Montaigne's Essays

I have been reading recently from Michel de Montaigne's Essays. Montaigne was born near Bordeaux, France, in 1533. His parents were wealthy and of high standing, but unusually humble (his Godparents and nurse were all peasants). He was taught Latin at an early age by teachers who did not speak French. He did not learn to speak French until he was six, but was fluent in Latin as a toddler. His life was a very exciting one, as he was childhood friends with the boy who would become King Henry IV of France. Even still, Montaigne's contribution to the world came through a series of introspective analyses.

Montaigne decided to write about himself. He maintained that better than politics, poetics, current affairs, or even our households, what each of us know best is ourselves. Yet most of us do not take advantage of the opportunity afforded us by our closeness to ourselves. We live with ourselves with a unique intimacy, yet few of us ever know ourselves. Socrates, who was Montaigne's hero and exemplar, insisted that knowing oneself was the hardest thing to do, and also the most important.

Why do we resist knowing ourselves? Perhaps because we don't want to. We are unwilling to admit that we are no more beautiful, no wiser, no richer or more successful than we actually are. Concerning ourselves, we are steeped in illusions. What we wish we were is more important than what we are, and in fact we don't want to face what we are, because doing so would mean accepting that we are not what we would like to be.

Montaigne related to himself in a very adept way. This did not mean that he didn't strive to be better, to be more moderate, prudent, and kind. No one should ever stop striving for these qualities. But he was able to forgive himself for his failures, to accept himself. Most of all, he forgave himself for being human. This was much harder for him than it seemed. As humans, we are animals as well as spiritual creatures; but we deny the animal in us, or we deny the spiritual- which is equally foolish. Most of all we find it difficult to simply live. We think we must always be busy at something in order to validate our existence. But life itself is sufficient justification.

Of this, Montaigne said:

"We are great fools. 'He has spent his life in idleness,' we say; 'I have done nothing today.' What, have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations. 'If I had been placed in a position to manage great affairs, I would have shown what I could do.' Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all... Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately."

What does Montaigne mean by "live appropriately?" Moderately, sanely, wisely, enjoying all things, but nothing too much, eating, drinking, making love, but also conversing, reading, and thinking well. Montaigne forgave himself for his humanity, and he forgave all, for they too were human. At the end of his essays is a literary gift to us all:

"It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy your being. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know well enough what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting on our own behind."

Tooth-to-Tattoo Ratio

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  I was talking to a surgeon with whom I work closely, and he suggested that the reason I survived and healed so quickly from my accident might have something to do with a phenomenon called TTR.  TTR stands for "Tooth to Tattoo Ratio".  It serves as a general measure of invincibility.  In short, the ideal TTR is 1:1.  Decreasing the number of teeth in an individuals head, or increasing the number of tattoos on a persons body, incrementally improves the individuals ability to survive a horrific accident.  This term should not be confused with the DBI, or "Dirt Bag Index", in which the number of tattoos is multiplied by the number of missing teeth.  The resulting integer is said to represent the number of days that have passed since the patient last bathed.

  
  

  TTR is just one example of medical slang- those unorthodox descriptors of unproven, but widely accepted medical phenomena.  Below are a list of other MedSlang terms.  

  
  

  
  

