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The Wisdom of Solomon (and some others)
by Steve Solomon


    The apparency is that in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king. The actuality is that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man had better keep his mouth shut.

    The apparency is that God is infinitely forgiving. The actuality is that God has the infinite capacity to be forgiven.

    A learning experience is what we say after everything went wrong and we failed. When everything went right we don't call it a learning experience; we call it a success.

    The official denial confirms the rumor.

    Only the lead dog sees new scenery.

    When small men cast long shadows the sun is going down.

    Sympathy equals empathy plus contempt.

    The only thing I am entitled to in all of Life is a chance to survive--if I am quick and strong.

    A system to create a really effective hospital where people get well fast, would be: once a week, the doctors choose the patient who has been there the longest with the least optimistic prognosis for recovery. This person is wheeled out into the courtyard, tied to a stake against the wall, snare drums roll loudly, and the worst sickie in the place is summarily executed by firing squad (while most of the rest of the patients look out their windows).

    The way to have a really effective mental hospital is to do the same thing: but executions happen one each day, Sunday's off. Oh! . . . and once a year the patients get to select by secret ballot one of their "therapists" for execution.

    The apparency: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. The actuality: If you even think there's a solution, you're part of the problem.

    The apparency: Taxes are required to create civilization. The actuality: Taxes are the proof that we have failed to create civilization.

    Government seems important to a people to the degree that it takes away their production in taxes. Correlary: The more the government takes the larger proportion of a people work for the government. Correlary: Without war or threat of imminent danger the government can't take a very large proportion of a people's production in taxes. Correlary: Without war or threat of imminent danger, government is not important. Correlary: Without war or the threat of imminent danger, the government will creat them.

    When peeling The Onion layer by layer, you have to shed a lot of tears.

    The apparency: You can't step into the same river twice. The actuality: you can't step into the same river once.

    I am rarely if ever lonely: Trapped within my own mind is all the company a person could ever want to get rid of.

    The apparency: Politics is the art of the possible. The actuality: Politics is the art of making the impossible seem possible--and getting fools to pay you to try.

    "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience." Teilhard de Chardin

    Great dying words: "I do not regret the journey. We took risks; we knew we took them. Things have come out against us. Therefore we have no cause for complaint." Captain Scott's journal, written while freezing to death in the Antarctic.

    Life is a journey best taken with little baggage.

    A philosophic scale is a graphic representation of possible states or conditions from highly desirable to most undesirable. Thus philosophic scales are very useful aids to understanding. L. Ron Hubbard codified the best ones I know of, such as the Emotional Tone scale, the Know-To-Mystery Scale, and etc. The Quality of Life scale is my own discovery. From bottom to top it goes: in hiding (various forms of non-beingness that seem to opt one out of danger); victimization (both sides of this game); melodrama (ordinary human emotion and reaction at play); high drama (almost inevitably in this Universe, tragedy); and at the top, adventure.

    Ethics versus Morals. Ethical behavior may be defined as acting after thinking about what would produce the greatest good for the greatest number effected. Morals are a codification of prior ethical decisions, simplified into easy-to-grasp rules. Morals exist because most people are very uncomfortable with the uncertainties of attempting to figure out what the right course of action might be, and most and are reluctant to take responsibility for having made mistakes. Being ethical means making decisions based on inadqeuate data and acting anyway. Ethical actions frequently work out badly; the actor has no one to blame for the results but themselves. Acting ethically while still desiring certainties means being uncomfortable. Moral acts also often work out badly. The apparent advantage to being moral is that when a moral act works out badly no one is to blame because the actor did what was supposed to be done. Being moral is comfortable because a moral person always knows what should be done, did it and is not to blame for the outcomes.

    Here's another way to say just about the same thing. If one wanted a way to evaluate the worth of an individual, it could be done by measuring how much uncertainty a person could tolerate. Most people can't tolerate much uncertainty at all and will create things to be certain about rather than stand with one foot on a banana peel and the other firmly planted in mid-air.

