 1946) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1889/04/26/ — Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1889/09/26/ — Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1891/05/18/ — Rudolf Carnap (1891 – 1970) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1896/11/17/ — Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1900/08/19/ — Gilbert Ryle (1900 – 1976) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1900/00/14/ — Alfred Tarski (1901 – 1983) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1902/07/28/ — Karl Popper (1902 – 1994) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1904/03/20/ — B. F. Skinner (1904 – 1990) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1905/03/21/ — Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1905/02/02/ — Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982) — Wiki – Pic – Video – AI –
1906/04/28/ — Kurt Gödel (1906 – 1978) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1908/01/09/ — Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1908/03/14/ — Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 – 1961) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1908/06/25/ — W. V. O. Quine (1908 – 2000) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1908/11/28/ — Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 – 2009) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1910/10/20/ — A. J. Ayer (1910 – 1989) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1911/03/26/ — J. L. Austin (1911 – 1960) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1912/06/23/ — Alan Turing (1912 – 1954) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1913/11/07/ — Albert Camus (1913 – 1960) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1915/01/06/ — Alan Watts (1915 – 1973) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1915/04/21/ — Garrett Hardin (1915 – 2003) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1921/02/21/ — John Rawls (1921-2002) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1922/07/18/ — Thomas Kuhn (1922 – 1996) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1924/01/13/ — Paul Feyerabend (1924 – 1994) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1926/10/15/ — Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1928/12/07/ — Noam Chomsky (1928 – ) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1929/09/21/ — Bernard Williams (1929 – 2003) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1930/07/15/ — Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1932/07/31/ — John Searle (1932 – ) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1935/10/01/ — Charles Scamahorn (1935 – ) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1942/12/11/ — Derek Parfit (1942 – 2017) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1942/03/28/ — Daniel Dennett (1942 – ) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1948/02/12/ — Ray Kurzweil (1948 – ∞) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1949/04/13/ — Christopher Hitchens (1949 – 2011) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1953/03/05/ — Michael Sandel (1953 – ) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1954/11/01/ — Alfred E. Newman (1953 – ) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1954/09/18/ — Steven Pinker (1954 – ) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1958/01/25/ — James C. Collins (1958 – ) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1960/03/27/ — Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960 – ) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1963/10/19/ — Jonathan Haidt (1963 – ) — Wiki – Pic – AI –
1966/04/20/ — David Chalmers (1966 – ) — Wiki – Pic – AI –

“[W]hoever could master the premises and combine the methods of both, would possess the entire English philosophy of their age” (Coleridge, X: 121). – https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/

(This list is predated to make a published working list to be used until a more complete but expandable historical list and I can make a parallel alphabetical list.)

I truncated the word Aphor from the OED’s definition of Aphorism. I created it as a unique searchable word that retains the flavor of an aphorism but is intended for finding latent ideas.

The link under SOURCE PERSON gives Probaway’s earlier list of quotations by the source person.

I’m not much of a drunk too … but …D’USSÉ

19 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by probaway in diary, evolution, habits, happiness, Health, Kindness, survival

≈ Leave a comment

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Comparing cognacs, D'usse versus Grand Marnier, Epictetus, I am not a drunk!, I drink alcohol, I drink cognac, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Testing Grand Marnier

D’USSÉ Cognac has given me many very pleasurable minutes.

I’m holding the bottle of D’USSÉ Cognac that I have been sipping from for several months.

These are the stainless steel measuring spoons I used for this experiment.

This is the same experiment I did a couple of days ago titled, I’m not much of a drunk … but … which was about my trying to put a trace of scientific rigor into how large a sip of Grand Marnier cognac is just right for maximizing my pleasure.

By the way, I don’t consider myself an Epicurean. They were a Classic Roman philosophical school based on maximizing pleasure in one’s life. Rather, when it comes to the big meaning of life things, I consider myself to be more of a kindness-seeking and giving Stoic. Those who strictly follow an Epicurean maximizing of pleasure philosophy of life often destroy their bodies with excess and then lose years of pleasure that they might have enjoyed had they been more moderate.

In this post, the term Stoic is used in the old Roman sense of responding well to what the environmental situation can deliver. The term stoic was intentionally corrupted during the Middle Ages to mean a person who simply endures the sufferings that life presents and falls into a life of hopelessness and despair. I’m enthusiastic about the Stoic approach of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, all of whom had many difficult situations but lived them fully and appeared to enjoy their lives.

When I sip some cognac the best response seems to be to savor all the wonderful things that it can bring to my senses.