• 404 moment - The point in a doctor's ward round when medical records cannot be located. Comes from HTTP 404 error "Not Found". 
• AGMI - Ain't Gonna Make It
• Agnostication - A substitute for prognostication. Term used to describe the usually vain attempt to answer the question: "How long have I got, doc?" 
• ART - Assuming Room Temperature (dying).
• ATS - Acute Thespian Syndrome (the patient is faking illness)
• Baby Catcher - an obstetrician 
• Blamestorming - Apportionment of blame after the wrong leg or kidney is removed or some other particularly egregious foul-up. 
• Blood Suckers/Leeches/Vampires - those who take blood samples, such as laboratory technicians and Phlebotomists 
• Bounceback - a patient who returns to the emergency department with the same complaints shortly after being released 
• Bury the Hatchet - accidentally leaving a surgical instrument inside a patient 
• Cheech - ordering every test available in a feeble attempt at nailing a zebra
• CNS-QNS - Central Nervous System - Quantity Not Sufficient. (Brainless, Spineless)
• Code Brown - a faecal incontinence emergency. Often used by nurses and medical technicians requesting help cleaning up an unexpected bowel movement. 
• Code Yellow - a patient who has lost control of his or her bladder
• CTD - "Circling The Drain"  May also mean "Certain To Die"
• DBI - Dirt Bag Index - multiply the number of tattoos by the number of missing teeth to give an estimate of the number of days since the patient last bathed. 
• Departure lounge - geriatric ward 
• Dermaholiday - dermatology, considered to be a less-busy department. See rheumaholiday
• DFKDFC - Don't fu**ing know, don't fu**ing care - a diagnosis often applied to a surgery's most regular visitors. Most often treated with a low-dosage course of Amoxicillin.
• Digging for Worms - varicose vein surgery 
• Disco biscuits - refers to the nightclub drug ecstasy. Usage: "The man in cubicle three looks like he's taken one too many disco biscuit".
• Donorcycle - nursing slang for a motorcycle, so named due to the amount of head trauma associated with motorcycle accidents, but less so with the body, making the perfect candidate for organ donation
• DRT - Dead Right There
• EFT - Eleventh Floor Transfer (in a 10 floor hospital; refers to patient who is very close to death)
• FUBAR - Fu**ed Up Beyond All Recognition
• FBUNDY - Fu**ed, But Unfortunately Not Dead Yet. Also TFBNDY: Totally fu**ed but not dead yet.
• FLK - Funny Looking Kid - used to indicate a child (usually a newborn) whose habitus or overall appearance, while normal in gross anatomy, suggests a need further medical investigation for congenital and genetic anomalies. "Funny", in this sense, means strange or unusual, not laughable.
• FOS - diagnosis given to patients that are likely not telling the truth (full of shit), alternatively a patient with a bowel obstruction.
• FTD - Fixin' to Die 
• Gas Passer - an anesthesiologist (also Gasser, Gas Man or Gaswallah).
• GI Rounds - medical staff taking a break to eat lunch/dinner
• GOMER - "get out of my emergency room" - a patient, usually poor or elderly, in the emergency room with a chronic, non-emergency condition. 
• GLM - good looking mum (MILF in the US) 
• GPO - "Good for Parts Only"
• Handbag positive - confused patient (usually elderly lady) lying on hospital bed clutching handbag 
• Hasselhoff - a term for any patient who shows up in the emergency room with an injury for which there is a bizarre explanation. Original Source: Baywatch actor David Hasselhoff, who hit his head on a chandelier while shaving. The broken glass severed four tendons and an artery in his right arm. 
• LOBNH - Lights On But Nobody Home.
• M & Ms - mortality and morbidity conferences where doctors and other health-care professionals discuss mistakes and patient deaths.
• NAD - Not Actually Done
• NFN - Normal For Norfolk, (a rural English county stereotypically associated with inbreeding.) NAA (Arkansas) in the US.
• O-sign - A patient is "giving the O-sign" when very sick and lying with mouth open. This is followed by the Q-sign - when the tongue hangs out of the mouth - when the patient becomes terminal. 
• Oligoneuronal meaning someone who is thick (not smart).
• PAFO or PFO - Pissed And Fell Over. Too drunk to be ambulatory.
• Polybabydadic - The state of having illegitimate children by several fathers, known or unknown.
• Pumpkin positive refers to the idea that a person's brain is so tiny that a penlight shone into their mouth will make their empty head gleam like a Halloween pumpkin. 
• Rear Admiral - a proctologist 
• Rule of Five - means that if more than five of the patient's orifices are obscured by tubing, he has no chance of survival. 
• Slasher - surgeon 
• Shotgunning - ordering a wide variety of tests in the hope that one will show what's wrong with a patient 
• Status Hispanicus - An overly agitated Hispanic patient (often Caribbean, seldom Mexican) who cannot stop screaming about their condition without providing useful information. 
• Testiculation - Description of a gesture typically used by hospital consultant "when holding forth on subject on which he or she has little knowledge". Gesture is of an upturned hand with outstretched fingers pointed upwards, clutching an invisible pair of testicles.
• TEETH - tried everything else, try homeopathy.
• TTFO - Told To Fu** Off. 
• TUBE - Totally Unnecessary Breast Examination
  
• UBI - "Unexplained Beer Injury"
• Vitamin H - A Haldol injection, used in the ER setting to rapidly sedate patients (often already drunk or high) who display dangerous or destructive behavior that threatens the safety of hospital staff and other patients.
• AMF-YOYO* - "adios motherfu**er, you're on your own"
• LGFD - "looks good from door"; used to describe a difficult patient that you do not want to enter the room and interact with.
• LOL - "little old lady"
• LOL FDGB - "little old lady fall down go boom"
• SPAK - "status post ass-kicking"
• WNL - we never looked (alternatively within normal limits)
• C/C- "Cancel Christmas" (dead)
• JIC - "Jesus is calling"
• MFB - Measure for box
• PBOO - "pine box on order"; see below
• Pecker checker / Cock Doc- urologist
• Unclear medicine - nuclear medicine, performed with nuclear I-suppose-atopes
• Q-sign - similar to an O-sign but with the patient's tongue protruding.
• Q-dot sign - n. similar to a Q-sign, but with a fly on the tongue. A poor prognostic sign.
• Fascinoma - any interesting or amusing tumor or malignancy
• “I fell on it” - invariably, the explanation given when a patient with a foreign object in his or her rectum is asked how it got there.
• Peek and shriek - to open a patient surgically, discover an incurable condition, and close the incision immediately
• Tough stick - n. a patient that it is difficult to draw blood from.
• Trauma handshake - n. a digital rectal exam. Every major trauma patient gets one.
• Two beers - the number of beers every patient involved in an alcohol-related automobile accident claims to have drunk before the accident
• Two dudes - The usual answer when doctors ask a patient who beat them up, as in "I was walking down the street minding my own business when these two dudes jumped me for no reason." The implication is that if it were only one dude the patient would have won the fight.

