iv.
So much seems to be about priorities. About making them, about admitting to ourselves what they are. And about being able to be happy with what we have decided is important. It is a complicated dance.
I cannot decipher these points in order, as they are all hopelessly intertwined. I attempt to look at their interlocking selves. The easiest should be the making of priorities. We decide what we want and place it as the most important thing in our lives…. But think about that. Who can say one week to the next what they REALLY want? Instead we push forward our goals for things we think we should want. The things that TV, our parents or the collective sense of right says we should. I question whether any but a tiny few of us ever put our greatest efforts foreword on the things we want the most.
Many of us live the lives that are easiest for us, not the most fulfilling. It is easier to live with unfulfilled dreams that to face failing. I have listened to so many friends, acquaintances and lovers espouse desire s to be the things they want the most, but somehow never work to achieve. Instead they perpetuate their comfortable day to day life. It is easier to charge up the Visa card then to really get out of debt. It is easier to date the girls who are around you than to search for your soul mate. I wonder how many of us set false idols foe what is most important in our lives than just find it too much work.
As far as being happy…. Maybe that is the crux. How many of us even know how?
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- Mike winkler
- A Career data security Engineer exploring concepts for a book on obsolete ideas in data security
The Way of the Poet Warrior
The Way of The Poet Warrior is my book of philosophy. It is the Why of what we I do. It is always a work in progress
The Way of the Poet warrior is the opposite of compartmentalizing. Modern Americans often live their lives in discreet boxes of emotional realities. We become the sum of our compartments. By definition this makes us less than the sum of all that we are. Compartmentalizing is being lesser, to not have to deal with the difficult things.
It is also the opposite of moral relativism. Endless euphemism anesthetizes the soul. If we can really judge things to their moral reality without looking away we can be true to our self. The Way of the Poet Warrior is the ability to call things good or evil. This is not mean spiritedness; it is only clarity. The courage and perception to be able to discern moral realities is important. The ability to discern these realities without bowing to the unspoken social pressures of mediocrity of emotion is a way to a greater self. Laugh, cry, smile and scream. Live your life, do not audit it.
The Way is about accepting who and what you are in totality. We must acknowledge our inner poet when we are making war. To forget the poet is to become an animal with no sense of past or future. We must also acknowledge the warrior. Society has conditioned us to deny being assertive when it might be perceived as rude or cause disharmony. Remember the poet and you will be a better warrior. Be as willing to create changes as you are to soothe over them.
Your assertive urges are a part of you. To suppress them is the same self harming effect as suppressing any other feeling. Your inner poet is not some effeminized passive voice, but the voice of understanding
In a sound bite it is the anthem of Live Life Large! (LLL)
You are what you do.
Everything comes down to this one simple concept. To say that what you are is how you look or feel is narcissistic at best. The things that you gain, both in the mind and your possessions, are nothing but fodder for your actions. What we are is the effects we have on the world. You are what you do. Our internal struggles are nothing but an exercise in becoming. Becoming is important. Understanding your self is vital, but in the end it is all the spiritual equivalent of masturbation.
We are the effects we have on the world. We are how we help or harm others. No other measure is meaningful. As Americans we tend to answer the question ‘What do you do?’ with a statement of profession. Although our jobs are an aspect of this, to say someone is a postman, psychologist, a writer, a ditch digger or President of the United States is a partial answer. A ditch digger may spend his afternoons making children laugh. The President could create topiary in the rose garden. A computer analyst may be the only think keeping his mothers sanity together. Each of us is defined by the sum total of our actions and effects on other people.
Kindness and truth
Do everything you can in kindness. Things done with malice in your heart are most often done to the detriment of those around you; Even the right thing. Even telling the truth. There are times where the truth only does harm. One of the hardest things that I have found to do in life is to get the mixture of kindness and truth correct. I tell the truth and act in truth as often as I can but always informed by kindness.