The following is a close repeat of how I approached the Grand Marnier cognac. Let’s experiment with it now. Join me if you can with whatever cognac you can bring to your lips.

D’USSÉ Cognac

1/8 tsp/0.63ml is too small. I can get the taste, but not the pleasure. – The taste was so brief it didn’t taste very good.

1/4 tsp/1.25ml is also too small. It also gives the taste, but there is too little of it to do the various sloshing games I usually play with it in my mouth to give the pleasure I am used to getting when I sip this Grand Marnier. – This is a strange experience for me because even a 1/4 tsp of D’USSÉ doesn’t give me any pleasure. Perhaps, horror to say, a bit of displeasure. Here a minute after the sipping I can feel my lips tingling a bit.

1 tsp/5ml was just okay, – but it too was just a bit too small for the pleasure I get usually from my sip. I skipped over the 1/2 tsp/2.5 ml because I was tired of being teased by those too small sips. Finally, enough of a sip to give some real pleasure, but it still isn’t the joy I know I’ve felt when sipping this cognac. In addition to my lips having a slight burn, there is a noticeable burn in my stomach.

1/2 Tbsp/7.5ml was just about right for a single sip of Grand Marnier. But the experience of sipping it from a half-sphere shaped stainless steel measuring spoon didn’t give me the same pleasurable feel as tipping the bottle to my lips and slowly sucking in just the right amount. – For D’USSE the 1/2 Tbsp felt like it was just right. I’m going to go for 1 Tbsp at a single sip even though I suspect that it will be too much. Let’s find out.

1 Tbsp/15m. When I look at this little cup it looks too BIG, but onward in furthering the glory of science, where it is sometimes necessary to go beyond what is thought to be a limit just to be sure it is the limit. Here goes. … Wow! That does taste great, and I do enjoy working it around in my mouth, but I have now broken out in a full-body sweat. My mouth has about the same tingle as from the smaller amounts, and my stomach feels warmer but is content with the experience.

In comparison with the Grand Marnier cognac, the D’USSÉ is a single very pleasurable experience, where the Grand Marnier was several different unique pleasurable experiences flowing through my mouth for a whole minute.

Why do people move so often?

28 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by probaway in Contentment, diary, habits, happiness, survival

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How many people to know?, Know a few people well, Know many people and move on., Who can you enjoy most?

This evening I was in a conversation about why people change their city of residence so often. As it turned out I was the one who spoke up for living your life with the same people. My reasoning was based on the idea that knowing people for a long time gives you a much better perspective on the values of life that are important. When you know someone for a long time and in many different life situations, it becomes a more meaningful thing when something happens to them. If you are with the same people for a long time, you know when they meet their spouse, how and when they began a family. You know the baby as a baby, as a toddler, as a child, as a teenager, as a kid with problems, as a college kid, or a soldier, as a returning alcoholic, or a dedicated political radical, and after a while as an older responsible citizen trying really hard to pay off their home mortgage while helping their kids’ lives become somehow coherent. Knowing the same people for fifty-one years, as I did in my years in Berkeley, I saw all of those things and lots more.

One of my interlocutors had intentionally joined the US Air Force to see the world and stayed in that profession for twenty-eight years. They loved it because there were so many adventures to participate in, and so many interesting people to meet. All sorts of people, from all sorts of different countries. They loved the vast variety of people and those different people’s exotic world views.

I mentioned the Classic Roman Seneca (4 BC to 63 AD), who mentioned that everyone in Rome had come from somewhere else. That was strange to him, but then “all roads lead to Rome.” Then he goes on to mention that in every city that he visited the same situation prevailed, that everyone had come from somewhere else. He thought it strange and attributed it to humans’ natural wanderlust, the desire to see what’s over the next hill, or around the next bend in the road. He himself had been brought to Rome as a child, and then went on to Egypt as a teenager, and then back to Rome and on to Corsica in his late fifties.

I moved several times until age twenty-five, but always between places where I had family or within a well-known college community. Then I was at Berkeley, California, for fifty-one years and now in Bend, Oregon for eight years.

If you meet new people you meet someone who has done something, but if you know people for a long time you know people who are doing things. I guess I prefer people who have a known purpose in life and are pursuing their known goals.

There have been over ten billion people who have existed during my life and that’s far too many to have known.

I have known quite a few people and enjoyed them all, even the difficult ones.

Logophilia – Pasquinade is the word for today.