Inventory on the Invisible

What is invisible? everything that matters, except everything and matter.  The closer we look at something, the more it disappears.

Hillbilly Wisdom

I often admire the insight and sagacity of the meek. One of the things I enjoy most is sitting in on a weekly support group meeting in downtown Mesa, AZ. Most of the attendees live under the humblest of circumstances. Many are homeless. I am inspired each week, without fail, by the insight that only these circumstances are able to create. I always learn.

The following is a brief dialogue between young Tom Joad and the old preacher, Casy from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Casy spoke again, and his voice rang with pain and confusion. "I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust sometimes.' An' I says, 'Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' thought, an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people. An' sometime's I love 'em fit to bust, an' I want to make 'em happy.' An' then- I been talking a hell of alot. Maybe you wonder about me using bad words. Well, they aint bad to me no more. They're jus' words folks use, an' they don't mean nothin' bad by 'em. Anyways, I'll tell you one more thing I thought out; an' from a preacher it's the most unreligious thing, an' I can't be a preacher no more because I thought it an' I believe it."

"What's that?" Joad asked.

Casy looked shyly at him. "If it hits you wrong, don't take no offense at it, will you?"

"I don't take no offense 'cept a bust in the nose," said Joad. "What did you figger?"

"I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; Maybe that's the Holy Sperit- the HUMAN Sperit- the whole Shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent- I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true. An' I still know it."

Franz Kafka

Quotes from Franz Kafka

"Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty.  Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."

"There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of senses is the Evil in the spiritual world.  What we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.  One can disintegrate the world by means of a very strong light.  For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes everyone who dares to gaze upon it."

"It cannot be said that we are lacking in faith.  There is no need for you to leave the house.  Stay at your table and listen.  Don't even listen, just wait.  Don't even wait, be completely quiet and alone.  The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can't do otherwise.  In raptures it will writhe before you."

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before.  But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."

"If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it, good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that made us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves.  What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide.  A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us."

"Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all it's fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off.  It is there though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf.  If you summon it by the right word, by it's right name, it will come."

Three Cups of Tea

This guy is one of my personal heroes.  An example of how life should be lived.

Obama is a murderer!

Proof positive that Mr. President cares nothing for life.

Hitchens v. Sharpton

Writing For the Wastebasket.

A Light in August

 

Part I: The Descent

 

Pious follies, righteous wrongs

commenced the turning of the wheel

that lurched, and then, momentum maimed

began its course on slickened steel.

 

A numb fragility ensued

an enervated straw man, bent

upon a chosen hell to show

that choice compressed is will well spent

 

Conceding error or regret

would cut too close to psychic bone.

Familiar siege of Sysiphus

with hue and cry in tenor tone.

 

A gusting gale into the mind.

The icy, solemn, northern blasts.

The irreversible domain

exclaims aloud: "The Die is Cast!"

 

The loathing worn as premier badge-

ferocity of inwardness

A positive and active pain,

all efforts wasted to arrest.

 

Toxic tendrils teem in tide-

unnameable and poignant still.

Bewitching and abysmal black,

a doomed and barren soil to till.

 

Brushed with rank delinquency

that Lessens men to somber souls,

and misadventure clutches fast

to slow the gait to stumbling stroll.

 

An obligate divinity

of crumbling character and worth.

The jagged contour of a life

devoid of gaiety or mirth.

 

The throng assembled, old and new-

a tragic loving legion lost

by twisting of minds labyrinth

which kills slow with insipid frost.

 

Evolved unnoticed to a storm-

a howling tempest in the brain,

which feeds itself, its force to feign

to rain at once, but then to reign.

 

Insinuated spinelessness

for lack of noble sturdy name.

The dungeon of the spirit growls

through teeth betraying undue blame.

 

Erosion and unfocused dread

ensnare in suffocating gloom.

Enabled by a mind amiss

to paint thick black a whitewashed tomb.

 

What once appeared a polished vase-

gleaming while it first was glanced,

when touched erodes with yawning yearn

by writhing and lamenting chance.

 

A light's denouement, brackish sight

as through a glass and darkly spied

a search beyond the crisis nigh

had left but one attempt untried.

 

The old, arresting designate,

shed clean to save the simple self-

A light in August, poised to bathe

a broken soul in splendor's wealth.

 

 

"In the middle of our journey, I found myself in a dark wood.  For I had lost the right path."

