Know Thyself through MESSAGING
Reflecting on the recent Grammy’s, Winter Olympic Opening Ceremonies, and the Super Bowl Halftime show; arguably three of the biggest stages before the world’s eyeballs, is it just me or did you also perceive some degree of messaging….say, oh I don’t know, something in the vein of:
Pardon me, America, um…. you could be doing it better.
Just me?
WIBCI we represented ourselves better?
I was watching a pair of pale and wispy Olympic ice skaters from a newish country, bedazzled up with aggressively bunned hair, frozen smiles, heaving for breathe, anxiously awaiting scores for the pinnacle of a lifetime’s worth of hard work and achievement.
The only thing blighting this moment is the U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A chant obnoxiously drowning out the commentators attempts to make the down time interesting.
Poorly played Emma.
Albeit the timing for this particular moment was less than classy, to me, chanting this in public places no longer rings of patriotism, it seems more like a bully mantra, more likely to color my cheeks with embarrassment than pride. Maybe if you were there in the stadium, surrounded by countrymen, it might be catchy, but from my couch, it wasn’t the best look.… more “WIBCI Post #123”
How President’s SHOULD speak to journalists:
For anyone who can’t remember a non-circus White House briefing, how the current President speaks to journalists, particularly women is NOT to be emulated. These interactions with journalists are meant to give the people of the US a better understanding of the goings on about the POTUS, not an embarrassing display of his insecurities. It is not impressive to speak like an impotent ogre to women. It is not a display of power, quite the opposite actually, it shows fear that these journalists, even those without male genitalia, are smarter than you.
I hope the bar will be picked back up, dusted off and put at the proper level someday.
WIBCI we embodied separation of church and state?
Wouldn’t It Be Cool If when the new POTUS was sworn into office that he/she/they placed their hand on the US Constitution?
Here are the words they say:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Nothing against the Bible but if we truly are tolerant of all religions and not supposed to cross the streams per Thomas Jefferson, than why not swear on the actual thing you are supposed to ‘preserve, protect and defend’?
Know Thyself through PHILOSOPHY
I find Philosophy fascinating, such that I’m begun a course to study them chronologically across multiple sources and take note of what stands out from each man.
I like starting from the beginning because I believe it almost impossible to follow geniuses in any field and proclaim they had zero influence.
I want to try and picture when was the first time in history this happened:
Guy A. after hearing someone speak and finding themselves in the company of a friend sometime after saying (in my mind I’m picturing Latin, white guys, togas, and the memory recall that was necessary before he printing press):
Hey, ___ious ___imus I heard this guy the other day say something rather interesting….
and Guy B. follows this with:
Huh?! That is interesting, say it again and I’ll write it down. Where did I put that papyrus?
and this writing or copies of it makes it way through a few thousand of years without deteriorating, being recycled, being seen as heretical, and falls into the right hands and is disseminated, discussed, critiqued, and remembered throughout history as something to learn from. I also like trying to figure out why I want to learn about this, the answers, at least in part, are better summed up by experts:
There are, in all ages, men born to be in bondage to the opinions of the society in which they live. There are not a few who today play the free thinker and the philosopher…-Jean Jacques Rousseau
The enterprise is not an essentially civic one. It does not begin with a settled position on political and moral matters, then seeking ways to enshrine the settled view. Rather the mission is a broadly epistemological one. The search, as we shall discover, is the search for truth, or at least for such illumination as to allow us to see the biases and half-truths that have lead from one blind alley to another in the labyrinth of thought.
–Daniel N. Robinson D. Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University
‘So much of our lives is meaningless, a self-canceling vacillation and futility; we strive with the chaos about us and within; but we would believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls. We want to understand;… we want to seize the value and perspective of passing things, and so to pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance. We want to know that the little things are little and the big things are big, before it is too late; we want to see things now as they will seem forever – ‘in the light of eternity’. We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death. We want to be whole, to coordinate our energies by criticizing and harmonizing our desires; for coordinated energy is the last word in ethics and politics, and perhaps in logic and metaphysics too….We may be sure that if we can but find wisdom, all things else will be added unto us. Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.’
–Will Durrant The Story of Philosophy:
… more “Know Thyself #122”
WIBCI
Wouldn’t It Be Cool If: once in a lifetime experiences were given to the deserved?
I have seen, many, many ads for a show featuring the fresh prince where he traverses the globe and experiences life altering moments, no other human has probably combined in a single lifetime.
and I find myself full of resentment.
Why does someone who slapped away a charmed life get to experience such things?! So an actor and corporate conglomerates wish to profit off of this guy’s reality TV moral comeback? Why does such a person deserve such an honor? Why not give this opportunity to a special ed teacher? Someone who could never afford it and actual has lived a life that doesn’t need to be forgiven/forgotten? Someone whose ego doesn’t desperately require our forgiveness for the despicable things they have done?
Boo.… more “WIBCI Post #121”
The other day I caught snowflakes on my tongue. It was blowing perfectly and the snowflakes had girth yet took their sweet time as they danced down. I think it had been years since I had experienced such a visceral, pointless, moment of focus. It was fun.
I do not wish to be young again. I’m all set with such moments of insecurity, and I don’t wish to unlearn, even for a moment, what life has taught me. But I do think it is beneficial to fleetingly and frivolously live in a moment; to swing, float, or stand in a storm.… more “Know Thyself #121”
WIBCI we knew what the word TYRANT means?
