Good Morning Digital Neighbors!!! Happy Thursday ADD Irregulars, WSN Aficionados, Friends & Refugees, PHAM & Misfits, Conversants, Lurkers, Seekers, Wanderers and Lost of Locals.
Lately in Coffee Talk we have been talking over the vast lies, misrepresentations and manipulations of modern life. It is a recurrent topic since our lives and culture are often built on bullshit assumptions that often go unquestioned in our desire to not have to think beyond the narrative or our own semi-vetted assumptions. Questioning is tiring, and one cannot spend their days doing nothing but questioning and disputing, there are things that need to be done. Most people don't seem to spend much of their days questioning, wondering or digging deeper in a desire to find a smidge of clarity or understanding. The acceptance of assumptions goes on and hopefully nothing disturbs it, especially nutjobs and all their doubts and skeptical comments.
While I have often maligned the CABAL of the Enemedia, Perma-career-statist, Academia & Prosely-teachers of the Book of Woke , The BIGS: Tech & Pharma and Enterlamement I know that any of us who are skeptical of the NARRAVTIVE can become blind to our own assumptions without knowing it. No one is free of knowing incorrectly or incompletely, no one is free of the subtle pull of confirmation bias working as the background music of their internal dialogue (if they have one).
Are we just screwed with an inescapable state of erroneous knowledge or unquestioned assumptions? Are the only options mindless groupfeel or loner conspiracy kookery? I don't think so, but if you are a questioner, doubter, skeptic or seeker I think you have to embrace a few reality points to anchor you in reality. The following points are probably self-evident to most of us wandering around Locals, but it is good for me to list them for my own clarification. Enjoy or ignore, you've been warned.
1. I could be wrong. - Most will find this a hard pill to swallow. Warped self-love begins with never having to feel you might be wrong. You know, they don't. That pretty much settles it. Until you can tell yourself "I was wrong" forget being a person with affiliations and settle for being among the herd.
2. My most beloved assumptions/information/knowledge are incomplete. This is part B of point #1. Until some sort of humility can take root in your person, welcome to Club Bias and herd-thinking & group-feeling. I have at best partial knowledge of the things I treasure most. Things I think I know, might have been built on past assumptions now proven to be wrong or incomplete. Learning never stops.
3. Know & Own your shit, especially the shit committed or espoused by the group(s) you most claim for fellowship or identity (as much as I hate that co-opted word). Do your best not to bleach out the stains of past crimes or atrocities, own them but don't wallow in them. Owning your own shit also means you ought to know and be able to talk about the good your group has done. If you group has no good to claim as part of its story, get out! Mono-thinkers can only focus on the fault, the point of castigating you in their talking points and they don't move beyond that. Mono-thinkers are at best herd leaders, but still part of the herd. Many mono-thinker are known by their empty degrees and absurdities of self-expression.
4. Be prepared to be tired and tempted to either anger or dismay. There will be numerous experiences of surprise and "you're kidding me?" The list will keep growing of lies, damn lies and the NARRATIVE. WTF is it now is an inescapable experience.
5. Find reasons to laugh every single day. Not the spiteful laughter of a cynic, but laughter at the absurdity of life, especially yourself. Life is funny.
6. Spend time away from your research into the shaft of bullshit. Putting a spotlight on the lies is a great thing, exposing the bias and questioning everything is good, but it cannot be non-stop. Nature, music, literature, the arts and games with others offer a break from the all consuming sky-is-fallingism that any of us skeptics can be tempted to embrace & espouse.
7. Know that nothing is beyond questioning. Anything that cannot be questioned is not worth knowing or believing. Just don't rest in a state of unfulfilled questions, questions should be seeking some sort of conclusion or acceptable assumption that is open to further revision and growth. Strive for reasonable confidence in your limited knowledge.
8. Care for your acre of reality with the greatest amount of loving attentiveness. Make you home a haven, your family a place honest & humble vulnerability, your adventures into society armed with sufficient awareness not to be seduced or blinded by all the lies and distortions.
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 ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
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2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
6:00 AM - 8:00 AM (CST)
Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31/2027
Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
White Pilled Wednesday - A break from the heaviness of news and current events to focus upon things more personal & positive for the first hour of Coffee Talk.
Afternoon Chats - Most Tuesday, Friday & Sundays 2:00 PM Central
Other chats as posted in the community.
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.”
