How to recognize and realize the five levels of happiness

Numerically measuring happy, healthy, wise, and wealthy levels is possible because they each have their defined opposites, and opposites have midpoints, with quarter points between each middle point and the ends. So with that definition, we have a numbered five-point scale. The next problem is defining what each of these five states means in a measurable way that discriminates between that numbered level and the adjacent ones. 

The Paths to Maturity chart was first published in 1994 as a multidimensional chart. It was reformatted as a list of completed sentences Feb 28, 2010, in Probaway – Paths to Maturity Expanded, and on Feb 27, 2010, a commentary was made, To maximize happiness, behave at your highest maturity level. Thus, eleven years ago, I already stated that what I defined as a sage level was maximizing happiness, implying that an immature level was its opposite. That created five stated levels for measuring happiness. Today I realized this earlier post met the goal of measuring happiness.

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Maturity expanded into five layers of increasing happiness.

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Time-binding maturity

1. IMMATURE Childish behavior is okay for children but very poor for older people.
2. ADOLESCENT Why are adolescents so stupid? I don’t mean low IQ I mean stupid.
3. ADULT Adult behavior isn’t stupid but it isn’t smart either.
4. MATURE Mature behavior is helped by a higher IQ
5. SAGE To behave as a sage requires intelligence, experience and thoughtfulness.

Environmental stress,

1. EGO EXPANSION when pleasurably stressful
2. EGO DEFENSE when dangerously stressful
3. EGO CONTRACTION when overwhelmingly stressful

Current attention adds another dimension:

1. IDEAS
2. PERCEPTIONS
3. PEOPLE
4. OBJECTS

 To maximize happiness behave at your highest maturity level. 

The resulting chart makes conceptual sense but is difficult to read, and so below is the chart expanded into complete sentences, which makes it easier to read but more difficult to follow conceptually. The best way to combine the advantages of both of these renditions of the same information is to have them viewed simultaneously side by side in printed forms or in separate windows. 

 Probaway – Paths

PLEASURABLY STRESSFUL

1. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a DREAMER fantasizing self-worth by DELUSIONAL THINKING about personal qualities when his attention is dominated by his ideas.
2. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a DREAMER fantasizing self-worth by SILLY LYING to get attention when his attention is dominated by perceptions.
3. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a DREAMER fantasizing self-worth by FABRICATING RELATIONSHIPS about people when his attention is dominated by people.
4. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a DREAMER fantasizing self-worth by GRABBING THINGS and just holding on to them when his attention is dominated by objects.
5. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of an IDEALIST claiming self-worth by EXCITABLE-THINKING about personal situations when his attention is dominated by his ideas.
6. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of an IDEALIST claiming self-worth by BOASTING about personal qualities when his attention is dominated by his perceptions.
7. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of an IDEALIST claiming self-worth by FORMALIZING RELATIONSHIPS into exclusive categories when his attention is dominated by people.
8. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of an IDEALIST claiming self-worth by CONTROLLING THINGS and over-stressing them when his attention is dominated by objects.
9. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PRODUCER acquiring self-worth by CALCULATING solutions to personal problems when his attention is dominated by his ideal.
10. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PRODUCER acquiring self-worth by LECTURING about knowledge to enhance esteem when his attention is dominated by his perceptions.
11. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PRODUCER acquiring self-worth by ACHIEVING STATUS by productive actions when his attention is dominated by people.
12. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PRODUCER acquiring self-worth by EARNING PROPERTY for personal accumulation when his attention is dominated by objects.
13. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a LEADER giving goals to people by CREATING attainable solutions to problems when his attention is dominated by his ideas.
14. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a LEADER giving goals to people by HUMORING to aid in the creation of self-consciousness when his attention is dominated by perceptions.
15. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a LEADER giving goals to people by EXPOSING people to common problems when his attention is dominated by people.
16. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a LEADER giving goals to people by ALTRUISTIC-GIVING to achieve common goals when his attention is dominated by objects.
17. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PROGENITOR giving skills to evolve worth by MEDITATING teachable paths to higher realities when his attention is dominated by ideas.
18. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PROGENITOR giving skills to evolve worth by PROPHESYING to create the conditions for human growth when his attention is dominated by perceptions.
19. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PROGENITOR giving skills to evolve worth by GOLDEN-RULING Doing to others as they should do when his attention is dominated by people.
20. When the environment is pleasurably stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego expansion are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PROGENITOR giving skills to evolve worth by NO-EXAMPLING to generate universal well-being when his attention is dominated by objects.

DANGEROUSLY STRESSFUL

1. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a CRAZY blunting feelings of self-worth by FORGETTING of even non-threatening memories when his attention is dominated by his ideas.
2. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a CRAZY blunting feelings of self-worth by DENYING of perceptual reality and of experience when his attention is dominated by perceptions.
3. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a CRAZY blunting feelings of self-worth by DELUSIONAL-PROJECTING of a fantastic persecution when his attention is dominated by people.
4. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a CRAZY blunting feelings of self-worth by DISTORTING REALITY in a reversed way when his attention is dominated by objects.
5. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of an AMBULATOR warping feelings of self-worth by SCHIZOID-FANTASIZING to repel stress filled reality when his attention is dominated by his ideas.
6. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of an AMBULATOR warping feelings of by HYPOCHONDRIZING of self and passive aggression when his attention is dominated by his perceptions.
7. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of an AMBULATOR warping feelings of by PROJECTING personal problems onto others when his attention is dominated by people.
8. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of an AMBULATOR warping feelings of by STEALING objects to acquire control when his attention is dominated by objects.
9. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a RATIONALIST distracting ideas of self-worth by INTELLECTUALIZING about action but with no real action when his attention is dominated by his ideal.
10. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a RATIONALIST distracting ideas of self-worth by DISSOCIATING behavior into proper but rigid channels when his attention is dominated by his perceptions.
11. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a RATIONALIST distracting ideas of self-worth by FORMING reactions opposite to impulses when his attention is dominated by people.
12. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a RATIONALIST distracting ideas of self-worth by DISPLACING attention to less anxiety-ridden things when his attention is dominated by objects.
13. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a STRUGGLER substituting others’ self-worth by ANTICIPATING and mentally practicing future actions when his attention is dominated by his ideas.
14. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a STRUGGLER substituting others’ self-worth by SUBLIMATING attention to alternate but worthy goals when his attention is dominated by perceptions.
15. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a STRUGGLER substituting others’ self-worth by ORGANIZING people to defend the group when his attention is dominated by people.
16. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a STRUGGLER substituting others’ self-worth by INVESTING goods to maintain their value when his attention is dominated by objects.
17. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a SAINT promoting others’ self-worth by FORGIVING ALL, the bad and good alike when his attention is dominated by ideas.
18. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a SAINT promoting others’ self-worth by BENEVOLENCING needed feelings into everyone when his attention is dominated by perceptions.
19. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a SAINT promoting others’ self-worth by COMPASSIONING required attentions onto others when his attention is dominated by people.
20. When the environment is dangerously stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego defense are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a SAINT promoting others’ self-worth by RAINING BENEFITS to all people and things when his attention is dominated by objects.

OVERWHELMINGLY STRESSFUL

1. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PSYCHOTIC suffering failure by TORPORING avoidance of all mental stimulation when his attention is dominated by his ideas.
2. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PSYCHOTIC suffering failure by COWERING avoidance of all bodily stimulation when his attention is dominated by perceptions.
3. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PSYCHOTIC suffering failure by PANICKING avoidance of all people when his attention is dominated by people.
4. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the IMMATURE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PSYCHOTIC suffering failure by TANTRUMING to avoid intrusion by reality when his attention is dominated by objects.
5. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a NEUROTIC avoiding ideas of failure by DESPAIRING of success of grandiose expectations when his attention is dominated by his ideas.
6. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a NEUROTIC avoiding ideas of failure by DEPRESSING of effective emotive energy when his attention is dominated by his perceptions.
7. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a NEUROTIC avoiding ideas of failure by RECOILING from contact with strong people when his attention is dominated by people.
8. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the ADOLESCENT person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a NEUROTIC avoiding ideas of failure by ACTING-OUT failure against alternate objects when his attention is dominated by objects.
9. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a CYNIC confining ideas of failure by REPRESSING needs of value arising from self when his attention is dominated by his ideal.
10. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a CYNIC confining ideas of failure by CLUTTERING values with irrelevant data when his attention is dominated by his perceptions.
11. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a CYNIC confining ideas of failure by DISPARAGING values held by other people when his attention is dominated by people.
12. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the ADULT person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a CYNIC confining ideas of failure by ABDICATING responsibility for group values when his attention is dominated by objects.
13. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a REALIST temporizing failure by SUPPRESSING present problems for later solution when his attention is dominated by his ideas.
14. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a REALIST temporizing failure by HYPOCRISIZING self about relationships to problems when his attention is dominated by perceptions.
15. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a REALIST temporizing failure by DISSEMBLING personal and group failings when his attention is dominated by people.
16. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the MATURE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a REALIST temporizing failure by HEDGING against losses with counter actions when his attention is dominated by objects.
17. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PROPHET co-opting ends with failure by RETURNING TO CORE self as to the universe when his attention is dominated by ideas.
18. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PROPHET co-opting ends with failure by TRANSCENDING THE CORE self to the world when his attention is dominated by perceptions.
19. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PROPHET co-opting ends with failure by BESTOWING MIND to humanity when his attention is dominated by people.
20. When the environment is overwhelmingly stressful, then the SAGE person’s expressions of ego contraction are taking control of his environment by using the methods of a PROPHET co-opting ends with failure by RETURNING ALL to nature as the source of all things when his attention is dominated by objects.

The maturity of a person is observed in the habits they choose.

The five levels of happiness are: 1. Immature, 2 Adolescent, 3. Adult, 4. Mature, 5. Sage

A critique of measuring happy, healthy, wise and wealthy.

Yesterday’s post outlined a method of measuring a human being’s personal endeavors of happy, healthy, wise, and wealthy more clearly. There is an easily felt difference between happy and unhappy, and in between those extremes, a middle value. And between that middle value and the extremes, discernible middle values. Thus, to make a five-point scale of happiness is reasonable. However, the five happiness levels are subjective and, when now looking at them, I see they are also dependent on self-directed goal-seeking behaviors. The question arises, is happiness an unmotivated emotion, or is it the result of successful actions? 

The dimension of personal endeavors named healthy was already implicit in my 2008 chart on human maturity, if you are willing to accept that a mature person named Sage is healthier than an immature person named Immature. I would think that a person with sage-like qualities would realize that those spiritual things would function better in a healthy body after their years of higher spiritual pursuits. However, accepted sages like Jesus, Socrates, and Gautama willingly gave their lives to pursue their principles, which seems to contradict my premise. Another attempt to define health might be blood pressure because Western doctors consider it the best single indicator of general health. The usual guide for blood pressure is below 120/80 and above 90/60, and halfway between would be approaching ideal, or 105/70. But, those numbers don’t come close to US government’s data for average Americans, except for 18-year-old females.

The graphic source is, US gov. But their graphic has obvious but unmarked flaws. The bottom of mmHg number should not be 0 but 60 and there is an unmarked gap between 80 and 110. The spacing between 110, 130, and 150 is 20, but the spacing between 70 and 80 is 10. I must accept their data points as correct, but the presentation is wrong.

The measure for wisdom is even more sketchy, but the Maturity chart is probably as good as it gets. However, my more recent thoughts have shifted to the difference between arbitrary beliefs based on wishful thinking and simply facing factual reality. Testable scientific pursuit and its technological fallout brought us many wonderful things, but it doesn’t satisfy people’s need for fixed ideas that one can “absolutely” believe. Therefore, “Why should I live?”

The fourth, perhaps measurable, basic endeavor of humans is wealth, and for recent years that has been measured in terms of money. And many people still believe that having more money is proof of personal value, even though many people with great wealth are losers. Perhaps a better measure these days would not be how much money one earns, but how much desirable living one can consume. Is one living better by making a white contrail high in the sky in their private jet and living better than another walking quietly with a friend through a personally beautiful world below? Can that be measured with blood pressure? I’ve done both, and the flying a jet alone is fantastic fun for a while, but quiet living with friends is better for long-term contentment.

Does having a FICO score in the 800s, which I have, mean being honest with the public and having a better relationship with one’s friends? Conversely, does a FICO in the 400s imply that one is miserable, and a cheater, or is a more normal central 700 the most comfortable?

Putting a measurable number on personal values seems harsh, and yet it has brought some ideas worth pursuing to the conversation.

How can we know when we are happy, healthy, wise and wealthy?

Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now is filled with 75 historically based graphs of data. Each graphic is a compilation of other researchers’ data, and consequently, there is a vast amount of helpful information in his book. The method he claims as his guiding principle is to prove his abstract points with mathematically demonstrated data. My search in this post follows Pinker and intends to make the basics of the human endeavors of happy, healthy, wise, and wealthy more clearly defined with measurable data and therefore comparable across various domains.

First question is how can we put a numerical number on happiness?

I’ve written a lot statements on happiness that I’ve tried to convert to aphors for use in the Aphor game, and to list some of those that would fit a five point scale. The colored number is the link to my source. 1. 3. The happiness of ordinary people isn’t ruined by occasional griefs but by chronic bad habits 2. 15. No one can be happy who attempts to turn everything to his advantage. 3. 13. A reasonable man needs only to seek moderation to find happiness. 4. 7. An honorable man is happy when he has a worthwhile goal and the resources to pursue it. 5. 5. Happiness is found in the active pursuit of worthwhile goals, and contentment is living within the sustained achievement of them.

Second is how do we measure health?

