Rolling the dice.

by Thaddeus on January 24, 2021August 20, 2023

Our motivations are the lights that lead us to action. They draw us in and illuminate our way toward better or worse.

Our greatest life motivation, whatever it may be, is our personal sun. It is light that drives us, sustaining the blessing or bane that grows in us. Our life purpose, our prime motivation inscribes our orbit.

If we cannot easily identify our prime motivation, then doing so is long overdue.

Even with worthy motivations to light our lives, it seems we too often find ourselves in darkness. We find our enlightened motivations dimmed by a fog of exhaustion or hidden by clouds of boredom.

In these moments of clouded weakness, OTHER motivations grow brighter and hold our attention, usurping all else and causing growth toward lesser lights. The habits grown in these moments of darkness invite an internal war and our happiness is the first casualty.

All humans are conflicted. Some more often than others, some for longer than others, but the threat of clouded vision, darkened skies and conflicting motivations is a real and present danger for us all.

This threat makes it all the more important for us to know our motivations and, most importantly, the environments in which they shine.

We may not have the ability to remove our hardwired motivations by sheer willpower, but if we can identify our motivations (good and bad), then in moments of light we can choose a path that is free of future choices contrary to our better selves.

If we wish to no longer do “Action A”… then we must choose a path in which “Action A” is an inconvenient or impossible choice.

This rule seems to assume we are free to choose. Are we? Without an answer to this question our conversation short-circuits and we can go no further with confidence. We must pause and attempt to answer the question of free will.

This is not an easy question. We could approach the question from multiple angles, but the simplest approach is to define what it is we are questioning.

What does the “free” in free will mean?

Total freedom is defined as action or choice that is entirely free from outside control without any restraints. Such a concept is just that… a concept. In the same way we might conceive of a flying horse with one horn and call this concept a “unicorn” we can also conceive of Total Freedom… but just because we can conceive of such a thing and talk about it does not mean this thing exists or has ever existed.

Total Freedom, if it existed, would be the domain of a First Mover, a god, something outside of time and physicality because anything with a beginning in time is dependent on the conditions that brought it into being and thus is constrained in some way by those conditions and thus not TOTALLY free.

To possess TOTAL free will would also seem to be beyond the reach of gods, for even they would not be free to do ANYTHING… at the very least they would not be free to choose to have never existed.

So unless we think we are gods, we can say with confidence that the “Free” in free will is not TOTAL Freedom.

Is this free a lesser freedom?

Is anything free at all if everything is limited by the laws of the universe? Are the laws themselves free?

1+1=2 is not a designed law nor is it free to be anything other than what it is… it is simply a brute fact.

What we call “freedom” is a term of convenience. Choice is no more “free” than rolling dice is “gambling”. A human’s ability to perceive, measure, and calculate the physical forces acting upon a die is not sufficient or quick enough for us to calculate the die’s final score but our unknowing does not mean it is unknowable and our ignorance does not give birth to chance from nothing.

Every roll of the dice can be calculated precisely if the initial states and forces are known. For an intelligence equipped both with sufficient perception and the neural hardware required to make the calculations throwing dice is not a game of chance. Though we know that rolling dice is not truly a game of chance, it is effectively a game of chance to us.

We label our ignorance of the underlying causes and forces involved in the toss of dice as “gambling,” not because it is truly chance but because it is a convenient way to describe a process too complex for us to understand.

Knowing that dice is not technically a game of chance does not make the game less fun nor does it remove the requirement to roll the die in order to advance the game.

Knowing that the images on a movie screen are not real does not destroy the joy of watching a movie. And while the final frames of a movie were long ago developed and set… this reality does not mean the frames that come in the middle of the film are without purpose. Each frame in our film is as necessary as the first and last.

Knowing we are fated to die does not lessen the point of living or cheapen the value of life, rather it makes life all the more important and valuable.

Some part of ourselves may object that a world without free will somehow disempowers us but we cannot be disempowered of a power that was never ours to begin with. Free will had never been within our grasp. We are all fated, but having a fate does not mean our actions are unimportant or that we cannot take actions that will improve our lot in life.

We said that if we wish to no longer do “Action A”… then we must choose a path in which “Action A” is an inconvenient or impossible choice.

We now see that the use of the term “choice” here is not meant to suggest Total Free Will but is a term of convenience used to describe our actions. If we wish to avoid the consumption of large quantities of sugar then we shouldn’t set up house in a candy store. This advice may seem trivial and obvious but how many times have we not heeded our own good advice and instead put our faith in the lie of free will and pretended we would just choose differently next time?

If you no longer wish to roll sixes, quit playing with six-sided dice.

Thankful for fingerprints…

by Thaddeus on November 27, 2020June 6, 2021

For much of our lives, the image we have in our minds of ourselves is somewhat timeless. Sure, we use phrases like “hour,” “year,” “decade,” “back then,” “when I was a kid,” and “when I grow up”… but these words and phrases are often just the machinery of language and when it comes our personal identity, time is seen as something we spend rather than something that is us.

This is how things remain for years… then strangely, one day it arrives, and things change, or more accurately, “change” becomes apparent.

In deep history, this moment may have rarely come to our ancestors, either because they did not live long enough to accumulate much time or because their world offered very little opportunities to view past images of themselves. For our ancestors, their images were only seen in-the-moment, a reflection from still water or some shiny object.

In our day, this moment comes plainly. If it has not happened for you it will. One day we observe our picture (just taken) and we see the fingerprints of time plainly upon us. If those fingerprints are not instantly clear they become so upon reference with a photo from years past. The hair grayed, the wrinkles set, the ears and nose ever growing… all of these fingerprints now evidence of a face that has met many sunrises.

This moment is a moment of reckoning. However, it need not be one of sadness or regret… after all, it is a moment many of those before us never had the opportunity to experience. It is a moment that evidences our good fortune in having come this far. It is a moment that should bring a new appreciation for each passing moment in the NOW.

For the NOW I am thankful. Thankful for every wrinkle and fingerprint Time has placed upon me, happy to remain a canvass upon which the hands of Time will create until my creation is finished and in that moment of completion my worth will be known, and then (as now) Me and that Moment will vanish in an instant into the making of this beautiful world, a world full of fingerprints.

The key to an orderly life.

by Thaddeus on August 1, 2020June 3, 2021

We all wish for order in our life but our success in finding it can differ greatly.

To finding something we must first define it. For me, the definition of an orderly life has slowly evolved into a simple “maxim of order”.

For me, this maxim of organization did not come fully formed but matured over time and has come to be an essential rule applied to more areas of my life than I would have imagined. This maxim informs my every decision, it shapes my world, and protects me from myself and my potential excesses. This maxim of organization defines the canvas of my life, bringing order, clarity, and beauty. This certainly does NOT suggest I HAVE ARRIVED, or that I am always successful in following the maxim. I’m not. While I am far from perfect, I aspire to perfection and it is that aspiration and effort that furthers me down a path of progress day by day. At the very least, in a world of seeming disorder, it is heartening to know that my path forward can be well-lit by this simple maxim.

Now having run the risk of over-hyping this “life-changing maxim,” here it is…

“Set the SCENE“

Please don’t be disappointed. I will unpack it concisely and then leave you to the adventure of developing your maxim of order or adopting some form of this one.

If life is a stage then setting our scene is our first task.

You might have guessed that the word “Scene” is an acronym for a larger concept. It is no accident that this maxim employs the simple and concise form of an acronym in order to follow its own rule.

S.C.E.N.E. stands for keeping things Simple, Consolidated, and Elegant… No Exceptions.

Yes, it is simple. However, it has been surprisingly powerful and deep for me, applying both to the order of my physical world and my thoughts and communications.

Simple: The first question is straightforward. Is this the simplest approach to the problem? Is this the simplest solution? Can this be accomplished with less? What is the “carrying costs” of keeping what is being kept? Keeping things is not free. Keeping things ALWAYS has a storage cost and equally important, a clutter cost. Can the label I am about to use to identify this box, this column, this item, be said with a single word? Keep it simple. Discard the extra adjectives. Apply “Occam’s Razor” to all thought processes and keep communications clear and simple.

Consolidated: Keep all of the same in the same place. Collect, consolidate, and be consice. If we can’t fit all our clothes in one closet then maybe we have too many clothes. If we can’t fit all our tools in the space we have for tools, maybe we have too many tools. I don’t allow myself to have multiple places for the same thing or multiple versions of the same thing that don’t serve a convincing purpose. One place for household cleaning supplies… ONE PLACE, not spread around to multiple bathrooms. One type of clothes hanger, not every kind ever made… a mashup of whatever cheap hangers came with the clothes. ONE TYPE of high quality wood clothes hanger. One type of coffee mug. Rather than coffee mugs of various sizes, I have one type and color. Yes, they may not have as much personality as a “Best Dad” mug or a mug shaped like Snoopy but for the trouble, the sanity, and the organization I figure I can express my personality in better and more creative ways than a plethora of coffee mugs. This does mean I forego hand-me-downs and well-intentioned gifts and instead have to incur the costs of purchasing something quality and consistent myself. But the cost of having consolidated order is far less costly to my clarity of mind and environment than the carrying costs and cost of chaos that a myriad of random office gifts would have on my cupboard. Having everything of like kind in one place allows a quick assessment of whether I have enough of something or need restocking. Requiring everything of like kind to be located in one place forces me to weed out the unnecessary and keep only what is needed and the duplicative things in my life are quickly ejected out of necessity. When approaching questions of thought and speech, consolidating concepts and words keeps your communications concise and powerful.

Elegant: Is the organization elegant? Having order in life does not require the removal of life’s color and beauty. I would suggest that beauty is more easily seen and best displayed in an uncluttered world. The word “elegant” may not be common in our modern world but it fits beautifully within the spirit of this maxim of organization…

_{“Elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity.}
_{Elegance is frequently used as a standard of tastefulness, particularly in visual design, decorative arts, literature, science, and the aesthetics of mathematics.}
_{Elegant things often exhibit refined grace and suggest maturity, and in the case of mathematics, a deep understanding of the subject matter.”}

Keeping things simple and consolidated are vital first steps, but for something to find a permanent and appreciated place in our life it must also have a quality of beauty and elegance.

No Exceptions: Simply and concisely put…exceptions are evil. Don’t allow them. Exceptions breed exceptions. Exceptions are slippery slopes that too often lead to a fall into chaos.

In honor of the maxim itself, I will leave it at that. Keep it simple, consolidated, and elegant. No exceptions.

Now go set your SCENE and live well 🙂

Clear your canvas.

by Thaddeus on July 28, 2020June 6, 2021

What is the magic of breaking free from past patterns? I think the most significant step, maybe the only step we are truly capable of taking, is to change the canvas upon which patterns can be drawn.

I find it doubtful that we are empowered with free will. The illusion of free will is too often thought to bring comfort, but in the end, like all lies, it poisons. It poisons and distracts. We can waste a lifetime trying to marshal our will power… something that is simply beyond the ability of our biology. Would it not be better to change what we can change, change our environment, and in doing so provide a new canvas upon which new patterns can be drawn?

And what better way to clear your canvas and paint anew than to banish dangerous passions. It is best said in a favorite Stoic Maxim that says…

“It is easier to banish dangerous passions than to rule them; it is easier not to admit them than to keep them in order once admitted; for when they have established themselves in possession of the mind they are more powerful than the lawful ruler, and will not permit themselves to be weakened or abridged.”

One might question what distinguishes a dangerous passion from a passion that is simply annoying? If the above maxim is true, even mildly annoying passions possess a kernel of power that once given entrance into our world can make themselves dangerous. Is it not better to eliminate the option of choosing such distractions altogether and seek a world filled with good choices?

So, let us start today with a clean canvas, free of counterproductive and dangerous options, doubting not what we know in the light of this moment, letting our brush draw its color from the best of us and paint our world anew.

