If you Google “Paris Hilton Jail” you’ll get 15 million hits. If you Google “Downing Street Memo” you'll get only 800,000 hits. A terrifying real-world topic, “Greenland ice sheet,” will only return 900,000 hits. I suppose it’s because there are no videos of memos or glaciers having sex. What brought…
I am cynical about the day called Father’s Day. For most of my life, I have seen it as yet another store-sponsored holiday. America traditionally “celebrates” Father’s Day by buying trinkets from a store. I can’t think of a better way to degrade any occasion.
Father’s Day has become something much more meaningful to me since I became a father, but it is not about receiving trinkets bought at stores. I write this fully aware that there are other, more comprehensive, ways of interpreting the trinkets.
What is it to be a father? Like most things in life, being a father is not about being brilliant. It’s mostly about pacing yourself. It’s about staying reasonably focused over the long-haul. It’s about dealing with fatigue. It’s been about repeatedly saying “no” to one’s momentary desires in order to accomplish something much more important in the long run.
I envisioned this blog to be a place for ideas. For that reason, I’ve minimized revealing much information about my family. It’s not that I’m not crazy about my family. I am. I adore my wife and children. It’s just that I’ve tried to respect their privacy. Then again, writing about events from six years ago doesn’t quite seem quite so invasive. Therefore, I’m using this post about my real life children to illustrate the idea of parenthood.
It is true that being a father is about bringing home a paycheck to feed and clothes little children. Therefore, being a father can sometimes …
If anyone is looking for a Good Book that endorses and promotes human slavery, Ebonmuse has a recommendation for you. No cheating by skipping around, now. Just read the passages he presents and then heed the conclusions of Ebonmuse.
Main Entry: ad•dic•tion Pronunciation: &-'dik-sh&n, a- Function: noun 1 : the quality or state of being addicted 2 : compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly : persistent compulsive use of a…
As human animals, we are condemned to live with great ignorance in an unpredictably violent world. To compensate, most of us work hard to develop an extraordinary expertise to protect ourselves from considering our precarious existence. We work hard to pre-screen toxic thoughts. We rarely contemplate our own inevitable deaths, for example. We are often successful at protecting ourselves from real-life things that would terrify us if we dared to squarely consider them.
Once in a while, though, we get a terrifying glimpse of unvarnished reality. For instance, we sometimes suddenly realize that we are affixed to that Conveyor Belt of Life, a “belt” that inexorably moves us toward a time when we will be old if we’re lucky, then lifeless. Whenever this terrible thought brings shivers, we quickly change channels to consider something less macabre. Yet we are all strapped onto that Conveyor Belt, even our precious young children. In 150 years, everyone currently living on Earth will be dead. It is difficult to conjure up more disturbing thoughts.
What other toxic thoughts occur when our mental guard is down? How about the thought that we are not meaningfully different from each other. Or that the world is full of mobile intestinal tracts–walking talking intestinal tracts. Or that our bodies are rife with parasites. And that we are animals. Or that we are breathing, thinking meat, a point directly yet elegantly made by a touring entourage of corpses known as BodyWorlds. And here’s another toxic truth most of …