1. 59. People quickly forget that the function of their brain is to promote their health and survival of their body so they can reproduce their species. 2. 14. Pain guides you away from injury, disability, and death, but pleasure usually guides you towards health, longevity, and reproduction. 3. 47. A young neurotic is often a physically healthy person who has cultivated some poor mental habits. 4. 13. The more comprehensively you can comprehend the past, the better you can craft a healthier future. 5. 5. 3:13 Happy and healthy is the man that finds wisdom early in his life and relishes understanding.

Third is wisdom measured by the maturity chart?

This is a chart I created back in 2008 that links three factors, 1. Environmental stress, 2. Time-binding maturity, 3. Current attention, to human happiness. This can be put into five levels of maturity.

 

Fourth is wealth measured by money?

If wealth means living well within one’s means, and not the total quantity of money one possess’, then is a credit score is a good measure of wealth? If so then: Wikipedia has a meaningful analysis of wealth with the system of Credit Score in the United States.

 

Source of image of FICO Scores

We can arbitrarily divide the FICO chart into five defined levels for comparison to the other defined well-being challenges. Wealth-Well-being scores is based on, 1. The first three vertical blue bars and lower. 2. The bars after the first three up to 2.00. 3. The bars between rising from 2.00 to descending back to 2.00. 4. Descending from 2.00 to the last three bars. 5. The last three vertical bars.

FICO Scores can now be measured as Well-being Wealth scores. +1 = 300>520, +2 = 520>620, +3 = 620>800, +4 = 800>820, +5 = 820>up.

We can now measure a person’s happy, healthy, wise, and wealthy score from a minimum of four +1s, equals 4, to four +5s equals 20. The distribution might look similar to the FICO score chart, but after including blood pressure Well-being health scores, the total Well-being chart is skewed much lower to the left.

Maxims #66 – Epictetus

Go to the Index of 120 Philosophers Squared

Epictetus (AD 55–135), a Stoic philosopher, was a Greek, living as a youth in Rome as a slave to Emperor Nero‘s secretary. Later he was banished from Rome by Emperor Domitian and went to Greece, where he founded his own school. “Live by taking appropriate portions of what is offered.”

Epictetus, philosopher of Stoicism

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Probaway maximizing on Epictetus

1. If you seek to be wise, make all of your thoughts and actions aligned with being wise.

2. Cultivate the habit of recognizing wisdom by intentionally examining every statement for the usefulness of its wisdom.

3. My habits are created by my repeated actions; therefore, to create a habit I choose my goals and practice, on routine little things, the actions needed to get there.

4. To cultivate appropriate actions and habits for my new self, I must intentionally override my old self’s preexisting habits.

5. I will practice selecting from my available options and accepting the already fixed ones with contentment.

6. Freedom can be like swimming alone in the ocean, you can do anything you like, but you have no choices. Define your goals and ways for getting there, and you have limited actions but free choices.

7. I have few needs and enjoy playing society’s games and I choose to be content with everything that life brings to me.

8. I need no excuses for living modestly when those around me are living extravagantly.

9. One of my paths to daily contentment is to pay no attention to things over which I have no control or influence.

10. It will be easier for you to understand the value of contentment by being with and dining with contented people.

11. Seeking out and keeping company with contented people will bring out your best qualities.

12. Keep at a distance from agitated people who naturally generate problems that will disturb your tranquility.

13. He who can laugh at his own foibles will be a pleasant companion.

14. Difficulties are inevitable, and the greater they are, the more satisfaction comes from resolving them.

15. As you develop character, using these suggestions, the greater the difficulties you will be able to cope with successfully.

16. The successful man is the one who is content with his life.

17. With foresight, you can see the precursors to future events and control the precursors and thus control the events.

18. I am the master of my thoughts and feelings, and my happiness depends entirely on my choice of responses to external events.

19. It takes intentional practice to develop the skills you will need for the tasks required to reach your future goals.

20. Practice intentionally the skills you will need, and never make a new and inept response to a stimulus for which you have prepared.

21. Wise men control themselves and can influence others, but fools are manipulated by others and by their own fickle thoughts.

22. We can not control nature or society-wide events, and trying to control the uncontrollable will cause us to suffer.

23. Create in your mind the qualities of the person you want to become and practice at every waking moment those traits.

24. For a man to refuse to acknowledge plain facts and insist on believing distorted facts will corrode his understanding and wither his shame.

25. Some ideas enter our mind that correspond to natural reality; some ideas are fantasies; our sane self must sort out which is true and not true.

26. A man must confront challenges to grow his character from childhood into adulthood and beyond.

27. If you want to grow into maturity, you must expose yourself to challenges.

28. Discover the laws of nature and your society, and guide your behavior to comply with them and with your own desires.

29. Even sages have faults, but everyone can take pleasure in reaching self-defined goals along their path toward perfection.

30. If someone mentions that you have a fault, check yourself carefully for that fault, and if they are right, correct that fault immediately.

31. In this world of immense time and space, I am not a diamond in the mud but more like a brief reflection, an iridescent glow on the mud.

32. Give posterity an example of contented wisdom for them to follow.

33. Cultivate your wise actions based on what your foresight reveals to you so you can react to everything that happens with contentment.

34. Choose to be unconcerned with external things that you don’t have and enjoy those internal things which you do have.

35. Appreciate all people and all their beliefs, for every one of them must find their own way in this world and beyond.

36. Use your foresight to understand how things will be, then preadapt to that situation, and your relationship to reality will always be appropriate.

37. The greatest pleasures become cloying like a tiny bit too much honey, that makes you want to spit it out.

38. On the path to perfection, you must learn to sustain the long-term good, abstain from the quickie good, bear the bad, and forbear too much of a good thing.

39. Practice coping with easy challenges in your life, then harder ones, before encountering the impossible ones.

40. Learn what you need to do automatically and habitually to achieve success in your field, and then practice it diligently.

41. You must not seek contentment via luxury, but by foresight and doing the right things at the right time, and for that, you need a practical goal.

42. If someone calls you foolish because of your contentment, you have succeeded in becoming content if that slander doesn’t annoy you.

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COMMENTS:
I rewrote all of the quotes above, in an attempt to reveal what Epictetus was thinking. His philosophy was to help a man live a contented life in harmony with nature and the society he found himself living within. There apparently was considerable societal energy during his time to solve the problem of humanity’s relationship with the natural world, the spiritual world, and the social world. Over the millennium following Epictetus, the postmortem spiritual world took control of the reins of church and state, and the Stoics and other rational philosophies similar to them were ignored and forgotten and then condemned. Then in 1417 a book written in 50 BCE, On the Nature of Things“>On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, was discovered, the Renaissance began, and a nature-based world view slowly came back into humanity’s consciousness.

It would appear, in retrospect, that a life based on Stoic principles of personal responsibility for one’s actions requires too much effort from ordinary men. The mass of humans seem to avoid personal free will and prefer to be given a fixed path to an ideal heaven that requires nothing of them beyond obedience to easily obeyed commands given to them from a self-proclaimed divine authority.

In the summer of 1955, I read The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius“>The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. I remember it as a simple and obvious way to conduct one’s life. I don’t remember changing a single thing about the way I conducted mine, and yet, when writing this post my emotion felt like I was coming home to my roots. It seems very strange that I hadn’t been aware of Epictetus, so I checked my copy of H.L. Mencken – A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources “>H.L. Mencken – A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources which I read repeatedly in the 1960s. There were many of my personal notations in this ragged book, but on checking subjects like Happiness, with lots of quotes, there were no quotes from Epictetus. It is saddening for me because I believe my life would have been more contented had I discovered him when reading Marcus Aurelius in 1955 or Mencken in 1965. Instead, I read Brave New World“>Brave New World and several other Huxley books in that youthful summer. I was living alone as the caretaker for the Theta Xi fraternity house in Pullman, Washington, that summer, which was so unique it makes various events of that time easy to remember.

Even my careful search for wisdom missed Epictetus. I should have used the Delphi Method to find wisdom.

Some ladders of potential human maturation.

Tags

Adolescent, Adult, Argyris, Child, Erikson, Hubbard, Infant, Jesus, Maslow, Mature, Rostrow, Sage

Natural maturation – Infant; Child; Adolescent; Adult; Mature; Sage. Grows from Pleasure; Control; Recognition; Choice; Helpfulness; Revelatory.

Erik Erikson – Trust v mistrust; Autonomy v shame; Initiative v guilt; Industry v inferiority; Identity v confusion; Intimacy v isolation; Generativity v stagnation; Integrity v despair.

Work – Shows up; Obedient; Value oriented; Team player; Confident; Job completer; Self-motivator; Creator; Innovator.

Achievement – I won’t; I can’t; I don’t know how; I wish I could; What is It? I think I might; I might; I think I can; I can; I will; I did.

The Beatitudes – Spiritless; Mourning; Whining; Hungry; Merciful; Pure; Peacemaking; Persecuted. Yields – In heaven; Comforted; Earthbound; Filled full; Receive mercy; See God; Child of God; Be God.

Walt Whitman Rostrow – stages of economic growth – Subsistence; Specialization; Industrialization; diversification; Consumer oriented.

Abraham Maslow Hierarchy – Physiological; Safety; Love/Belonging; Esteem; Knowing & Understanding; Aesthetic Needs; Self-actualization; Transcendence.

Lawrence Kohlberg – Punishment; Reward; Good intentions; Obedience; Justice; Conscience.

L. Ron Hubbard, Tone Scale – Apathy; Grief; Fear; Anger; Antagonism; Boredom; Contented; Conservatism; Cheerfulness; Enthusiasm.

Chris Argyris – Ladder of Inference – Observations; Selected Data; Meanings; Assumptions; Conclusions; Beliefs; Actions.

Charles Scamahorn – Probaway – Paths to Maturity  – Chart expanded

Many Pinterest charts of similar ideas.

This post is an outline for exploring human development and moving toward a more mature personality.

 

Chopping wood, carrying water, shoveling snow.

Tags

Carry water, Choose to be more mature, Chop wood, Shovel snow

Dudley’s writing group met at Aingeal and Ahonu’s – The prompt: 40 minutes.
“One way or another that gives poetry its musical qualities.”

It was a stormy morning here in Bend, Oregon. Most of the snow had melted away that was exposed in our open fields, but where the snow plows had shoved it, along the sides of the roads, there were still four-foot-high berms. I had driven to the Unitarian Church an hour early planning to attend a pre-church meditation group, but during the drive over it started snowing again and snowing heavily by the time I arrived for the meditation. By the time I parked, the snow was covering the ground an inch deep and accumulating fast.

The regular services weren’t scheduled to begin for an hour, so rather than go to the quiet fireside room and meditate I decided to shovel snow to clear the paths for the oncoming congregation. I had done this simple work several times at various places this week of record snowfall with the intent of developing more mature habits. My previously posted idea is that when one is feeling good and has some psychic energy they should look around and intentionally choose to do the most mature thing available at the time, that needs doing.

Shoveling snow may not sound like a mature activity, after all a child can do it, but when one of the great sages of ancient times was asked what he did now that he had achieved enlightenment, he replied, “I chop wood, and carry water.” His disciple asked him how that differed from before he became enlightened? How did it differ from when he was a youth being forced by his parents to chop wood and carry water?

“It’s no different. No different in the physical activity. The difference is in the mental and spiritual activity. As a child I felt rebellious and angry at having to do such stupid things as chop wood and carry water, but now, as what you call an enlightened sage, I feel a satisfying rush that permeates my whole being for the opportunity to be of service to my fellow human beings and to my animal friends and to my plant friends, too.”

Some lyrically inclined people would call this attitude toward those simple acts a form of poetry. It gives structure to an otherwise dumb physical reality. It gives meaning to the results that come from the uses of the water and from the uses of the chopped wood. This attitude generates the most beautiful music that exists in our world.

These simple physical acts that seem so lacking in spiritual meaning ultimately give everything the essentials of life and permit living beings – people, animals, and plants too – to thrive. What could be more poetic? What could be more musical? The rhythmic sound of chopping wood is poetry and it’s the finest music that can be made because it is the sound of life being brought into a higher state of being.

Chop, chop — carry, carry — shovel, shovel, shovel.

Spiritual and secular growth compared.

Tags

Art of War, Delphic Maxims, Enchiridion, Epictetus, Golden Rule, Human maturity, Index of Philosophers, Jesus, Paths to maturity, Probaway, Sun Tzu, Tao Teh Ching, The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece

The development of a sage may come about in many ways, but the method developed by the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece in the 147 Delphic maxims sets us on the path of a proper way to live. Lao Tzu in his Tao Teh Ching uses the power of the attractive void to pull all things into existence. Sun Tzu uses the natural traits of human behavior in his Art of War to create and sustain nations. Jesus has described human ascent in climbing the ladder of the Beatitudes using his version of the Golden Rule. Epictetus in his Enchiridion shows how an ordinary person can live a contented life. Probaway gives a multi-dimensional view of Paths to Maturity that relates various levels of development. Probaway also has 138 Western Philosophers Squared Off In Quotations – Chronological Index of Philosophers. Probaway is presently exploring ways of accelerating ordinary people through the levels of maturity from infancy through sage in Personal explorations of the levels of maturity.

Humans are genetically inclined to be moral beings but they do learn from experience, and thus it is necessary to help them gain the experience that will be of benefit to all humanity.

Human morality is based on carefully refined gossip entering our genetic code.

Hillbilly Elegy and Thank You for Being Late compared.

Tags

ACE Adverse Childhood Experiences, ACE PCE test, Bad childhood versus good childhood, Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance, Thank You for Being Late, Thomas Friedman

Two recent bestseller books are perfect bookends for an idea for advancing human maturity to a new level. Hillbilly Elegy, A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance, and Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman are both about men coming out of their communities and entering into very successful lives. They both came from Old-World cultures that are renowned for personal frugality and industry. Vance from a Scots-Irish culture that produced over one-third of U.S. presidents and Friedman, whose Jewish culture produced many scientists and intellectuals. Both cultures have deep historical roots and fabulous intellectual achievements, but Vance’s fragment of his subculture hit a very bad spot this last hundred years as their American homeland of Appalachia’s coal-mining culture fell apart and many moved to  Middletown, Ohio, and withered. Friedman’s subculture got displaced also and moved to St. Louis Park, near Minneapolis, Minnesota, and it thrived.