Life Maxims – words to live by

by Thaddeus on April 23, 2020March 12, 2022

Mountain valley during sunrise. Beutiful natural landsscape in the summer time.

A “Maxim” is a short, pithy statement expressing a general or self-evident truth, a fundamental principle or rule of conduct. Some refer to such sayings as an adage, proverb, precept, or simply a quote… but when I can use a word with a rare letter like “x,” in it, I’m using it.

In addition to a handsome spelling, “maxim” also has the added bonus of a Romanesque feel about it, and many of my favorite maxims do in fact come from the ancient Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers.

So Maxim it is for me.

Before we dive into the list, a few quick notes.

You won’t find any attributions for the maxims. Too often the words attributed to a particular personality in fact came from someone else or were said earlier in a slightly different way. Rather than getting lost in a “he said, she said” discussion and missing the point of the maxim, I simply don’t attribute the sayings to ANYONE, even when that maxim is something I believe originated with myself or family. After all, there is nothing new under the sun… whoever said it, they did not say it in a vacuum, it came from life experiences beyond themselves. Even if somone was the first to coin a phrase or thought, the focus should be on the truth of what was said, not who said it. Beyond the potentially contentious issue of authorship, I also found that some of the “original” quotes were constructed in a way that were not as “pithy” or concise as they could be (in my opinion). Sometimes this was due to translation, antiquity, or simply a verbose speaker. So I edited them to make them relevant for my purposes.

I like maxims that roll off the tongue and are as short and potent as possible. So if you recognize a popular saying that appears to be heavily edited, it probably is. Truth is truth, it does not need an appeal to authority, a famous name to support it, or a special sentence structure to make it more true. It just happens to be easier for me to remember the maxim if it is short and poetic. This list was for my family. It was something I would read monthly and attempt to commit to memory. So, for all the reasons above I edited them. I kept the substance of truth but often repackaged it in modern and more consice terms. The dead and the misquoted will have to forgive me. My goal was not to be a respector of men but rather a collector and practicioner of life’s wisdom.

If you feel compelled to know to whom a certian maxim is most often attributed, you can always google the phrase… but for my purposes, it was not important who said what, rather what was said.

The maxims are not in any order of preference. They are simply organized by topic.

So here you have it. Live well and if you have suggested additions please share.

Action	Life is the lens you choose.
Action	Your focus is best set on “Doing.”
Action	Action is the duty and proof of living.
Action	Actions express priorities.
Action	Accept the world as it is, or accept the responsibility to change it.
Action	Dare to dream, pursue with passion, love always.
Action	Do today what others won’t, so you can do tomorrow what others can’t.
Action	Dreams are for sleeping. Wake up and do.
Action	Avoid the temptation of wild speculation. Never of worry over things outside your control. Actionable data should determine your level of granularity and focus.
Action	Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Action	The power to do is in the doing
Action	Paralysis of analysis is real, ignorance kills, and enlightened action is the surest path forward.
Adversity	Take the good with the bad and laugh at the rest.
Adversity	The obstacle is the way.
Altruism	You must live for your neighbor, if you would live for yourself.
Altruism	Being selfless and wisely selfish amount to the same thing.
Altruism	Never serve fish when you can provide a pole.
Anger	Carryon with love, hate is too heavy a burden to bear.
Anger	It is far better to heal an injury than to avenge it.
Anger	The consequences of anger and grief are often far greater than the circumstances that aroused them
Anger	Anger is a short madness… devoid of self control, heedless of decorum, forgetful of kinship, deaf to reason, excited by trifling causes, and like a falling rock it breaks itself to pieces upon the very thing it crushes.
Anger	A step made in anger, is to step off a precipice into a powerless fall to destruction.
Anger	The greatest remedy for anger is to delay your passion, not in order to pardon the offense, but to form a right judgment about it.
Anger	Anger is arrogant if successful and frantic in failure. Even when Anger is defeated it does not grow weary.
Bias	Separate ideas from identity.
Chance	There is no such thing as “chance,” only details beyond our ability to process.
Change	People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, usually do.
Change	Change is the surest sign you are living.
Change	No man steps in the same river twice, for the river has changed, as has the man.
Change	Changing your environment is the surest way to change yourself.
Communication	If you continually talk to yourself you will never have the space to listen to anyone else
Communication	Silence is often the best answer.
Communication	Never miss a chance to shut up.
Conformity	Many take no heed of whether the road they travel upon be good or bad in itself, but value it only by the number of footprints upon it.
Death	Nature decieves no one. All things come to pass.
Death	If anyone pities the dead, he ought also to pity those never conceived.
Death	Life is short. Of what importance, then, can it be to lengthen that which, however much you add to it, will never be much more than nothing?
Death	Reckon your age not in years but in virtues.
Death	There is no reason to hasten to the burial-place of one you love. What lies there is but the worst part of them and that which gave them the most trouble.
Death	Disease and Death are most deadly for those who dwell on them.
Death	Living is wasted on the dying.
Death	The longest and the shortest life amounts to the same, for the present moment lasts the same for all and NOW is all anyone can possess.
Death	Why should death grieve us? Is it that a loved one has died, or that they did not live long? If we greive because a loved one has died, then we ought always to have grieved, for we always knew this is the fate of the living. If we greive because they did not live as long we presume to know the future and that it would have been to their advantage to live longer.
Decision	Don’t doubt in the dark what you know in the light.
Discernment	Never being satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole or agreeing too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something.
Effort	Half measures are for the half hearted and the want-to-be’s but won’t.
Effort	An extraordinary life is not lived ordinarily.
Effort	Live life easy, do it the hard way.
Exceptions	The exceptional live without exception.
Exceptions	Exceptions are evil.
Excuses	Excuses only sound good to the guilty.
Excuses	He that is good at making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
Excuses	Never make excuses. Your friends don’t need them and your foes won’t accept them.
Excuses	It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
Excuses	You may fail many times but you are never a failure until you blame someone or something else.
Failure	You may try and fail, but never fail to try.
Failure	Own your failures before they own you.
Fiances	Waiting is Wisdom.
Finances	Fiduciary Frequency brings Freedom.
Flattery	Flattery from others ensnares, self-flattery destroys.
Freedom	If you set a high value on liberty, you must put a small value on everything else.
Friends	A friend of sour disposition who meets every incident with a groan will steal your peace and spoil your mind.
Friends	You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
Friends	Tell me with whom you consort and I will tell you who you are.
Habits	If you no longer wish to roll sixes, quit playing with six sided dice.
Habits	Bend the spoon beyond the point you wish it to remain.
Habits	Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.
Habits	If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
Habits	A dog allowed to chase cars will chase cars.
Habits	Rivers are easiest to cross at their source.
Habits	You are what you repeatedly do.
Habits	You do not choose your future, your habits will.
Habits	How you do anything is how you do everything.
Habits	Don’t have tea with grizzlies
Habits	The patterns in our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us.
Habits	Our worst vice is that we change our vices and in doing so, we continually change the face of a well-recognizes evil.
Habits	It is easier to banish dangerous passions than to rule them; it is easier not to admit them than to keep them in order once admitted; for when they have established themselves in possession of the mind they are more powerful than the lawful ruler, and will not permit themselves to be weakened or abridged.
Happiness	Happiness is not found in owning the best of something but in making the best of everything.
Hope	Hope is not a strategy.
Hypocrisy	Failure to carry into effect what one teaches is the failure of the person not the teaching.
Introspection	The unexamined life is not worth living
Introspection	Many men fish their entire lives never realizing it is not the fish they seek.
Introspection	Know thy self.
Introspection	ANTS – Automatic Negative Thoughts… be careful of your self talk, you are listening.
Introspection	To speak a thought is to give it strength, to make it more real even if it has never been true. Be careful what thoughts you give breath to, they will become your truth, they will become you.
Introspection	Put each day up for review, considering what you did best and worst. The future descends from our past.
Introspection	If you wish for a great empire, rule yourself.
Introspection	People are made of stories.
Knowledge	Truth lies open for all; it has not yet been monopolized.
Knowledge	A quick answer is often quick to disappoint.
Knowledge	One need not be right in all things to be right in some.
Knowledge	Better to know how to think than what to think.
Knowledge	The only opinions that matter are those formed in fact.
Knowledge	Confusing what you wish to be true with what is actually true invites insanity.
Knowledge	The greatest evil is the lies we tell ourselves.
Knowledge	It is impossible for a person to learn what he thinks he already knows.
Knowledge	Those who are prone to receive bare theories without careful investigation are often prone to spew those theories to others. Digest your theories first and you won’t be so prone to throw them up. After having digested theories properly you can better show the changes wrought by your reasoned choices.
Knowledge	Never let your schooling get in the way of your education.
Mindfulness	Mindfulness is the ability to be vividly aware of whatever is appearing in one’s mind or body without grasping for the pleasant or recoiling from the repulsive.
Negativity	A “seeksorrow” will contrive vexation above all else.
Opinion	Having an opinion is not an accomplishment, having a well research position is.
Organization	Disorder invites disorder.
Organization	Scarcity is the mother of invention and the father of discipline.
Organization	A place for everything and everything in its place
Perseverance	Whatever strikes against that which is firm and unconquerable injures itself with its own violence.
Perseverance	Rome was not built in a day.
Perspective	Generalizing from the particular is particuliarly dangerous.
Perspective	It isn’t events that disturb people, but their judgments of them.
Perspective	To observe is to collect data. To perceive is to tell a story. Know the difference and their time and place.
Perspective	Too often we see the world not as it is but as we are.
Perspective	You can only choose from what you can see.
Perspective	Your first impression should act as an advisor not a dictator.
Perspective	A “gut feeling” should tell you something about what you ate, not what you think.
Perspective	If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are probably right.
Perspective	Nothing is more responsible for the Good Old Days, than a bad memory.
Pleasures	Endless pleasure becomes its own form of punishment.
Pleasures	The more pleasures you capture the more masters you must serve.
Politics	My Conservatives friends call me Liberal. My Liberals friends call me Conservative. I simply try to call it as best I can as a Free Thinker, with no thought of wearing a team jersey or participating in any pep rallies.
Pride	Free yourself from the tyranny of granduer
Pride	Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity.
Pride	Pride is the burden of the foolish.
Procrastination	Do not let Perfect be the enemy of Good or Good the enemy of Great.
Procrastination	It is foolish to spend a whole life making ready to live.
Procrastination	If you are waiting for the perfect time to start, you will wait forever.
Procrastination	Do not let the Possible destroy the Now.
Procrastination	Don’t confuse asking questions with doing the work.
Procrastination	To succeed at anything, you must start.
Purpose	To exist is common, to live is rare.
Purpose	Arriving at a destination on the floor is no more the point of dancing than getting to the end of a song is the point of music… and so it is with our life.
Purpose	Live well, you will only do it once.
Purpose	Life isn’t a game ot be won, it is a song to be sang.
Reason	Do not bind yourself too tighlty to any one school of thought, rather strive to be a university of reason.
Reason	Reason is the greatest good, Reciprocity the rule.
Regret	You may embrace your future or you may embrace your past, but do not be fooled that you can do both.
Regret	When you are constantly looking back you can’t be looking forward.
Regret	No amount of regret can change the past, and no amount of worry can change the future.
Regret	Don’t give your past the present to define your future.
Regret	Do the stars care?
Regret	I would rather live now than die forever.
Relationship	If you would be loved, love.
Relationship	A selfless act is not a “selfnone” act, our actions are never free of self, only less motivated by it.
Relationship	The easiest way to eat crow is while it’s still warm.
Relationship	T.E.A.M. – Together Everyone Achieves More
Relationship	Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
Religion	Most people’s religious beliefs are received, not researched, defended passionately, yet lived passively.
Religion	It is better to have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.
Religion	Beware of those who commend you for seeking god, they may be the same ones that condemn you upon your conclusions.
Religion	Personification places intention and purpose where it never existed.
Reputation	Be your own spectator; seek your own applause.
Reputation	You probably wouldn’t worry about what people thought of you if you knew how seldom they do it.
Speech	If you can be self critical of only one thing, be critical of your speech. More than your appearance, and sadly often more than your actions, your choice of words either advertise a bright and thoughtful intellect or a mind prone to the laziness and the vulgarity of common speech. Your grammar, word choice, and content is no small thing. What and how you communicate will tell the world more about you than anything else you do.
Suffering	Suffering is just as great as we consider it to be.
Time	Today, is the first day of the rest of your life.
Time	Your eternity is now.
Time	A short life is more often made than received.
Time	Too often we allow demands to be placed on our time with very little thought of the cost, we spend time cheaply as though it has little value.
Time	What you ought to conserve most carefully is that which may run short without warning.
Time	The most joyous moment can be destroyed by the pointeless questions of… “How long will this last?”
Time	Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. Unwrap your present fully.
TIme	There are only two days in a year when nothing can be done… yesterday and tomorrow.
Time	If you can’t play their game, then don’t.
Vices	Failed men obey their lusts as slaves obey their masters.
Vices	Be careful the things you cling to… their grip may grow stronger than yours.
Vices	People often become more attached to their burdens than the burdens are to them.
Virtue	Virtue is that which is in accordance with Nature.
Virtue	Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
Virtue	Always be kind.
Virtue	Of all the things that are, some are good, others bad, and yet others indifferent. The good are virtues and all that share in them; the bad are the vices and all that indulge them; the indifferent lie in between virtue and vice and include wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, and pain.
Wealth	Less is more
Wealth	The Carrying Cost often outweighs the price tag.
Wealth	To take pleasure in thrift is to guarantee pleasure no matter your degree of wealth.
Wealth	Do not let success be a jail of your own making.
Wealth	Too often we buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.
Wealth	The poor man is not he who has too little, but he who craves more.
Wealth	Nothin is worth possessing if you have no one to share it with.
Wealth	The definition of of financial wealth is keeping more than you spend.
Wealth	Understand ENOUGH. If you do not define “ENOUGH” then you will be cursed to chase “MORE” your entire life.
Wealth	Inflating your lifestyle will deflate your sails.
Wealth	If you do not own where you live, it will own you.
Wealth	There are two ways to become wealthy. One is to make more money, the other is to want less.
Wealth	Riches work for the wise but enslave the fool.
Wealth	The greatest danger of possessions is the pursuit of them.
Worry	Give it your best go, then let go.
Worry	Two elements must be rooted out once for all… the fear of future suffering, and the remembrance of past suffering. The latter no longer concerns me and the former does not concerns me yet.
Worry	The malignant growth of thought over that which you can not control, is a cancer of the mind. This is the reality. Being real is understanding what you REALLY can and REALLY can not change
Worry	Fear is a poor chisel with which to carve tomorrow
Worry	Worrying is carrying two days worth of troubles at the same time. Today’s and Tomorrow’s.
Worry	Worry too often gives a small thing a big shadow.
Worry	Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere
Worry	If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.
Worry	A worrier will have a life full of trouble, most of which will never happen.
Worry	If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you will die often.
Worry	Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.
Worry	Incessant worry about the worst case will in any case guarantee a life haunted by the future.
Wunderlust	Living well can be done anywhere.
Wunderlust	Wherever you go, there you are.