-Dante

 

 

Part II:  The Turning

 

"And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars."

-Dante

 

Self-sent to toil and serve the wretch,

a wretch within one's own self found.

Through mediating intellect

a loveliness of life abounds.

 

That monster's ancient, wheezing voice

regains its pluck, arrests its fall,

and grattitudes eclectic reach

restores the man to infant's crawl.

 

Frequent, feverish, and in haste,

borne up by love and sight of light.

A climbing out of dungeons dearth-

restored to strength, reborn to might.

 

A senior friend to intellect

whose ministrations, daily sought,

lift up the heavy hands and heart

to sprint to glory rarely wrought.

 

Where once was bland tonality-

the rumbling hum of boredom's horde,

now magesterial presence shines

with lyric shield, and song as sword.

 

The body, soul, and mind conspire

to rise against, at last, reject

the woe and shame, the storm of murk,

abandonment, and self-neglect.

 

Replaced it with a slant of light-

sheet lightning- flickering afar,

though not perceived for power spent,

still left the door of hope ajar.

 

This new display presaged the day

of sun aloft in noon-day sky.

No shadow cast, but underfoot

the bones of yester-sorrows lie.

 

And if unflagging patience wins

this day, the next, then month and year

through alternating drench and draught

what's washed away will be the fear.

 

An energy that was before

throttled back to choke and stall

at once began, at my behest

to laugh aloud, above the squall.

 

And like a long beshrouded truth

uncovered now to marvel past

a gleaming clarity spills forth.

Autumnal plunge- reborn at last.

 

Skittering 'round the edge of mind,

one feels the wind that from the wing

of madness hissed beside the ear

and near it, recognized a thing

that plagues and festers, scolds and scorns,

but has within it's armor black

a gaping square, a missing link

that leaves it open to attack.

 

And so, with love, a blaze ignites-

engulfs the whole of room around,

and scrubs it hotly from the view.

Ash. Ember. Darkness.  Not a sound.

 

And thus it is that haven home

must burn to humble earth, that we

may see the brilliance of the sky.

 

Light in August.

 

Serenity.

Education Stunts Creativity

Are Women Born This Way?

Incontrovertible confirmation:

Robbins on Resourcefulness and Emotion

This is an unexpectedly great video.  The interaction with Gore is pretty entertaining.

Wordnik

This is a fantastic clip from TED.  I used the word "dactylic" for the first time in my life today, and five minutes later saw it used here.  Now I need to find a way to use the word "synecdochically".

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/161

Argument for Idiots

38 Ways to Win an Argument from Arthur Schopenhauer's The Art of Controversy

1. Carry your opponent's proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it. The more general your opponent's statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it. The more restricted and narrow your own propositions remain, the easier they are to defend.

2. Use different meanings of your opponent's words to refute his argument. 
Example: Person A says, "You do not understand the mysteries of Kant's philosophy." Person B replies, "Oh, if it's mysteries you're talking about, I'll have nothing to do with them."

3. Ignore your opponent's proposition, which was intended to refer to some particular thing. Rather, understand it in some quite different sense, and then refute it. Attack something different than what was asserted.

4. Hide your conclusion from your opponent until the end. Mingle your premises here and there in your talk. Get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order. By this circuitous route you conceal your goal until you have reached all the admissions necessary to reach your goal.

5. Use your opponent's beliefs against him. If your opponent refuses to accept your premises, use his own premises to your advantage. 
Example: If the opponent is a member of an organization or a religious sect to which you do not belong, you may employ the declared opinions of this group against the opponent.

6. Confuse the issue by changing your opponent's words or what he or she seeks to prove. 
Example: Call something by a different name: "good repute" instead of "honor," "virtue" instead of "virginity," "red-blooded" instead of "vertebrates."

7. State your proposition and show the truth of it by asking the opponent many questions. By asking many wide-reaching questions at once, you may hide what you want to get admitted. Then you quickly propound the argument resulting from the opponent's admissions.

8. Make your opponent angry. An angry person is less capable of using judgment or perceiving where his or her advantage lies.

9. Use your opponent's answers to your questions to reach different or even opposite conclusions.

10. If your opponent answers all your questions negatively and refuses to grant you any points, ask him or her to concede the opposite of your premises. This may confuse the opponent as to which point you actually seek him to concede.

11. If the opponent grants you the truth of some of your premises, refrain from asking him or her to agree to your conclusion. Later, introduce your conclusion as a settled and admitted fact. Your opponent and others in attendance may come to believe that your conclusion was admitted.

12. If the argument turns upon general ideas with no particular names, you must use language or a metaphor that is favorable to your proposition. 
Example: What an impartial person would call "public worship" or a "system of religion" is described by an adherent as "piety" or "godliness" and by an opponent as "bigotry" or "superstition." In other words, inset what you intend to prove into the definition of the idea.

