Aphorism of the Day, August 2025

Aphorism of the Day, August 13, 2025

The redefinition of truth from the classical notions of invisible "goes without saying accepted common knowledge," about the divine, philosophical necessary truths, and tautological definitional and mathematical truths, happens in the Enlightenment when truth become more that which can be empirically verified and in line with agreed upon eye-witness reporting, and scientific laws.  The older totalizing truths perhaps have been relegated to feeling truths, intuitive truths, which pertain to the "truth" of aesthetic experience or the truth of the subjective experience.

Aphorism of the Day, August 12, 2025

To say biblical meanings are stable and final and self-evidential is to deny their changing relationships to people living in time where meanings are always in flux due to stages of life and changing life circumstances.  To say meanings are stable and final is to deny the reality of time.

Aphorism of the Day, August 11, 2025

One of the ways to account for division within the religious communities of the first century is to present Jesus as being a divisive figure.  I did not come to bring peace.  Members of a household will be divided against each other.  There is strange comfort in adjusting to the reality of division if one has the leader of one's own side of the division not saying, "they will come together over me," but they will be divided because of me.  All too human reality comes to text in the Gospel; all too human reality in text is actually divinely revealed if one finds it to be a poignant insight.

Aphorism of the Day, August 10, 2025

While most don't literalize the utopian visions of Isaiah about the wolf and lamb becoming friends; many still literalize the apocalyptic as predictive of future events.  The Apocalyptic is of a similar discourse as the utopian.  Both are discourses which serve people who need a vision of better life for all with harmony and justice as a way of surviving and refusing to normalize oppression which is so "loud" in their lives that it can purport to be the "truth" of life.

Aphorism of the Day, August 9, 2025

The apocalyptic functioned as visionary hope which involved a radical discontinuity in suffering situations.  A new and different heaven and earth would interdict the situation of pain soon, and this vision gave comfort for those who had to live with the suffering.

Aphorism of the Day, August 8, 2025

Hope is a visionary extrapolation from our assessment now of the traces of our lives of what we might think would be ideal or better for us in our future.  Hope can suffer from our faulty assessment facility because we can be too coded by the imperfections of our present life to even know what would be best for us?  Although hope usually assumes a utopia rather than a dystopia, in practice it can be perceptually guided by selfish self-interest.  It can be what I think is best for me without regard to what is best for the common good.  When we over identify self-interest with common good, others may and do suffer.

Aphorism of the Day, August 7, 2025

The Shadow Sublime might be called the high that people or groups get from hurting others through physical harm or verbal demeaning assaults.  That such could be "peak" experiences/entertainment for people reveals the frightening versatility of the human psyche.  It occurs in mob or crowd behaviors and so it provides individual absolution of guilt for a horrible thing to be done.  In fact, it can also rationalize the horrendous as righteous indignation.

Aphorism of the Day, August 6, 2025

Every era has the social phenomena of what might be called the Shadow Sublime, which has many forms of people getting "high" from negative appraised ideas and behaviors, which depart from acceptable legal and social standards.  The "high" which come from deep-seated conspiracy theories characterize the thrill of being an exclusively privileged one with special knowledge of the cause of social and political events.  The Shadow Sublime can occur because one is so over-whelmed by the actual complexity of life that the exclusive special knowledge gives one the "high" of having the experience of "being in control" because one has this inside knowledge.  It is an individual and social pathology that functions as an adjustment technique because actual mystery if a threat.  The certitude of such insider knowledge can result in acting out behaviors which are anti-social in nature.

Aphorism of the August 5, 2025

Having potential and not doing any work brings about a life of regretful might have beens.  Having dreams without doing anything about them limits dreaming to a narcotic function.  Having hope without faith leaves one's life in perpetual atrophy.

Aphorism of the Day, August 4, 2025

What is the relationship between faith and hope?  They both are about the future.  Hope is the vision of a better future; faith is acting now being persuaded about the immediate action toward that better future.

Aphorism of the Day, August 3, 2025

We have passed from the classical age of the general acceptance of words containing assumed self-evidential meanings immediately knowable by all, to the modern era of words being the human products which have origin and history within context, to the post-modern era where everything is but an interpretation of other interpretations.  Some people still try to live in classical and modern ways akin to an Amish buggy on a super highway.

Aphorism of the Day, August 2, 2025

Living is the art of the continual borrowing of existing traces of what we know has been and rearranging those traces with and within current human production to be traces for doing the same in future occasions.  Most of this done with seeming automatic redundancy memories without conscious regard of intending to do something "new."

Aphorism of the Day, August 1, 2025

How about starting an addiction recovery group called Greed Anonymous?  This was suggested by Ralph Nader many years ago.  Probably won't happen because greedy people are probably the last to come to an end of themselves and seek help and because they can dispense small band aid charity for tax breaks, they can convince themselves that their idolatry is really salutary.