It is easy to live in a kind of myth of empirical truth having no moral component. This may be true in physics and engineering but not in the interactions between people. Every truth can help or harm. Every kindness has a chance of making someone lesser because it is not kindness at all; it is our own weakness at not wanting to be truthful. We hide and say it is kindness. It has long since become my opinion, that the hardest and best thing in the world, is to perform every action and speak every word in kindness and truth. Finding the right balance between the two it my largest daily challenge.
Based on this idea the greatest challenge is to not do the right thing, But to do it for the right reason. Do the right thing to be true to the word. Do it for the right reason to be true to yourself.
Good and Evil
The words have grown harder to use than ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’, admitting a serious mistake, or your favorite profanity. We live in a time and place of political correctness. Neutral language has infected more than our language. It has made it harder to think some thoughts. Our souls are becoming anesthetized by the tendency toward speaking of even the most extreme things in moderate tones.
Do not mistake the way that words like ‘awesome’ have become watered down. By daily using the strongest of language it becomes dimished by over use. We, instead of feeling strong feelings or having extreme thoughts, have made our strongest words into a new form of mediocrity. This is why I seek to resurrect the oldest and strongest of words. We need to be empowered to both feel the strong feelings and say the strong words. Let us really use, and really feel the good and evil around us.
I was struck during the invasion of Iraq by the sons of Sodom Hussein. Although I make no judgment on the morality of that war the two were evil men. They raped, killed and took from a population who had no recourse. Both were tyrannical and greedy in a way that shocked even my 21st century television and internet saturated self. Their crimes were paraded across the news services as that days feeds. They evoked no more emotion that the rest of the pre-processed fodder. Truly evil men are discovered, they fight to the death, and we feel nothing. This is wrong.
Conversely I spoke to a stranger in a pub. She told stories to me and my companions. We told ours to her and her companions. There was a lot of silliness and comradare. We all laughed and an evening became a thing to be remembered. I call the evening good and the people good. We all made each other’s lives incrementally better. I call the story-telling-woman (whose name I never learned) good. I see evidence of good people in the world.
Because in 1971 someone may have had a better day does not make today not the Best Day. Think about that.
It is our best day. Life is filled with tiny sparks of the beautiful but we feel the need to force them into qualified niches of mediocrity. If we witness an act of depravity the break goes both directions. Either we talk about the disenfranchised or the unfortunate or we defame the perpetrator with blind unseeing defamation. We talk about how stupid niggers, white trash, spics or slopes can be. We never, even in our own mind examine the act and what it means.
It has become the opiate of our society to not examine, but to label. We never feel or think about the strongest emotional experiences our or lives or most deeply effect our sensibilities.
I say lets open the floodgates. We must still live in kindness and truth. This applies to all things and everything we do in life. But let’s really experience our highs and lows. Feel empowered to use the words. Examine your life for what is good and evil. If we take this difficult step we are empowered to act. We can reward and applaud that which we find good. We can live in the unabashed light of our goodness and that of others without qualification. We will also feel empowered to revile the Evils in our lives. Once empowered to feel we cannot help but feel empowered to act.
Partial Suicide
Nature of fear
Love is easy. Trust is hard
The cup
A lot has been said and can be said about the nature of grief, loss, and sadness. So many analogies are around the Idea of a cup.
Suzann Dean said—the grief is mine. Do not attempt to take it from me. Even though it is a bitter drink I intend to drain it until its last drop.
To many, the idea of watching someone else’s loss is harder than experiencing it. The well meaning seek to anesthetize us from our feelings. They distract us so we will not be sad. I say live your sadness. It is as much a part of who you are as your joy and accomplishments. To deny sadness and loss does nothing but lessen our self understanding and self mastery. Drink the bitter cup. Own it
There is a famous line from the bible I love to paraphrase. Christ asks the greater god if there is any way that the cup can be passed from his lips. He asks that he may not have to die in the hardest way possible. The greater god has no reprieve for him. Although I would never call a man a coward for wanting to avoid death by torture, many of us ask the greater world to take from us our hardships so we do not have to experience them. We still wish to have the results of the difficulty but not to have to bear through the achievement of it. Prozac for the soul does nothing but numb us. Again I say drink the bitter cup. Hardships make us strong. They teach us self knowledge that cannot be had when others bear our burdens.