Neither author mentions the other and they may never have crossed paths but because they are both now in that rarefied circle of successful nonfiction authors, they will soon meet. What made Vance’s life journey to success so unusual is that he grew up with a background of high Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE test). His culture was one of gross alcoholism, interpersonal violence, childhood abuse and personal defeatism. Although Vance’s mother was abusive, and her father was an abusive alcoholic, that very man rejected drink and became a model grandfather for Vance. Vance was naturally brilliant intellectually and a super hard worker and against all odds made it to Yale Law school and onto the NY Times best-seller list.

Friedman grew up in a culture of emotional, social, and financial support with excellent schools and teachers, and many of his schoolmates became famous. His community was later involved in a study named 40 Developmental Assets for Adolescents, which sounded like an exact reverse of the Adverse Childhood Experiences study. From his writing, it appeared that Friedman was a normally bright kid who was given lots of opportunities and support by his culture and just grew naturally into a successful adult. His coming to the Times bestseller list was almost a given outcome for his journey through life.

I was unaware of the 40 Developmental Assets for Adolescents when I created the Positive Childhood Experiences test (PCE test) which is a simple flip of the ACE test. PCE gives a starting point to show the way, but The 40 Assets not only has a more complete list but it gives a whole strategy for implementing the suggestions.

Read these two books together and understand more deeply what creates a wonderful human being out of a normal child.

Condensed thoughts 2016

01 January 2016 – Probaway Person of the Year Xi Jinping – Xi Jinping for taking China from a backward economy to the most powerful one on Earth.

02 January 2016 – How your appendix may be helping you live longer. – With appendicitis don’t take antibiotics or operate until you must.

03 January 2016 – You do have a choice – sometimes. – You do have free will, if and only if you have the time and opportunity to think.

04 January 2016 – Be it not do it. – Not ! – Meditation isn’t for sitting, it’s preparation for doing.

05 January 2016 – Why and how to approach a new situation with a smile. – Approach new and possibly dangerous situations with a smile, and you can generate your smile by first looking at people’s silly shoes.

06 January 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Growth only happens when you move on from your comfort zone.

07 January 2016 – The Better Angels of Our Nature – discussion – A new group of people is always a delight because they will inevitably bring ideas up in a new way.

08 January 2016 – How to make your skin more perfect. – Touch a bar of soap with your wet fingertip, touch the soapy tip to your blemishes, then rinse away the soap under a running tap, and then dry and massage the area.

09 January 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Happiness – Happiness is in the present moment of progress toward a worthwhile goal.

10 January 2016 – How are we hurting ourselves with self-deception? – There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one’s conscience.

11 January 2016 – Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) logarithmic chart update – 11 January 2016 – The best defense against diseases is by avoiding them as early as possible.

12 January 2016 – Once again we discuss happiness, but I have problems. – Give it your best, let it go, and intentionally walk away.

13 January 2016 – I want you to be happy – but at a higher level of consciousness – Happiness has higher levels that can be achieved.

14 January 2016 – Is happiness a behavior that can be learned? – A conscious pursuing of personal reality is the real path to happiness.

15 January 2016 – What things are stressing me this week? – Those were my stressors of the last two weeks; but I chose them, so they were pleasurable, not painful.

16 January 2016 – How to identify and avoid bad ideas. – Perhaps I’m being too harsh. — Avoid people who talk nonsense.

17 January 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Thoughts – Voluntarily change where you are placing your attention and you change your entire universe.

18 January 2016 – Steven Colbert has a cold. – Probaway – Life Hacks ~ Many helpful hints on living your life more successfully. As the title says, these posts have tried to help people live better lives.

19 January 2016 – Live long and prosper – upgrade – Live long and participate !!

20 January 2016 – New ideas are offensive !! – New ideas are dangerous and therefore offensive.

21 January 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Genius – When looking into the unknown it takes genius to know what is unusual and what is commonplace.

22 January 2016 – Mona Lisa has been restored for 3D – I have been working nearly nonstop since Christmas digitally restoring the Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

23 January 2016 – I have done 3,000 posts at Probaway ! Whew !! Hm? !!! – Of course my daily question is what is important to blog about today?

24 January 2016 – How to expose better options to others? – You learn to expose yourself to better options by watching how others make choices.

25 January 2016 – A minor Mona Lisa setback – A good life isn’t found in lounging about with no problems and nothing to do, it’s finding important things that need doing, and doing them.

26 January 2016 – The Opening – To whom and to what is the Opening telling us to attend to?

27 January 2016 – My face is a jungle covered with bacteria. – Outside of our civil society we are living in a wild jungle and should behave in ways that fit our natural condition.

28 January 2016 – Irrational Man by Woody Allen – movie review – The Irrational Man shows yet another series of thoughts not to bother pursuing.

29 January 2016 – Some daylight in your eyes helps you focus better. – Go for a walk every day, smile at the sky and enjoy a friendly companion. Walking a mile to school or work would be perfect.

30 January 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Fear – The best amount of fear is that which goads you to your best efforts.

31 January 2016 – The EarthArk is shockingly uninteresting. – A child born today may live to see the irretrievable end of nearly all life as we know it.

Condensed thoughts Probaway February 2016

01 February 2016 – What to do when you come to a fork in the road – Of course if we were not on a road, but on a trail, I would recommend the A trail, and avoid the B trail.

02 February 2016 – We are the chosen ones. We chose ourselves. – Pay attention to your local environment and participate.

03 February 2016 – Argus Dome deep-space refrigerator – Once in place the EarthArk temperatures can be maintained at —100° F. for thousands of years without any human maintenance.

04 February 2016 – How to think better. – Thinking better means to help our minds to help everyone participate more fully in our world, and to do that requires clean signals from our world.

05 February 2016 – Teach what you most need to learn to do and sell it.– Any brilliant person can succeed if they get started early in life.

06 February 2016 – World population passes 7.4 billion humans. – Life is wonderful now because the Earth is supporting 7.4 billion people.

07 February 2016 – Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) logarithmic chart update – 07 February 2016 – We live in a dynamic and chaotic situation where every living thing is seeking food, and every other living thing is potentially a source of food, including YOU.

08 February 2016 – The 100 Greatest Atrocities of Human History – Modern humanity is doing just fine when compared to our past.

09 February 2016 – How to fix your distorted view of history. – Humans will eat voraciously, reproduce maximally and kill as needed, like every other predatory animal.

10 February 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Participate – Seeking to live long, and to participate with all that’s around you, is the route to a long and enjoyable life.

11 February 2016 – Black hole gravity waves detected near my old home. – I live a surprisingly tranquil life.

12 February 2016 – Wikipedia links to 100 Greatest Atrocities of History– This list adds up to 494.82 million homicides since 500 BCE.

13 February 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Evolution – Evolution isn’t a belief, it’s an observable fact.

14 February 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Love – Let my last breath be, “I love you!” and the last words I hear, too.

15 February 2016 – How people can move from maturity to sagehood – People grow in maturity when they are feeling expansive and take more responsibility for human welfare.

16 February 2016 – My Apatheism is pulling back the veil that obscures the obvious. – If I have anything that could be called a religion it is to pull back the veil so others can see what they previously did not see.

17 February 2016 – Learning to smell essential oils is difficult. – With huge industries based on smell and food odors, there must be some theoretical understanding of what is happening.

18 February 2016 – Mona Lisa comes to life in Bend, Oregon – Mona Lisa comes to life and will watch you move.

19 February 2016 – Mona Lisa and Charles Scamahorn in Bend, Oregon – That is why I spent so much time restoring the Mona Lisa. So you can see her magic too.

20 February 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Smile – Look at the sky and smile.

21 February 2016 – To grow you must be feeling emotionally positive. – Get yourself into a positive state of mind right before making decisions.

22 February 2016 – Do humans need a transcendent purpose for their lives? – If even Sartre can’t find a valid reason for his existence, what can the average man do?

23 February 2016 – The secret of Mona Lisa’s smile revealed. – Mona Lisa knows your secrets too!

24 February 2016 – Atrocities by Matthew White – book review – War is dangerous to your life and property, so choose leaders who will keep you out of war.

25 February 2016 – What is your ultimate value? – A personal ultimate value must be practiced and promoted to be valuable.

26 February 2016 – Mona Lisa in 3D big enough to see clearly. – When you cross your eyes it is possible to see her in three dimensions.

27 February 2016 – I try to stay healthy, but today I have a cold. – I’ve taken two baths today, and always feel better afterward, so I’m going in now.

28 February 2016 – “Bat shit crazy!” – If bat intestinal biota is as powerful as similar human biota, it may open a totally new field of medical practice.

29 February 2016 – EarthArk day went by without a hitch. – Rich people living in paradise refuse to take care of ugly things.

Condensed thoughts Probaway March 2016

01 March 2016 – My life with shamans. – Each shaman can be more productive if their stories are based on personal experience and analysis and conclusions.

02 March 2016 – People are incapable of thinking beyond their maturity level. – At the beginning of a conversation discover the interests of a person, and speak exclusively to those.

03 March 2016 – What is the good life? – The good life is right here when looked at that way, so why go wandering all over the world, like some of my friends do?

04 March 2016 – Why can’t people think for themselves? – I don’t claim to be any better at this than anyone else, and it is just a question of whom you choose to put your attention upon.

05 March 2016 – Hey kids! What are you going to do when the mountains run dry? – With accurate information there can be foresight and better actions.

06 March 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Fate – Our greatest personal freedom is choosing how we respond to events.

07 March 2016 – Philosophers Squared – Karl Jaspers – Only in those moments when I exercise my freedom am I fully myself.

08 March 2016 – Gracious receiving of a gift is the greatest gift of all. – Instantly returning something of value makes the original gift not a gift given in love, but more of an economic transaction, and that is not what is intended by the gift.

09 March 2016 – An easy experiment to improve your skin. – A healthy skin microbiome is a good defense against skin problems.

10 March 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Fear – Fear is a good thing when it prevents us from doing stupid things.

11 March 2016 – People need hopes based on achievable realities. – When you graduate from high school, if you can’t go to a top university become a small home owner.

12 March 2016 – Humans versus the future Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Humans being integrated into AI is a process of us living forever.

13 March 2016 – A cry of existential desperation? – Sometimes I trust other people’s opinions more than my own.

14 March 2016 – Emptiness is an empty goal. – Life expands in meaning as one progresses in their sustainable maturity.

15 March 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Anxiety – Anxiety confuses the mind and replaces meaningful action with dithering.

16 March 2016 – The Hidden Half of Nature by Montgomery and Bikle – review – The Hidden Half of Nature is an easy read backed up with twenty pages of fine-print scientific documentation.

17 March 2016 – Now is the time to seed the Universe. – The goal of sentient human beings is to help the Universe evolve into the fully conscious super-being that it is capable of becoming.

18 March 2016 – Avoid unnecessary risks. – If you think you are about to do something stupid, you certainly are, so don’t.

19 March 2016 – How to do quick personal introductions in a group. – A quick way to remember a person’s name is by linking it with an interest.

20 March 016 – Help in finding meaning for other people’s lives. – How do you create personal meaning in a Universe made of simple fundamental forces that have no inherent meaning?

21 March 2016 – A different Golden Rule for different levels of maturity.– The moral quality of humanity is still improving and humans are becoming more humane.

22 March 2016 – The world is surprisingly low on public homicide. – Isn’t it obvious that the world is improved by helping others improve their lives and not terrorizing them?

23 March 2016 – How can you choose the proper life path? – Always do the right thing at the right time, and avoid doing the wrong thing all the time.

24 March 2016 – How to pop the media bubble ! ? – Media must be made to pay in dollars for the harm they create with their stories.

25 March 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #22 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – “The imperfect beckons perfecting.” It is through restoring that wholeness is achieved.

26 March 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Selfishness – It is impossible for a selfish person to be happy, because they always want more of what they don’t have, and they don’t have contentment with what they do have.

27 March 2016 – See risk before it becomes risky. – If you think someone is about to do something stupid, quietly move to where you can’t become involved.

28 March 2016 – And, still there is the wonder. – Try these words in a cartoon balloon of the president’s pointed finger about to be pressed down onto a big red button, “You’re fired!”

29 March 2016 – Paths through Maturity from Infant to Ourora – To maximize happiness behave at your highest maturity level.

30 March 2016 – DO NOT ENTER – “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”
In the end as at the beginning it is better to heed the words – “DO NOT ENTER.“

31 March 2016 – Mona Lisa gets even weirder. – You can generate the Mona Lisa optical illusion in living people.

Condensed thoughts Probaway April 2016

01 April 2016 – The world runs on promises. – The middle way is freedom from too little money or too much money.

02 April 2016 – Moving our sentient life into the Universe. – It is possible for us to boldly go where no man has gone before, with the help of our intelligent machines.

03 April 2016 – Living well depends on how you reassemble your habits.– We are masters of our fate only when we consciously control our perceptions and our body’s expressions.

04 April 2016 – How to mature from Infantile to Sage and beyond. – People can grow when they are feeling good, and wither when they feel bad.

05 April 2016 – My life as a work of art – Perhaps every person’s own inner artwork is seen by others as bizarre and insane if the individual is foolish enough to expose themselves and IT.