13. To make your opponent accept a proposition, you must give him an opposite, counter-proposition as well. If the contrast is glaring, the opponent will accept your proposition to avoid being paradoxical. 
Example: If you want him to admit that a boy must do everything that his father tells him to do, ask him, "whether in all things we must obey or disobey our parents." Or, if a thing is said to occur "often," ask whether you are to understand "often" to mean few or many times, the opponent will say "many." It is as though you were to put gray next to black and call it white, or gray next to white and call it black.

14. Try to bluff your opponent. If he or she has answered several of your questions without the answers turning out in favor of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the technique may succeed.

15. If you wish to advance a proposition that is difficult to prove, put it aside for the moment. Instead, submit for your opponent's acceptance or rejection some true proposition, as though you wished to draw your proof from it. Should the opponent reject it because he suspects a trick, you can obtain your triumph by showing how absurd the opponent is to reject an obviously true proposition. Should the opponent accept it, you now have reason on your side for the moment. You can either try to prove your original proposition, as in #14, or maintain that your original proposition is proved by what your opponent accepted. For this an extreme degree of impudence is required, but experience shows cases of it succeeding.

16. When your opponent puts forth a proposition, find it inconsistent with his or her other statements, beliefs, actions or lack of action. 
Example: Should your opponent defend suicide, you may at once exclaim, "Why don't you hang yourself?" Should the opponent maintain that his city is an unpleasant place to live, you may say, "Why don't you leave on the first plane?"

17. If your opponent presses you with a counter-proof, you will often be able to save yourself by advancing some subtle distinction. Try to find a second meaning or an ambiguous sense for your opponent's idea.

18. If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him to carry it to its conclusion. Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.

19. Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his argument, and you have nothing to say, try to make the argument less specific. 
Example: If you are asked why a particular hypothesis cannot be accepted, you may speak of the fallibility of human knowledge, and give various illustrations of it.

20. If your opponent has admitted to all or most of your premises, do not ask him or her directly to accept your conclusion. Rather, draw the conclusion yourself as if it too had been admitted.

21. When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial and you see the falsehood, you can refute it by setting forth its superficial character. But it is better to meet the opponent with a counter-argument that is just as superficial, and so dispose of him. For it is with victory that you are concerned, not with truth. 
Example: If the opponent appeals to prejudice or emotion, or attacks you personally, return the attack in the same manner.

22. If your opponent asks you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it begs the question.

23. Contradiction and contention irritate a person into exaggerating his statements. By contradicting your opponent you may drive him into extending the statement beyond its natural limit. When you then contradict the exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had refuted the original statement. Contrarily, if your opponent tries to extend your own statement further than you intended, redefine your statement's limits and say, "That is what I said, no more."

24. State a false syllogism. Your opponent makes a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you force from the proposition other propositions that are not intended and that appear absurd. It then appears that your opponent's proposition gave rise to these inconsistencies, and so it appears to be indirectly refuted.

25. If your opponent is making a generalization, find an instance to the contrary. Only one valid contradiction is needed to overthrow the opponent's proposition. 
Example: "All ruminants are horned," is a generalization that may be upset by the single instance of the camel.

26. A brilliant move is to turn the tables and use your opponent's arguments against himself. 
Example: Your opponent declares, "So and so is a child, you must make an allowance for him." You retort, "Just because he is a child, I must correct him; otherwise he will persist in his bad habits."

27. Should your opponent surprise you by becoming particularly angry at an argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal. No only will this make your opponent angry, but it will appear that you have put your finger on the weak side of his case, and your opponent is more open to attack on this point than you expected.

28. When the audience consists of individuals (or a person) who are not experts on a subject, you make an invalid objection to your opponent who seems to be defeated in the eyes of the audience. This strategy is particularly effective if your objection makes your opponent look ridiculous or if the audience laughs. If your opponent must make a long, winded and complicated explanation to correct you, the audience will not be disposed to listen to him.

29. If you find that you are being beaten, you can create a diversion-that is, you can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had a bearing on the matter in dispute. This may be done without presumption that the diversion has some general bearing on the matter.

30. Make an appeal to authority rather than reason. If your opponent respects an authority or an expert, quote that authority to further your case. If needed, quote what the authority said in some other sense or circumstance. Authorities that your opponent fails to understand are those which he generally admires the most. You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have entirely invented yourself.

31. If you know that you have no reply to the arguments that your opponent advances, you by a fine stroke of irony declare yourself to be an incompetent judge. 
Example: "What you say passes my poor powers of comprehension; it may well be all very true, but I can't understand it, and I refrain from any expression of opinion on it." In this way you insinuate to the audience, with whom you are in good repute, that what your opponent says is nonsense. This technique may be used only when you are quite sure that the audience thinks much better of you than your opponent.

32. A quick way of getting rid of an opponent's assertion, or of throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious category. 
Example: You can say, "That is fascism" or "atheism" or "superstition." In making an objection of this kind you take for granted: 
1. That the assertion or question is identical with, or at least contained in, the category cited; and 
2. The system referred to has been entirely refuted.