20 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by probaway in diary

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Logophilia, Pasquinade

Pasquinade is “A satire or lampoon, especially one that ridicules a specific person, traditionally written and posted in a public place” (from thefreedictionary). The term comes from Pasquino, one of the Congregation of Wits or Five Talking Statues of Rome upon which people have posted witty poems and political satires, starting about 1508. The late night comics like Steven Colbert do comedic pasquinades about Donald Trump every show.

The “members” of our Logophilia monthly meeting group are requested to be on the lookout for unusual words they encounter in their daily life. I have been reading and rereading The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca as translated by Moses Hadas, and he sprinkles his writings with an unusual words. Here is a not atypical sentence: “We confess that he [Augustus] was a good emperor and appropriately entitled father of his country for no other reason than because he did not requite with cruelty even personal affronts, which irk rulers even more than actual injuries, because he smiled at pasquinades aimed against him, because punishments seemed to pain him more than the culprits, because he not only refrained from executing the men condemned for adultery with his daughter but banished them for their safety and gave them safe conducts,” p. 150. I wrote out that whole sentence because not only was it an example of Hadas’s writing style, but it seemed to be a pasquinade aimed at possible weak minded readers. Me?

I enjoy rereading Seneca because he was dead center at the heart of the Roman Empire’s administration in those years that are still memorable in both the religious and secular worlds (BCE 4 to CE 64). Seneca is an absolute insider to real world politics of the Emperors Caligula, Claudius, Agrippina and Nero. Seneca was in Egypt with his Uncle the Chief Administrator of that country for about ten years ending in 31CE and those are the years that Jesus is active in the next door Roman administration district.

I thought pasquinade would be a good word to begin a Logophilia series, but this post didn’t go anywhere.

Finally an approximate return to my normal life.

15 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by probaway in Contentment, diary, habits, happiness, Health, reviews, survival

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Bend Bulletin, Diet and BMI, Inguinal hernia, My normal life returns, Prostate cancer, Returning to Seneca, Snow and ice removal, Snowpocalypse

A year ago I had just reached my year-long diet goal for attaining my perfect Body Mass Index (BMI) and was feeling really healthy. I could climb the four levels of our local parking structure to the rooftop two steps at a time and then walk across the top level to my parked car in comfort. Breathing hard of course, but comfortable. Then came a diagnosis of prostate cancer and I participated in forty-four radiation treatments. Here is an article in the Bend Bulletin, with photos, about the very device I laid in and the nurse that controlled my treatments. It was actually a pleasant experience and while in the waiting room I had many wonderful conversations with people experiencing similar life-threatening situations. I survived very well, some didn’t!

In my follow-up visit with my radiation doctor a month later I mentioned a new lump in my lower right abdomen. He checked it and declared I had an advanced inguinal hernia. I then visited my VA personal doctor within the week, and he began the paperwork for me to get the appropriate operation. That was completed eight days ago, and I am on the mend and feeling good and doing heavy-duty things like shoveling a lot of snow off my house roof, and chopping with a pick-ax through six-inch thick ice to clear things like street drains with huge water puddles around them.

I make a point of doing those things in such a way that there isn’t the slightest strain on my hernia stitches. With the forty degrees weather, the snow is melting and the main streets are dry, and our residential street is clearing up nicely, but there are many eight-foot high piles of snow about the city, and lots of puddles. My house has five-foot piles of snow continuously around all four sides. That snow is mixed with slabs of inch-thick ice that I pried off the roof. That is necessary to prevent ice dams that force water through the roof into the house. There are many cases of that problem with people I know. I wouldn’t be surprised if as many as ten percent of homes here in Bend had water intrusions and roof collapses. But who’s counting? The insurance companies I suspect are being hit hard.

I have never missed any of my daily social meetings during these months of “trials and tribulations,” and if I hadn’t mentioned them I suspect that no one would have guessed I had the slightest problem. Hopefully, these potentially horrible things are in abeyance for a while and I can spend more time with my philosophers.

My problems are trivial compared to Seneca‘s and the more carefully I read his writings the more orderly and quiet my life becomes.

Probaway – Life Hacks

~ Many helpful hints on living your life more successfully.

Search results for: Seneca

Aphors list by SOURCE DATE

Aphor list by SOURCE DATE

Maxims #49 – Chrysippus

Some common thoughts stated as maxims, #9

Seeking a route out of public chaos and private anxiety.

Aphors list by SOURCE DATE

I’m not much of a drunk too … but …D’USSÉ

D’USSÉ Cognac

Why do people move so often?

Logophilia – Pasquinade is the word for today.

Finally an approximate return to my normal life.