Ramblings of a Retired Mind

  “The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.” Hannah Arendt

  “We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.” Erich Maria Remarque, “All Quiet on the Western Front”

  “Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.” Umberto Eco

  I don’t tell myself I will live forever, nor do I tell myself I won’t. Instead, I choose to live a comfortable lie. I am perfectly content with convincing myself that my timeline has no boundary, a strange but entirely necessary deception. Since retiring, my relationship with time has dissolved entirely. The structure of alarms, calendars, and professional deadlines has evaporated, leaving behind a vast, seamless expanse. I rarely know what day it is and sometimes lose track of the month. If I were to count the days, it would feel like watching a countdown clock tick toward the zero-mark at the end of a stadium game. And don't we all want the game to go on forever? To maintain the illusion that the whistle will never blow, I wrap myself tightly in this comfortable lie. Yet, through my seventy-plus years, I have seen ample, undeniable proof of reality. I have stood at the resting places of grandparents, parents, cousins, and friends. I watched them age, fade, and eventually ...

A must-read to understand our country today. https://ia801609.us.archive.org/29/items/kaufman-s-clinical-neurology-for-psychiatrists-pdfdrive/The%20Basic%20Laws%20of%20Human%20Stupidity%20%28Carlo%20M.%20Cipolla%29%20%28Z-Library%29.pdf 

  “Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” Robert Frost

  Comfortable Lying   “Liar!” We hear the word everywhere today, thrown around in politics, media, and everyday arguments. But what does it actually mean? By definition, a liar is a person who intentionally communicates untruths—a prevaricator, fabricator, or falsifier. Psychology typically categorizes these individuals into three distinct types: • The Habitual Liar: Someone who lies frequently as a matter of daily habit. • The Pathological Liar: Someone who lies compulsively with no apparent external benefit. • The Inveterate Liar: Someone whose deception is so deeply ingrained that it is impossible to change. But these clinical definitions miss a much more common, insidious breed: The Comfortable Liar. This is the person who tells a lie without experiencing a single shred of internal conflict or guilt. They are masters of convenient moral logic. To survive their own deception, they convince themselves that their falsehoods are necessary, welcomed, and even deman...

  Terrifying Truth   I live in a yurt. Not many people do. If you've never been inside one, there is something important to know: there are no corners. My bathroom is round. No corners. My bedroom is round. No corners. I have no closets because I could never build one without creating a corner. The walls of my yurt curve like waves on an ocean, flowing continuously around me. Nothing interrupts their movement. No sharp edges. No angles. No corners. I live alone. I work alone. I work in my yurt. I have a garden where I grow fruits and vegetables. It, too, is round. No corners. I do not drive. There are too many corners where streets meet, too many sharp angles in the world. When I go into town, I walk with an almost unconscious avoidance of corners. I stay away from the edges of buildings and where walls meet. I weave left and right, always moving in a curved stride. There is a method to my movement. There is a reason. He grabbed me and twisted my arm. “Yo...

  Terrifying Truth The mirror shows an image. But there is no depth—no depth of understanding, no glimpse into what lies beneath the surface. Is the image looking back at me the person I truly want others to see, or simply the person I hope they will see? I know that when I look at someone, I am evaluating them, too. Do they like what I like? Do they believe as I do? Are their morals the same as mine? And I wonder: when they look back at me, are they asking themselves the same questions? We all wear masks. We reveal our true selves to only a limited few. The rest of the world sees the image we choose to present, the reflection in the mirror, carefully shaped by what we want others to believe about us. But a mirror can only show us the surface. It cannot reveal the fears that weigh upon us, the worries that keep us awake, or the joy and hope that quietly live within us. It shows us the face we present to the world, but never the story behind it. What is the truth? Perhaps ...