33. You admit your opponent's premises but deny the conclusion. 
Example: "That's all very well in theory, but it won't work in practice."

34. When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer, or evades it with a counter-question, or tries to change the subject, it is sure sign you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without intending to do so. You have, as it were, reduced your opponent to silence. You must, therefore, urge the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness that you have hit upon really lies.

35. Instead of working on an opponent's intellect or the rigor of his arguments, work on his motive. If you succeed in making your opponent's opinion-should it prove true-seem distinctly prejudicial to his own interest, he will drop it immediately. 
Example: A clergyman is defending some philosophical dogma. You show him that his proposition contradicts a fundamental doctrine of his church. He will abandon the argument.

36. You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere bombast. If your opponent is weak or does not wish to appear as if he has no idea what you are talking about, you can easily impose upon him some argument that sounds very deep or learned, or that sounds indisputable.

37. Should your opponent be in the right but, luckily for you, choose a faulty proof, you can easily refute it and then claim that you have refuted the whole position. This is the way in which bad advocates lose good cases. If no accurate proof occurs to your opponent, you have won the day.

38. Become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand. In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the person by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character. This is a very popular technique, because it takes so little skill to put it into effect.

Photographer's Ecology.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/561

Writing for the Wastebasket.

The Winding Way

 

Bliss refines the winding way

as though by sculptors skilled caress.

The coarse to smooth, though gaze betray

the grooves and hollows of distress:

of work, and toil, and strain belayed

by grace divine and bellows blessed

to breathe into a love delayed

ease, life and grace-

togetherness.

  

A sculptor's masterpiece, at first glance, is smooth and supple in texture.  As one looks more closely, however, the markings left by the tools of the sculptor are evident.  They remind us that all such masterpieces are the cumulative result of myriad tiny strokes and efforts.

 

Writing for the Wastebasket

Real

 

An objective world before the eyes,

meaningless until we choose

to interact, our soul and it,

a panorama- lectern lit

by timely walk in ancient shoes.

 

Stone unturned, exposed and still,

it's still a stone with features hurled

until, it viewed and taken in,

a votive object- pressed to skin,

it only then becomes a world.

 

House, alike, is shell and stick-

precious nothing, fashioned foam.

The value that ascribes the loss

is memory, and love across

the ties that bind.  Then this, a home.

 

A force within compels the turn-

a work, indeed- projected forth

through clearer lens and better view.

Lest dormancy reclaim anew,

we must progress., march forward- North.

 

The meaning thing applied to dross

projects a path to time and place.

It echoes forth long after dead,

subjective paints rock, rose, and red,

'to err' avoided: honored space.

Nietzche: Why I Am So Wise

He who knows how to breathe the air of my writings knows that it is an air of the heights, a robust air.  One has to be made for it.  Otherwise, there is no small danger one will catch cold.  The ice is near, the solitude is terrible- but how peacefully all things lie in the light!  How freely one breathes! How much one feels beneath one!  Philosophy, as I have hitherto understood and lived it, is a voluntary living in ice and high mountains- a seeking after everything strange and questionable in existence, all that has hitherto been excommunicated by morality.  From the lengthy experience afforded by such a wandering in the forbidden I learned to view the origin of moralizing and idealizing very differently from what might be desirable: the hidden history of the philosophers, the psychology of their great names came to light for me.  

How much truth can a spirit bear?  How much truth can a spirit dare?  That became for me more and more of the real measure of value.  Error (belief in the ideal) is not blindness.  Error is cowardice... every acquisition, every step forward in knowledge is the result of courage, of severity toward oneself, of cleanliness with respect to oneself... I do not refute ideals, I merely draw on gloves in their presence... Nitimur in vetitum.  We strive after the forbidden (Ovid):  In this sign my philosophy will one day conquer, for what has hitherto been forbidden on principle has never been anything but the truth. 

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but to hate his friends.  One repays a teacher badly if he remains a pupil.  You may be my believers, but of what impotance are all believers?  You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me.  Thus do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account. 

Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have denied me will I return to you...

-Friedrich Nietzche                                                    

Writing for the Wastebasket.

Grand

 

A tree- content to ease its stay

hemmed in by giants, weakened while

it grows aloft and musters will

arboreal way- alone and still

reverent rostrum, proud profile.

 

Toward the light and with High help

it presses forth branch, bud and leaf.

A will within and vision true.

A timely magic to imbue.

Becomes grand through adversity.

 

 

Times of adversity confront each of us.

Without the difficulty of being hemmed in, a tree would not be forced to muster its own power to grow toward the light.  It must bring forth its own strength to spread its branches and flourish.  If it becomes grand, it is partly because of its suffering.  Times of adversity are crucial to personal development.