06 April 2016 – Moving our sentient life into the Universe. #2 –https://probaway.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/moving-our-sentient-life-into-the-universe-2/

07 April 2016 – How do you know that? ??? – Science is based on testable ideas that are tested and challenged.

08 April 2016 – It’s easy to be loving when you feel good. – It’s easy to be loving when you feel good.

09 April 2016 – Look for universal problems. – To find universal problems we must: Look for universal problems!

10 April 2016 – Look at the surface and then beyond it. – If you are going to understand why things behave the way they do, you must ask the right questions.

11 April 2016 – Maturing our behavior from Infant thru Sage +. – The steps through these stages of maturity are where you place your attention when you are ready.

12 April 2016 – Today I heard a strange clapping sound. – The second clap was for my reciting my sonnet, The Goal of Marriage.

13 April 2016 – Experimenting with voice to Google docs transferred to WordPress – The same form of chaos soon becomes boring to a mind seeking novelty.

14 April 2016 – How pessimism and optimism affect human maturation – Intentionally get into an optimistic attitude when you approach a new situation.

15 April 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Pessimism – The pessimist looks at problems and grumbles; the optimist looks at them and works on a solution.

16 April 2016 – A meditation for maturity – Practicing all of the levels of human maturity shows one a way to go to a better place than where they presently are living.

17 April 2016 – J. Robert Oppenheimer and Vincent Van Gogh – A strange overlap between Vincent Van Gogh, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Charles Scamahorn.

18 April 2016 – Positing universal solutions for all humans isn’t difficult.– Treat others not as you would like them to treat you, but as they should treat you.

19 April 2016 – Some of my favorite Probaway posts. – What I am doing now always seems important; it’s always like that.

20 April 2016 – Dictionary of New Epigrams – Possessions – There is pain in getting, pain in having, and pain in losing possessions.

21 April 2016 – Kant’s Categorical Imperative empowered beyond humans. – Ourora’s Categorical Imperative is to manifest a law that maximizes the Universe’s well-being.

22 April 2016 – Is there an epidemic of self-adulation ? – People look at their billion heir, and identify with him, and ask why don’t I now have what he promises now.

23 April 2016 – Do the right thing ! – Life is made of a lot of motivated actions, so make your motivations to do the right things at the right times for the right reasons.

24 April 2016 – Camus to the rescue. – Choose to live life in this world the way you want to live it in this world.

25 April 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #23 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – You can elicit anything from the voids around you.

26 April 2016 – This Mona Lisa looks into your secrets. – The eerie effect from the Paris Mona Lisa is that her eyes shift over to you as you walk toward her.

27 April 2016 – A problem with my hot bath cold cure. – If I take another hot bath tomorrow I will take the calcium and quinine a half hour before getting in.

28 April 2016 – What legacy do you wish to leave after you’re gone? – I can’t do everything but I can do what I can do, and do it well.

29 April 2016 – Live long and participate ! – When it comes to risk the goal is not to be smart but to avoid being stupid.

30 April 2016 – Why and how to learn to work with joy ! – Moving from an adolescent lifestyle to an adult one involves changing the focus of one’s attention from self-aggrandizement to self-production and ownership of value.

Condensed thoughts Probaway May 2016

01 May 2016 – Reasons to worry about death. – The best you can do for the world is to help your friends to realize their potentials.

02 May 2016 – Affirmations for personal growth – Adolescent to Adult – I happily perform actions that build my and my family’s measurable worth.

03 May 2016 – Affirmations for personal growth – Child to Adolescent – I am the architect of my life; I build its foundation and choose its contents.

04 May 2016 – Both pain and pleasure will help you grow. – Both pain and pleasure can help you grow, or they can destroy you.

05 May 2016 – Love your life by the heartbeat. – Life is lived in the moments, and they can be measured by heartbeats more accurately than by decades.

06 May 2016 – My spider bite 7 years later is cancerous. – The spider bite 65 days after the bite. 2010/10/18 it still has soft dented tissue.

07 May 2016 – Most of my Bowen’s sarcoma removal trip was fun. – I hope this carcinoma removal was a happy day for me, but I won’t know for a year.

08 May 2016 – Affirmations for personal growth – Child to Mature – Doing things to help our community function well is what I work on.

09 May 2016 – Money is talking in ugly ways. – If the public can’t be provided with good information they can only make bad decisions.

10 May 2016 – STOP !!! What are you thinking? … NOW. – STOP !!! Pay attention to what’s happening and participate, and that includes participating with your inner self.

11 May 2016 – My writers’-group prompt “repair” went sadly sour for me. – Why? Why? Why? … Bend is so beautiful.

12 May 2016 – The Earth is capable of creating sentience. – It seems easier to state big ideas as questions rather than observations.

13 May 2016 – Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and now Me Day! – August 20, 2016 will be Me Day. Go forth and make it your Me Day.

14 May 2016 – Pandemic by Sonia Shah – book review – Sonia Shah is a boots-on-the-ground, feet-in-the-muck investigative reporter who goes where it’s dangerous to go in search of the truth.

15 May 2016 – Stay by Jennifer Hecht – book review – My living goal, and I recommend it to you: Live long and participate.

16 May 2016 – The Life Project by Helen Pearson – book review – To live a long healthy life it is best to live modestly and to be around kind, loving people from beginning to end.

17 May 2016 – What is enlightenment? – Seeking enlightenment sets you up for failure; “Get wisdom, and with all thy getting, get understanding!”

18 May 2016 – “Leave me the resources to live as long as you.” – Children of the world demand that your elders not destroy the resources you need to live as long as they have.

19 May 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Enlightenment – Converting well-considered enlightenments into functioning habits propels one along the paths of wisdom.

20 May 2016 – The Botox cure for depression. – If Botox were injected into the specific location where the problem arose it would block the problem without affecting the rest of the body.

21 May 2016 – Squamous cell carcinoma electrodessication, curettage removal. – The doctors say that squamous cell carcinoma is the least dangerous form of cancer; all the same it is probably best to have it removed before it grows larger.

22 May 2016 – Two billion years of evolution wasted on modern humans. – If you think you are about to do something stupid, you certainly are, so don’t.

23 May 2016 – My problem with hope. – A realistic goal with a realistic way to get there isn’t based on hope, it’s based on doing the right things.

24 May 2016 – Today we discussed destiny. – Most of the life we will live will be driven by the paths we choose to follow, and each of those paths has a built-in destiny that we can look along before we go.

25 May 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #24 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – You may reside at the pinnacle by creating a void at the top.

26 May 2016 – A fine memorial service for a woman I called Mom. – I love my life in Bend, and the friendly people, and I fall back emotionally on my current motto – Live and participate. These two friends lived their lives that way.

27 May 2016 – My aspirations for humanity. – Live and participate.

28 May 2016 – The words associated with levels of maturity – infant thru sage. – Infantile, Childish, Adolescent, Adult, Mature, Sage, Ourora.

29 May 2016 – How do we encourage our political leadership to promote sustainability? – The problem for our political process is that most of our voting public has lost contact with reality and can not even select reasonable candidates.

30 May 2016 – A beautiful problem solved. – Queen Bess! You know, the wonderful queen who has that pretty sister who married, ahh, ahh … what’s his name?

31 May 2016 – My presentation of maturity was rejected. – When feeling good explore your options.

Condensed thoughts Probaway June 2016

01 June 2016 – The best Earth ever for humans is right now. – We are living in a time of great abundance and opportunity.

02 June 2016 – My VIA Character Strengths – Being in a very positive frame of mind is associated with growth toward greater maturity.

03 June 2016 – Americans have a sad problem and here is the fix. – Make the quality of your life better by making the quality of your work better.

04 June 2016 – Where would an atheist, a believer, and others reside in God’s opinion? – “Your wish is granted.”

05 June 2016 – Being 80 years old has disadvantages and advantages. – Being mature is helping others to live and participate with their opportunities.

06 June 2016 – Why didn’t you call? – Why haven’t you called them and claimed your rewards?

07 June 2016 – I am not your slave ! – I am not a slave to your desires, but your companion on the path to greater maturity and contentment.

08 June 2016 – Being witty isn’t always a helpful virtue. – Moving into more mature states of development means voluntarily taking risks.

09 June 2016 – What is a friend? – Live and participate by helping your friends live and participate.

10 June 2016 – I’m not spry at age eighty but I can act it. – It might save you some grief if as a youth you consider how an old person would approach your present problems.

11 June 2016 – We live in a world filled with denials of the obvious. – We live in a world filled with denials of the obvious, and one obvious fact is that we are headed into a world with fewer jobs and more stringent debt slavery.

12 June 2016 – How may I help you? – Now you understand why your kindness in helping others is a personal reward.

13 June 2016 – The communication of data precedes life. – If information is an arranged set of data, isn’t any unusual collection a form of information?

14 June 2016 – Our discussion group discussed fear. – Fear didn’t seem to be a deep issue with these people, and it’s just one of those things you live with.

15 June 2016 – A search for maturity-appropriate prayers. #1 – There are other ways to pray that can be made visible to everyone.

16 June 2016 – A search for maturity-appropriate prayers. #2 – I encourage them to choose their own paths, and to live within their own ideas of goodness and wisdom.

17 June 2016 – A discussion of the paths available through life. – Reveal the proper paths to us, that we may participate fully in life.

18 June 2016 – A discussion of the paths available through life. #4 – Those who look most carefully down their paths and choose most wisely will probably find the greatest happiness.

19 June 2016 – I grew a little today. – The remarkable thing for me was that I automatically went to the aid of a person who might, or might not, have been in trouble, when no one else even noticed.

20 June 2016 – Is anyone listening? – It’s Me! I’m listening!

21 June 2016 – Algorithms to Live By – by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths – We are usually better off trading off the costs of error against the costs of delay. Get it done!

22 June 2016 – Why go traveling when I live in Bend, Oregon? – Why leave?

23 June 2016 – Living responsibly and enjoying your life. – Live your life as if you are responsible for your every action, because you are.

24 June 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Advice – I often ask advice from a local concrete garden gnome Samumpsycle. He always gives good advice because he understands my problems. It’s Me! I’m listening!

25 June 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #25 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – Heaven follows the way, and The way follows after the self-made void.

26 June 2016 – The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner – book review – The book The Power Paradox was too paradoxical for me.

27 June 2016 – It’s hard to say goodbye. – writing group prompt – It’s hard to say goodbye … when you know it’s final.

28 June 2016 – Magic and risk were discussed today. – When thinking and talking about really big things people prefer the supernatural explanations.

29 June 2016 – A memorial service at the UUFCO in Bend, Oregon. – Today I added another unusually beautiful rock to the piping around the front entrance. It was for Christine.

30 June 2016 – This isn’t working, so it’s time to find things that do. – The type of responsibility toward other people I’ve been proposing isn’t working, so it’s time to consider other options.

Condensed thoughts Probaway July 2016

01 July 2016 – The Seven Sages of Bendor – We are still stepping in the same river named Time, but into much different water.

02 July 2016 – It was suggested to me that I STOP writing this blog. – My friend suggested that I STOP

03 July 2016 – It was suggested to me that I STOP writing this blog.

03 July 2016 – I didn’t put a period after yesterday’s STOP. Here it is. – •

04 July 2016 – Yesterday’s period wasn’t big enough. Here’s a bigger one. – • •

05 July 2016 – Fireworks over Bend, Oregon. – Photos of fireworks over Pilot Butte, Bend, Oregon

06 July 2016 – Prompt – Stop. – At this moment I am still committed to not posting … but that makes me feel sad.

07 July 2016 – A fine day for me here in Bend. – This gives me some motivation to continue thinking and blogging and trying to find ways for all of us to live better lives. — Thank you •

08 July 2016 – Gut by Giulia Enders – book review – Whether you are or are not a nutritionist, you will enjoy reading Gut, and probably find things you will change about your relationship with your gut.

09 July 2016 – Perhaps a new look is needed for this Probaway site. – Perhaps this freaky photo will be more attractive to people than the more sane looking ones.

10 July 2016 – Things have never been better in this Best of All Possible Worlds! – Things have never been better than this current Best of All Possible Worlds!

11 July 2016 – “Remember the first time you were barefoot, and stepped on something?” prompt – We looked at each other for a few moments and went our separate ways, and we lived happily ever after. At least I did.

12 July 2016 – Bend, Oregon, is a wonderful place to own a house – For the time being Bend is a wonderful place to own and a terrible place to rent.

13 July 2016 – AHONU and Aingeal Rose interview Charles Scamahorn on YouTube – AHONU and Aingeal Rose interview Charles Scamahorn on YouTube

14 July 2016 – A long overdue epiphany – If you can’t sell something it’s not worth anything.

15 July 2016 – Another category of people here in Bend. – Certainly, I am growing worry warts! But, I can’t find any, so I think my analysis is right.

16 July 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Humility – Pontificating about humility is a sure sign of arrogance.

17 July 2016 – A strange day for me, of disappearing rocks. – Other than their decorative interest these rocks have no value, except to me.

18 July 2016 – Squamous cell carcinoma electrodessication, curettage removal 2 months later. – With medical problems just get good advice and do the right things.

19 July 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Happiness – The continual happiness of a sage is made possible by his habit of relishing everything.

20 July 2016 – UU 10 minute prompt – Motion – Totally stuck … stuck … I have no motion whatsoever!

21 July 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Adaptation – Position yourself so all the necessities of all adaptations support you.

22 July 2016 – The Longevity Project by Friedman and Martin – book review – Isn’t it obvious that living your life helping others live meaningful lives will bring longer and happier lives to both you and your companions?

23 July 2016 – A quiet day with friends, reading, hiking up Pilot Butte. – Oh, yes, having fine companions in all of these simple pleasures helps a lot.

24 July 2016 – A psychedelic day. – “Not to be smart, but to avoid being stupid.”

25 July 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #26 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – The weighty is the foundation of the light, and The quiet are the touchstone of the active.