In the Prologue of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he describes how in Greek Mythologies Daedalus had done the Gods dirty by NOT sacrificing the bull he was supposed to:
“He had converted a public event to personal gain, whereas the whole sense of his investiture as king had been that he was no longer a mere private person. The return of the bull would have symbolized his absolutely selfless submission to the functions of his role. The retaining of it represented, on the other had, an impulse to egocentric self-aggrandizement. And so the king “by the grace of God” became the dangerous tyrant Holdfast – out for himself.”
Joseph Campbell goes on to describe the characteristics universal to TYRANTS:
“..the individual cuts himself as a unit off from the larger unit of the whole community: and so the One was broken into the many, and these then battled each other-each out for himself-and could be governed only by force.
He is the hoarder of the general benefit.
He is the monster avid for the greedy rights of ‘my and mine.’
The havoc wrought by him is described in mythology and fairy tale as being universal throughout his domain. This may be bo more than his household, his own tortured psyched, or the lives that he blights with the touch of his friendship and assistance; or it may amount to the extent of his civilization.
The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself and his world-no matter how his affairs ay seem to prosper. Self-terrorized, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and battle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which are primarily the reflections of the uncontrollable impulses to acquisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence is the world’s messenger of disaster.“
Remind YOU of anyone?!… more “WIBCI Post #120”
Know thyself by trusting your gut
I find, for me, there is a direct correlation between how analog an agreement is and how much I trust it.
For example; I have more faith in a human than a bot, an ink signature to a digital one, a smile to an emoticon; I prefer hearing a voice to receiving an email, a handshake over a secure file location, a test drive as opposed to car-trader-max-vanna, and sex to porn.
I like to clearly comprehend the messages of others through tone, body language, sarcasm, eye contact, and pheromones; because these things are very difficult, if not impossible, to fake.… more “Know Thyself #120”
WIBCI humility and class mattered?
I tried to find a historical example of a political leader renaming an already named thing in honor of themselves that remained so named one they were inevitably no longer in power. (Such things appear historically not to have staying power).
WIBCI the only individuals publicly honored had to have done something honorable for said public?
Seems to squish out all the honor if you put the crown on your own head. Just me?… more “WIBCI Post #119”
Know Thyself through being thoroughly entertained.
I watched a DVD, from a DVD player last night and it was amazing!
When I wanted to watch the movie, I put the disc in the player, pressed play, and the movie…..started.
I could pause, rewind, and replay of my own free will. Even better, the content was NEVER interrupted. No ads, banners, previews, recaps, pop ups, teasers, trailers, commercial content or solicitation is any way shape or form, no breaking news, no celebrities selling out, nor was anyone in the movie branded with logos. No one tried to sell me something through the use of cute cartoons, catchy tag lines, or really happy people monochromatically dancing and singing to distract you from the elongated list of side effects that make you wonder how bad the ailment could be.
I got to focus on the movie, in its entirety, unriddled with commercials, the way those that created it wanted me to.
Entertainment is art, not filler between advertisements.
Pure is good.
WIBCI there was a stage past blame?
It appears to me, in my limited experience, that people are currently quite proficient at diagnosing why they are mentally the way they are. They seem to have hit the nail on the head, figured the cause of their woes, and psychoanalyzed themselves, their ego, Id, and their super ego, exhaustedly.
Oddly enough, this seems to have been the finish line. Love the self awareness, but are you sure you are done?
Is the goal identification or fixing?
If an engine broke down and you discovered the issue, you wouldn’t just acknowledge the issue and then get a snack, right?
Very cool that the time was spent on really thinking about your past, nothing wrong with that. Just saying after you discover that little truth about you, after the ah-ha-reflection, spend time thinking about how to fix it/not do it anymore/make up for lost time/stop resenting/try to like kale/stop thinking so many judgy thoughts about your co-workers…..etc.… more “WIBCI Post #118”
In the 1985 movie Back to the Future, Doc (Dr. Emmett Brown), has four portraits on the mantle in his home of: Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein. Standing before Edison, Doc pleads:
‘Tom, how am I going to generate that kind of power?! It can’t be done, it can’t!’
There is a theory that Doc has been thinking about time travel for quite a while, even before 1955. Doc also knows that interference in the past would change the future, altering any photographs of the interfered individuals. The on-line position is that these portraits represent the individuals he would most want to meet if he were to ever concur time travel. Their prime position on the mantel will be proof of whether he manages in the future to go back in time, if the experience changed them.
My four portraits of people I would just want to be around, assuming language is to be no barrier….. I could get it down to eight, but my list includes the ladies….so…Leonardo Da Vinci, Hypatia of Alexandria, Charles Dickens, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Joan of Arc, Benjamin Franklin, Cleopatra, and Dean Cassidy
Who are YOUR four/eight?… more “Know Thyself #118”
Suddenly it wasn’t only a personal thing to me. I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better. I could see boys going down under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them that there was still good in it, and they wouldn’t believe you if you did. It was too vast a problem to just be a personal thing.
-SE Hinton The Outsiders
I thought about how selfless this thought is. How anti-narcissistic it is. Thinking like this takes time, quiet, reflection, and consideration.
If you could, would YOU tell them there is still good in the world? How much?
… more “WIBCI Post #117”
I like days the commercial world shuts down: National Holidays that create long weekends and massive weather events necessitating getting anything thought to be necessary while sequestered in advance. If these bonus days happen in the wintertime, all the better. I liked it better before the days of online shopping and delivery for almost everything. I find it cozy and comforting to stock up, hunker down, and dig in. I like being inside my home knowing there is nothing I’m expected to accomplish for anyone else; the day is mine to with it what I want.
If you knew you were going to be snowed in for over 24 hours, what would you do to prepare and then what would you do on YOUR day?… more “Know Thyself #117”