CHANGE… an effective approach.

by Thaddeus on April 12, 2020June 6, 2021

We find ourselves both “pilot” and “passenger” in an ancient animal we have come to identify as “ourselves.” An animal evolved from the unknowing into a thing of knowing.

An animal controlled through unconscious mechanisms beyond our understanding and yet also seemingly controlled by conscious thought.

Whether we are greater part “pilot” or greater part “passenger” is of small consequence, because in the end we are wholly determined by our environment.

The “environment,” in this sense, meaning the world we find ourselves in physically and socially.

If we remain in an environment full of the vices we wish to rid ourselves of then we risk defeat before beginning.

In spite of the popularity of the phrase, no one has ever pulled themselves up by their own “boot straps.” It is a physically impossible idea and was originally used as a way of expressing an absurd idea, like being able to pull yourself out a swamp by pulling on your own hair. Nonetheless, the idea of being completely self-reliant and being able to force change by the sheer strength of ones willpower is an alluring, if absurd idea. Rather than settling for a doomed approach simply because it sounds alluring and impowering, I would suggest our efforts are best invested in a tried and true startegy.

If we have any ability to effect change, it will be at the root of our reality that we will find our greatest leverage. Our greatest hope for lasting change is in changing our environment.

If we ignore our environment, we ignore the elephant in the room. Attempting to change the nature of ourselves by sheer willpower is like attempting to change a “tree” by plucking at its fruits and flowers. Any change effected in this way is often merely cosmetic and fleeting.

Superficial pruning is lost in the next season and even significant pruning is grown over in time.

Lasting change is best made by changing one’s environment.

Maybe that means surrounding yourself with an environment that is NOT FULL of the vices you are trying to rid yourself of. Only you know what those vices are… list them in your mind now and consider how you might eliminate them from your environment. If the vice you want to rid yourself of is non-existent in your new environement then you need not worry about whether you are the pilot responsible for navigating around the vice or the passenger along for the ride.

Maybe having surrounded yourself with a more “vice-free” environement you won’t even need the boots (or the false security of “willpower). If your environment is free of the “trash and rubbish” you are trying to free yourself from then maybe you can run barefoot without concern and embrace your journey as both pilot and passenger in this wonderful animal that is you.

There are two ways to become wealthy…

by Thaddeus on July 12, 2019June 3, 2021

If someone told you they could grant you instant wealth would you be interested?

Someone can.

That someone stared back at you in the mirror this morning.

There are two ways to become wealthy.

One way is to make more money, the other is to want less.

It is up to you… you can decide to be wealthy right this instant… just decide to want less.

You might suggest that “The heart wants what the heart wants” and that it is not within our control to want something other. Whether that is true or not, I would suggest that the more important point is “You can not want what you do not know.” Bare with me, and I’ll try to show the relevance.

Consider for just a moment that there may be things you would want more than anything else if only you knew about them. Could it be that with deeper contemplation you might discover something you did not initially know, and once this thing is known you come to realize your previous “wants” fade from your desires?

I would suggest this new thing, this new piece of information might be the knowledge of the true “Carrying Costs” of your “want.”

In the financial world, the term “Carrying Costs” refers to the costs of holding inventory and includes maintenance, specifically in regard to perishable items, storage costs, or other ancillary costs incurred as a result of owning or holding something.

Let’s take a silly example… Getting a pony sounds wonderful at first, but with a little thought you quickly realizes you don’t just need the money for the purchase of the pony, you also need money to buy and maintain a barn, pay for a veterinarian, pay to have shoes put on the pony, buy food, and invest your time grooming and training the pony. Once you think through the “Carrying Costs” of owning a pony you may find this thing you thought you wanted starts to fade from your desires.

If you are lucky enough to want something with very low Carrying Costs you should still appreciate that even then, you will still be faced with the Carrying Costs of fear.

Once you have this thing you have desired, you then run the risk of becoming obsessed or worried that you will lose it or damage it. Now instead of fully enjoying what you thought you wanted, your joy and peace of mind is stolen by worry of losing it, and your time (and other non-renewable resources) begins to be consumed trying to create a circumstance where you are guaranteed to have this prized possession forever.

Considering the true and FULL Carrying Costs of what we think we want is rarely done. If we considered such realities we might want far fewer things than we currently do.

It might also be argued that “wanting” is a good thing… that “wanting” motivates people to greatness. Fair enough, but in fairness no one is suggesting the path forward is a lobotomy or giving away all you own and eating grass on a small mountain somewhere. The suggestion is simply that we be more thoughtful about what it is we really, truly want. Be more thoughtful about the full carrying costs of what we allow ourselves to acquire.

Fancy things and expensive vacations are wonderful but such things might best be left as “happy ancillaries” to our real WANTS, rather than ends unto themselves. If these “things” come to us great, if they leave us great, if they never arrive great.

The point is NOT to be without things. The suggestion is NOT to be mindless and wantless.

The suggestion is rather to become more mind-FULL and Want LESS.

The Pessimist’s Reward…

by Thaddeus on July 9, 2019June 6, 2021

Could it be that I have missed one of life’s main goals?

Based on casual observation, I am beginning to suspect that one of the ultimate goals of this life or maybe even a secret reward has been promised to any among us who can imagine and proclaim the worst possible outcome of events. Why else would so many choose to take the darker side of “what will happen” so regularly? I can only assume that they must be strategically choosing the negative position in order to play the odds, ensuring that one of these days they will be right, the worst will happen, and they will win some secret jackpot and be praised as “omniscient pessimists” by the rest of humanity.

Why else would thinking people intentionally choose a negative default perspective unless they expected some reward for their troubles?

I suppose there is a certain perverse euphoria in proclaiming “I told you so” but it is hard to imagine that this fleeting moment of gloating is worth a lifetime of negativity or the countless times they are wrong.

Often the excuse for taking the negative is basically… “Look, I’m just being real here.”

Owning reality and not living in some fantasy world is certainly a virtue but how “Real” is taking the negative all the time? Consider how often a negative prediction is wrong! Yes, bad things happen but so do good things and that doesn’t even consider the third outcome… indifferent results, neither good or bad. If each category of results had an equal chance of happening (and they do) then the category of “Bad” results would have only a one in three chance of happening, and yet many seem to pretend it is a foregone conclusion, and then take some unknown pleasure in proclaiming their omniscient negativity to anyone who will listen… “I can tell you right now how it is all going to turn out.”

Some pessimists might concede that they are often wrong but will argue that there is a certain catharsis in having the negative approach, that expecting the worst case scenario somehow purges or blunts the negative emotions that accompany the worst outcomes and makes them happier when things turn out better than they expected. This may be the best argument one could make for a negative view but I still find it weak. I would agree that it is important to consider and accept both the best and worst case scenarios, but would it not be better to simply accept the reality that either is possible and then proceed without committing your opinion to an outcome you do not REALLY know will happen and most likely do not control.

Catharsis is he process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. Don’t repress them, accept them. Accepting both the good and bad offers catharsis, without the messy drama of committing yourself to an outcome that may not happen. If it is pleasant surprise you are after than expect nothing, good or bad, and then you will be surprised by whatever happens.

How many mental cycles, hours, days, and weeks of the pessimist’s life is lost to worry, ill will, and negativity… and for what?

If the odds are not in the pessimists dark favor, if catharsis and surprise can be found in simply accepting both good bad potential outcomes, then it must be that the pessimist does indeed choose negativity out of their desire to stand victorious above a swamp of negativity and proudly proclaim they “told you so”. How sweet and fulfilling this hollow, self interested victory must be if it is to fill the hole created by countless other failed predictions of pending doom and the joy of living lost in the process.

I choose to assume neither the best or worst but rather wait and accept what ACTUALLY happens. I find it most prudent to consider the possibility of both good, bad, and indifferent outcomes and to further appreciate the fact that my perspective about the outcome will be more important to me than the event itself.

On the balance, the pessimist has no reward, but must be content with the fleeting thrill they feel when the worst that could happen, does, and proves their pessimism correct every now and then. A fleeting reward at the cost of all else is no reward at all.

Enjoy the Dance

by Thaddeus on April 25, 2019June 6, 2021

Our species is unique in its obsession with the future (worry) and too often enslaved to the past (regret).

For better or worse these obsessions likely proved to be highly influential selection factors. Those who were obsessed with tomorrow were more likely to be prepared for it and more likely to have existed long enough to have offspring wired and brought up to have this same obsession. Those who ruminated on the past were less likely to repeat failures and more likely to learn from them.

But at what cost?