26 July 2016 – One more blank and I’ll blank. – Free at last, free at last, Oh, Thank God, we are free at last!

27 July 2016 – Tranquility is easy, if . . . – Tranquility is as easy as creating habits to see and react properly to the precursors.

28 July 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Thanksgiving – Be thankful for the invisible cloak of contentment.

29 July 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Smile (#2) – It’s easy to smile, just open your eyes, stretch your nose, and lift your lips :-)

30 July 2016 – Making your life easier. – Make each of your actions a completed task so you can give your full attention to your next task.

31 July 2016 – How do we make our personal reality work for us? – Real-world wisdom always seems to come back to foresight, and to live better means looking into the future, to see opportunities and avoid problems.

Condensed thoughts Probaway August 2016

01 August 2016 – A prayer to help us mature. – The maturity prayer helps a person cope with natural reality.

02 August 2016 – Our writers’ prompts are inside of the “quotation marks.” – “I never saw it that way.”

03 August 2016 – The Atomic bombs, Hydrogen bombs and me. – Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb

04 August 2016 – How is it possible to find people of action? – As we explore the new ways available we can help others to choose their own best paths.

05 August 2016 – America must create opportunities for those it displaces. – When a governmental policy intentionally destroys people’s livelihoods, it must offer very special opportunities to those people.

06 August 2016 – Take on lots of little pleasures one second at a time. – Life is lived one second at a time, so why not enjoy your pleasures one second at a time?

07 August 2016 – Fear shrinks your options, terror eliminates them. – Help you grow rather than shrink in your personal maturity.

08 August 2016 – All living things were able to adapt to circumstances quicker than those around them. – All surviving species were able to adapt to circumstances quicker than those around them.

09 August 2016 – Do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. – Do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way.

10 August 2016 – How will I feel when I get what I think I want? – How will I feel when I get what I think I want?

11 August 2016 – This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin – book review – “As a tool for activation of specific thoughts, music is not as good as language.”

12 August 2016 – Do the doable, and avoid the impossible. – Do the doable, and avoid the impossible.

13 August 2016 – How do you motivate yourself to practice for 10,000 hours? And then what? – The only 10,000 hour subject that I have to build upon is BS, so I will struggle on with BS.

14 August 2016 – Time is the dragon that eats everything. – To taper off the hungry habits of the time dragon.

15 August 2016 – We presently live in a wonderful world. – “Don’t you ever watch the news? Things are terrible!”

16 August 2016 – What is the meaning of life? Answered. – The action of participating in life is the meaning of life.

17 August 2016 – The adventure at Red Rock beach. – I am a slow learner, but I don’t go under falling rocks anymore.

18 August 2016 – Change the Story Change the Future by D. Korten – book review – MAKE MONEY !!!

19 August 2016 – I don’t expect impossible things to happen. – Believing in a spirit world would conflict with my reality and interfere with my living a tranquil life here and now in this world.

20 August 2016 – How to live forever. – How to live forever: Realize that “now is forever”, and enjoy it by participating in the moment.

21 August 2016 – Get emotionally up and explore your options. – You grow happier by discovering and practicing your more mature options.

22 August 2016 – Our American problem is lack of political foresight. – And now we must go one further and adapt to the coming situation or soon die.

23 August 2016 – What is your purpose in life? – My purpose in life is to participate in the opportunities available.

24 August 2016 – Where we should search for reality. – We find physical reality in the physical world and human reality in the human world.

25 August 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #27 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – You do not need maps when walking about your home;

26 August 2016 – Your future begins right now. – Your future begins with choosing a goal and trying to reach it.

27 August 2016 – Look at reality squarely, seeking clear perception. – Each of our stages of life needs an adjustment to see our new reality clearly.

28 August 2016 – Sunsets over Bend, Oregon’s Cascade Mountains – August sunsets are spectacular in Bend, Oregon.

29 August 2016 – The function of a man’s life versus the meaning of life. – The purpose of a man’s life is to wisely participate in all his world’s needs, past, present and future.

30 August 2016 – Foolish people. – Five seconds of fun cost this man fifty years of potential fun.

31 August 2016 – Lava rocks under Bend, Oregon – Residing inside a lava rock? Somehow, that doesn’t appeal to me at the moment.

Condensed thoughts Probaway September 2016

01 September 2016 – Blink – by Malcolm Gladwell – book review – The thoughtless decisions recommended in Blink revert us to being prehuman animals, unless we’ve developed a well-informed unconscious.

02 September 2016 – First Friday Art Walk in Bend, Oregon – As the Ainu say after a great day: We lived and lived and nothing happened.

03 September 2016 – I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong – book review – Research science will probably discover amazing intestinal biota treatments in the next few years leading to better public health and greater life expectancy.

04 September 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Happiness – Happiness and unhappiness are alike in that the more we practice them the more skilled we get at living that way.

05 September 2016 – Philae needed a better landing system. – A future lander on a low gravity object would benefit from long stabilizing struts.

06 September 2016 – Predicting the future requires understanding the present. – Life is easier when you perceive your present and past accurately and base your future actions on probable outcomes.

07 September 2016 – Spend your money! Spend! Spend! Spend! A rant! – What will bring you happiness is doing lots of little kind things for your family and friends, and that is free.

08 September 2016 – Unprecedented by David Ray Griffin – book review – There is hope for humans for a few more years.

09 September 2016 – 7 year sequence of photos of spider bite, squamous cell carcinoma electrodessication, curettage. – Help your skin protect the inner you from the assaults of the world.

10 September 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – A catalog, index, list. – 72 Words with new epigrams

11 September 2016 – Your emotions are telling you something important. – Emotions are a major part of our lives and we should appreciate them to the fullest.

12 September 2016 – Just “Who will you be?” – “He was a man. Take him complete, with all his flagrant faults exposed, He was a man!”

13 September 2016 – “This was their finest hour”. Winston Churchill – if the British Empire and Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour’.

14 September 2016 – The Gift of the Gab – David Crystal – book review – It feels good to have a hearty response to a bit of writing from a group of writers.

15 September 2016 – When is the best time to choose your future goals? – Avoid making important decisions when in a bad mood, and wait for a good mood to arise naturally, or learn how to get into a positive mood.

16 September 2016 – Honesty, Integrity and Enthusiasm – I’ve led a life of cold sarcasm when I should have been filled with enthusiasm.

17 September 2016 – What is the most important idea that I can be promoting? – Some ideas are so obvious once stated clearly that they seem obvious from the beginning.

18 September 2016 – What will be the results of decisions based on anger? – The world is always a complex place and to let anger influence decisions will inevitably degrade the quality of one’s success.

19 September 2016 – How to create a Golden Rule for yourself. – The end value of choosing more mature activities at any stage of life is that you and your friends live longer more fulfilling lives.

20 September 016 – How to answer the big philosophical questions. – Often we are compelled to participate in life’s problems promptly or perish.

21 September 2016 – Our social groups generate divisive morality. – All men are equal, until they meet.

22 September 2016 – What will be the results of decisions based on disgust? – Get happy before making an important decision.

23 September 2016 – What emotion should precede action? – Some people claim that we are always in an ideal state for coping with the present moment.

24 September 2016 – What action does a baby’s emotion generate in its mother? – The infant must get proper attention with its communications or it will die and thus not leave its genes in the gene pool of human behavior. We are the living result of the infant’s successful communication.

25 September 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #28 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – Broadcast and infuse this simplicity into understanding people.

26 September 2016 – A book fell off the shelf – Winston Churchillized line spacing for easy reading aloud.

27 September 2016 – Homage to Picasso, Duchamp and Warhol – None of the people who discussed these pictures with me found them offensive.

28 September 2016 – On the Meaning of Life by Will Durant – book review – Even our greatest people are like journeymen workers, just doing the jobs they are destined to do.

29 September 2016 – Debate cheaters must be penalized. – The unfair advantage of overshoots and interruptions should be corrected by taking double that time away from future presentations.

30 September 2016 – The impossible strikes. – Helping people grow is a worthwhile task to pursue for a couple of years.

Condensed thoughts Probaway October 2016

01 October 2016 – Be prepared for the unexpected. – Be prepared for the future by learning from other people’s mistakes.

02 October 2016 – Have I learned anything in 81 years? – Look around and find the next great thing and participate.

03 October 2016 – What I might have done but didn’t. – I’m still on that trip and like my friend Mark says about his life, “So far it’s working.”

04 October 2016 – How much warning of an impending catastrophe can we expect? – Until now all living creatures came into adulthood equipped to survive in their environment.

05 October 2016 – How to upgrade humanity. – Do unto others a kindness that will help them to be kind to others.

06 October 2016 – Rejection is annoying! – I love living in Bend, but it does have its challenges.

07 October 2016 – What should I do? – What I should do is to create more mature habits when I have the chance to do so.

08 October 2016 – Cure for Catastrophe by Robert Muir-Wood – book review & quotes – Most risks are avoidable, but you must make the necessary efforts to avoid them.

09 October 2016 – How to direct what is called growth toward maturity. – Create more mature habits when you have the chance to do so.

10 October 2016 – The best risk analysis you are ever likely to see. – It’s easy to avoid problems when they are far away, and hard to cope with them when they are close.

11 October 2016 – The Trolley Problem by Thomas Cathcart – book review – The Trolley Problem is a fun book to read, and will provoke you to thought and to laughter.

12 October 2016 – List of things that are getting better. – You presently have the opportunity to live a wonderful life. Don’t waste it by wallowing in the despair that is being generated by the media.

13 October 2016 – The function of truth is to avoid problems and pain and to bring pleasure. – Take in all information from the point of view that makes it true, and then make your evaluations of what truth is for the task at hand.

14 October 2016 – Writer’s group prompt- Abigail, San Francisco, confusion – They decided to move back to Homedale where Bill knew he could get a job.

15 October 2016 – The moment humans became human. – Humans became human the moment they could put two words together.

16 October 2016 – The Power of Meaning by Emily Esfahani Smith – book review – We can attain to a higher state of personal being by choosing to behave in the most mature way available to us at the moments we are feeling emotionally good.

17 October 2016 – I realized that I was not invited. – Sometimes, in the midst of a seemingly profound quest, reality intrudes.

18 October 2016 – My presentation on promoting maturity. – This was my first public talk on how to develop more mature habits.

19 October 2016 – The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth – Book review – If your speech be honest it’s fair to be eloquent.

20 October 2016 – What are the indicators of maturity in daily conversation? – To be mature we must act on our experience and convictions.

21 October 2016 – A conversation about inspiration and motivation. – A good conversation is where everyone can take away something they can use.

22 October 2016 – Some visual extravaganzas from google search – If you enjoy images this is a fantastic way to probe into things you may have never seen before, but will like.

23 October 2016 – Diary – Driving in Bend is becoming difficult. – Pedestrian killed in Bend incident identified

24 October 2016 – What if we said what we really thought? – There is a long tradition among humans of killing those people who speak and act out their thoughts too clearly.

25 October 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #29 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – However, you must always avoid pleasures, Avoid extravagance, Avoid arrogance.

26 October 2016 – Retreat from a Rising Sea by Orrin H. Pilkey & Linda & Keith – Book review – When people live in paradise they refuse to look at risks.

27 October 2016 – How mature is your meditation? – Meditation can be a momentary quietness when a person’s complete being explores the options available and chooses those goals that will be most beneficial.

28 October 2016 – Deep Ancestry by Spencer Wells – book critique – Many people are thrilled by factual history as I am by the processes that drive history.

29 October 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Risk – Life is risky, so choose your options in a way that will benefit you and your friends.

30 October 2016 – I set myself up to fail by defining the goal poorly. – Define your goals in such a way that there is a way to accomplish them.

31 October 2016 – How do I set my life goal so I can achieve it? – When you are feeling good, choose to do the most mature thing you can.

Condensed thoughts Probaway November 2016

01 November 2016 – I’ve been feeling a little morose lately. – My feelings are my responsibility, and I will do what needs to be done.

02 November 2016 – Lists of meta rules for human behavior. – The word “should” attracts the reciprocity of other people.

03 November 2016 – Fecal transplant is soon to become a big business. – Safe fecal transplants will soon be available but until then use your own material.

04 November 2016 – The Earth Ark needs the Earth’s DNA now! – To save the present life on Earth for the distant future we must save the current DNA.

05 November 2016 – The intentional giving and receiving of love is transformative. – Express love and kindness in such an external and comprehensible way that it can be imitated by others.

06 November 2016 – I am not serene today. – How can I be serene when so many people claim to be suffering?

07 November 2016 – Alternatives to the Categorical Imperative – 37. – “Do many kindnesses for friends.” Kindness improves everyone and everything.

08 November 2016 – We now live in a new reality! Get used to it! – Now is the time to be thinking clearly and to make ourselves ready to participate fully in our brave new world.

09 November 2016 – vitality – How can I use my remaining vitality to benefit humanity?

10 November 2016 – What now? – Love and honor your critics!

11 November 2016 – The Power of Meaning by Emily Esfahani Smith – book review #2 – There is personal power to be gained by finding your meaning, and this book points the way, but it doesn’t take you there.

12 November 2016 – The Mind-Gut Connection by Emeran Mayer – book review – Reading “The Mind-Gut Connection” will help you follow the suggestions in the list quoted above.

13 November 2016 – It was a truth that was difficult to believe. – I have made my mental disease palpable.

14 November 2016 – I had a brilliant idea! – Get your brilliant ideas out into the external world any way you can!

15 November 2016 – My current theory of human maturity isn’t popular. – Pause occasionally and consider — What is a better way to do this?

16 November 2016 – The Golden Rule upgraded for creating maturity for a child through sage. – To teach people how to manipulate their friends for personal advantage would not be the teaching of a spiritual sage.

17 November 2016 – There is no there anywhere. – We must be both flexible and rigid when using words, because there is no fixed there anywhere.