 

 

Writing for the Wastebasket

Die to Inquiry

I walked into the mountains four days ago to die.  I hadn’t worked out the details of the process or exact location.  I didn’t know how long it would take, or how much pain would be involved.  I had faced episodic bouts with deep despair, and each had stirred within me a desire to go into the mountains- never to self destruct, but always to die.  By now I knew only that I should ascend and allow.

January.

For the last three days the temperature has exceeded ninety degrees.  My hands, neck, and face, the only exposed parts of my body, have been cracked and reddened by the wind and sun.  A brush from an ocotillo branch or pack strap serve as smart reminders of the previous days’ exposure.  Today the weather is fittingly brisk and overcast.  I am perched on the crest of a cinder bluff, gazing west across a canyon to the hillside 300 meters away.  Still and exposed, the surprising weather change is enough to create discomfort, and the wind draws me into subtle shudders and convulsions.

I gaze downward into the black dirt and white bunch grass between my boots.  I wait, and then reach down and pull the tuft of dry grass up by its roots.  I carefully twist and tie the bunch grass into a bundle and set it back down.  I shift my feet deliberately and rest a flat stone in each of my boot prints, and then I scan the area for kindling.  The world slows as I survey my arms-length periphery.  The wind continues, but shifts to cause a rhythmic heaving in the flora.  My eyes pick through paloverdes and I break away dry branches.  My fingers float through nearby creosote and sage in various stages of flourish and decay.  I break away desiccated extensions of cane cholla, graythorn, and mesquite.  I muse at how light the dead cholla feels, and compare it to nearby samples of its thicker, weightier chainfruit cholla cousin. 

From the careful gathering of this tinder arises an awareness of my shins.  I check them a few times a day.  I’m due.  I place the twigs and branches in a radiating pattern over the bunch grass and pull my right pant leg over my boot to my knee.  Three needles.  I pull the cholla quills out of my leg, and marvel at how the reddening flesh clings to them and resists their removal.  The thought makes me smile.  Risus sardonicus.  Miraculous, living tissue clings desperately to its primary source of agony like a mother having an infant torn from her arms.  Despite the obvious harm inflicted, the angry skin from the violent little assailants clings so well that all the focus and strength of a grown man is required to accomplish the task.  I think, observe, lower my pant leg, and stare for a long while up the canyon to the north.

I came to the mountain to die with two friends, though I’m fairly certain they thought I was there to hike and hunt deer with them. We spoke, strategized, maneuvered, and hyperventilated as we trudged together up fifty-degree slopes of cactus and scree.  Cade and Matt didn’t know I was there to die.  Since I had wanted to die for the entire decade I had known them both, I wasn’t behaving in a way that would betray my secret.  Even if they had known, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t miss me.  After all, they must have thought about me the same repellant way that I thought about myself.  Even in these desolate mountains with these rough-and-tumble men, I continued to wallow in a sticky, stinking cesspool of me.   My mind was overridden with thoughts of my problems, my laments, my choices, my skeletons, my addictions, my life, my death. Me.  This was my story- etched into my bones.  Carved into my flesh in bold-face Times New Roman.  And for this purpose I had marched into these mountains:  Control+Alt+Delete.

I had finally decided how it would happen.  Better said, the method chose me- it was inquiry.  I would ask myself to death- hen peck and interrogate until the sinews had been peeled from my bones, leaving only a sun-bleached, bold-face bone pile crumbling in the desert.

For three days I have been asking.  All the questions remained unanswered because, of course, they were all rhetorical.  All but one: 

“How do I hate Me?”  Let me count the ways…

754 before I stopped counting.  Even then, I stopped counting so that I could add to the list “#755: you can’t even keep track of the reasons you should hate yourself?  What’s wrong with you?” Other remarkable questions spilled from my brain, each one deepening the profundity of my psychic distress.

“What kind of person does something like that?”

“How could you have hurt her that way?” 

“What the hell happened to your life?”

“Is this the example of a father you want your kids to know?”

“Why can’t you string together two solid weeks?”

I never bothered with the answers.  They didn’t matter.  Of paramount importance, however, was the tallying of questions as reasons in and of themselves.  I filed them away as IOU’s- notes to be drawn upon when I tried to slip back into self-trust or enjoyment.  They were psychic currency- to be used for the sole purpose of purchasing pain and stagnation.  I categorized them, sub-categorized them, alphabetized them, and rated them by importance.  I assigned them relative values.  Questions that caused me to visibly grimace with regret were allotted ten points.  The feeling of a sucker-punch with no visible grimace was worth eight.  The higher the number, the more “value” the inquiry had on the Character Auto-Brutalization index.  After day two, my shame exceeded my desire to think of new things to be ashamed about.  I was too pathetic to continue calculating how pathetic I had become.  What else would I think about if not this?  As always, self-sabotage was the nearest and best-fitting answer.  When in Rome, do as the Romans do, and when in Mexico, pass the Bacanora.