I would suggest the price has been our inability to live in the present, to experience our NOW without labeling, comparing, and planning.

This is a tricky point to make because I do not want to be misunderstood to suggest that either of these traits are innately evil. After all, studying the past and thinking forward into the future has resulted in the advancement of our civilization and quality of life.

As with most things, what is the question is degree, and thus the question of obsession. Obsession is often defined as “an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind.” It is the “preoccupying” and the “intruding” that we must guard against.

We must own the reality that our ability to think on the past and the future are tools that nature selected for us. These are wonderful, powerful tools, just as a hammer is a wonderful, powerful tool, and yet not everything in life is a nail.

Knowing our proclivity to obsess and overindulge in the use of our natural talents, we must learn to teach ourselves anew how to balance learning and planning with living in the NOW. It is here that meditation becomes an invaluable tool.

YESTERDAY has ceased to exist. Learn from it but live beyond it.

TOMORROW is a hope. Prepare for it but do not count on it.

NOW is all you have. Never let it be a slave to what WAS, but IS not, or what may BE, but is not YET.

Balancing hindsight with foresight while still leaving ample mental space to simply observe the NOW is not easy, but it is worthy. It may help to remember that all of life is not a rush to a destination.

Arriving at a destination on the floor is no more the point dancing than getting to the end of a song is the point of music. Enjoy the dance.

Beware of ANTS

by Thaddeus on April 8, 2019June 6, 2021

You are the maker and destroyer of your world.

Every minute, every hour, every day, we must protect our world from ANTS. Automatic Negative Thoughts are a poison of habit. A habit that hobbles.

To speak a thought is to give it strength, to make it more real than it was before, even if it was never true. Be careful what thoughts you cultivate, they will become your truth, they will become you.

Be careful of your self talk, you are listening.

Tea With Grizzlies

by Thaddeus on April 5, 2019June 6, 2021

It is one thing to learn from failures, it is another thing to pass permanent judgement on ourselves.

Too quickly, we often look backwards to a failure and say “that is me.” In such cases, isn’t our retrospection short sighted? Why look back only as far as our last failure? Why not look back beyond that failure to a time when we were supposedly “pure” and “praise worthy” and in doing so, judge ourselves approvingly?

“But there were failures before that,” you reply.

Well then, why stop there? Keep going. The problem is, before long we find ourselves traveling all the way back to the womb and for what? Our past actions (or inactions) say more about our PAST inability to be fully AWARE and in THAT MOMENT from the past, than they will ever say about who we are NOW in THIS MOMENT.

One might next respond, “But I don’t want to forget these failures, lest I repeat them.”

I am not suggesting we forget or ignore failures, rather I am suggesting we acknowledge them, learn from them, and move on. It is possible (and preferable) to acknowledge a reality without LIVING WITH IT DAILY.

For example, I can acknowledge the reality that a bear has crept out of the woods and into my front yard, and respond appropriately; however, acknowledging the bear is NOT the same thing as inviting it in to live with me inside my cabin. I have options…

It would be foolish to pretend the bear was not there, doing so could cost me my life.

It would be foolish to invite the bear in to live with me, doing so could cost me my life.

I could panic, and lose control of myself at the very thought of this bear in my yard, freezing up as I imagine thousands of scenarios in which this visit ends terribly. Doing so, I might likely live my last few moments in frozen panic, as the bear slowly makes its way into my home to say “hello” with its incisors.

Alternatively, I could acknowledge, that like me, it is part of the natural world, and as such, circumstances have brought it into my front yard. It might be prudent for me to consider whether I have done something to encourage this unwanted visit. Maybe I unintentionally “baited” or encouraged this bear to come calling. If so then I should note the behaviors that beckoned the bear and not do them in the future, unless I want to have tea with a grizzly.

I would suggest, the best course of action is simply to acknowledge the bear, appreciate the place and purpose it has in the world, my world. Consider what has brought it into my yard (circumstance or personal actions, intentional or not) and then take precautions to not let it inside my home.

Rather than responding to my bear with paralyzing fear or crushing guilt and dismay, it might be more prudent to simply observe the bear for a moment, note it’s presence, resolve to not invite such a visit again, while also appreciating, that in spite of my best efforts, circumstances may still bring such a visit in the future.

Having given the bear a moment of my mental space, having taken appropriate precautions, I should then focus on something else and move on. The bear’s home is not my yard, it too will move on unless I act foolishly and invite it in, or fail to acknowledge its presence at all, and walk out to become its dinner instead.

Those things that are the “bears” in our lives need not cause us panic or guilt, and they certainly should not be invited in to live with us daily. Acknowledge your “bears” and note what (if anything) encouraged their visit. Once we have observed and faced our “bears”, taken prudent precautions, and come to peace that bears are just part of living… then we should GET ON WITH LIVING.

Imperfect visitors, such as bears, need not live with us daily and “imperfection” as a category need not be viewed as wholly negative.

To me, some of the most beautiful things in the world are beautiful because of their imperfection. Often the imperfections in wood bring a natural character and beauty all its own. The flaws in the woodgrain often have the effect of bringing focus to the beautiful grain that is strong and perfect around such flaws. This does not suggest one should seek out flaws in order to improve their “beauty” as a person, anymore than a great oak seeks out insects, weather, or genetic flaws in order to make its finished wood more beautiful. A piece of wood, artificially and intentionally made imperfect through scarring or distressed is often seen for what it is… a fake.

In the end, in may ways, we are all great oaks. Flaws will often appear naturally without any inducement by ourselves, and it may also be that our choice of where and how to grow might intentionally or unintentionally invite flaws. Grow wisely. Acknowledge that bears walk in the woods. But most importantly, GROW!

The growth through, and around, our imperfections is what brings beauty and strength to our grain and it will provide a stunning view, high above the bears, and the forrest floor.

What’s in your row?

by Thaddeus on March 11, 2019June 6, 2021

It has been said…

“The patterns in our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us.”

We are “strange loops” cycling back around, pattern after pattern. When I look back on my life thus far, I see a myriad of patterns… some I am proud of and others I am not.

It is curious (and too often disheartening) how automatic our responses are to various stimuli. Those who know us best can with unnerving accuracy “play our part” and predict how we will react to this event or that circumstance. We never have to worry too much about showing those around us who we are… we do it every day through our patterns and our reactions. Our interests (or lack of interest) is shown in what we make time for, what we do, day-after-day, we weave a pattern, a self-portrait, and then we are surprised when someone reads it so well and holds a mirror to the patterns we have drawn for ourselves, of ourselves.

Fortunately, our past does not have to define us. We can change that which needs changing and reinforce that which will make us a port of calm and refuge for ourselves and those we love. This will be the most difficult thing we will ever do. Change is always hard, but change-of-self, breaking a pattern and creating another, is EXTREMELY difficult.

I might argue that the patterns we weave, started long before we were mature or self-introspective enough to make well thought out decisions about those actions. The family we were born in to, whether you were the oldest, middle, or youngest child, whether you won the lottery and were born into a zip code that provided opportunity and wealth, or scarcity and poverty… all of these things influence our early pattern making. It is here that the last part of the quote above becomes so important. The patterns in our life reveal who we are but it is our habits that measure us.

As is often the case with a good quote, there is a bit of word-play, going on here… our patterns are our habits, so why the distinction?

The word “patterns” seem to denote that which is automatic, unplanned, a natural state, however; the word “habit” seems to be colored with a sense of choice. We choose our habits. This is why I love this quote… it speaks with truth to the past (all of which we can not now change and some of it things we never had any control over to begin with) and it speaks with truth to the NOW and the future, which we make with the habits we choose.

We our not measured by what we are given, we are measured by what we make of what we are given, the habits we grow and the habits we kill.

Our life is a garden for which we had no “say” in its placement or its early plantings. In time though, this garden becomes ours to weed, ours to plant. The rows of our garden may reveal our early self but the habits we plant to fill those rows will measure us. Let us plant wisely.

Dreams are for sleeping…

by Thaddeus on March 6, 2019June 6, 2021

I have heard it said…

“If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you must do is wake up.”

We often use the words “dreams” and “goals” interchangeably. This practice probably causes no intrinsic harm but this quote made me wonder. Could it be that deep down we understand the nuanced difference between these words, and then by allowing ourselves to use these words interchangeably, we allow ourselves to be lazy and fumble the ball short of the goal line?

A dream is an idea, often a bit abstract, often hazy, and all too often rather general. Dreams figuratively and sometimes literally float in our mind as something we would love to do, love to be… and like a cloud they are beautiful, they can morph from one object into another in our “minds-sky”, and they are tied to nothing but the breeze of our imagination.

That is not to say that we do not from time-to-time have very specific detailed dreams for our life. We do… but in my personal experience, something I refer to as a “dream” is usually something focused on a “destination,” something I see as my “moment of arriving.” It is very rare that I characterize the step-by-step (often mundane) process of getting there as “my dream.”

A goal, on the other hand, seems to come with a slightly different but vitally nuanced color to it. When I call something a goal, this goal is rarely contemplated without also contemplating the plan directly associated with that goal. A goal requires a plan. The basic definition of a goal is something that results from the execution of a plan.

We casually use the words “dream” and “goal” interchangeably, but I now wonder whether doing so degrades one and gives an undeserved sense of accomplishment to the other. Having a dream is easy… just fall asleep or daydream about something you love, would love to do, or would love to be. Having a goal is hard. To have a goal (a real goal) requires a plan to get you there, and making plans, much less seeing them through, is VERY difficult.

I can hear you now… “You are just playing semantics!”

You would be correct.
I am.
But that’s my point.

Words matter. The ones we use to describe our world, ourselves, our actions, all come with underlying ideas and meanings. If we refer to something as a “goal” but have NOT done the hard work of putting a plan together to get there, then we are essentially “building a roof, without first building a foundation”… and somewhere deep inside of us, that lazy part of our brain throws a party and says… “See there, progress, we are getting things done, we have a goal, which means we have a plan, which means we did some real work here people, and one day soon this dream will be a reality.” Nope. More times than not, what we have is a DREAM, not a GOAL. No work is required for a dream. It is something we fantasize about, something we would like to be a reality, but because we have no plan, because we prematurely call it a “goal,” we never “wake up.”

A dream will never come true unless you wake up and live it. Ideas without plans are just dreams, they are pretty clouds, but good luck ever grabbing one. A cloud looks like a real, very defined object from the ground, but if you have ever flown into a cloud you have experienced the reality that it is often VERY difficult, if not impossible, to tell where a cloud begins and ends. Dreams are like that… they are pretty clouds. They float n our minds-sky without any real definition or a plan to get there… and even if we did arrive at the cloud, the cloud is so ill-defined that we wouldn’t really be sure whether we had arrived or not. Dreams, like clouds, condense out of the heating and cooling of our emotional passions. They can be beautiful, but they can never be a destination. You can’t truely live in the clouds.

Dreams that you wake up from, and then formalize into a plan, become GOALS, and the journey to that goal, that one step at a time process, is what brings reality to our desires. Dreams are made real by waking and working. Dreams are made real by persistent, unrelenting action that follows a plan, that leads to well-defined places in the real world. The sooner we wake to the realities of the world and realize that there are no benign fairies that will make magic happen, no genies granting wishes, and no living in the clouds, the sooner we will wake to a reality (that with with work and planning) CAN BE .

Now wake up… dreams are for sleeping 🙂

On the Edge of Luminance

by Thaddeus on March 2, 2019June 3, 2021

Moonlit-Seascape-2

On March 2nd of last year, a car accident left me unconscious for over 15 minutes on the scene and could have easily taken my life. A day later, drifting in and out of sleep and trying to recover my mind, these words came to me and offered me a way to vent my fear and confusion. I found this note much later on my phone “Notes” app and it was a bit like reading a note from a different me from a timecaplsule I had forgotten I had buried.