18 November 2016 – Coping with injuries with prophylactic heat instead of antibiotics. – If an injury never becomes infected it will never need antibiotics.

19 November 2016 – Choose with forethought for long-term pleasure acquisition. – Choosing long-term pleasure goals brings about a growth of habitual short-term personal pleasure events.

20 November 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Trust – Bitter honesty is better for you than sweet bullshit.

21 November 2016 – Heavens to Betsy! A Christmas story. – Sometimes when some little thing happens unexpectedly she is remembered with the words … Heavens to Betsy!

22 November 2016 – Now is a time to revisit my Doomsday considerations. – The plant life can be saved and those surviving people will enjoy seeing the world come back to life.

23 November 2016 – The processes of magical thinking do affect the outcome. – Magical thinking works for those who believe their spirit guide is on their side.

24 November 2016 – We always need more kindness, humor and accomplishment. – Happiness is to be involved in expressing kindness, humor, and accomplishment. Contentment is to be basking in a life that has given those things to others.

25 November 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #30 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – If you display a virtue, it will be weakened; That is not the proper way, and What is not the proper way soon dies.

26 November 2016 – Desert Notes by Barry Lopez – book review – For me, Desert Notes is a classic snoozer.

27 November 2016 – Things are great! Well, at least very good. – But it’s time to complain because the fix is in and we are getting screwed!

28 November 2016 – A possible Probaway Person of the Year, Palmer Luckey – It is rare to get onto the Probaway Person of the Year list and common to fail in attempting great enterprises.

29 November 2016 – The Adventure of the Hanging Baskets – Without further fuss, he handed over grandma’s coin purse to Trevelyan. Curious? No, not for a Harvard student.

30 November 2016 – Traveling to Berkeley –

Condensed thoughts Probaway December 2016

01 December 2016 – Traveling to Berkeley –

02 December 2016 – Bend to Berkeley and back to Bend – The Med was, in fact, the Center of the World for planet Earth.

03 December 2016 – I return to the Center of my World, the Caffe Mediterraneum – Berkeley was always like that for me, a bit distant, but a joyful confrontation in words.

04 December 2016 – I get a lesson in routine car maintenance. – Routine maintenance is better than breakdown repair.

05 December 2016 – Tara’s funny little problem solved – Tara didn’t discover for months that her friends knew all along why she whistled under her arms.

06 December 2016 – Mediterraneum, People’s Park, Berkeley Barb, Steppenwolf – The three of us then went out and started digging.

07 December 2016 – Our election was distorted by poor information. – We must do our best to guide our new leadership onto healthy paths.

08 December 2016 – Agree and disagree! How can we know what really happened? – A website with AGREE TO DISAGREE is needed with a premise of paralleled opposition.

09 December 2016 – Yes No Know – My goal is to create a website with — YES NO KNOW —

10 December 2016 – A possible Probaway Person of the Year, Albert Einstein – Einstein did all of those things essential to the discovery of gravitational waves one hundred years ago in 1916.

11 December 2016 – Words on the Move by John McWhorter – Book review – Words on the Move will guide you through the Babel of our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.

12 December 2016 – A Probaway blog overview of past and future – January 20, 2017 will be the end of Pax Obama and may be the end of Pax Americana.

13 December 2016 – The Probaway Scale for Measuring Pain has had an impact. – Pain informs you what is dangerous for you to do, not what you shouldn’t do, but that it may hurt.

14 December 2016 – Spring Chicken by Bill Gifford – book review – Spring Chicken will get you up to speed on modern anti-aging science, but it claims there isn’t a proven pill just yet.

15 December 2016 – I’m not much into pleasure. – We must do some form of personal work to experience the pleasure it creates!

16 December 2016 – What is our responsibility to the Universe? – Strange as it may seem, our first contact with space aliens may be from other Universes.

17 December 2016 – Our evolving world needs an evolving world view. – The evolving world view must include supporting vast new energy sources.

18 December 2016 – What should we humans be searching for? – Human extinction is possible so we should prepare to avoid it.

19 December 2016 – Who to ask, “Should human self-actualization be a personal goal?” – To whom should we turn to for guidance for humanity’s future?

20 December 2016 – It takes a while to do a habit automatically. – A diet is a personal commitment to the health of one’s future self and it should be treated as a sacred trust.

21 December 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Belief – You don’t have to believe everything you see or hear, but walk away from stinking things.

22 December 2016 – So, do the right thing! – So, do the right thing!

23 December 2016 – Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance – book review – Hillbilly Elegy is a book that must be read to THE END to get the positive message.

24 December 2016 – Grave of the Fireflies – Decades later I am still trying to save the world by writing blogs.

25 December 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #31 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – So Mourn the acceptance of victory, As the acceptance of defeat.

26 December 2016 – How to survive the unknown unknowns and prosper. – We need slack in our available resources that we can instantly apply when we see actionable realities for using our flexible assets.

27 December 2016 – Positive statements are more popular than negative ones. – Even positive things, when mentioned with balancing negative ones, may be too harsh for people to appreciate.

28 December 2016 – My top ten new options for New Year’s Resolutions – Those are the top resolutions for my coming year.

29 December 2016 – Reality goes into accelerating acceleration. – “The future we want to invent is a future in which human beings have finally grown up into real adults rather than the half adults that we have today.”

30 December 2016 – My most significant blog posts for 2016 – War is dangerous to your life and property, so choose leaders who will keep you out of war.

31 December 2016 – New Year’s Resolutions must have a punishment included. – While setting up your New Year’s Resolutions, also make up your own easy punishments for different kinds of possible failures.

31 December 2016 – Condensed thoughts 2016 –

Coming condensed thoughts Probaway 2017?

Condensed thoughts 2016

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Condensed thoughts

I woke up this morning thinking I might still do something.The Condensed thoughts of Probaway 2016 January – June 30

Condensed thoughts January 2016

01 January 2016 – Probaway Person of the Year Xi Jinping – Xi Jinping for taking China from a backward economy to the most powerful one on Earth.

02 January 2016 – How your appendix may be helping you live longer. – With appendicitis don’t take antibiotics or operate until you must.

03 January 2016 – You do have a choice – sometimes. – You do have free will, if and only if you have the time and opportunity to think.

04 January 2016 – Be it not do it. – Not ! – Meditation isn’t for sitting, it’s preparation for doing.

05 January 2016 – Why and how to approach a new situation with a smile. – Approach new and possibly dangerous situations with a smile, and you can generate your smile by first looking at people’s silly shoes.

06 January 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Growth only happens when you move on from your comfort zone.

07 January 2016 – The Better Angels of Our Nature – discussion – A new group of people is always a delight because they will inevitably bring ideas up in a new way.

08 January 2016 – How to make your skin more perfect. – Touch a bar of soap with your wet fingertip, touch the soapy tip to your blemishes, then rinse away the soap under a running tap, and then dry and massage the area.

09 January 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Happiness – Happiness is in the present moment of progress toward a worthwhile goal.

10 January 2016 – How are we hurting ourselves with self-deception? – There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one’s conscience.

11 January 2016 – Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) logarithmic chart update – 11 January 2016 – The best defense against diseases is by avoiding them as early as possible.

12 January 2016 – Once again we discuss happiness, but I have problems. – Give it your best, let it go, and intentionally walk away.

13 January 2016 – I want you to be happy – but at a higher level of consciousness – Happiness has higher levels that can be achieved.

14 January 2016 – Is happiness a behavior that can be learned? – A conscious pursuing of personal reality is the real path to happiness.

15 January 2016 – What things are stressing me this week? – Those were my stressors of the last two weeks; but I chose them, so they were pleasurable, not painful.

16 January 2016 – How to identify and avoid bad ideas. – Perhaps I’m being too harsh. — Avoid people who talk nonsense.

17 January 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Thoughts – Voluntarily change where you are placing your attention and you change your entire universe.

18 January 2016 – Steven Colbert has a cold. – Probaway – Life Hacks ~ Many helpful hints on living your life more successfully. As the title says, these posts have tried to help people live better lives.

19 January 2016 – Live long and prosper – upgrade – Live long and participate !!

20 January 2016 – New ideas are offensive !! – New ideas are dangerous and therefore offensive.

21 January 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Genius – When looking into the unknown it takes genius to know what is unusual and what is commonplace.

22 January 2016 – Mona Lisa has been restored for 3D – I have been working nearly nonstop since Christmas digitally restoring the Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

23 January 2016 – I have done 3,000 posts at Probaway ! Whew !! Hm? !!! – Of course my daily question is what is important to blog about today?

24 January 2016 – How to expose better options to others? – You learn to expose yourself to better options by watching how others make choices.

25 January 2016 – A minor Mona Lisa setback – A good life isn’t found in lounging about with no problems and nothing to do, it’s finding important things that need doing, and doing them.

26 January 2016 – The Opening – To whom and to what is the Opening telling us to attend to?

27 January 2016 – My face is a jungle covered with bacteria. – Outside of our civil society we are living in a wild jungle and should behave in ways that fit our natural condition.

28 January 2016 – Irrational Man by Woody Allen – movie review – The Irrational Man shows yet another series of thoughts not to bother pursuing.

29 January 2016 – Some daylight in your eyes helps you focus better. – Go for a walk every day, smile at the sky and enjoy a friendly companion. Walking a mile to school or work would be perfect.

30 January 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Fear – The best amount of fear is that which goads you to your best efforts.

31 January 2016 – The EarthArk is shockingly uninteresting. – A child born today may live to see the irretrievable end of nearly all life as we know it.

Condensed thoughts Probaway February 2016

01 February 2016 – What to do when you come to a fork in the road – Of course if we were not on a road, but on a trail, I would recommend the A trail, and avoid the B trail.

02 February 2016 – We are the chosen ones. We chose ourselves. – Pay attention to your local environment and participate.

03 February 2016 – Argus Dome deep-space refrigerator – Once in place the EarthArk temperatures can be maintained at —100° F. for thousands of years without any human maintenance.

04 February 2016 – How to think better. – Thinking better means to help our minds to help everyone participate more fully in our world, and to do that requires clean signals from our world.

05 February 2016 – Teach what you most need to learn to do and sell it.– Any brilliant person can succeed if they get started early in life.

06 February 2016 – World population passes 7.4 billion humans. – Life is wonderful now because the Earth is supporting 7.4 billion people.

07 February 2016 – Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) logarithmic chart update – 07 February 2016 – We live in a dynamic and chaotic situation where every living thing is seeking food, and every other living thing is potentially a source of food, including YOU.

08 February 2016 – The 100 Greatest Atrocities of Human History – Modern humanity is doing just fine when compared to our past.

09 February 2016 – How to fix your distorted view of history. – Humans will eat voraciously, reproduce maximally and kill as needed, like every other predatory animal.

10 February 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Participate – Seeking to live long, and to participate with all that’s around you, is the route to a long and enjoyable life.

11 February 2016 – Black hole gravity waves detected near my old home. – I live a surprisingly tranquil life.

12 February 2016 – Wikipedia links to 100 Greatest Atrocities of History– This list adds up to 494.82 million homicides since 500 BCE.

13 February 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Evolution – Evolution isn’t a belief, it’s an observable fact.

14 February 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Love – Let my last breath be, “I love you!” and the last words I hear, too.

15 February 2016 – How people can move from maturity to sagehood – People grow in maturity when they are feeling expansive and take more responsibility for human welfare.

16 February 2016 – My Apatheism is pulling back the veil that obscures the obvious. – If I have anything that could be called a religion it is to pull back the veil so others can see what they previously did not see.

17 February 2016 – Learning to smell essential oils is difficult. – With huge industries based on smell and food odors, there must be some theoretical understanding of what is happening.

18 February 2016 – Mona Lisa comes to life in Bend, Oregon – Mona Lisa comes to life and will watch you move.

19 February 2016 – Mona Lisa and Charles Scamahorn in Bend, Oregon – That is why I spent so much time restoring the Mona Lisa. So you can see her magic too.

20 February 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Smile – Look at the sky and smile.

21 February 2016 – To grow you must be feeling emotionally positive. – Get yourself into a positive state of mind right before making decisions.

22 February 2016 – Do humans need a transcendent purpose for their lives? – If even Sartre can’t find a valid reason for his existence, what can the average man do?

23 February 2016 – The secret of Mona Lisa’s smile revealed. – Mona Lisa knows your secrets too!

24 February 2016 – Atrocities by Matthew White – book review – War is dangerous to your life and property, so choose leaders who will keep you out of war.

25 February 2016 – What is your ultimate value? – A personal ultimate value must be practiced and promoted to be valuable.

26 February 2016 – Mona Lisa in 3D big enough to see clearly. – When you cross your eyes it is possible to see her in three dimensions.

27 February 2016 – I try to stay healthy, but today I have a cold. – I’ve taken two baths today, and always feel better afterward, so I’m going in now.

28 February 2016 – “Bat shit crazy!” – If bat intestinal biota is as powerful as similar human biota, it may open a totally new field of medical practice.

29 February 2016 – EarthArk day went by without a hitch. – Rich people living in paradise refuse to take care of ugly things.

Condensed thoughts Probaway March 2016

01 March 2016 – My life with shamans. – Each shaman can be more productive if their stories are based on personal experience and analysis and conclusions.

02 March 2016 – People are incapable of thinking beyond their maturity level. – At the beginning of a conversation discover the interests of a person, and speak exclusively to those.

03 March 2016 – What is the good life? – The good life is right here when looked at that way, so why go wandering all over the world, like some of my friends do?

04 March 2016 – Why can’t people think for themselves? – I don’t claim to be any better at this than anyone else, and it is just a question of whom you choose to put your attention upon.

05 March 2016 – Hey kids! What are you going to do when the mountains run dry? – With accurate information there can be foresight and better actions.