Day three- panting and wheezing like an obese asthmatic, straining to see through rivulets of sweat streaming into my eyes.  My lower limbs feel barely intact- loosely articulated by duct tape and rubber bands.  My swollen ankles, knees, and feet, bolstered by heavy hiking boots, are no match for the rough-hewn volcanic boulder and shale.  I am halfway through my one-mile jaunt to where I heard the echo of gunfire.  A 20 pound pack,  a rifle, and 754 rocks piled high on my shoulders slow my steady ascent.  I don’t know how big or heavy the rocks are.  Actual size.  Heavy enough.  Cade was a crack shot with a rifle, and I knew he had shot at a deer.  I also knew that if I didn’t get to him shortly, we would run out of daylight and be unable to track or locate the deer he had shot.

I stared into the mindless, lifeless eyes of the deer.  I had seen living deer from this distance.  Death evokes shallowness almost immediately.  The shape, contour, and color of the eyes remains, but the depth, essence and connection escapes.  The effect is eerie.  I look into the eyes of people every day, and take that depth for granted.  It’s only when I see the eyes like this- vacant hulls of what once contained and harnessed teeming, beaming, living light- that I retroactively admire that bright eyes of the living.  I sensed that this moment was one of the tipping points- the existential crises that arose out of seemingly normal points in time.  I had seen this sight many dozens of occasions before, but on this occasion I began to inquire. 

Had the deer suffered? 

No.  Dead in it’s tracks.  Never knew what hit him.

Would his life, or rather the circumstances surrounding his death be useful?

The meat would be carefully stripped from his carcass, packed out, cleaned, and gifted to Abundio- the destitute and senile ranch hand.  Abundio would slice it into thin strips and hang it over branches of mesquite to dry into machaca.  It would feed him for 6 months.  He would use the cape and pelt for warmth when needed.  It’s hard to imagine any human in the current stages of global development relying on a deer hide for warmth and survival, but these humans exist.  They are men like Abundio.

Why am I okay with this type of violence against life?

Not sure.

I wondered about my wonderment.

Is it regret?  No.  Resolve?  Commitment?  Compassion?  No.  What is it? 

It just is.

I stood on the bloody hillside- questioning my questions.

Maybe inquiry is still the best way to die, but not this method of inquiry.  These rhetorical interrogations seem only to prolong my suffering.  Maybe, as with the deer, a new series of questions are in order.  New guards and rifles on the firing squad.

I light the bundle of bunch grass with a butane lighter, and after a few moments of attention, a tiny fire crackles to life.  I stoke it with my sticks and dry cactus, manicure it, ensure it is contained to the size of one of my boot prints, and re-position the rocks on either side of it to protect it from the wind.  I rustle searchingly through my pack and retrieve my lunch- handmade tortillas with a spoonful of black beans folded into them.  I peel back the tin foil that envelops them, and expose them with my ash-streaked fingertips.  Frozen from the morning in my backpack.  I replace the foil and perch them over the flames of my tiny fire.

Why must my story about myself be engraved so deeply?  It seems irreparable.  Is it true? Or could it be that my demons are only stories?  Rocks as large and heavy as my mind fashions them to be.  Are they macabre fairy tales that turn Prince Charmings back into frogs, and end with Jack falling off the beanstalk to his death? How can I know they are (or aren’t) true?  If they are stories, who do I become when I believe them?  In what way do I change? How damaging are these concepts when my mind gives them teeth, claws, aggression, bubonic plague?  And now this: If I see the stories for what they are and leave them here, with the deer’s soul on the bloody hillside, who will I be without them?

754 stories.  Pathetic, demeaning, depressing, and defining stories.  I am these stories insofar as I acknowledge them. 

So, what am I if they are untrue? 

A heart at peace.

And the I of the scary tales and armored scales? 

Dead to reality.

On the mountain where I came to die, I lie down next to a boot print fire.  A chilling gale assaults my back, yet my face is warmed by embers.  I don’t need to fight the cold anymore.  No more rushing to the ramparts.  Just allow.  The flame, the source, will do the rest.  Smoke from paloverde, creosote, cholla, and mesquite wisps into my nostrils and my eyes well up.  I am being smoked.  I turn my mind’s attention to the wind bracing my back, to my soft and shallow breathing. I am being breathed. 

I was born here, on this mountain, just now.  Born with no trace of past- just storybooks and imagination.  I ascended and allowed.  I found the way to find me.  I fix and stare from eyes vacated of mind.  I feel it must be what the deer felt yesterday on the bloody hillside.  I will tell myself more frightening stories someday. Being a masterfully self-deceptive raconteur, I will likely believe them again.  I remind myself to be still.  Rather than breathing, thinking, and living… allow. Be breathed, thought, and lived.  It will happen anyway, despite my ignorance of it.

 I am alive.  And the I  that I survived rests in ashes on the mountain of my birth.