Ideas & Time

Good ideas
Derive from previous ideas
And only occur to us when their times come;
None of us can ever have a good idea
Whose time has not yet come.
04.01.13

Love & Enemies

To love our enemies
We must shed fear and anger
And replace them with vicarious empathy.
03.31.13

Change & Evidence

We would rather
Make up justifications
Than change our minds
In response to evidence.
03.30.13

Conceal & Beauty

Beauty half-concealed
Is amplified by imagination
Whereas beauty fully revealed
Is diminished by its imperfections.
03.29.13

Unethical & Cruelty

Everything we do
That’s ethically wrong
Is a form of cruelty against others.
03.28.13

Talking & Making Love

A good test of a couple’s friendship
Is how long they talk after making love.
03.27.13

Technology & Industrialization

The most serious adverse consequence
Of modern technology and industrialization
Is the global epidemic of obesity.
03.26.13

Standards & Excellence

If our own standards of excellence
Do not exceed the expected
We are not excellent.
03.25.13

Winners & Attitude

The true winners in life
Are those who can maintain
In spite of all that befalls them
An indomitably cheerful attitude.
03.24.13

Reason & Enemies

Reason’s many enemies:
(Emotion, passion, intuition, delusion, situation
Illness, pain, fatigue, deprivation, need, and stress)
Distort logic in favor of irrational thinking or justification;
Since most of us can never be free from all these
Most of us can never reason perfectly.
03.23.13

Governments & Children

Governments, like children
Are quarrelsome, self-interested, and wasteful;
But, unlike children, they never grow up.
03.22.13 

Bureaucracies & Injustices

Bureaucracies
Use euphemisms
To sanction injustices.
03.21.13

Age & Power

Life is power;
We gain it as we grow
And we lose it as we age.
03.20.13

We & Someone Else

Discoursing on how bad someone else is
Helps us forget how bad we really are.
03.19.13

Ahead & Behind

High quality living ends
When we start looking behind
Instead of looking ahead.
03.18.13

Incentives & Enlisting

Incentives insist
We resist, then justify
And softly enlist.
03.17.13

Others & Ourselves

The best way to know what people think of us
Is to find what they say about us to their friends;
The best way to deal with what people think of us
Is to only care about what we think of ourselves.
03.16.13

Conscience & Thoughts

We need to retreat with fear
Whenever thoughts or feelings
Contrary to our conscience
Find justifications.  
03.15.13

Incompetnece & Learning

When we have been incompetent
We respond with anger and accusations
When our incompetence is pointed out to us;
We are seldom willing to accept or learn
From our own incompetence.
03.14.13

Doing & Dying

When doctors tell us
If we continue to smoke
It would eventually kill us
We continue to smoke;
And when statesmen tell us
That if we continue to do
What we have been doing
It would eventually kill our country
We continue to do
What we have been doing.
03.13.13

Equality & Equalizers

The great equalizers
Disease and death
Are abhorred by humanity.
All the de-equalizers
Such as country, creed, ideology,
Power, wealth, youth, and beauty
Are revered by humanity.
Such is our love of equality.
03.12.13

Modern & Medicine

Modern medicine
Proudly spends
Less time with patients
And more time with computers.
03.11.13

Trust & Burden

The burden of trust

Is heaviest on the honest
And lightest on the dishonest.
03.10.13

Power & Corruption

Driver aggression being proportional
To the size and power of the driven vehicle
Is a daily reminder of the corrupting power of power.
03.09.13

Successful & Unsuccessful

Contrived lawsuits are means
By which the unsuccessful
Persecute the successful. 
03.08.13

Leeches & Government

The leaches of democracy are three:
Lobbies, corruption, and bureaucracy.
The leaches of dictatorship are three:
Suppression, censorship, and nepotism.
03.07.13

Emotions & Justifications

We generalize
With our emotions
We individualize
With our reason
And we justify
With our biases.
03.06.13

Youth & Desires

When youth was exploding with desires
It actually believed that it was the one desiring;
Until old age slowly revealed that youth
Was invariably pre-programmed
To feel and behave
The way it did;
Nothing personal, after all.
03.05.13

Dislike & Learn

If we dislike a faction, an ideology, a person
We should be careful not to dislike
Everything about them
Lest we miss learning
From their hidden attributes
Some valuable lessons.
03.04.13

Aggravations & Aggravated

We should not get aggravated at aggravations;
They stimulate our minds, help us appreciate peace
And challenge us to find creative solutions.
03.03.13

Enemies & Friends

Listen to your enemies
And pay attention to those
Who dislike or wish to harm you;
You will learn much more from them
Than from your friends.
03.02.13

Achievement & Struggle

Achieving
Without struggle
Can only be done illicitly.
03.01.13