06 March 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Fate – Our greatest personal freedom is choosing how we respond to events.

07 March 2016 – Philosophers Squared – Karl Jaspers – Only in those moments when I exercise my freedom am I fully myself.

08 March 2016 – Gracious receiving of a gift is the greatest gift of all. – Instantly returning something of value makes the original gift not a gift given in love, but more of an economic transaction, and that is not what is intended by the gift.

09 March 2016 – An easy experiment to improve your skin. – A healthy skin microbiome is a good defense against skin problems.

10 March 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Fear – Fear is a good thing when it prevents us from doing stupid things.

11 March 2016 – People need hopes based on achievable realities. – When you graduate from high school, if you can’t go to a top university become a small home owner.

12 March 2016 – Humans versus the future Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Humans being integrated into AI is a process of us living forever.

13 March 2016 – A cry of existential desperation? – Sometimes I trust other people’s opinions more than my own.

14 March 2016 – Emptiness is an empty goal. – Life expands in meaning as one progresses in their sustainable maturity.

15 March 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Anxiety – Anxiety confuses the mind and replaces meaningful action with dithering.

16 March 2016 – The Hidden Half of Nature by Montgomery and Bikle – review – The Hidden Half of Nature is an easy read backed up with twenty pages of fine-print scientific documentation.

17 March 2016 – Now is the time to seed the Universe. – The goal of sentient human beings is to help the Universe evolve into the fully conscious super-being that it is capable of becoming.

18 March 2016 – Avoid unnecessary risks. – If you think you are about to do something stupid, you certainly are, so don’t.

19 March 2016 – How to do quick personal introductions in a group. – A quick way to remember a person’s name is by linking it with an interest.

20 March 016 – Help in finding meaning for other people’s lives. – How do you create personal meaning in a Universe made of simple fundamental forces that have no inherent meaning?

21 March 2016 – A different Golden Rule for different levels of maturity.– The moral quality of humanity is still improving and humans are becoming more humane.

22 March 2016 – The world is surprisingly low on public homicide. – Isn’t it obvious that the world is improved by helping others improve their lives and not terrorizing them?

23 March 2016 – How can you choose the proper life path? – Always do the right thing at the right time, and avoid doing the wrong thing all the time.

24 March 2016 – How to pop the media bubble ! ? – Media must be made to pay in dollars for the harm they create with their stories.

25 March 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #22 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – “The imperfect beckons perfecting.” It is through restoring that wholeness is achieved.

26 March 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Selfishness – It is impossible for a selfish person to be happy, because they always want more of what they don’t have, and they don’t have contentment with what they do have.

27 March 2016 – See risk before it becomes risky. – If you think someone is about to do something stupid, quietly move to where you can’t become involved.

28 March 2016 – And, still there is the wonder. – Try these words in a cartoon balloon of the president’s pointed finger about to be pressed down onto a big red button, “You’re fired!”

29 March 2016 – Paths through Maturity from Infant to Ourora – To maximize happiness behave at your highest maturity level.

30 March 2016 – DO NOT ENTER – “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”
In the end as at the beginning it is better to heed the words – “DO NOT ENTER.“

31 March 2016 – Mona Lisa gets even weirder. – You can generate the Mona Lisa optical illusion in living people.

Condensed thoughts Probaway April 2016

01 April 2016 – The world runs on promises. – The middle way is freedom from too little money or too much money.

02 April 2016 – Moving our sentient life into the Universe. – It is possible for us to boldly go where no man has gone before, with the help of our intelligent machines.

03 April 2016 – Living well depends on how you reassemble your habits.– We are masters of our fate only when we consciously control our perceptions and our body’s expressions.

04 April 2016 – How to mature from Infantile to Sage and beyond. – People can grow when they are feeling good, and wither when they feel bad.

05 April 2016 – My life as a work of art – Perhaps every person’s own inner artwork is seen by others as bizarre and insane if the individual is foolish enough to expose themselves and IT.

06 April 2016 – Moving our sentient life into the Universe. #2 –https://probaway.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/moving-our-sentient-life-into-the-universe-2/

07 April 2016 – How do you know that? ??? – Science is based on testable ideas that are tested and challenged.

08 April 2016 – It’s easy to be loving when you feel good. – It’s easy to be loving when you feel good.

09 April 2016 – Look for universal problems. – To find universal problems we must: Look for universal problems!

10 April 2016 – Look at the surface and then beyond it. – If you are going to understand why things behave the way they do, you must ask the right questions.

11 April 2016 – Maturing our behavior from Infant thru Sage +. – The steps through these stages of maturity are where you place your attention when you are ready.

12 April 2016 – Today I heard a strange clapping sound. – The second clap was for my reciting my sonnet, The Goal of Marriage.

13 April 2016 – Experimenting with voice to Google docs transferred to WordPress – The same form of chaos soon becomes boring to a mind seeking novelty.

14 April 2016 – How pessimism and optimism affect human maturation – Intentionally get into an optimistic attitude when you approach a new situation.

15 April 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Pessimism – The pessimist looks at problems and grumbles; the optimist looks at them and works on a solution.

16 April 2016 – A meditation for maturity – Practicing all of the levels of human maturity shows one a way to go to a better place than where they presently are living.

17 April 2016 – J. Robert Oppenheimer and Vincent Van Gogh – A strange overlap between Vincent Van Gogh, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Charles Scamahorn.

18 April 2016 – Positing universal solutions for all humans isn’t difficult.– Treat others not as you would like them to treat you, but as they should treat you.

19 April 2016 – Some of my favorite Probaway posts. – What I am doing now always seems important; it’s always like that.

20 April 2016 – Dictionary of New Epigrams – Possessions – There is pain in getting, pain in having, and pain in losing possessions.

21 April 2016 – Kant’s Categorical Imperative empowered beyond humans. – Ourora’s Categorical Imperative is to manifest a law that maximizes the Universe’s well-being.

22 April 2016 – Is there an epidemic of self-adulation ? – People look at their billion heir, and identify with him, and ask why don’t I now have what he promises now.

23 April 2016 – Do the right thing ! – Life is made of a lot of motivated actions, so make your motivations to do the right things at the right times for the right reasons.

24 April 2016 – Camus to the rescue. – Choose to live life in this world the way you want to live it in this world.

25 April 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #23 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – You can elicit anything from the voids around you.

26 April 2016 – This Mona Lisa looks into your secrets. – The eerie effect from the Paris Mona Lisa is that her eyes shift over to you as you walk toward her.

27 April 2016 – A problem with my hot bath cold cure. – If I take another hot bath tomorrow I will take the calcium and quinine a half hour before getting in.

28 April 2016 – What legacy do you wish to leave after you’re gone? – I can’t do everything but I can do what I can do, and do it well.

29 April 2016 – Live long and participate ! – When it comes to risk the goal is not to be smart but to avoid being stupid.

30 April 2016 – Why and how to learn to work with joy ! – Moving from an adolescent lifestyle to an adult one involves changing the focus of one’s attention from self-aggrandizement to self-production and ownership of value.

Condensed thoughts Probaway May 2016

01 May 2016 – Reasons to worry about death. – The best you can do for the world is to help your friends to realize their potentials.

02 May 2016 – Affirmations for personal growth – Adolescent to Adult – I happily perform actions that build my and my family’s measurable worth.

03 May 2016 – Affirmations for personal growth – Child to Adolescent – I am the architect of my life; I build its foundation and choose its contents.

04 May 2016 – Both pain and pleasure will help you grow. – Both pain and pleasure can help you grow, or they can destroy you.

05 May 2016 – Love your life by the heartbeat. – Life is lived in the moments, and they can be measured by heartbeats more accurately than by decades.

06 May 2016 – My spider bite 7 years later is cancerous. – The spider bite 65 days after the bite. 2010/10/18 it still has soft dented tissue.

07 May 2016 – Most of my Bowen’s sarcoma removal trip was fun. – I hope this carcinoma removal was a happy day for me, but I won’t know for a year.

08 May 2016 – Affirmations for personal growth – Child to Mature – Doing things to help our community function well is what I work on.

09 May 2016 – Money is talking in ugly ways. – If the public can’t be provided with good information they can only make bad decisions.

10 May 2016 – STOP !!! What are you thinking? … NOW. – STOP !!! Pay attention to what’s happening and participate, and that includes participating with your inner self.

11 May 2016 – My writers’-group prompt “repair” went sadly sour for me. – Why? Why? Why? … Bend is so beautiful.

12 May 2016 – The Earth is capable of creating sentience. – It seems easier to state big ideas as questions rather than observations.

13 May 2016 – Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and now Me Day! – August 20, 2016 will be Me Day. Go forth and make it your Me Day.

14 May 2016 – Pandemic by Sonia Shah – book review – Sonia Shah is a boots-on-the-ground, feet-in-the-muck investigative reporter who goes where it’s dangerous to go in search of the truth.

15 May 2016 – Stay by Jennifer Hecht – book review – My living goal, and I recommend it to you: Live long and participate.

16 May 2016 – The Life Project by Helen Pearson – book review – To live a long healthy life it is best to live modestly and to be around kind, loving people from beginning to end.

17 May 2016 – What is enlightenment? – Seeking enlightenment sets you up for failure; “Get wisdom, and with all thy getting, get understanding!”

18 May 2016 – “Leave me the resources to live as long as you.” – Children of the world demand that your elders not destroy the resources you need to live as long as they have.

19 May 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Enlightenment – Converting well-considered enlightenments into functioning habits propels one along the paths of wisdom.

20 May 2016 – The Botox cure for depression. – If Botox were injected into the specific location where the problem arose it would block the problem without affecting the rest of the body.

21 May 2016 – Squamous cell carcinoma electrodessication, curettage removal. – The doctors say that squamous cell carcinoma is the least dangerous form of cancer; all the same it is probably best to have it removed before it grows larger.

22 May 2016 – Two billion years of evolution wasted on modern humans. – If you think you are about to do something stupid, you certainly are, so don’t.

23 May 2016 – My problem with hope. – A realistic goal with a realistic way to get there isn’t based on hope, it’s based on doing the right things.

24 May 2016 – Today we discussed destiny. – Most of the life we will live will be driven by the paths we choose to follow, and each of those paths has a built-in destiny that we can look along before we go.

25 May 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #24 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – You may reside at the pinnacle by creating a void at the top.

26 May 2016 – A fine memorial service for a woman I called Mom. – I love my life in Bend, and the friendly people, and I fall back emotionally on my current motto – Live and participate. These two friends lived their lives that way.

27 May 2016 – My aspirations for humanity. – Live and participate.

28 May 2016 – The words associated with levels of maturity – infant thru sage. – Infantile, Childish, Adolescent, Adult, Mature, Sage, Ourora.

29 May 2016 – How do we encourage our political leadership to promote sustainability? – The problem for our political process is that most of our voting public has lost contact with reality and can not even select reasonable candidates.

30 May 2016 – A beautiful problem solved. – Queen Bess! You know, the wonderful queen who has that pretty sister who married, ahh, ahh … what’s his name?

31 May 2016 – My presentation of maturity was rejected. – When feeling good explore your options.

Condensed thoughts Probaway June 2016

01 June 2016 – The best Earth ever for humans is right now. – We are living in a time of great abundance and opportunity.

02 June 2016 – My VIA Character Strengths – Being in a very positive frame of mind is associated with growth toward greater maturity.

03 June 2016 – Americans have a sad problem and here is the fix. – Make the quality of your life better by making the quality of your work better.

04 June 2016 – Where would an atheist, a believer, and others reside in God’s opinion? – “Your wish is granted.”

05 June 2016 – Being 80 years old has disadvantages and advantages. – Being mature is helping others to live and participate with their opportunities.

06 June 2016 – Why didn’t you call? – Why haven’t you called them and claimed your rewards?

07 June 2016 – I am not your slave ! – I am not a slave to your desires, but your companion on the path to greater maturity and contentment.

08 June 2016 – Being witty isn’t always a helpful virtue. – Moving into more mature states of development means voluntarily taking risks.

09 June 2016 – What is a friend? – Live and participate by helping your friends live and participate.

10 June 2016 – I’m not spry at age eighty but I can act it. – It might save you some grief if as a youth you consider how an old person would approach your present problems.

11 June 2016 – We live in a world filled with denials of the obvious. – We live in a world filled with denials of the obvious, and one obvious fact is that we are headed into a world with fewer jobs and more stringent debt slavery.

12 June 2016 – How may I help you? – Now you understand why your kindness in helping others is a personal reward.

13 June 2016 – The communication of data precedes life. – If information is an arranged set of data, isn’t any unusual collection a form of information?

14 June 2016 – Our discussion group discussed fear. – Fear didn’t seem to be a deep issue with these people, and it’s just one of those things you live with.

15 June 2016 – A search for maturity-appropriate prayers. #1 – There are other ways to pray that can be made visible to everyone.

16 June 2016 – A search for maturity-appropriate prayers. #2 – I encourage them to choose their own paths, and to live within their own ideas of goodness and wisdom.

17 June 2016 – A discussion of the paths available through life. – Reveal the proper paths to us, that we may participate fully in life.

18 June 2016 – A discussion of the paths available through life. #4 – Those who look most carefully down their paths and choose most wisely will probably find the greatest happiness.

19 June 2016 – I grew a little today. – The remarkable thing for me was that I automatically went to the aid of a person who might, or might not, have been in trouble, when no one else even noticed.

20 June 2016 – Is anyone listening? – It’s Me! I’m listening!

21 June 2016 – Algorithms to Live By – by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths – We are usually better off trading off the costs of error against the costs of delay. Get it done!

22 June 2016 – Why go traveling when I live in Bend, Oregon? – Why leave?

23 June 2016 – Living responsibly and enjoying your life. – Live your life as if you are responsible for your every action, because you are.

