Android philosophy:

[jupiviv]

Recently I've started typing aphorisms on my mobile while travelling, on droidedit. I guess this is like having a twitter feed, but not as lame. Anyways, here are the aphorisms written so far:

Nature could be called our true mother, but we were never truly born.

Many fields of science (especially the soft ones) have become intellectualised housework on a grand scale.

The job of a psychologist is to tell people how to be insane in the proper way.

Anyone who gets paid for speaking or searching for the truth is doing neither. The reason for this is that if getting paid is regarded as a condition for speaking or seeking the truth, then to that degree there is untruth, as the truth is known for its own sake.

Nothing stimulates thought in a man as much as the elimination of his hope. Attachment to specific chains of causation that brings hope, and makes us ignorant of the rest.

We consider it praiseworthy to go through that which we want to avoid at all costs (suffering) in order to attain what we desire most, i.e, happiness. And yet, we don't consider it nearly as praiseworthy to have attained happiness without enduring any suffering whatsoever! Has anyone ever heard of a man being praised more for trying to reach his destination by going in the opposite direction than for being already present in it?

When you stop trying to avoid certain things because they cause suffering, you will see that suffering ceases. The same for happiness. Stop trying to possess/achieve things that lead to happiness, and happiness will cease (both as state of mind and desire.)

The refinement of pleasure is achieved by limiting the conditions that produce it, so that the more refined one's pleasure becomes, the sooner it ends (or one gets bored of it), and one wants something new. Perhaps that's the point of refinement - people don't want to miss out on the manifold avenues of pleasure.

Great men, great thoughts and great deeds are often merely bridges between lesser ones.

No religious doctrine conceives of the spiritual as being utterly beyond the material or the physical, and yet this is precisely what religion should do, and what religious people say it does.

Blaming religion for war and violence is like blaming chickens for bird flu.

People are usually not offended by a misanthrope, provided he believes that it is misanthropy itself, as opposed to his honesty about his misanthropy, that makes him unique.

When charity is not merely self-righteousness, it is insurance for it.

A career is what women have as a substitute for a family. I think the reason those career women feel incomplete and such after a certain age is that they don't spend enough "quality time" with their jobs, and so start a family to make up for it.

For every politician, the nobility of a political ideal is measured by the number of people who consider it to be noble.

Hedonism is a self-contradictory philosophy because, if implemented honestly, the hedonist would actually spend more time thinking about pleasure than partaking in it.

The sage never wants anything but finite things, precisely because he only wants to infinite. All finite things are means to his end.

It's said that three's a crowd, but that isn't true. Even one can be a crowd. All crowds, after all, can be reduced to ones.

Competence is often only valued because it obscures incompetence.

Every sociopolitical system is necessarily a meritocracy. What determines the merit of such a system, however, is how it defines "merit".

A man will break his back working for a promotion, spend a fortune on a car or a diamond ring, dishonour his family, humiliate himself, walk over his best friend's corpse and break the hearts of hundreds of other men just for a kind glance from the woman he loves.

How come slander is a crime, but flattery isn't?

Perhaps the reason why so many spiritual people believe in a universal consciousness is to make up for their own almost total lack of it.

"Progress" is the motto of our glorious age, engraved upon a magnificent tower that kisses the heavens, located in the great City of Humanity. But no one knows what it means, since it is a different motto in each one's mouth.

One beauty - what is beautiful? That which is lovable. What is lovable? That which is beautiful. But who is it that loves the beautiful? Some people think that love creates beauty, but the opposite is the case. The beautiful is loved by that which it creates. Love is beauty longing for itself from within the prison of ugliness. And what is ugliness? That which is not beauty. The foolish man's beauty cannot match the wise man's beauty, for the latter sees what the former doesn't. The wise man sees all, so he does not see any ugliness, for what is ugliness but that which we do not want to see?

Existentialism is introverted positivism at its best, and totalitarian subjectivism at its worst.

Determinism negates both free and un-free will, because everything is the will of the All, which is neither free nor bound.

What would Nietzsche have to say about Nietzscheans? Would he approve of all their existential fuming and steaming about the importance of a self they don't even understand let alone possess? Would he not perceive readily that their fumes come not from the earth's bowels but rather from their own?

[Cahoot]

That’s cool. Some provocative thoughts. I’ve been doing the thing same thing (with paper and pen). Maybe there is something in the air. An aphorism virus. Climate change.

Before digital, I had a photo darkroom. Attention on black and white contrast. As Ansel demonstrated, contain absolute white and absolute black within every print. They give space for all the shades of gray in between.

Also good for writing, as you show.

*

As evidence of causality rather than as a prescription of how to behave, you cannot help but love your neighbor as yourself.

edited:

You can only love your neighbor as you love yourself.

[Cahoot]

Contrast without conflict. The essence of Christianity.

[Urizen]

These aphorisms are very perceptive. Nearly all of them are undoubtedly true. A couple may need a bit of explanation before they can be accepted.

Anyone who gets paid for speaking or searching for the truth is doing neither. The reason for this is that if getting paid is regarded as a condition for speaking or seeking the truth, then to that degree there is untruth, as the truth is known for its own sake.

True. Rumi makes a similar point in his discourses:

... The worst of scholars are those who depend upon princes, and who revolve their life and purpose around the attention and favor of princes. Such scholars take up learning in hopes that princes will give them presents, hold them in esteem, and promote them to office.

Therefore, such scholars improve themselves and pursue knowledge on account of princes. They become scholars from their fear of princes. They subject themselves to the princes’ control. They conform themselves to the plans that princes map out for them. So, whether they visit a prince, or a prince visits them, still in every case they’re the visitors, and it is the prince who is visited.

However, when scholars do not study to please princes, but instead pursue learning from first to last for the sake of truth - when their actions and words spring from the truth they have learned and put to use because this is their nature and they cannot live otherwise - just as fish can only thrive in water - such scholars subject themselves to the control and direction of God. They become blessed with the guidance of the prophets. Everyone living in their time is touched by them and derives inspiration from their example, whether they are aware of the fact or not.

Should such scholars visit a prince, they are still the ones visited and the prince is the visitor, because in every case it is the prince who takes from these scholars and receives help from them. Such scholars are independent of the prince. They are like the light-giving sun, whose whole function is giving to all, universally, converting stones into rubies and carnelians, changing mountains into mines of copper, gold, silver and iron, making the earth fresh and green, bringing fruit to the trees, and warmth to the breeze. Their trade is giving, they do not receive. The Arabs have expressed this in a proverb: "We have learned in order to give, we have not learned in order to take." And so in all ways they are the visited, and the prince is the visitor.

We consider it praiseworthy to go through that which we want to avoid at all costs (suffering) in order to attain what we desire most, i.e, happiness. And yet, we don't consider it nearly as praiseworthy to have attained happiness without enduring any suffering whatsoever! Has anyone ever heard of a man being praised more for trying to reach his destination by going in the opposite direction than for being already present in it?

This one needs explanation.

No eligious doctrine conceives of the spiritual as being utterly beyond the material or the physical, and yet this is precisely what religion should do, and what religious people say it does.

That depends on one's level of understanding of religion.

The sage never wants anything but finite things, precisely because he only wants to infinite. All finite things are means to his end.

He sees the infinite in the finite. 'Eternity in an hour', 'infinity in a grain of sand'.

[windhawk]

Gain knowledge, and learn to love your fellow man.