    This one introduces a character I call "Everybody." "Everybody" is a person just like everybody else. Now, to get on with it: The ability to disagree may be the most important ability a person could have. I'm not completely certain if its the most important. But certainly this ability is important. Everybody has some firmly held convictions they're quite entirely certain about. And Everybody is going nowhere but slowly downhill as a spiritual being. But despite slowly worsening, Everybody remains quite certain they are entirely right about just about everything. If you go into agreement with Everybody, you'll go nowhere too. So the single most important thing a person can be able to do is to disagree with every Everybody, no matter how hard agreement is being enforced. The main obstical to disagreement is getting through infancy and childhood without being forced into agreement with one's parents, peers and the Authorities in charge of your indoctrination.

    Another essential ability is the ability to Know. Especially to Know who you are. And Know other things as well. You don't Know by finding out. You just Know. Its a skill in that arena defined as "be still and Know." Either you've got it or you ain't. Knowing is a big help toward disagreeing.

    The Christian Soul is an immortal, little nut-like thing that resides next to the heart. A Christian is a human made in God's image (but who rarely acts at all god-like because they are certain that God is infinitely bigger than they are) who has been charged by God with a lifetime duty to care and cultivate their Soul. The Soul belongs to God, not the person within whose body it resides. It is the duty of every good Christian to guard their soul, to protect it from experiencing the various sins the person might wish to commit, so that when the person dies, the Soul in their charge may return to God, from whence it came. If the Soul's guardian doesn't refrain from sin, their Soul will go to hell. The thing I don't get here is why a person should care, since they're not the soul.

    Considering the options, self-employment is far superior to employment, but my real choice has always been comfortable unemployment.

    Health begins in the soil; healing begins with hygiene; liberty begins with freedom.

    The apparency is, that an "open-minded" person gives every viewpoint unbiased consideration. But I've never succeeded at convincing an "open-minded" person of anything. Give me instead a person with firm opinions, anytime! I'd prefer encountering someone with firmly held views that conflict with my own. At least this person can make up their mind. Someone who can "make" their mind, can change their mind. In actuality, open-mindedness is one of two phenomena: either someone with nothing at all between the ears, so that all thoughts merely go in one earhole and out the other, or, an "open minded" person is one who gives the ideas and viewpoints of others no reality whatsoever.

    If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough. If you live for doing it all, what you have done was never enough. If you live for being it all, what you are at the moment is enough.

    Questions that carry foregone conclusions on the face of them write the questioner down an ass . . . . Dr. John Tilden, Appendicitis, 1901.

    Evil comes often to a man with money; tyranny comes surely to him without it. Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum.

    I once met a man named Mr. 'Nertia, who was so lazy he wouldn't even stop working once he had begun.

    A father walked into the bathroom to discover his 14 year old son reading a pornographic magazine while practicing the manly art of self-abuse. 'Son!' he pleaded, 'Don't do that! If you keep it up you'll go blind.'
    'But Dad,' the young man protested, it feels so good! Suppose I keep doing it until I get to the point that I need glasses. Then I'll do it less often.'
    So it is with all our bad habits.

    "The water will never clear up 'til you get the hogs out of the creek." Jim Hightower, Texas politician.

    Concerning prominent, well-known personalities currently in the public eye: Shit rises to the top; sometimes it sinks to the bottom.

    The apparency is that time heals all wounds. The actuality is that time conceals all wounds.John Dalmas, The Scroll of Man.

    People have very bad memories: we always estimate our capacity to make future efforts based upon our present condition, rarely considering that our present condition may not be our future condition. In other words, when we feel "down," everything seems impossible.

    People have very poor memories: we generally believe that whatever we think and feel NOW is what we always thought and felt. And always will think and feel.

    Academic education never made a stupid person become intelligent but it often makes intelligent people become much stupider. The stupid who graduate become, as the Spanish say distainfully, instruidos, not genuinely, educados.

    "Look at a man the way that he is, he only becomes worse. But look at him as if he were what he could be, and then he becomes what he should be."Goethe.


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