jozef.warum.net

Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past - the potentialities they have actualized - and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.

2012-02-04T14:14:17Z

In fact, the opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of our lives. But also the potentialities alone are so affected. For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irrevocably lost, but rather, on contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity. From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past - the potentialities they have actualized - and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past. ... But today's society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy an, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual's value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler's program, that is to say, "mercy" killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer.

--Man's Search For Meaning

Their faces are frozen in artificial smiles

2012-02-04T13:42:08Z

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to "be happy". But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to "be happy". Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation. This need for a reason is similar in another specifically human phenomenon - laughter. If you want anyone to laugh you have to provide him with a reason, e.g., you have to tell him a joke. In no way is it possible to evoke real laughter by urging him, or having him urge himself, to laugh. Doing so would be the same as urging people posed in front of a camera to say "cheese,", only to find that in the finished photographs their faces are frozen in artificial smiles.

--Man's search for meaning

a good Christmas-tree-puller

2012-01-09T17:34:26Z

A good man, a good rope, and a good Christmas tree are transposed when the man is hanged by the rope on the Christmas tree. As a transposition, this is axiologically bad; but it is an axiologically good bad, that is, a good transposition, namely, a good hanging. On the other hand, if a man pulls the Christmas tree behind him on a rope we have a composition of values, of the same elements, and the complex value "man-pulling-Christmas-tree" or "Christmas-tree-puller," the concept of which contains all three connotations in question. The actual person fulfilling this concept is "a good Christmas-tree-puller."

--Robert S. Hartman

We May Be Rich But They Are Happy

2011-12-07T21:30:24Z

And this pressure of ready-made pastimes and amusements affects another source of the joy still apparent in pretechnical societies - the element of spontaneity, of a direct, fresh response to living and being. This spontaneity is not easy to define. In fact, none of the phenomena of happiness lends itself too well to our typically modern dissecting and analyzing intelligence. There is a factor in it of rejoicing in the sheer existence of some object - a bird, a flower, a song a sword. But there is an element, too, of enhancing the object by communicating to it the power of life of the observer's own personality. The Africans have a name for a man's power to enhance, in beauty, force and emotion, the given facts of being. They call it nommo. And men with this gift - poets, singers, seers, saints - are said to have baraka, the power of enhancement, of giving and having life and having it more abundantly. For societies in which this is a high and valued endowment, it is virtually impossible to conceive of such modern phrases as "to kill time" or "the problem of leisure."

...

But, in the larger sense of human existence needing, for joy and sanity, a sense of purpose and direction, an awe and wonder, which, as Einstain reminded us, is the very source of inquiry and hende of science - in this sense, our technical society, so wrapped up in means and manipulation, too often fails to give us direction and dedication, without which we can be rich and healthy and strong, yet bored and joyless as well.

--Barbara Ward (1963)

Good news - The world is good!

2011-11-27T16:13:45Z

Anything which under one concept is good because it fulfills the concept may under another concept be bad because it does not fulfill that concept. Thus, as Spinoza observed, a good ruin is a bad house, and a good house is a bad ruin. It is the art of the optimist always to find that concept in terms of which the thing appears good, and that of the pessimist always to find that concept in terms of which the thing appears bad. The thing is always the same; optimism and pessimism appear in the art of naming and hence understanding it. ... A thing is good if it has all the properties of its concept. The proper concept of the world must contain all the natural properties there are, have been, or will be. The world is that which has all these properties and thus always fulfills its concept. Therefore it is good. If a concept of the world is posited that does no contain all the properties there are, then it is not the concept of the world, and wrong thinking results, in the light of which the world is bad because it does not fulfill the concept posited. The goodness of the world is, of course, not ethical but axiological goodness. Although the world as such is good, the things in it may, indeed must be, both good and bad; for as we have seen anything that is good under one concept may be bad under another. Badness thus is the transposition of concepts or the incompatibility of things which in themselves are good. The world, thus, axiologically good as it is, contains the maximum variety of good and bad things (cf. Leibniz's pre-established harmony).

--Robert S. Hartman

What is the value of value?

2011-11-25T16:22:43Z

Why ought I to be good?
Is it better to be good than bad?
Is it conceivable that it would be better to be bad than good?
Ought the good to be?
Ought what is to be good?
Is the best better than the good?
If the good out to be, what about the best?
Is the perfect better than the good?
Is the perfect better than the best?
Ought what is to be perfect?
If the perfect ought to be, ought the good not to be?
Is the best good enough?
Is the best perfect?
Is the perfect worse rather then better than the good?
Is there any good at all?
Is all good relative?
What is the value of value?
What is the value of fact?
Is value?

--Robert S. Hartman

Limited by what we fail to notice

2011-11-13T18:53:26Z

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

--Daniel Goleman

Wenn ein Kind immer müssen muss

2011-11-10T20:15:12Z

Text yields, bends, and accommodates

2011-10-29T18:09:38Z

Some students begin by forming an opinion ... and it is not till afterwards that they begin to read the texts. They run a great risk of not understanding them at all, or of understanding them wrongly. What happens is that a kind of tacit contest goes on between the text and the preconceived opinions of the reader; the mind refuses to grasp what is contrary to its idea, and the issue of the contest commonly is, not that the mind surrenders to the evidence of the text but that the text yields, bends, and accommodates itself to the preconceived opinion.

--Fustel de Coulanges

Choose wisely

2011-10-07T04:08:15Z

If you do something you enjoy
long enough
eventually someone will come along
and offer you money
to stop enjoying it
so they can take it away
from you
and break it into little pieces
because this is what makes them happy.

Choose wisely.

--Dallas Clayton

Our day cries for moral leadership.

2011-09-30T04:24:06Z

We must mobilize our compassion and the intrinsic moral goodness of America to break the power chain of divine sovereignties and permit the human state to succeed the military state. For it is the moral goodness of America that makes this country great, the goodness that recognizes the infinite intrinsic value of the human person. We need to translate this moral goodness into international relations. We need to export it, for, in the long run, it -- rather our wealth, our standard of living, and our named power -- is what attracts the rest of the world to America. I have no doubt that the Soviet Union fears our goodness much more than our badness.

--Robert S. Hartman (1963)

Give people exactly what they want

2011-09-19T04:29:37Z

When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.

--Steve Jobs

I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

2011-09-05T13:52:59Z

17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.
34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.
37. If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.
49. If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.
51. If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less
people-oriented position.
53. If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.
61. If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.
64. I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.
84. I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.
92. If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)
100. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

--The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

Enough

2011-09-02T04:13:25Z

Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.

Increase the speed of light.

2011-09-01T04:58:46Z

   (2)  No matter how hard you push and no matter what the priority,
        you can't increase the speed of light.

        (2a) (corollary). No matter how hard you try, you can't make a
             baby in much less than 9 months. Trying to speed this up
             *might* make it slower, but it won't make it happen any
             quicker.

--RFC 1925 - The Twelve Networking Truths