=====

ON THE EDGE OF LUMINANCE

Insanity pervades and paints the air with a vibrancy of disorder. Discord persists like a living sea. Frothing, foaming, tossed about, from its depths spring thoughts without restraint.

Upon this fragile web I weave… thoughts suspended in their web… caught and bound by their gossamer wings, nearly lost to their pounding against strings of their own making.

The warmth of a touch grounds it all, lest my mind spiral into unmaking…flesh brings peaceful limit to an expanse quickly growing unmanageable.

The warmth of “now” makes its impression known, a welcome authoritarian. The author of meaning, the moment of now, peace in a breath caught and exhaled.

Like the spent and broken wing of a moth gives tragic witness to the sprites exorbitant efforts to overcome… so to, these words give witness to my mind touching flight with sod weary wings… like a moth on the edge of luminance, leaving only tattered wings as evidence of a journey of aspiration.

fire_moth_by_maxine_photo

NOW

by Thaddeus on February 9, 2019June 6, 2021

All you will ever truly own is NOW… this moment.

Yesterday belongs to the ages. Tomorrow is only today’s promise. NOW is the sum of you, for better or worse… do not waste it.

You can only live in the NOW. Every measure of effort you spend attempting to re-live the past or pre-live the future results in an equal measure of death in the NOW.

There is no living in the past, you can only observe the memory of it, a memory often flawed, often incorrect, albeit often precious.

Memories have great potential to stir appreciation, validate accomplishment, deliver constructive admonishment, and inform our present… but to dwell on memories, is to “miss the meat for the seasoning.”

Never elevate that which is only “seasoning” beyond that which it is meant to season. The spice should never be the entrée.

Own your NOW, before yesterday does.

NOW is a beautiful thing, it is something for which all of those who have ever lived, no matter how powerful or rich, would trade all their power and wealth to possess.

Your NOW, just as it is, with its perfections and imperfections, with its seasonings of seasons past and its promise of tomorrow’s potential, is the most valuable thing in this universe… it IS your universe. Nothing else exist.

Only NOW has substance and only NOW can cast a shadow… all else is but a forward or backward slanting shadow of NOW.

F-F-F-February

by Thaddeus on January 31, 2019August 11, 2023

It’s the shortest month of the year. Perfect for a short term reset to help curtail the creep of bad habits. For this short month we will be Fit, Frugal, and Fasting.

Fit – Move more and close those Apple Watch rings every day no matter what!

Frugal – freeze all spending except for absolute necessities.

Fasting – continue to eat once a day and delete those news apps and other digital distractions on our phones. A short month free of news and cell use (except for work) would do us good.

And when temptation comes calling we will have our handy mantra ready to read…

What it means…

by Thaddeus on June 5, 2018August 11, 2023

Every now and then I get asked about my ink and what it means. I spent several years working up each one (for better or worse) so here is the long answer to that short question of “What does it mean?”

Ink by the numbers…

The ink on my left arm is binary code. If you were to input it into a binary program reader it would render my life’s motto of “Dare to Dream, Pursue with Passion, Love Always.” In my days at Belmont I had a professor who assigned us the task of coming up with a life motto for ourselves and this is the phrase I finally decided on. I chose to have the tattoo in binary because I love computers and, more importantly, I love the beauty of the idea that all of our language and world can be communicated with a system consisting of only two characters. The binary aspect of the design also has a certain symbolic yin/yang feel to it for me as well.

As for the layout… it contains 360 characters and forms a square made in three parts, with the symbolism being that the 360 characters represent the 360 degrees of a circle and thus the design metaphorically represents the idea of “squaring the circle.” The three columns dividing the square represent the “rule of thirds” which is used throughout art and architecture to bring a pleasing aesthetic balance.

All of that to say…the purpose of my Binary Ink was to remind me each day what is most important… Daring to Dream, Pursuing with Passion, and Loving Always; and that if I could do those things then I might be able to “square the circle” of life and reach a balance and beauty that is metaphorically represented by the “rule of thirds.”

There be Dragons…

The half sleeve ink on my right arm has several components.

The two columns of text translate roughly…

“Reason is the greatest good, Reciprocity the rule.”

This phrase seemed to encapsulate what I believed to be life’s most basic truths and the phrase answered two of life’s greatest questions for me…

– What is the most important (highest/greatest) thing in life?

– How should one best live their life (what is the WAY to live)?

The first question is answered by stating that…reason is the greatest good, and the second question is answered by stating that reciprocity is the rule, or way, to live.

Reason requires us to determine the right and wrong of something dispassionately through logic, and someone who exercises Reason in all things is one who will exemplify Reciprocity by treating others as one wishes to be treated. Someone who reveres Reason will naturally understand that treating others as one would want to be treated gives the individual and the community at large the greatest possible degree of security and is thus the best philosophy of life.

Reason and Reciprocity are my guiding lights, and the daily practice of Reason leads to a life of Reciprocity… a life well lived.

The red stamp at the bottom is done in the traditional Chinese stamp style and basically reads “The stamp of Thaddeus Schwartz,” but Chinese is especially interesting because each character comes with its own individual meaning too, so if you read the meaning of each “character” (which is why I hired a translator to help with this) it means…

“To conscientiously carry out or follow the practice of fair or just progress or teaching.”

With much help from a translator we were able to carefully select characters that both represented my name and at the same time expressed a meaningful idea.

Thaddeus Schwartz = 施允迪 (Surname followed by First name)

Surname: 施 sound from Schwartz (such)… Meaning: 施 carry out; impose

First name: There are 2 Chinese characters for the first name… 允迪
1st character: 允… Meaning: allow or consent; fair or just (chosen only for the meaning)
2nd character: 迪… Meaning: progress; teach… represents the sound from Thaddeus (deus) (chosen for the meaning and sound)

允迪 = Thaddeus… Conscientiously carry out; follow the practice

The tattoed stamp is done in a calligraphy style. For simpler translation, the stamp is shown here with standard fonts and is to be read counterclockwise starting at the northeast corner of the stamp…
“seal of Schwartz Thaddeus”

Dragon

The larger part of the design focuses on a “Fish Dragon” leaping from water.

The following story (known as the Koi Dragon Myth) describes the significance of the Koi/Dragon motif.

“In the wild, koi are cold-water fish that gain strength by swimming against currents. Many years ago, in a time before recorded history, a huge school containing thousands of koi swam up the Yellow River. The colors of their well-muscled bodies flashed in the sunlight making them seem like a million living jewels. All was going well until the koi reached a waterfall. Immediately, a large number of them grew discouraged and turned back, finding it much easier to simply go with the flow of the river. Yet, a determined group of 360 koi stayed on. Straining and leaping, each koi strove to reach the top of the falls. Again and again they flung their bodies into the air only to fall back into the water. All this splashing noise drew the attention of the local demons who laughed at the efforts of the struggling koi. Adding to their misery, the demons sadistically increased the height of the falls. Still the koi refused give up! Undeterred, the koi continued their efforts for one hundred years. At last, with one heroic leap, a single koi reached the top of the falls. The god’s smiled down in approval and transformed the exhausted koi into a shining golden dragon. He joyfully spends his days chasing pearls of wisdom across the skies of the vast and eternal heavens. Whenever another koi finds the strength and courage to leap up the falls, he or she too becomes a heavenly dragon. The falls have become know as the Dragon’s Gate and, because of their endurance and perseverance, koi have become symbolic of overcoming adversity and fulfilling one’s destiny.”

Swimming against the stream, struggling to overcome, breaking free, and realizing my destiny is something I aspire to. I also liked the water, sky, and fire elements because these are elements of our natural world and are basics parts of our “becoming.” I also liked the evolution from water to air, a transition that parallels our own evolution.

Final Elements

The last two elements of the tattoo are the Cherokee Star and the Lotus Flower.

My ancestors are German, Jewish, and Cherokee… the star represents my heritage.

The lotus has a history of symbolism…

“The lotus is born at the muddy bottom of a pond. The plant pushes its stalk up through the mud and murky water to the surface where a beautiful blossom eventually blooms. It symbolizes the desire to elevate one’s self above the muddy thoughts and actions of daily life in order to become a better person. The lotus flower is also said to represent the purity of body, mind, and spirit with the blue lotus specifically representing knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence.”

All of these ideas are ones I aspire to, and my ink reminds me of these in an artful way each day.

Dad’s Eulogy

by Thaddeus on November 7, 2015June 6, 2021

I am not sure how I will fare through these next few moments, but should I struggle please do not feel discomfort for me, rather embrace it and feel the ease of this honest moment for what it is.

I come from a long line of men and women who feel deeply, love truly, and should that stream surface today, as it often did with my dad, I ask you to bear with me, I will make it through.

Dad could be many things, he could look as comfortable in a Tux as he could his favorite yellow sweatshirt, but given the choice, he would always prefer a small informal gathering of family and friends and so that is what we have here today.

I read somewhere, that what we do here today is “the last kind act that man may do for man, to tell his virtues and to lay with tenderness and tears his ashes in the sacred place of rest.”

If that is true, then I know before I begin that I will fail here today, there are no words or time to express, what this man was to me, our family, to all of those who were touched by his smile.

My brother shared with me shortly after Dad’s passing that it is not just our Dad we have lost but a Boss of 30+ years, a Neighbor of 15, and a Best Friend for life.

The words “lost” and “passing” have been used often in these last few days and it has caused me to think upon a line in one of my songs that suggests there is no “Good in Goodbye”… as too often is the case, I think I was wrong.

There is good in goodbye… We are surrounded today by that good, it is in the loving eyes and touch of his wife who showed me from my first memory up until Dad’s last breathe what it meant to love unconditionally, what is meant to live a life with someone who after 57 years still made you thrill when they walked in the room.

That good is in the eyes and smiles of his children and grandchildren and in the hundreds of stories that could fill countless meals and evening with laughter.

Dad loved to laugh and we have heard that laughter echo in each of us even in the midst of his passing.

No one made him laugh more than the one who stood by his side and moms through those final years. Shad, no father could ask for a better caregiver. I know Dad would have been proud to see his family come together, as we always do, to love and hold each other through these hard times. And hard times they were.

I can find no justice or purpose in his suffering, but I will not waste a single moment of thought on what was but a small part of an extraordinary life. Dad’s breaths of joy and happiness, far outnumber those made in moments of struggle, and so it is there in those happy moments, I will choose to find my peace.

Dad was a collector of sayings, he loved them and filled little pads with them, as well as with his own thoughts and of course his famous “To-Do” lists… actually, his To-Do lists usually required a custom made velcro leather holder, but that’s an entirely different story. One of the sayings he collected he kept under the glass of his desk and in typical Dad fashion, he made a copy for mom to post beside her desk for the times when she might question the pain… I think it spoke to Dad’s choice to see the beauty in this weaving we call life, in spite of the occasional dark threads…

It read…

My life is but a weaving
Between my God and me.
I cannot choose the colors
He weaveth steadily.
Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;
And I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper
And I the underside.
Not ’til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And reveal the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
In the weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned

There is no darker thread than his passing, and yet to me, Dad has neither passed nor been lost to us… I see him in my son, in his garden, and though it feels emptier, I still see him in his workshop, his home, and his office.

It had become a habit of mine to stop by his office after a days work and say “I’m heading home Chief, is there anything you need?” He always had a warm smile for me when he looked up… and somehow, without a word, that smile would say “thank you, I’m proud of you, and did you finish the latest form I gave you?”

I will miss that smile, that presence, the warmth of his hands on my shoulders, the long discussions about books and philosophy, and I will forever be indebted to him for his blood that ran through my instrument and gave me music to share.

To each of us, he gave a gift of himself… six children, all very different but bound by the lesson and the example he lived every day, we would sometimes jokingly call him the “white horse” because he was always championing peace among us all… Dad taught us that differences do not equal distance.