I am not advocating the seeking of hard times to temper your mettle. My point is that do not avoid the fire that belongs to you. All this can do is to make you weak. It can serve no purpose but to leach the value of your joys and great moments
My conclusion is as vulgar as it is simple. It’s my fucking cup. It may be bitter, or difficulty but it is mine. I treasure my sadness grief and loss in the same way I do my ability to make people smile. I do not deny any part of myself. My trials flaws and hardships are all necessary to be true to the man I am
Every action is either selfish or is aimed at making the world better
Beliefs carved in stone?
At what point do we form beliefs that we do not question? To even ask this is a challenge and a provocation.
We all engage in arguments, discussions and had out a few monologues to the world. As a general statement we believe we are right- Why can’t others see things our way? This does not mean we are not presented with good arguments by skilled speakers. Life is full of people talking at each other. Each is vested in his argument being the truth. Pro-choice/pro life, guns, no guns, marriage vs. singlehood, career or family first, these are the tug-of-war arguments of our era. Both sides are well researched and valid. But it is a rare precious thing when someone is actually convinced of anything. Why is this?
We want to convince, not be convinced. On occasion people are run over by the intensity of an argument. It is a rare thing in the world that someone is legitimately convinced of something they were once opposed to. We do not listen. We wait to speak. We may be picking though our opponent’s (and in truth it is a conversational opponent) for ways to augment our position. When, in the formation of our core selves, do we forbid ourselves to truly listen?
It seems we must question the answers behind the answers. Like the entire paradigm of the Poet Warrior, what selfishness or altruism rules the beliefs behind the espoused beliefs and arguments? When do we form these inviolate-able, unarguable base precepts of our life? When do we learn that there are some thoughts, concepts, virtues and vices that are not to be questioned? And why do we form them?
Like all life, people chase the path of least resistance. Could it be, we form beliefs and views that are good enough? We follow the path of least resistance after this? Is it just easier to not have to rethink things? Why would we put ourselves through the psychological stress of re-examining our core beliefs?
But gyms are everywhere. Continuing education programs fill the nights of many of our lives. We manage as a society, at least some, to not listen to the sirens call of the couch and narcotic TV and computer time killers. We manage to transcend the path of least resistance. This is a wonderful thing, so why do we not extend it to our beliefs?
I say to walk the path of the Poet Warrior we need to not follow the path of least resistance in out truths. Question everything, including the path of the Poet Warrior itself. Examine the things that you hold closest to your heart. Why do you hold it so? Exercise your personal philosophy in the way you do your mind and body.
I am committed to the grievous necessity of the availability of abortion. No argument has ever swayed me in this. I have mounted my share of assaults on those who hold the reverse position. When we peel the onion back on beliefs such as this, but not just this, what is the selfishness and altruism? As a man do I want the ‘escape clause’ for my actions? I admit that this is not without weight. Do I believe that the value of a woman who is alive and actualized is higher than that of a potential life? Surely I do. But what is the belief behind the belief? Why do I feel this? In my case I believe every individual human life is a wellspring of potential, but the general concept of human life is less so. Quantity of life means less than quality of life. But are there beliefs that can be chased further down the rat hole? Surely there is.
When arguing this point with an intelligent and well spoken co worker of mine we reached the point that his beliefs were based in what was “right”. It was the tenants of his faith.
Faith is not an answer. It is a firewall against self examination. Examine your faith. Examine each tenant as scrupulously as if it were a new faith, not an incumbent one. Faith, like knowledge or drugs, can be a wonderful thing or a shield to hide behind so as to not have to deal with the hard parts of life.
In fairness I try my best to walk the path I espouse. I am looking for the argument that can prove me wrong, in this belief as well as my others. It is easy to not do so. It is a daily struggle, just like going to the gym, or doing my homework for class.
Is our personal philosophy worth less than our intellect or our bodies? The path of least resistance is narcotic for the soul.
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