24 June 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Advice – I often ask advice from a local concrete garden gnome Samumpsycle. He always gives good advice because he understands my problems. It’s Me! I’m listening!

25 June 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #25 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – Heaven follows the way, and The way follows after the self-made void.

26 June 2016 – The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner – book review – The book The Power Paradox was too paradoxical for me.

27 June 2016 – It’s hard to say goodbye. – writing group prompt – It’s hard to say goodbye … when you know it’s final.

28 June 2016 – Magic and risk were discussed today. – When thinking and talking about really big things people prefer the supernatural explanations.

29 June 2016 – A memorial service at the UUFCO in Bend, Oregon. – Today I added another unusually beautiful rock to the piping around the front entrance. It was for Christine.

30 June 2016 – This isn’t working, so it’s time to find things that do. – The type of responsibility toward other people I’ve been proposing isn’t working, so it’s time to consider other options.

Condensed thoughts Probaway July 2016

01 July 2016 – The Seven Sages of Bendor – We are still stepping in the same river named Time, but into much different water.

02 July 2016 – It was suggested to me that I STOP writing this blog. – My friend suggested that I STOP

03 July 2016 – It was suggested to me that I STOP writing this blog.

03 July 2016 – I didn’t put a period after yesterday’s STOP. Here it is. – •

04 July 2016 – Yesterday’s period wasn’t big enough. Here’s a bigger one. – • •

05 July 2016 – Fireworks over Bend, Oregon. – Photos of fireworks over Pilot Butte, Bend, Oregon

06 July 2016 – Prompt – Stop. – At this moment I am still committed to not posting … but that makes me feel sad.

07 July 2016 – A fine day for me here in Bend. – This gives me some motivation to continue thinking and blogging and trying to find ways for all of us to live better lives. — Thank you •

08 July 2016 – Gut by Giulia Enders – book review – Whether you are or are not a nutritionist, you will enjoy reading Gut, and probably find things you will change about your relationship with your gut.

09 July 2016 – Perhaps a new look is needed for this Probaway site. – Perhaps this freaky photo will be more attractive to people than the more sane looking ones.

10 July 2016 – Things have never been better in this Best of All Possible Worlds! – Things have never been better than this current Best of All Possible Worlds!

11 July 2016 – “Remember the first time you were barefoot, and stepped on something?” prompt – We looked at each other for a few moments and went our separate ways, and we lived happily ever after. At least I did.

12 July 2016 – Bend, Oregon, is a wonderful place to own a house – For the time being Bend is a wonderful place to own and a terrible place to rent.

13 July 2016 – AHONU and Aingeal Rose interview Charles Scamahorn on YouTube – AHONU and Aingeal Rose interview Charles Scamahorn on YouTube

14 July 2016 – A long overdue epiphany – If you can’t sell something it’s not worth anything.

15 July 2016 – Another category of people here in Bend. – Certainly, I am growing worry warts! But, I can’t find any, so I think my analysis is right.

16 July 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Humility – Pontificating about humility is a sure sign of arrogance.

17 July 2016 – A strange day for me, of disappearing rocks. – Other than their decorative interest these rocks have no value, except to me.

18 July 2016 – Squamous cell carcinoma electrodessication, curettage removal 2 months later. – With medical problems just get good advice and do the right things.

19 July 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Happiness – The continual happiness of a sage is made possible by his habit of relishing everything.

20 July 2016 – UU 10 minute prompt – Motion – Totally stuck … stuck … I have no motion whatsoever!

21 July 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Adaptation – Position yourself so all the necessities of all adaptations support you.

22 July 2016 – The Longevity Project by Friedman and Martin – book review – Isn’t it obvious that living your life helping others live meaningful lives will bring longer and happier lives to both you and your companions?

23 July 2016 – A quiet day with friends, reading, hiking up Pilot Butte. – Oh, yes, having fine companions in all of these simple pleasures helps a lot.

24 July 2016 – A psychedelic day. – “Not to be smart, but to avoid being stupid.”

25 July 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #26 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – The weighty is the foundation of the light, and The quiet are the touchstone of the active.

26 July 2016 – One more blank and I’ll blank. – Free at last, free at last, Oh, Thank God, we are free at last!

27 July 2016 – Tranquility is easy, if . . . – Tranquility is as easy as creating habits to see and react properly to the precursors.

28 July 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Thanksgiving – Be thankful for the invisible cloak of contentment.

29 July 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Smile (#2) – It’s easy to smile, just open your eyes, stretch your nose, and lift your lips :-)

30 July 2016 – Making your life easier. – Make each of your actions a completed task so you can give your full attention to your next task.

31 July 2016 – How do we make our personal reality work for us? – Real-world wisdom always seems to come back to foresight, and to live better means looking into the future, to see opportunities and avoid problems.

Condensed thoughts Probaway August 2016

01 August 2016 – A prayer to help us mature. – The maturity prayer helps a person cope with natural reality.

02 August 2016 – Our writers’ prompts are inside of the “quotation marks.” – “I never saw it that way.”

03 August 2016 – The Atomic bombs, Hydrogen bombs and me. – Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb

04 August 2016 – How is it possible to find people of action? – As we explore the new ways available we can help others to choose their own best paths.

05 August 2016 – America must create opportunities for those it displaces. – When a governmental policy intentionally destroys people’s livelihoods, it must offer very special opportunities to those people.

06 August 2016 – Take on lots of little pleasures one second at a time. – Life is lived one second at a time, so why not enjoy your pleasures one second at a time?

07 August 2016 – Fear shrinks your options, terror eliminates them. – Help you grow rather than shrink in your personal maturity.

08 August 2016 – All living things were able to adapt to circumstances quicker than those around them. – All surviving species were able to adapt to circumstances quicker than those around them.

09 August 2016 – Do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. – Do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way.

10 August 2016 – How will I feel when I get what I think I want? – How will I feel when I get what I think I want?

11 August 2016 – This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin – book review – “As a tool for activation of specific thoughts, music is not as good as language.”

12 August 2016 – Do the doable, and avoid the impossible. – Do the doable, and avoid the impossible.

13 August 2016 – How do you motivate yourself to practice for 10,000 hours? And then what? – The only 10,000 hour subject that I have to build upon is BS, so I will struggle on with BS.

14 August 2016 – Time is the dragon that eats everything. – To taper off the hungry habits of the time dragon.

15 August 2016 – We presently live in a wonderful world. – “Don’t you ever watch the news? Things are terrible!”

16 August 2016 – What is the meaning of life? Answered. – The action of participating in life is the meaning of life.

17 August 2016 – The adventure at Red Rock beach. – I am a slow learner, but I don’t go under falling rocks anymore.

18 August 2016 – Change the Story Change the Future by D. Korten – book review – MAKE MONEY !!!

19 August 2016 – I don’t expect impossible things to happen. – Believing in a spirit world would conflict with my reality and interfere with my living a tranquil life here and now in this world.

20 August 2016 – How to live forever. – How to live forever: Realize that “now is forever”, and enjoy it by participating in the moment.

21 August 2016 – Get emotionally up and explore your options. – You grow happier by discovering and practicing your more mature options.

22 August 2016 – Our American problem is lack of political foresight. – And now we must go one further and adapt to the coming situation or soon die.

23 August 2016 – What is your purpose in life? – My purpose in life is to participate in the opportunities available.

24 August 2016 – Where we should search for reality. – We find physical reality in the physical world and human reality in the human world.

25 August 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #27 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – You do not need maps when walking about your home;

26 August 2016 – Your future begins right now. – Your future begins with choosing a goal and trying to reach it.

27 August 2016 – Look at reality squarely, seeking clear perception. – Each of our stages of life needs an adjustment to see our new reality clearly.

28 August 2016 – Sunsets over Bend, Oregon’s Cascade Mountains – August sunsets are spectacular in Bend, Oregon.

29 August 2016 – The function of a man’s life versus the meaning of life. – The purpose of a man’s life is to wisely participate in all his world’s needs, past, present and future.

30 August 2016 – Foolish people. – Five seconds of fun cost this man fifty years of potential fun.

31 August 2016 – Lava rocks under Bend, Oregon – Residing inside a lava rock? Somehow, that doesn’t appeal to me at the moment.

Condensed thoughts Probaway September 2016

01 September 2016 – Blink – by Malcolm Gladwell – book review – The thoughtless decisions recommended in Blink revert us to being prehuman animals, unless we’ve developed a well-informed unconscious.

02 September 2016 – First Friday Art Walk in Bend, Oregon – As the Ainu say after a great day: We lived and lived and nothing happened.

03 September 2016 – I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong – book review – Research science will probably discover amazing intestinal biota treatments in the next few years leading to better public health and greater life expectancy.

04 September 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Happiness – Happiness and unhappiness are alike in that the more we practice them the more skilled we get at living that way.

05 September 2016 – Philae needed a better landing system. – A future lander on a low gravity object would benefit from long stabilizing struts.

06 September 2016 – Predicting the future requires understanding the present. – Life is easier when you perceive your present and past accurately and base your future actions on probable outcomes.

07 September 2016 – Spend your money! Spend! Spend! Spend! A rant! – What will bring you happiness is doing lots of little kind things for your family and friends, and that is free.

08 September 2016 – Unprecedented by David Ray Griffin – book review – There is hope for humans for a few more years.

09 September 2016 – 7 year sequence of photos of spider bite, squamous cell carcinoma electrodessication, curettage. – Help your skin protect the inner you from the assaults of the world.

10 September 2016 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – A catalog, index, list. – 72 Words with new epigrams

11 September 2016 – Your emotions are telling you something important. – Emotions are a major part of our lives and we should appreciate them to the fullest.

12 September 2016 – Just “Who will you be?” – “He was a man. Take him complete, with all his flagrant faults exposed, He was a man!”

13 September 2016 – “This was their finest hour”. Winston Churchill – if the British Empire and Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour’.

14 September 2016 – The Gift of the Gab – David Crystal – book review – It feels good to have a hearty response to a bit of writing from a group of writers.

15 September 2016 – When is the best time to choose your future goals? – Avoid making important decisions when in a bad mood, and wait for a good mood to arise naturally, or learn how to get into a positive mood.

16 September 2016 – Honesty, Integrity and Enthusiasm – I’ve led a life of cold sarcasm when I should have been filled with enthusiasm.

17 September 2016 – What is the most important idea that I can be promoting? – Some ideas are so obvious once stated clearly that they seem obvious from the beginning.

18 September 2016 – What will be the results of decisions based on anger? – The world is always a complex place and to let anger influence decisions will inevitably degrade the quality of one’s success.

19 September 2016 – How to create a Golden Rule for yourself. – The end value of choosing more mature activities at any stage of life is that you and your friends live longer more fulfilling lives.

20 September 016 – How to answer the big philosophical questions. – Often we are compelled to participate in life’s problems promptly or perish.

21 September 2016 – Our social groups generate divisive morality. – All men are equal, until they meet.

22 September 2016 – What will be the results of decisions based on disgust? – Get happy before making an important decision.

23 September 2016 – What emotion should precede action? – Some people claim that we are always in an ideal state for coping with the present moment.

24 September 2016 – What action does a baby’s emotion generate in its mother? – The infant must get proper attention with its communications or it will die and thus not leave its genes in the gene pool of human behavior. We are the living result of the infant’s successful communication.

25 September 2016 – The Tao Teh Ching – #28 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – Broadcast and infuse this simplicity into understanding people.

26 September 2016 – A book fell off the shelf – Winston Churchillized line spacing for easy reading aloud.

27 September 2016 – Homage to Picasso, Duchamp and Warhol – None of the people who discussed these pictures with me found them offensive.

28 September 2016 – On the Meaning of Life by Will Durant – book review – Even our greatest people are like journeymen workers, just doing the jobs they are destined to do.

29 September 2016 – Debate cheaters must be penalized. – The unfair advantage of overshoots and interruptions should be corrected by taking double that time away from future presentations.

30 September 2016 – The impossible strikes. – Helping people grow is a worthwhile task to pursue for a couple of years.

Condensed thoughts Probaway October 2016

01 October 2016 – Be prepared for the unexpected. – Be prepared for the future by learning from other people’s mistakes.

02 October 2016 – Have I learned anything in 81 years? – Look around and find the next great thing and participate.

03 October 2016 – What I might have done but didn’t. – I’m still on that trip and like my friend Mark says about his life, “So far it’s working.”

04 October 2016 – How much warning of an impending catastrophe can we expect? – Until now all living creatures came into adulthood equipped to survive in their environment.

05 October 2016 – How to upgrade humanity. – Do unto others a kindness that will help them to be kind to others.

06 October 2016 – Rejection is annoying! – I love living in Bend, but it does have its challenges.

07 October 2016 – What should I do? – What I should do is to create more mature habits when I have the chance to do so.

08 October 2016 – Cure for Catastrophe by Robert Muir-Wood – book review & quotes – Most risks are avoidable, but you must make the necessary efforts to avoid them.

09 October 2016 – How to direct what is called growth toward maturity. – Create more mature habits when you have the chance to do so.

10 October 2016 – The best risk analysis you are ever likely to see. – It’s easy to avoid problems when they are far away, and hard to cope with them when they are close.

11 October 2016 – The Trolley Problem by Thomas Cathcart – book review – The Trolley Problem is a fun book to read, and will provoke you to thought and to laughter.

12 October 2016 – List of things that are getting better. – You presently have the opportunity to live a wonderful life. Don’t waste it by wallowing in the despair that is being generated by the media.

13 October 2016 – The function of truth is to avoid problems and pain and to bring pleasure. – Take in all information from the point of view that makes it true, and then make your evaluations of what truth is for the task at hand.

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Condensed thoughts Probaway November 2016

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Condensed thoughts Probaway December 2016

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Condensed thoughts Probaway January 2017