Although he seems to be at a great physical distance from us now, he is forever, and all the more, close to us in our hearts. While I would give almost anything to walk with him down the “Animal Road” one more time, and listen to him teach me, to know each of the trees by their leaves, I will let him go… not from my heart but from my presence. It is a wound that will not heal with time, but a scar I gladly bear, and I will honor him by finding joy and laughter in this new normal.

Dad, picked up a camera long before I was born and the slides and the whir of the family projector still thrills me, it is from him that I found a love for capturing the beauty of a Life in Random Order and I can thank of no way to honor him more than to share those images now.

After the video Mom has requested we play one final song… a song I wrote years ago fittingly called the Last Song. After it plays the family will rise and escort Dad to the Hillside, we ask that you remain seated until the family and grandkids have exited… then please join us for the final Toll Ceremony. The bell outside was part of the original home place we all shared back in Illinios, it was rung in times of emergency and celebration. Today it will ring one last time for Dad. The family will escort Dad up the Hill while you await our return on the front porch and driveway area.

If a life is measured by the smiles it creates, then you will see his was an extradonary life.

What I Believe…

by Thaddeus on September 18, 2009June 6, 2021

A Secular Statement

I get asked a lot these days what I believe if I don’t believe in the supernatural… so I thought it might be helpful to put this out there for those with curious minds.

If these kinds of discussions are not your thing, then by all means please click-on, no worries… I am okay with the possibility that you may see thing differently. For me I figure that if I don’t share, then I run the risk of missing out on the thoughts of a friend and I am always up for learning more about others and myself, so here it goes…

Below is a concise statement of my worldview as a Secular and following that paragraph are some of the common questions I get about this statement. The statement is concise the rest is rather lengthy, but hopefully interesting and to the point.

My secular life is a life committed to protecting one’s personal freedoms and the freedoms and diversity of our communities, our world, and our environment. I embrace the passion that comes with the realization that I shall only live once and that the value of a life well lived is beyond measure. I awake each morning knowing that it is only the love and kindness I show, the knowledge I impart, and the help I render that shall live beyond me. As a Secular I find less to hate and more to love. In times of disaster I look for a better tomorrow rather than pretending there is purpose in meaningless tragedies. I find awe and inspiration in the complexity and the simplicity of the world and people I share it with. When I approach the limit of knowledge, rather than fill the gaps with wishes or fears formalized as an unquestionable faith, I rather stand in awe and then turn to the effort of advancing my understanding beyond it’s current horizon. I find comfort in the knowledge that secular societies are moral without the inducement of any reward, other than the knowledge that treating others as we would be treated brings security to all. I find security in the knowledge that secular punishment is based on reason and fairness rather than a view that demands infinite punishment for finite crimes of conscience. As a Secular I know each day is my “eternity” and as such it is not to be wasted, not to be forgotten. I count it my privilege to to accept the world as it is today while working with love and charity to insure that tomorrow we find the world as it could be.

RESPONSES TO A SECULAR WORLDVIEW

Question: Thaddeus, you speak of only living once… life after death is something many people believe in and have for as long as we can tell. How can you know for certain that there is no afterlife?

My Response: I do not know for “certain”… rather, what I am stating here are my realizations based on the facts available to me, and the conclusions those facts and probabilities force upon the subject. There is no evidence to suggest there is an afterlife, so in the absence of evidence for an afterlife I have come to the realization that there is little reason to build a worldview based on such a notion. So, technically I am Agnostic on the question of the afterlife which is in contrast to believers who profess to KNOW FOR CERTAIN what happens after death.

However, admitting Agnosticism on any subject does not preclude someone from having a practical day-to-day “modus operandi” that is more concrete, and it is this day-to-day position that I am stating here after basing it on a reasonable assessment of the probabilities involved… thus, this is why I state that with a lack of evidence for any afterlife my modus operandi is “realization that I shall live only once”.

By analogy… there is no evidence for fairies or unicorns… I CAN NOT say for CERTAIN that they do not exist but there appears to be no evidence for them, thus the sober and reasonable thing to do is to not incorporate such notions into my worldview.

I also find that the notion of an afterlife is not only without any evidence but that commitment and belief in such a notion can prove very dangerous to oneself as well as others.

There are of course varying degrees of this danger. For some the notion of an afterlife is only a “hope” and not something they have full faith or belief in, and for these there seems to be little real danger.

Then there are those that do fully believe in the afterlife and as such see this life as less important and a kind of prelude to the “real deal”… this perspective at the very least effects in small ways the importance they put on the here and now.

Finally we have a multitude of instances where belief in the notion of an afterlife has caused great pain, suffering, and atrocities in the present and throughout history as people strap bombs to their backs or ride off to slaughter the infidels whether they be Christians or Muslims or others… not to mention the more mundane day-to-day harm done by the self-righteous who are so sure that everyone else is wrong and going to hell.

So unlike the rather benign indulgence of believing in fairies or unicorns, there is a world of evidence that belief in an afterlife is not only without evidence, it is dangerous to the believer and society.

Question: The “good life” or a “life well lived” is defined for the believer by the teachings of the Bible… what does a “life well lived” mean to you without the Bible as a guide or measuring stick?

My Response: I do not think a “good life” or a “life well lived” is a concept that is as subjective or elusive as many try to make it. I think we as a species share a very common and basic agreement about what this concept or phrase means. Sure there are exceptions… there are people who are mentally ill or have psychiatric issues but these are a small statistical subset… on the whole, regardless of religion (or lack thereof), race, or geographical location I think you will find an overwhelming number will respond the same way… a life well lived is one in which you have meaningful relationships and improve and insure our life and the life of our loved ones by treating others as we would be treated. The concept of the golden rule is not unique to the scriptures and altruism is something that is very rational from both the perspective of personal security and preservation as well as a larger societal view.

Question: If you do not believe in the scriptures or a God then where does your love and kindness come from?

My Response: Love and kindness comes from the same place it does in all people regardless of their religious belief or disbelief… again their are exceptions, but love and kindness for your children and by extension those around you who make up your environment, your children’s environment, and thus the larger society. We even see some degree of altruism in other species.

There are of course other possible candidates for a solution to this question and it is only fair that we consider them as well…

One solution to the question of “Where does love and kindness come from?” is to answer that “All goodness comes from God”. This answer must be considered and weighed as a candidate among all other explanations.

In the case of the believing Christian the explanation offered is even more precise. They are confident that all goodness comes from the God of the Bible and yet this answer comes with it’s own baggage… one must then also ask the next question of “where evil comes from?” The scriptures are clear on this too and it is again God who is sovereign and in control, he is the creator of all including good and evil… even the creation of the “tree of good and evil”.

The Christian’s answer has to consistently explain how the source of ultimate good can at the same time be the source of ultimate evil… for example, how can we square such circles as a “Good God” condoning and commanding genocide…

1 Sam 15:3’Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and WOMAN, CHILD and INFANT, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’ “

Stating that they were to kill the children evidently was not enough… God evidently felt he needed to make sure his blood thirst was clear, and for good measure he added INFANT… just in case some sympathetic soldier might be smitten with the cute and innocent eyes of a pagan new born.

I often hear such verses defended by suggesting that God’s foreknowledge of the kind of pagans these infants would grow to be justifies his actions. This explanation falls short on several levels; however, if for argument sake we allow this defense to explain the fates of the pagans, it still does not explain the fates of the faithful in this situation. How can one characterize as “good” or as “fatherly” a God or a Heavenly Father that commands his faithful, his very own “children”, to witness and commit such atrocities. What scars must this leave on someone’s psyche to witness, much less be commanded to commit the butchering of infants in their beds, and children in their play yards? We see the ravages of war in the minds of our young soldiers today, how much more would that mental pain be if they were commanded to commit such full scale genocide and atrocities. If God wanted to annihilate the pagans, why not do the dirty work himself as he does daily around the world? Why not wipe out the pagans with a natural disaster or a mysterious disease? If God wanted to be through with the pagans why not “close up their wombs” and let the generation die out on its own leaving no babies that must be slaughtered at a later date by God’s “chosen” people? Is it really better to ask your chosen people to personally decapitate children and babies or to run pregnant women through with a sword? I am sorry but a this sounds like a “God” who was dependent on the bloody sword of man, an invented God created by men to justify a genocide.

If one cannot muster any empathy for the pagan’s innocent children, their innocent infants, or their innocent livestock then surely the believer must have some empathy for the evil this commandment must been to the faithful soldier of God.

Would you ask your children to butcher babies for you?

I have also heard it argued that the age of accountability covers these children and infants. I have even heard this line of argument pressed to the extreme limit of saying that such genocides are actually a testimony of God’s grace to these infants because the slaughter of their lives before they became “accountable” ushers them immediately into heaven as opposed to hell, where they were likely destined had they been allowed to live and grow up in a pagan household.

If this “age of accountability argument” is true then why doesn’t God love all of us enough to slaughter us before we reach the age of accountability? This also raises the issue that the doctrine of “age of accountability” is not directly or even indirectly supported by ANY scriptures, and in fact violates several scriptures and clear doctrines of the bible. For instance, many believers are very committed to the doctrine of “Free Will”, a doctrine that says it is up to us to decide for ourselves in this life whether to follow Christ or not and that from the beginning God had to give us a Free Will if he expected genuine love in return, because without Free Will we would be nothing but fancy “robots”. The problem is… if the Age of Accountability is held to be true then the doctrine of Free Will must be false because these infants were not given a chance to make a choice in this life… they were not given a free will, the decision was made for them… they were slaughtered and thus ushered straight to heaven without a choice. So like many doctrines of the religious, they conflict.

To suggest that goodness comes from a biblical God that could wreak such evil on infants and mentally scar his own chosen people with commanding them to commit and witness such atrocities seems a bit irrational if not perverse. And of course this is only the tip of the iceberg. One of my favorites notorious scriptures is the condoning of taking young virgin war trophies and raping them so long as the troops wait 30 days and give them a nice hair cut and nail trimming…

Deut 21… “When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself, then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. “She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.”

So, goodness comes from a biblical God that states that as long as you give these young girls a nice short haircut, give them a manicure, and 30 days to cry it out… THEN you are allowed to have sex with them (even if they do not want to… RAPE) and that it is somehow not considered RAPE… rather it is a testimony of God’s goodness and justice to let them continue breathing in a living hell while they service God’s chosen soldiers. How pleasant.

Well, I am not a woman and I do not have any daughters but I can not see how a haircut, a nail clipping and a 30 day delay equals anything but DELAYED RAPE and SLAVERY. The OT of course says you can not sell the virgin war trophies as you can other slaves (slavery is okay though) but it is okay for you to claim them like property and hold them against their will as your “beloved” wife. The point is, that such twisted views of justice and goodness are not unusual in the scriptures even among its most core doctrines. In the words of Robert Ingersoll…

“The absurdity of the doctrine known as “The Fall of Man” gave birth to that other absurdity known as “The Atonement.” So that now it is insisted that, as we are rightfully charged with the sin of somebody else, we can rightfully be credited with the virtues of another.

So while the answer… “Goodness comes from our Biblical God” is one candidate among other explanations, I would suggest that given the contradictions of the scriptures and the direct evidence of evil in this same God I would hope you could see why I find this a less than convincing candidate for an answer.

Another alternative candidate for an answer to the question of the origins of “goodness” is one that states that goodness comes from our desire to preserve ourselves and our loved ones… admittedly this desire can also result in evil if one does not carefully consider the effects of ones actions… in other words, if some one acts shortsightedly.

This natural explanation is evidenced not only across various cultures, beliefs and disbelief’s but is also seen in varying degrees in other species. This natural explanation thus has the benefit of being free from self contradiction while offering an explanation for both goodness (well reasoned desire for self preservation) and evil (short sighted actions based on self preservation).

