Happy Friday Digital Neighbors! Good Morning ADD Irregulars, Phamily & Refugees, Dawn Patrol & Early Birds, Later Dayers & Vagabonds, Conversants, Lurkers and all the rest of ya's. A few more quotes and commentary on various aspects of opportunity, which is much better than whining about privilege and hoping you can enshrine some sort of victimhood to make you above criticism, challenge or question. Whining about privilege and enshrining victimhood is probably a guaranteed ticket to emotional or mental illness. Well enough me for the moment - on to some quotes!
Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. - Charles de Gaulle
Once a virtue, now an act of extremism, self-reliance is the boogey-man of any person or group that cannot depend upon goodwill to maintain the relationship. One of the rules I learned early in life: The more you have to control a person, the less you actually love them. In families, this becomes the toxic environment that stifles differentiating yourself from the family norms. Non-controlling individuals can voice dissatisfaction and disapproval without the threat of cancellation, excommunication or exile. They are really the same reality, but just slightly different packaging. Controlling persons, families, or communities will move to exile almost immediately both as a way to silence the outlier and warn others not to follow suit. I am not saying that exile shouldn't sometimes be used, but it ought to be the last resort after all other attempts at reconciling and understanding have been exhausted. In a work environment, it is a little different if you decide to go off-brand and undermine your place of employment. Sometimes extracting the cavity is simply the best thing to do.
Sorry, wandered off-topic - self-reliance is a good thing. They more we can cultivate it the more freedom we will actually possess. By that metric I have almost no freedom except to act defiant when I come to a point of disagreement. My ability to sustain myself is at a very low threshold and my greying is not helping in that matter. At least I know I am not in a good position to survive an interruption of normalcy for a very long period. That knowledge makes me less prone to panic in the moment, I am not a chicken little person. Do I get stressed, absolutely. Do I feel fear, most certainly. But I tend not to let the animal run the person once the initial flash of emotions have washed through the system.
Of course the only way to know is to subject oneself to various self-imposed tests. Fasting and abstaining from things that you could lose in the crisis is a good preparation for the moment you may not have a choice. Try giving up comforts as a matter of self-exploration, of measuring what your interior state under absence will be. The vast majority of your neighbors cannot live without comfort and cannot handle inconvenience. Trying to test your limits on both is good preparation that require no special skills other than the willing to try it and to pay attention to what is taking place in your interior state. I guess the bad news is if it pushes you to a break down, at least you know and might be able to correct that before you find yourself lost in a crisis and the animal is replacing the person.
No man is free who is not master of himself. - Epictetus
Self-mastery and self-reliance are good and praiseworthy things anytime in the chapters of history, but very important when the system is fragile. The system is fragile. Probably more than I realize and that doesn't fill me with hope for the immediate chapters ahead of us. I think the hallmark of mastering oneself is to master what comes out of your mouth. That of course begins with what you coddle in your mind and decide to voice or not voice. I am not really thinking of the use of vulgar words, humor or such things in normal conversation, but rather what you say when you are irritated, inconvenienced or faced with prolonged discomfort. Acknowledging dark thoughts is not the same as acting on them. The doing is impactful, the consideration of it is dangerous.
How you react when the joke is on you can reveal your character. - Robert Half
No one is immune to the power of humor. Even comedians, who know how to take themselves lightly and easily find humor in life's absurdities, know that humor pulls back the curtain on attitudes and behaviors. Powerful humor can exposes vulnerabilities, give rise to questions and make the target feel stupid or foolish. That last bit used to get comics silenced and killed. Think skin, small ego and a readiness to laugh at yourself is probably the best defense when targeted by a clever comedian. Many aren't clever enough to be able to reply to the such verbal assaults. They usually get mad. Mad people become animals. I think I've mentioned that. 🤨 Laugh at yourself, it is some of the best medicine for your ego. Accept that your most treasured convictions or beliefs probably have a something odd or amusing about them than a clever mind can exploit with humor. IF, if you can get over that and over yourself, you have a great chance of real autonomy and cultivating some depth of self-reflection. Of course, I could be full of crap. 💩 Thanks for reading this long my dear digital neighbors!
Missouri Creek Photograph by Brian Kerls
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