  “Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there’s the hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That’s so for all stages of development and classes of society.”   Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” Albert Einstein

  “The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.” Arthur Schopenhauer

  The truth! Now there’s a joke. What is the truth? Today, truth seems more blurred than ever. “The honest-to-God truth!” we proclaim, perhaps with our fingers crossed behind our backs. The truth is what one says is the truth—or is it? For some people, repeating a lie often enough eventually turns it into truth in their own minds. They convince themselves that because they believe it, it must be true. Not me. The terrible truth is that it is becoming harder to know what is actually true. Wars have been fought over competing versions of the truth. Marriages have been made, and marriages have been destroyed, based on what one person says is true and another believes to be a lie. “To love, to honor, till death do us part.” Those are powerful words. Yet how easily can someone convince themselves that looking outside the marriage is not really a betrayal? Perhaps they redefine love and fidelity until, in their own mind, they have somehow remained true to their vows. A terrib...

  Ramblings of A Retired Mind The new motto seems to be: “It’s all about me now.” Is that really the direction we want for our great nation—and for ourselves as citizens? Rules are for everyone else, but not for me. We see it in the person who fishes without a license, hunts an endangered animal, or speeds down the highway because the rules apparently don't apply to them. We see it in the driver who takes up two parking spaces, the neighbor who blasts music without a thought for anyone around them, or the person who sets off fireworks during a record drought with no concern for the danger to others. Little things, perhaps. But little things add up. Something seems different now. The sense that we are all part of the same community—that our actions affect other people—seems to be slipping away. And then there is politics. The divide has become so vast that sometimes it feels as though we are no longer simply citizens who disagree with one another, but opposing camp...

​ “Mixing one’s wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.” Bertolt Brecht 

  “When will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.”   George Bernard Shaw

  “Little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” Arthur Miller

  “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.” W. E. B. Du Bois

  “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.” George Orwell

​ “Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.” George Orwell

  “There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery.” F yodor Dostoevsky

​ “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Eleanor Roosevelt

  The writers group that I belong to Writers Out West , have challenged ourselves to write something about one word which will contain no more than 300 words. For one as "wordy" as myself, this is quite the challenge, but here is my 2nd effort for the word Mirrors.   Ramblings of a Retired Mind Mirrors   A pane of glass is a window to the world. Add a silvered, reflective surface, and it becomes a portal into countless other dimensions. Instead of looking outward, we look back, and when we do, we never truly know exactly what we will find. The present, the past, and perhaps even the future all wait within its silent, silver depths.   Will I recognize the face that looks back at me today? I was once young, then I matured, and now I have finally grown old. I see the person I deeply cherish, the one I once was. Every changing season of my life is reflected in the mirror before me. Yet, I cannot help but wonder: can I also catch a fleeting glimpse of the p...

  “So far as I can see, all political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” George Orwell

  Really... “People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.” Dan Quayle

 Never has there been a time when there has been a truer statement than today... “The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” George Orwell

  “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.”   Charles Dickens

  “No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” Edward R. Murrow

​ “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.” Charles Dickens

​ “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” —  Henry David Thoreau

  “The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.” Umberto Eco

The writers group that I belong to Writers Out West , have challenged ourselves to write something about one word which will contain no more than 300 words. For one as "wordy" as myself, this is quite the challenge, but here is my effort for the word Mirrors.   Ramblings of a Retired Mind Mirrors   A pane of glass is a window to the world. Add a silvered, reflective surface, and it becomes a portal into countless other dimensions. Instead of looking outward, we look back, and when we do, we never truly know exactly what we will find. The present, the past, and perhaps even the future all wait within its silent, silver depths.   Will I recognize the face that looks back at me today? I was once young, then I matured, and now I have finally grown old. I see the person I deeply cherish, the one I once was. Every changing season of my life is reflected in the mirror before me. Yet, I cannot help but wonder: can I also catch a fleeting glimpse of the person I hav...

  “I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.” Johannes Kepler

​ “No matter where you stand, no matter how much popularity you have, no matter how much education you have, no matter how much money you have, you have it because somebody in this universe helped you to get it. And when you see that, you can’t be arrogant, you can’t be supercilious. You discover that you have your position because of the events of history and because of individuals in the background making it possible for you to stand there.” Martin Luther King Jr.