This is however a scientific view and thus I do not hold it with FAITH or unwavering commitment… it is simply the best candidate, the best theory, the best answer I have seen at this time… if a better answer comes along then you would find me suggesting such a discovery be awarded a nobel prize as opposed to being burnt at the stake, called heresy, or resigned to hell to suffer forever.

Question: You mentioned in your statement that you hate less now that you are no longer a Christian?

My Response: I am simply saying that I find less to hate as a secular than I did as a Christian. As a Christian we are told we are to hate homosexuality, that we are at war with the world, and that our savior came not to bring peace but to bring a sword that will set family members against family members (Mat 10:34), and on and on… so yes, I find less to hate, less to be in opposition to for no good reason other than because a scripture tells me to… in other words, it is God’s word, don’t ask! Do I mean to say that the scriptures are wrong on all ethical issues? No, but there are certainly many it is wrong on… slavery, sexism, genocide, bigotry, etc. So yes, the exchange of “blind faith” for “reason” has left me with less to hate and more to love.

Question: Do you really find any comfort in such a view? Who do you pray to, who answers your prayers and comforts you?

My Response: Okay, there are really two separate questions here… one is “Do I find comfort in my views?”… and the second is a question about prayer which would also beg the question of the efficacy of prayer. I’ll take one at a time.

As to “comfort”… Yes, there is MUCH comfort to be had my views, but first let me say that even if it did not provide comfort but was still a reality then I would prefer the reality to false comfort. In the same way, if I had an incurable fatal disease I would prefer the doctors give me the truth as opposed to a comfortable fiction. Give me the facts, the probabilities… I prefer the real to the fictional.

But to the question of “is there comfort in a secular worldview?”. Yes, there is more comfort in this than the alternative view, but again please know that my objective is not to find “comfort” but to find what is most probable.

For example, I find it much more comforting having no one to blame for my father’s Parkinson Disease. My father has been the best father one could hope for… he has lived a life much more deserving than many his age, many who were complete losers and yet are still 100% healthy. What comfort is there in believing in a sadistic God that would allow such an injustice?

In the midst of my faith crisis years ago my oldest son German (then 16 months old) fell from a second story window onto concrete. While there where no exterior signs of damage (other than a mild abrasion) his skull had been cracked. As we rushed to the hospital we called everyone we could in our church group. We prayed over him. They prayed over him. We pleaded for him to our God in heaven, failing to ask the obvious question of why God did not stop him from falling in the first place.

At the end of that horrible day I slowly walked down the halls of the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital with my son in my arms. As he gazed up at me, I gazed back with the joy of knowing that the doctors had just told me that he was perfectly fine and could go home… he had survived a fall from a second story window, missed construction debris, been spared the nails and splintered boards, had landed just perfect, had split his skull internally but was fine… he would go home with us that night. Eventually I had to look up, and inevitably my eyes fell upon room after room, parent after parent, child after child receiving news that was the opposite of mine.

My son’s outcome would be characterized by many as a “miracle”… you would think I would be overjoyed and full of faith. I was of course overjoyed with the outcome but the overriding emotion as I walked down that hall was not one of comfort. My son was a great kid and I have tried to be a great father, but I am under no delusions that either he or I were more deserving than these other little ones we were leaving behind.

So although “comfort” was never my objective (and still is not) I can say that admitting that many of life’s tragedies are simply meaningless is much healthier and comforting than pretending their is a sadistic God in the sky who more often than not turns a deaf ear and in fact actively wreaks havoc on the most defenseless of this world. Again if there was evidence for such a Biblical God… despite my distaste for his blood thirst… I would believe in him… but there is not, so fortunately I am not in that uncomfortable position.

Before I leave this topic I feel compelled to comment on a common defense I hear for the atrocities that the Biblical God reeks on our planet daily. It is often said that these tragedies and sufferings serve a higher purpose, one that is beyond our understanding and that such tragedies are required to shape the lives of God’s children, to produce growth and change our hearts. I hear this defense from the same people who tell me that God is all powerful and without limitations… and yet it seems he is limited in his ability to effect change without violence. How can it be that an all-powerful God must resort to something as base and blunt as violence, death, and suffering to accomplish his goals. Is this Biblical God’s power of persuasion so weak or his creativity so inept that he can utilize no other tool but violence, disease, death and suffering to accomplish his goals. This seems patently absurd and at contradiction with itself, especially when the very same scriptures tell us that he is capable of creating a pain free world and that he will one day do just that in a heaven… a place that is to be incapable of producing even a single tear. If he is capable of such a paradise why would he first create a living hell on earth for so many to begin with? Surely the Biblical God could effect his will without stooping to such primitive tools as violence and disease.

Next was your mention of prayer. I would ask that you consider the fact that prayer and the promises made about prayer should be one of the areas were we could see demonstrable evidence for a promise kept. If God kept his promises then I might see how faith could bring some comfort. So lets look at the promises. There are many, many verses I could list but we only need one to establish the promise so lets take…

James 5:13-15 Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.

The promise made in this verse is very straightforward… no grey areas here. The most common prayer request in the world is one for recovery from an illness. Here we have a promise about what will happen when we pray. Although it would be fair to take it on its face and expect recovery every time, we could be more lenient and only expect recovery the majority of the time… and yet, Christian segments of society show no greater tendency to recover than any other segment. If this promise was kept only 10% of the time that would be short of the promise but would still be something… but there is no statistical difference in Christian and Pagans recovery. This demands an explanation.

I have many believers who are family and friends and yet they have not asked to take my father to their church elders for an assured healing… why not? Is it because they don’t care? Surely not. Maybe it is because they know deep down that the promises do not work. That religions makes claims it can’t back up. Maybe it is a bit like the child who finally realizes that Santa could not possibly make it to every house in the world in one night… and yet they decide to keep on “believing” because it is the easier path to take when the majority of the other kids believe and it is just cool to imagine there might really be elves in a workshop.

If I told you that Poseidon was my God and that he has promised me that if I prayed to him he would deliver all the fish I asked for then you would expect for me to be able to show that I was catching more fish than “Poseidon Atheists”… at the very least you would expect to see that on average “Poseidon” fisherman did marginally better in fish quantities that “Non-Poseidon” fisherman. If the stats did not show this then you would say “Hey, you have a problem here… if your God says one thing and does not deliver then that necessarily says something about your God and the validity of your belief in him.” If it is fair to make this criticism of Poseidon’s broken promises, why is it not equally fair to demand an explanation for the broken promises of a “Biblical God”?

I hope you can appreciate why I see your comfort misplaced in a promise that is clearly not kept.

Question: Earlier in you original statement you said… “When I approach the limit of knowledge, rather than fill the gaps wishes or fears formalized into an unquestionable faith, I rather stand in awe and then turn to the effort of advancing my understanding beyond it’s current horizon”… Thaddeus, that statement sounds to me like you think you are smarter than God… surely you can appreciate that insinuating you are smarter than God sounds arrogant?

My Response: I am not sure how “turning to the effort of advancing my understanding” is arrogant. I am only stating my commitment to the task… I am hardly claiming to have succeeded or to have completed the effort and thus POSSESS ALL the answers.

My statement simply says that I am humble enough to admit when there is a gap in my understanding and that I will do all I can to try to advance my understanding in order to span that gap if possible. I no where state that all gaps can be spanned… I happen to think there are gaps in our understanding that we are incapable of filling.

The real hubris is the believer who when faced with the unknowable does not state their gap in knowledge but rather CLAIMS TO KNOW BEYOND A DOUBT and with all FAITH what the answers are. It is the religious who claim to know what happens after death, who claim to know God’s mind, his wishes, his likes and dislikes, the meaning of life, even the particular materials used for pavement in heaven. Believers are the ones who demonstrate the real hubris, and they not only claim to KNOW all these things but they also KNOW that they are the ONLY correct ones, in exclusion to all others, and that everyone else is going to hell where they will get what they deserve… a never ending eternal torture for finite crimes… crimes as simple as thinking the wrong thought about a god who never showed up and never evidenced himself.

Question: You seem to speak of morals and ethics, but without the word of God to establish the standard upon which peoples actions should be measured where do you get your morals?

My Response I have already addressed this at length above… it comes from altruism and a desire for preservation of ones self, loved ones and the environment/society one must continue to exist in. Treat others as you would want others to treat you and those you love.

Question: You said in your original statement that you “find security in the knowledge that secular punishment is based on reason and fairness”… I am not sure what you are referring to here. Are you talking about the justice system we have here in the United States?

My Response: I am simply stating the fact that our justice system (a mere mortal system) requires that the punishment equal the crime, and that this position is morally superior to the “justice” found in the biblical system which supports INFINITE punishment for finite crimes, without the possibility for parole or rehabilitation.

I of course do not believe any of this biblical system to be a reality, but for argument sake… if we were to assume it to be a reality then it has always troubled me that apparently God/Jesus is unable to convince a mere human to become rehabilitated. I guess men are capable of waging convincing arguments that can change the hearts and minds of other men, but God somehow is unable to rehabilitate even one soul in hell… seems he needs to attend some communication and soul winning seminars. It also could be that his message of “love me or else I will burn you forever and ever” is not the most appealing message of love.

Question: A worldview that does not include an afterlife seems very sad to me, but what continually strikes me is your continual statement of “KNOWING”… how can you possibly know what you say you know for certain?

My Response: To explain what I mean by “know” let me share my “Scale of Certainty”. I think it will help avoid some confusion in terms and is something I should have led off with. The following offers a definition for “Hope”, “Belief”, “Knowing”, “Certainty”, and “Faith”. Admittedly I have no ownership of these terms… others may choose to define these terms differently… I only offer the following in order for others to appreciate how I understand these words when I use them.

HOPE

To WISH or HOPE is a very “open-handed” position… one simply states what they desire, what they WILL in a particular situation to be true. The very nature of Hoping often creates a mental environment that is positive and nurturing… it is with hope (in part) that scientists approach their next experiment, it is with hope that we join our life with one another, it is with hope that we struggle politically and socially to make the world a better place. However it is vitally important to note that HOPE does not in any way affirm a certainty about anything other than the emotional stance of the person doing the HOPING… it does not make a statement with any degree of certitude (or even arguably, speculation) about the external, real world.

Example of a hope: I hope the world will find everlasting peace… not stating fact just a mental stance, something I would “will” to be a reality if I could.

BELIEF

With BELIEF we move up the “Scale of Certainty”. We are no longer merely “hoping” we are now saying that we believe with a certain degree of probability that the subject of our belief is true. While we are basing our position on probabilities, this word is often used to describe our “working theory or position”, our current “modus operandi”, our “proto-theory”. Belief is that point where the probability of a subject has reached a critical mass, so as to tip the scales of Reason one way or the other. Admittedly there are those that often use this word indiscriminately and use it to state what they feel is a certainty rather than a high probability.. in these cases the word FAITH would be a better fit. Because BELIEF is used so widely in our common vernacular to describe positions on politics, science, relationships, etc… and because so many of these things are demonstratively real things for which we are making real probabilistic statements, I would suggest that we limit this word to describe probable things rather than opening this word up to confusion by also using it to describe positions on things for which there is no demonstrable or probabilistic evidence… this only confuses matters, especially when there is a word that is a custom fit for just such indemonstrable/improbable positions… as mentioned before, the better word for such things is FAITH, and we will get to that in a moment.

Example of a belief: I believe my wife loves me… she evidences this to me every day in little ways and based on these demonstrable acts of love I believe she loves me.

KNOWING

What do we mean when we say we know something? I would suggest that when we say we “Know” we are saying that we have come to a point where the probability of a particular position has not only reached a critical mass that tips the scales of Reason but that the probabilities are so one sided that one can assume with comfort that the subject is known with as much certainty as can be afforded a finite mind. It is important to note that KNOWING is not certainty in the absolute sense but rather a point at which probability overwhelms the alternatives.

Example of knowing: I know gravity to be real and thus I need not test it by jumping from every window I encounter.

CERTAINTY

Certainty is an absolute 100% statement that is true anywhere in the universe at any time, past, present and future… such a statement by its very nature is well beyond the finite mind… it is impossible for us to test something everywhere at all times and be certain.

FAITH

Since faith is typically a religious term and I am discussing it in a society that is predominantly Christian I will use the definition of faith given in the Bible…

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

In other words… Faith is something hoped for, something believe as certain without any evidence.

Hmmm… So , Hope as we know “wills” or “wishes” something to be true and then we marry our “Wishes” to the absolute character of “Certainty”… the child of this joining is one for which the world has labored under for nearly all of human history… the child of this unholy union is FAITH. Faith is the bastard child of HOPE and CERTAINTY.

Faith, though born in illegitimately sets itself up as the most desirable of all traits… to have Faith is noble, yes? Nope, I am afraid it is not. Faith is being certain without evidence, which is just another way of saying to everyone else that you have the exclusive right to claim as fact (and thus a fact for everyone) something for which you have no evidence.

That is not to say that positions without Reason are necessarily harmful, I encourage Hope and Inspiration which are often without direct basis in reason; however, when Hope wishes to merge with Certainty and thus claim to be fact without proof then this new entity called Faith becomes that which has incited so many to such hatred, and this hatred burns hot against the stark backdrop of absolutes. The very DNA of “Faith” is a double helix of fantasy and unjustified certainty.

Question: In your original statement you said… “As a Secular I know each day is my “eternity” and as such it is not to be wasted…” Wasted? It seems you are saying that a Christians life is wasted. Thaddeus, I would suggest you are not only wasting your life here but you are wasting your eternity as well. After all, if as a believer I am wrong then I have not lost anything but have simply lived a better life for having believed what turned out to be a fantasy. Thaddeus, if you are wrong then you will have lost everything and I will have gained eternity in paradise.

My Response: My intention was not to claim that believers are “wasting” their life… that is for you to decide. If you took this meaning then it is of your own making. I was simply saying that I am committed to doing all I can to make sure that I utilize my time in a way that improves my life and the lives of others… period… no accusation intended.

Believe it or not, my world view does not have as a foundation an “Us versus Them” mentality. I understand this is the mentality of the scriptures with it’s “chosen people”, “remnants”, and “predestined elites” and then all the “OTHERS”, but my world view is not based on that kind of division. I was simply stating my goals as a fellow human being with the responsibility I owe to myself and thus by extension to others.

As to your “what have you got to lose ” statement… this type of argument is classically known as Pascal’s Wager and it is a flawed defense for believing.

Instinctively we all already know the answer to this question… what is at stake when we contemplate believing a lie is the very thing that prevents us from signing on to every crazy idea and belief that comes our way. What is at stake is what lets lets even the believer dismiss the crazy beliefs of all those OTHER religions. How many Christians lie in bed awake wondering whether their better gamble would be to bet on Islam or Hinduism… or vice versa. What is at stake is the same thing that prevents us from buying the midnight infomercial sales pitch of… “Try our program, what have you got to lose! Even if you do not lose 20 pounds in a week you will be better off than you would have been otherwise!”

We know what is at risk here, and in every other area of our life we guard it carefully… what is at risk is what makes us human, what makes us unique, it is our REASON, our RESPECT for REALITY, our respect for others, our self respect and a respect for not wasting our time pursuing a fiction as fact, especially when that pursuit involves criticizing, shunning, and demonizing others.

The price for believing a fantasy is high, it is paid by the believer whose life suffers from the delusion, it is paid by their family who are forced to deal with the effects, and paid by the community that suffers from the cancer of the delusion.

I have heard it said that you can not make a right step in the wrong direction. We should do good for good reasons, not bad reasons. A life of believing in a belief system that is contradictory and false is bad. Period.

All the good that a believer wants to attribute to the ethics of their religion can be had without a deluded view of a god or a commitment to bronze age bigotry, sexism, slavery and hate.

How many hospitals and schools could have been built with the money spent on fancy churches, temples, and ridiculous costumes and hats for priests and preachers? What problems could we solve in the here in now if we spent a little less time focusing on the “hereafter”?

Strong words? Yes, but maybe a little strength is called for these days. Have we not dwelt in the cave long enough? Can we not admit the images on the cave wall were but shadows? Is the beauty of the world outside the cave, the magic of a child’s smile, the taste of salty air not enough? Can each day not be our eternity, the beauty of the cosmos our cathedral? Are we really so self centered and greedy that this world is not enough, that we must have more, that we must have eternity and be willing to sacrifice what we KNOW and WHO we know for what we imagine? Can we only find self worth if we can pretend to be princes in the making, children of God, and instruments of some grandiose plan?

I for one am tired of lives wrecked on the shores of dogma. It is rather ironic that dogma spelled backwards is… “am-god”… after all, this is really what the religious seek… the know they are not gods so they imagine they are the next best thing… maybe they are the progeny, the children of God… they want eternal life like a god, they want to be princes in heaven ruling over angels like a god, they want their crowns of gold, their palace awaiting them, they want the respect of being the representatives and voice of God on earth… so they invent religion in order to make their fantasy true in their own minds and in the process they degrade all those who see it otherwise. Their focus turns to a fictional hereafter instead of the here and now. I suggest that the shores of dogma have wrecks enough… There is much to lose… but with reason much to gain.!

Question: Without God what is the point, why not do whatever makes you want… if we lived like this then society would crumble.

My Response: If you could only for a moment participate in a thought experiment and pretend that tomorrow you would awake convinced that the Biblical God does NOT exist. Do you think it would be very likely that under this new mind set you would suddenly desire to spend the rest of your day in wanton debauchery… raping children, killing small animals for fun, murdering, stealing, etc? I am guessing not. The point is that your assumption that your ethics come from your faith might deserve re-examination.

We too often “trade in fear” rather than in reason. Yes, if someone acts with little thought or contemplation of the far-reaching effect of their actions then they may act in a way that harms others. Acting thoughtfully and taking the time to consider and weigh the pro and cons of various rules, laws, or ethics is something that must be taught and requires effort… but if such an effort is made then I think we find that such contemplation can regulate our rash and short sighted actions. Gods need not apply.

The fear that drives us, drives us apart and is without any evidence in reality. The Bible is self-contradictory and yet many insist on ignoring the plain contradictions.

By way of analogy… I hold journalists to a pretty high standard, and when they fail to live up to this standard I disregard their reports… I expect journalists to get their facts straight, to make sure the narrative is consistent and representative of the facts, and I expect them to get little things like numbers, statistics, and sequence of events correct. I don’t think I am alone in justifiably holding journalist to this standard… I think most of us do (or should) and if the journalist fails we should discredit their stories and dismiss them as an authority. After all, this is what we do to a witness that is contradictory in a courtroom.

I also hold the authors I read to a high standard… I expect them to speak clearly and informatively on their subject. I expect the prose and content to be written so that the intended audience can make perfect sense of what is being said. I expect an author to be clear enough that her intent and “thesis” is not open to broad speculation or interpretation but is plain and obvious. I think most readers expect the same thing and when we find an author delinquent in one of these areas I think most of us count it against the author.

I (and I think most people) rightly expect all these things of journalists and authors… and yet these writers are mere human beings of which many are only of average intellect and skill.

If we are to expect this much from the words of a human being then how much more should we expect from the “greatest intellect in the universe”? Would it not be reasonable to expect that the words of God himself should greatly surpass any mere mortal attempts at communication?

I think this is a fair and reasonable expectation, and thus as a believer and now as a non-believer I continue to expect that out of any written document that purports to be the Word of God… and yet the Bible fails miserably on this account.

I will leave you with the words I began with and hopefully after reading the above they will be clearer and mean more the second time around…

Courier – May 2007

by Thaddeus on May 1, 2007June 3, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – April 2007

by Thaddeus on April 1, 2007June 3, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – March 2007

by Thaddeus on March 2, 2007June 3, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – February 2006

by Thaddeus on February 2, 2007June 3, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – December 2006

by Thaddeus on December 2, 2006June 3, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – November 2006

by Thaddeus on November 2, 2006June 3, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – October 2006

by Thaddeus on October 1, 2006June 6, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – July 2006

by Thaddeus on July 1, 2006June 6, 2021

Click image to view contents.

Courier – June 2006

by Thaddeus on June 1, 2006June 6, 2021

Click to view contents.

Courier – May 2006

by Thaddeus on May 1, 2006June 6, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – April 2006

by Thaddeus on April 1, 2006June 6, 2021

Click image to view contents.

Courier – March 2006

by Thaddeus on March 1, 2006June 6, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – February 2006

by Thaddeus on February 1, 2006June 6, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – January 2006

by Thaddeus on January 1, 2006June 6, 2021

Click image to view contents.

Courier – December 2005

by Thaddeus on December 1, 2005June 6, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – October 2005

by Thaddeus on October 1, 2005June 6, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – August 2006

by Thaddeus on August 1, 2005June 6, 2021

Click image to view content.

Courier – April 2005

by Thaddeus on April 1, 2005June 6, 2021

Click image to view contents…

“I care”

by Thaddeus on July 21, 1995June 3, 2021

Image result for hand holding

Tears fall dry as the wasted winds in winter.

Cold is the heart in the heat of all despair.

The face worn and torn by the tides of Life’s emotions.

Currents of joy between the waves of fear.

Hope seeps and spills down the twisted river.

Tranquil pools of peace meet the rapid’s angry roar.

Somewhere in between is caught the breath of springtime.

Then that breath is lost in a tumble to the fall.

Winter threatens summer with a heat of cold intentions.

Amidst the seasons storms thaws a hope of meaning there.

With the darkest hour comes the value of the dawning.

Despair in retreat at the whispered words, “I care.”

The Thought

by Thaddeus on June 2, 1990June 6, 2021

When a thought from pen to paper goes
there is a loss of it’s original glow.

It’s glean though gone can glean another
and spark a thought in the mind of a brother.

The value of a thought’s unknown for the thinker knows not what seed he’s sown.

The thought so precious must be guarded well and the tongue must carefully this thought tell.

For how this thought is spoken or penned will ultimately decide that thoughts end.

So when your tongue or hands do hold, this thing the thought, more precious than gold.

With reverence and caution the meaning portray or do not at all its meaning attempt to say.

Rhyme’s End

by Thaddeus on May 27, 1990June 3, 2021

Image result for watch in sand

My talent with the tongue and rhyme
Like spring has come and gone with time
And though I’m left with thoughts to speak
My tongue is mute and pen is weak.

Maybe these jewels I’ve never seen
And all my rhymes were but a dream.

My speech is taken prisoner.
My thoughts are shackle bound.
So I’ll leave this world of poetry
Just as it was found.

Standing Still In Silence

by Thaddeus on February 6, 1990June 3, 2021

Image result for old tree
Standing Still in Silence
In the Wind that Worries Wrought
Taken, Took, and Tortured
By Fates’ Folly though we Fought.
But Better to Be Brazen
In This Time of Trouble and Tears
Than to give up, then hopes forgotten
And we leave no monument to our years.

The Pen

by Thaddeus on January 19, 1990June 3, 2021

The pen my friend will always be for it is always there in necessity.

When the ears and cares of others turn cold the pen and paper my thoughts will hold.

Ink to quench my soul tongue’s thirst, giving fancy flight and feelings verse.

Paper with care my thoughts absorb and the pen no longer becomes a sword,

But becomes the salve that saves the soul from anguishes deadly strangle hold.

The pen my friend will always be for it is always there to comfort me.

A Wave

by Thaddeus on November 11, 1989June 3, 2021

Image result for ripple
Some thoughts seem but a ripple
In this great ocean of time.
But as this ripple nears eternity
Its’ significance we may find:
What is but a ripple today
At eternities shores may be a mighty wave.